If you’ve been on the internet in the last year and done any research into marketing strategies or techniques, you’ve likely come across the term “growth marketing.” And if you’re like most small business owners or nonprofit leaders, you’ve skimmed right over that section and googled “how to get people to see my Facebook posts” instead. Listen, no judgment here. In a time where we are all still processing what happened in 2020, trying desperately to make plans for 2021, and finding ourselves in unchartered territory nearly every day, there’s nothing wrong with tried and true marketing strategies when that’s all you can manage.

But, if you’re in the mode to really explore how you can build business growth in 2021, invite more people to join your nonprofit’s work, or simply want to keep learning about the marketing methods that offer the biggest return on investment, growth marketing is a natural place to start. In an effort to both bring you some context around the term and offer practical advice, this post will:

1. Explain what growth marketing is in simple words

2. Highlight four key benefits of a growth marketing approach

3. Offer three practical steps to take if you’re new to growth marketing

Growth marketing explained in simple words

Growth marketing is marketing 2.0. It uses the traditional marketing model as its foundation. It then adds many different layers, including technical analysis of each aspect of the user’s experience, creative ad copy, SEO optimization, email marketing campaigns that are driven by data, value-additive blog posts, and A/B testing. The insights gained from these approaches are implemented quickly in order to achieve sustainable and robust growth. Simple, right? Not so fast.

This type of marketing approach can feel complicated at best for small business owners and nearly foreign to nonprofits. In fact, this kind of intentional strategy requires consistent effort, education, and accountability to be successful. So if we know it’s best to take this approach why are so many resistant to the idea? My guess is that the vast majority of small business owners and nonprofit leaders have a very small margin of time dedicated to marketing. When time is short, the attention goes to putting out fires and the demands of the day instead of into long-term marketing strategies that might take both investment and time to see results. However, the danger in ignoring this strategy is clear — traditional marketing efforts alone will eventually fail, owners and directors will burn out from riding the hamster wheel of social media posting and outdated advertising methods, and in the end, businesses will still lack customer growth and nonprofits will remain on the endless cycle of donor churn.

So what’s the key to getting more small businesses and nonprofits on board with this strategy? The first step is to understand the clear benefits of growth marketing.

Why growth marketing?

• Growth marketing has clear SEO benefits - When you take a more comprehensive approach to your marketing, you’ll quickly find that all of your channels are overlapping in one way or another. For example, when you spend time reviewing your website analytics, your Google Search Console results, and your social media campaigns, you’ll be better equipped to write effective and compelling ads, whether those be on social media, Google, or in print. Through time and testing, your keyword research will start to naturally flow into everything you write on behalf of your business or nonprofit.

• Growth marketing will help you attract new customers or donors - Growth marketing makes the most of data that has been compiled from new customers or donors. Think of it as slowly building a photo of your ideal customer or donor. Perhaps through social media, you learn that your page is mostly followed by women. Next, you see in your Google Analytics report that the majority of your website visitors are from a specific region of the US. You also see data on your own website that most visitors land on your home page and then directly click on your blog. Now, the next time you need to create a paid advertising campaign, you can target that ad to reach women in your region of the country who have visited your blog. (Where they, obviously, find clear and concise calls-to-action to join your email list, donate, or buy!) This strategy is also likely to save you money in the long run by eliminating the overuse of PPC ads that are not targeted correctly.

• Growth marketing can enhance your current campaigns - Growth marketing can help you enhance your current campaigns by making the most of the leads you already have. If you’ve been running a targeted ad on Facebook or Instagram and added quality potential-customers to your email list, you can use the data collected through your SEO efforts to send them more targeted emails related to previous behavior. For example, let’s say you just ran an ad over the holidays offering a coupon code in exchange for an email address. Growth marketing in this situation doesn’t simply mean emailing those people your latest product launch. Instead, it offers you a unique opportunity to appeal to a direct audience with inside information about who they are — they are people who are interested in you and what you have to offer enough to trust you with their email address.

  In this case, the best choice would be to send them a personalized email introducing your company to them, thanking them for their trust in giving you their email address, and then offering a few suggestions on how they can get the most from the coupon. In one fell swoop, you’ve added to your trust factor and started a dialogue with a potential new customer.

• Growth marketing can help you build brand recognition - Last but not least, building brand recognition through consistent and intentional marketing efforts is a major benefit not often measured through sales or donations. When you begin to consistently integrate your marketing efforts across channels and use information about your audience and their pain points to offer practical solutions, your trust and authority can skyrocket. Over time, your audience will understand exactly what you have to offer and why you are the best person to help them. This takes time and investment but there are companies like SaaS marketing agency Robben Media that can help you.

Implementing growth marketing strategies into your business or nonprofit

There’s no denying that growth marketing is the future of marketing and that it will soon be required to stand out among a sea of other businesses and organizations fighting for the same dollars. If you’re finding yourself overwhelmed by the process and in need of a simple first step, here are a few suggestions:

1. Find someone who can help you understand your unique challenges, your value proposition, and how growth marketing can fit into your current strategies.

2. Start small. Instead of trying to change everything overnight, choose a starting point. It might be simply checking your analytics weekly and making notes about what’s working or what’s not. Maybe it’s deciding that in January, you’ll send one targeted email to a specific category of your email subscribers. Success is just a series of small wins.

3. Give yourself some room to experiment without fearing the results. If you view all of your marketing efforts like one big experiment, there’s really no failure. You’re simply eliminating what doesn’t work for you and finding your magic sauce that fits your company or nonprofit culture and priorities.

Until next time,

Andrea

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