Rob Sobers said about the marketing growth strategy, “It’s not about tactics—it’s about people and process.” And when it comes to people, you need buy-in from all over the organization. Growth is everyone’s business. When it comes to process, growth marketers must learn to fail. And fail fast.&#160; A marketing growth strategy is about small <a href="https://cxl.com/blog/marketing-growth-strategy/" class="more-link">[&#8230;]</a>
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Rob Sobers said about the marketing growth strategy, “It’s not about tactics—it’s about people and process.”
And when it comes to people, you need buy-in from all over the organization. Growth is everyone’s business.
When it comes to process, growth marketers must learn to fail. And fail fast. 
A marketing growth strategy is about small and incremental wins that build up over time. 
In this article, you’ll learn how to build a marketing growth strategy to increase your market penetration, market share, and revenue.




Rapid experimentation is critical to your growth marketing strategy 
Growth marketing is about process over tactics. A marketing growth strategy goes deeper into customer relationships to uncover opportunities that engage, activate, and retain.
Growth marketing aims to add value throughout the entire marketing funnel, whereas brand marketing focuses on top-of-funnel activities like awareness.
The growth marketing process is all about rapid experimentation, learning, and adaptability. To drive growth, test ideas, implement what works, scrap the failures, and keep experimenting.
To say the business landscape is competitive is an understatement. In 2020, there were 8,000 martech solutions.

In such a fast-paced environment, to “fail fast” is to win.
Failing fast is different from failing often. The goal is to test ideas intentionally and get answers quickly, then iterate and continuously improve. 
This philosophy comes from The Lean Startup methodology, which relies on testing hypotheses to better understand your customers’ pain points and goals. 
The reality is that we don’t know what our customers want most of the time.  
Running experiments allows you to test what you think you know about your customers, rather than investing time, resources, and budget into an idea that ends up not yielding results.
Each experiment helps you learn more about your customers and generate foundational data for future experiments and marketing efforts. In this way, they are continuous feedback loops that help you find the message and marketing approaches that will achieve your growth goals.
Your customers want different things. To drive loyalty, tailor the experience to what each customer values. 
To truly differentiate your brand, center your growth strategy around creating unique and personalized customer experiences.
Getting to know the 4 major types of growth strategies in marketing
The Ansoff Matrix, named for its strategist creator Igor Ansoff, can be a helpful tool as you evaluate growth opportunities.
It outlines four major growth strategies: market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification. 
Marketers can use this framework to evaluate the risks associated with different growth strategies. Market penetration is the least risky and diversification is the riskiest strategy.

1. Market penetration
The goal of market penetration is to leverage new tactics to increase product sales, including existing customers and new customers within existing markets.
This strategy can be useful for established companies looking to grow but don’t have a pressing need to expand beyond their niche. 
It can also be helpful for startups looking to expand without the resources to branch out beyond their existing target markets.
For example, in 2021 accounting software platform Bill.com acquired spend management tool Divvy in order to increase its market share. Bill.com penetrated this market by taking over a company already in it and reported increased fourth-quarter earnings of $78.3 million (including over $10 million from Divvy).
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Growth marketers can penetrate a new market by running experiments like:
Sales and promotions. A more aggressive promotion or advertising strategy can help your brand reach a larger group of your target customers.
Revisiting pricing strategy. Dropping the price of your products or offering a lifetime plan may attract new customers and sales.
Customer experience improvements. Tailoring your customer experience according to their wants and needs can increase customer loyalty and advocacy.
Acquiring a competitor. Acquisitions can quickly increase your market share and bring in new customers.




2. Market development
Market development involves taking existing products into new markets. These markets will have varying levels of familiarity with your brand and products. 
New markets include geographic regions, new customer segments, or new channels to reach your customers (digital or physical).
It’s a lucrative move for businesses with truly unique products. Especially if customers have high purchasing power, meaning a more profitable market. 
If your desired customers have similar needs and behavior to your existing customers, you can employ similar tactics that have already worked well for you.
Such as UK-based money app Cleo’s expansion into the United States:

Cleo’s marketing team might test actions like:
Regional or global expansion. Expanding into foreign markets or untapped domestic markets.
New customer segments. Catering your marketing and promotional efforts to reach a new type of customer.
New channels. Building new revenue streams in an untapped channel, like content marketing or email marketing.




