The concept of growth marketing bases a new strategy off of an age-old desire: to stand out in a competitive market. The following tech professionals have benefited from business acumen and experience in their fields, with eyes on the current landscape. And in part two of a two-part series, they’re sharing some simple but effective growth marketing hacks.
For example, SimplePractice’s Director of Growth Design Jeff Doan uses data to show potential customers there’s a better way to manage healthcare notes, scheduling and billing. This year, he’s tailoring his messaging around product fixes.
“I’m excited about digging into internal and external factors that plant the seed of doubt in your customer base with a current solution,” said Doan.
Top Growth Marketing Trends
- Omnichannel approach for content
- Growing company social media followers through help of influencers
- AI as a tool to help achieve key KPIs
- Product-led growth that motivates customers to convert
- User privacy will be a top concern
A combination of consumer knowledge and trial-and-error approaches has led these LA professionals to champion omnichannel marketing approaches, intelligent attribution and product-led growth.
Single Grain CEO Eric Siu doesn’t take a one-and-done approach to marketing. He said he repurposes content depending on where he believes it will best serve users. Below, Siu shared how the digital marketing agency’s brand has specifically benefited from guest carousel posts.
What growth marketing trends are you watching in the year ahead and why do you think these trends will be important?
Take an omnichannel approach for any content you create by repurposing what you already have. Nowadays, people are on all channels and you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. For example, you can record a YouTube video and upload shorter snippets from that video to TikTok, or turn the audio into multiple podcast episodes.
To take it even further, extract memorable quotes and use those to create Instagram posts, which you can also post on LinkedIn and Pinterest. Not only are you saving time, you’re getting the largest possible return on the time you invested up front.
If you don’t have a large following, you can collaborate with someone who does.’’
What are some simple steps product and marketing pros can take to start leveraging these trends in their work?
Guest carousel posts work really well on Instagram and LinkedIn because you can communicate your message succinctly. Start by repurposing any listicle blog post — say, “5 Tips for Preparing Healthy Meals in 30 Minutes Per Week,” and turn those tips into a carousel. Imagine five images that users can swipe through, with a call-to-action at the end asking them to follow you for more tips.
If you don’t have a large following, you can collaborate with someone who does. Offer to create a carousel for them to post on their page. When we tested this ourselves, we gained more than 600 Instagram followers through one guest carousel. We then repurposed this same content and posted it to our own social media channels.
Genly Co-Founder Karen Porat tracks the company’s media wins back to users’ first clicks on their digital campaigns in real time. That way, she has clear data to report their marketing methods’ success. Porat said that Genly optimizes its clients’ inbound lead generation campaigns based on the ads, forms and audiences that generate the highest demo set rates.
What growth marketing trends are you watching in the year ahead?
This year, growth companies are more focused than ever on increasing their demo set rates and are looking to AI as the tool that will help them achieve their 2020 KPIs. Demand managers are not only accountable for generating high quantities of qualified inbound leads for their sales development representatives, but are also partnering in the sales process in a more meaningful way. As a result, they will be turning to technology that will allow them to increase their demo set and win rates through intelligent attribution and optimization.
This year, growth companies are more focused than ever on increasing their demo set rates.’’
What are some simple steps product and marketing pros can take to start leveraging these trends?
Make sure that every inbound lead can be linked to its originating campaign and creative, and that every sales interaction is documented correctly in your customer relationship management systems. Accurate data is key in order for AI to be effective, so tracking every piece of information in your funnel (click-through rates, conversion rates, time that lead was generated, etc.) will be crucial for an AI-enabled platform to integrate your data points and increase your demo sets and overall performance.
Incorporating AI into marketing technology is a big part of Genly’s vision to create a growth on-demand platform that’s designed to help managers hit their goals.
Director of Growth Design Jeff Doan is focused on consumer motivation. He emphasized the importance of targeting potential customers who could benefit from an SaaS platform like SimplePractice. In order to grow awareness, Doan recommends identifying any factors in the customer journey that could cause consumer skepticism in competitor solutions.
What growth marketing trends are you watching in the year ahead?
The growth marketing trend I’m watching in 2020 involves product-led growth. It is a hot term, and for good reason. Products that customers enjoy using make the whole process easier. But what if you have a product that your customers don’t know they need?
That’s where we see growth processes moving into the marketing world. It’s a buyer’s market now. With so many SaaS products to choose from, growth teams really need to understand what motivates a customer to convert and show value as soon as possible. It sounds easy, but many marketers assume they know this information.
I’m excited about digging into internal and external factors that plant the seed of doubt in your customer base with a current solution. If you can understand these factors, you can tailor your message around how your product fixes them and clearly demonstrates the tangential benefits provided.
Always be learning. Test the small things. Talk to your customers.’’
What are some simple steps product and marketing pros can take to start leveraging these trends?
Always be learning. Test the small things. Talk to your customers. If you’re constantly exposed to new ideas, you’ll be able to try out ideas on a more frequent basis because you never know what is going to work best. For example, a big long-term project (for me, it’s onboarding) doesn’t mean you can’t fix leaky holes in the short term. It means getting to know your data inside and out: what’s working, what’s not and trusting your gut. If you think something is confusing or could be better, it likely could. The most important and probably the simplest step is to talk to your customers. There’s no better resource than people who actually use your product. Ask yourself questions like, “Why did the most recent customer sign up?” Look for common patterns to ideate around.
At Prodege, VP of Growth Marketing Andrew Robinson knows quite a few outreach hacks, one of which is adjusting settings on Google AdWords to make sure specific content is visible to your entire user base. Robinson currently oversees the growth marketing team for the Swagbucks and MyPoints brands at the data and insights solutions company.
What growth marketing trends are you watching in the year ahead?
I believe that privacy will continue to grow as a priority concern in consumers’ minds. More users will actively opt out of ad tracking and will appreciate privacy-oriented messaging. Large tech firms will continue to move to cater to those concerns and position themselves as market leaders in user privacy. This trend will have a growing impact on growth marketers’ ability to target audiences on social and search platforms. These platforms will likely need to reduce the visibility advertisers currently have into who is interacting with their ads in order to meet the privacy expectations of their user bases.
Want better attribution on Apple Search Ads? Try targeting those in the 18-65 age bracket.’’
What are some simple steps product and marketing pros can take to start leveraging these trends?
Here are a few tricks of the trade: Google AdWords currently allows ad targeting by age, gender and geo. However, the age bands start at 18 to 24 years old. There are Google users under 18. Google doesn’t want to highlight targeting minors for obvious reasons, but in the process, they include all these users in the “unknown” age bucket. If you are not interested in driving AdWords clicks from teens, try suppressing “unknown” ages.
Similarly, Apple Search Ads doesn’t allow attribution on users that have “limit ad tracking” enabled. Want better attribution on Apple Search Ads? Try targeting those in the 18-65 age bracket. This will suppress ads from all “limit ad tracking” users, improving attribution rates dramatically.