3. Product development
Product development allows you to expand your existing market share by developing a new product for that audience.
This is what happened with Clubhouse. In 2020, Clubhouse established a market for an audio-only social platform. Then competitors came into this existing market with their own products.
Such as Twitter Spaces:

And Facebook’s audio chat rooms:

And Spotify’s Greenroom:

This strategy is only possible with a deep knowledge of your customer. By understanding what pain points exist, you have the opportunity to alleviate them. 
During product development, test activities like:
R&D. Investing in research and development to create new products for the existing market.
Acquisitions. Companies can acquire competitors’ products or technology to enhance their offering within the market they already serve.
Partnerships. Strategic alliances with other brands to develop offerings or leverage each others’ distribution channels.




4. Diversification
Diversification by taking a new product into a new market can be risky but lucrative. It can set you up for future growth within a new market, allowing you to test new growth strategies within the new market it now has access to.
Depending on the type of diversification you pursue, you can mitigate some associated risks. 
The two types of diversification where growth marketers might test include:
Related diversification. The brand has some existing relation to the new product or market it wants to pursue.
For example, a SaaS company that primarily caters to marketing teams could employ related diversification by creating a new program for CFOs. In that case, the company has existing knowledge of the space and can leverage its networks and credibility for market expansion.





Unrelated diversification. The new business endeavor is entirely unrelated to your existing products and market.
For example, a software company that opens a restaurant would be employing unrelated diversification. It still creates a new revenue stream, but the unrelated nature of this move likely means the business can’t leverage its existing knowledge or networks to gain traction.




Design a marketing growth strategy that increases market share and revenue
A marketing growth strategy isn’t created by a marketing department in a vacuum. It requires buy-in and cooperation from all departments within an organization.
In most cases, an organization’s leadership sets the company’s revenue, market share, and goals. 
The marketing growth strategy is the road map that outlines how the entire company will work collaboratively to meet those goals.
Once you have assessed your goals and resources and landed on the type of strategy you want to pursue, you can begin building a killer growth marketing strategy using the following phases.
Defining your growth model 
Defining your growth model is the foundational stage of building your growth process. In this phase, you’ll spend time mapping out your customer journey and identifying all of your growth channels. 
A common framework for defining your growth model is Dave McClure’s Pirate Metrics for startups: the AARRR framework.
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Acquisition: Generating leads and new users;
Activation: Increasing product usage and improving customer experience;
Retention: Reducing churn and encouraging repurchasing;
Referrals: Encouraging brand advocacy;
Revenue: Turning leads into customers.




These stages aren’t a strict pathway. Customers will bounce through various actions throughout their experience with your brand. 
The framework helps you evaluate how you can affect growth at each stage of the customer journey.
For each stage of the funnel, consider the distinct metrics that ladder up to your business’s KPIs. Those KPIs will help you zero in on the stages of the AARRR framework where you should focus your business growth strategy. 
Once you’ve done this high-level digging into your growth model, map out the customer journey. Think about the touchpoints at each stage of the AARRR framework. 
This exercise will lead you to a full picture of the channels you can leverage to increase those metrics. Some of those channels might include:
Acquisition. SEO, SEM, paid advertising, content marketing, social media, email marketing, strategic partnerships with other brands, PR;
Activation. Your brand website, product demonstrations and videos, free trials, push notifications, email marketing, targeted ads and campaigns, live chats, content marketing;
Retention. Email marketing, push alerts, brand app, content marketing, events, sales, personalized communications, and reminders;
Referrals. Rewards program, contests, email marketing, campaigns;
Revenue. Paid advertising, subscriptions, lead generation, direct sales and relationship-building, partnership models, email marketing, push notifications, and live chat.




This exercise will look different for every business, and some stages will overlap.
For example, email marketing can be a powerful tool that falls under every stage. It comes down to how you’re using email marketing. What is the action you want the recipient to take? How will you drive them toward that action?
Those are the kinds of questions you’ll consider as you think about ways to drive growth throughout the customer journey. 
Your growth framework helps you think about what information your customer already has at each phase of the customer journey and what additional information they need from you to move throughout the funnel.
Leverage this customer journey map to understand all of the channels you can activate toward those goals. Do this by improving the customer’s experience and reducing obstacles at each phase. 
Get your whole team involved at this stage. Their ideas can help you cover blind spots and fully understand the customer experience. 
Once you’ve mapped out your existing customer journey, consider what this would ideally look like. What is the best customer experience? Where are there gaps between that ideal scenario and your current experience?
You may learn that some of your channels are obsolete, while new channels would better serve your customer experience. Those gaps can feed into your growth strategy by helping you identify the opportunities that exist for product or marketing development. 
Do this exercise regularly, such as quarterly or semi-annually. 
Creating a regular practice around customer journey mapping helps you keep the customer experience in focus as you plan campaigns, keeps you relevant by requiring regular questioning of your channels, and helps you continually identify growth opportunities.
Quarterly growth planning
Once you establish the foundation of your growth model and grasp your customer journey, you can begin your planning process.
Start by exploring the data to understand your areas of opportunity. Where are you losing customers or potential customers? 
Maybe you’re driving a ton of traffic to your website, but your visitors are failing to convert. Or, maybe you’re losing them later—customers convert once and vanish, failing to become repeat customers. 
Prioritize your opportunities according to what the data tells you. 
Ideally, you’ll have enough customer data to understand what’s working and where your opportunities lie. But in the early stages of development, you might not have the quantitative data necessary to dig into these questions. 
Collect qualitative data by talking to your customers. Conduct surveys and focus groups to get a benchmark for how your customers and prospects perceive your brand and products.
This data collectively helps you build a strategic quarterly plan with clearly defined goals or OKRs. 
Your objective is a high-level qualitative goal, like increasing monthly active users or growing referrals. The key result is a quantifiable metric that determines whether or not you have succeeded in achieving your goal. 
So, if your goal is to increase monthly active users, your key result could be to achieve 500,000 monthly active users by the end of Q1, up from your current baseline of 450,000 users.
Your goals should be motivating, rewarding, achievable, and accountable. Set goals that are aggressive yet attainable. 
One way to walk this line is by setting goals and “stretching” goals. 
For example, if you’re aiming to hit $28 million in revenue by the end of the year, you could set a stretch goal of $32 million, as an extra motivator even when your team has a good quarter.
Stretch goals aren’t intended to set teams up for failure. They’re used to push high-performing teams to do even better:
“If a company has just surpassed an important benchmark in the industry or in its own recent history, it’s well-positioned to tackle a stretch goal. Why? Winning affects attitudes and behaviors positively. 
When confronting an extremely challenging task, the employees of recent winners are more likely to see an opportunity, systematically search for and process information, exhibit optimism, and demonstrate strategic flexibility. 
Companies experiencing weak results, however, are not well-positioned. Their employees are more likely to see a stretch goal as a threat, grasp for externally sourced quick fixes, exhibit fear or defensiveness, and launch new initiatives in a chaotic and ultimately self-defeating fashion.” – Sim B. Sitkin, C. Chet Miller, and Kelly E. See [via Harvard Business Review]




Deploy goals and stretch goals should as motivators. Aim big if your team is doing well, but not unrealistic. Often it’s about baby steps toward those bigger goals.
Accountability also remains important. Set checkpoints leading up to your final deadline to evaluate how you’re tracking toward your goals. 
Use those checkpoints to understand where you can adjust your strategy, motivate your team in different ways, or expand your efforts.
In-quarter execution 
In-quarter execution is all about the build, measure, and learn cycle of experimentation. Here is where you’re running campaigns and experiments to better understand how you can achieve your growth goals. 
This four-phased process works as follows.
1. Designing your experiment
Start with a hypothesis, including an independent and dependent variable. 
For example, let’s say you’re a marketer for Canva. You’ve mapped your customer journey and the associated metrics, analyzed your data, and you see an opportunity to improve your conversion rate. 

You notice that trial conversions of Canva Pro aren’t converting well.
Your assumption could be that users cancel because they don’t understand the full suite of available benefits. 
Your hypothesis could be that increasing the number of educational emails throughout the user’s trial period would increase the conversion rates of trial users by 10%.
The independent variable, or what you’re changing to better understand the outcome, is the number of emails you send throughout the trial period. 
The dependent variable, or what you’re measuring as you make changes to the independent variable, is the percentage of new customers who convert at the end of their trial period.
Knowing the value you’ll provide to your customers also helps you determine how you’ll design the emails. 
It’s not about the number of emails but the value they provide inside. This is where you’ll carefully design your experiment to showcase the premium membership.
2. Ship your experiment
Start by A/B testing. It’s the simplest way to have a control group to compare against your independent variable. 
In this example, your first move would be sending an email about the premium membership benefits versus not sending an email. Then you’d measure the lift to understand the value of sending that email. 
If there is some lift in your conversion rate, you can start experimenting with other variables to try and beat the original lift level. 
Next, you might look at the copy in the email and test whether language about price or language about features performs better. 
Set another A/B test and keep repeating that process while benefiting from the successful experiments.
3. Analyze your experiment
Measure the results and key metrics. Was your hypothesis correct? What else did you learn about your customers throughout the A/B testing process?
Here, you’d measure metrics like what percentage of users converted to a paid membership, as well as email performance metrics like open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribes. 
Ask questions like:
Did a certain email have a significant bump in opens? 
What trends can you track relating open rate to time of day or week, or subject line copy? 
What was user behavior following them clicking through to your site? 
Did they bounce immediately or browse your content and features?




Questions like these should get the wheels turning about future experiments you can run.
4. Automate and scale OR learn and redesign
Depending on the success of your campaign, the last phase will be to automate and scale or take your learnings and redesign some or all elements of your experiment. 
In the case of Canva, if a certain email outlining the value of the premium membership boosts the conversion rate by 10%, automating that email to go out to all free trial customers should add 10% more value into your business. 
Automating that successful email allows you to focus on the next experiment. 
No matter the outcome of your experiment, you’re learning and collecting data about your customer behavior. This information should fuel your future experiments and campaigns.
Conclusion 
Once you have a handle on your marketing growth process, running experiments can help you learn a ton about your customers and uncover even more opportunities to improve their experience.
Don’t be afraid to fail. All experiments, even those that don’t produce the desired outcome, push you closer to your growth goals.
To learn more about creating a growth strategy from industry experts, take CXL’s Growth Marketing Minidegree.

The post The Expert Guide to Creating a Marketing Growth Strategy appeared first on CXL.

Rob Sobers said about the marketing growth strategy, “It’s not about tactics—it’s about people and process.” And when it comes to people, you need buy-in from all over the organization. Growth is everyone’s business. When it comes to process, growth marketers must learn to fail. And fail fast.  A marketing growth strategy is about small […]
The post The Expert Guide to Creating a Marketing Growth Strategy appeared first on CXL.

The Expert Guide to Creating a Marketing Growth Strategy

When WordStream began receiving complaints that the seven-day free trial of their PPC management software wasn’t long enough, the brand decided to A/B test 14-day and 30-day trials. The results? Prospect trial to conversion rates fell with the longer trials. WordStream confirmed that seven days was plenty of trial time, and they didn’t need to <a href="https://cxl.com/blog/growth-marketing/" class="more-link">[&#8230;]</a>
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When WordStream began receiving complaints that the seven-day free trial of their PPC management software wasn’t long enough, the brand decided to A/B test 14-day and 30-day trials. The results? Prospect trial to conversion rates fell with the longer trials. WordStream confirmed that seven days was plenty of trial time, and they didn’t need to […]
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Growth Marketing: The Skills and Frameworks You Need

Groove’s customer service platform almost died in the introductory stage because they forgot to listen to their customers. They drew people in with a product they assumed would be a hit and pushed forward without taking in customer feedback.&#160; The result? People had a terrible experience using their product. After turning their attention toward feedback <a href="https://cxl.com/blog/product-lifecycle-growth-stage/" class="more-link">[&#8230;]</a>
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Groove’s customer service platform almost died in the introductory stage because they forgot to listen to their customers. They drew people in with a product they assumed would be a hit and pushed forward without taking in customer feedback. 
The result? People had a terrible experience using their product.
After turning their attention toward feedback and testing, letting the voice of their customers fuel their content strategy and product development, they took off. Three years later, they were a $5 million business.
Not revisiting your marketing objectives in the growth phase of your product lifecycle is the death knell of many startups.
In this article, you’ll learn how to develop a marketing strategy for the growth stage. We’ll also share how to achieve marketing goals at this stage, using your existing customers and experimentation to increase sales and loyalty.   




What is the growth stage of the product life cycle (and why is it important)? 
The growth stage is the period of the product life cycle with the sharpest increase in sales thanks to a boost in-market presence. It’s the second of the four product life cycle stages:
Introduction stage;
Growth stage;
Maturity stage;
Decline stage.




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After getting your product to market and working to gain traction (with new insights but little in the way of financial reward), the growth stage accelerates your ascent. Your audience is aware of and has accepted your product. 
Generating interest and capturing demand this way comes with several benefits.
Increased consumer awareness: More people using and talking about your product helps to increase market size and demand, leading to a boost in sales;
Lower costs: The large outlay of product development and marketing in the introduction stage can start to be clawed back through economies of scale, more efficient routes to market, and new distribution channels;
Greater profits: The combination of more product sales and reduced costs can see an upturn in profits and margins on products sold.




Increased demand brings challengers looking to benefit from the developing market. It also means you have to contend with no longer being the “new” product and the hype boost that can bring. 
For this reason, the growth stage is the best time to innovate: first by introducing new product features or product lines to diminish competitors attempting to copy, then by capitalizing on your standing to position your product as the best choice.  
How to identify if you’re moving from the introduction stage to the growth stage
In the introduction phase, the focus is on creating product awareness to motivate your target market to consider you when making a buying decision. 
The introductory stage is rarely profitable because of high distribution and promotion expenses but low sales. 
You’re expending a lot of resources trying to build awareness and find a foothold in the market, so your customers continue purchasing and spreading the word. 
This is why fads tend to rise and fall without ever making it out of the introductory phase: They’ve failed to satisfy a lasting need for their users.
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Because you’re spending a lot without reaping financial rewards, keep the introduction stage as short as possible. 
Your marketing goal in the introduction stage is to get out of the introduction stage. 
When sales increase and your marketing objectives shift towards creating a preference for your brand over the competition, you’re heading toward the growth stage of product lifecycle marketing. 
The role of marketing in the growth stage
You’ve achieved a degree of awareness, and people are buying your product. Now, you have to get creative, so you’re top of mind as the choice in the market continues to build.
As Harvard Business School professor, Theodore Levitt, notes:
“Instead of seeking ways of getting consumers to try the product, the originator now faces the more compelling problem of getting them to prefer [their] brand.”




Your market goals now are to increase market share and create brand preference.
Luckily, there are many ways to do this (as we’ll see below). To establish why your brand is better than the rest, champion your voice of customer. 
Use the feedback you’ve gained in the introductory phase to position the messaging of your product. Your early customers will reveal the specific benefits of your product in a way that resonates with future buyers’ needs and challenges.
You can also use this phase to drive adoption and consumption post-sale. Once your customers are on board, you can reward their loyalty to create brand advocates that help grow sales through word-of-mouth.
Here’s how to do exactly that, with examples of businesses that get it right.
Develop a marketing strategy that champions the voice of the customer
To drive growth, build a company that connects with customers beyond surface-level attributes like price or features. 
The more customers identify with your brand, the more they’ll hesitate to jump ship. They’re also more likely to return and promote your business. 
Develop your growth marketing strategy with these concepts in mind.
Let customer and competitor research guide you 
At launch, marketing is based on customer behavior related to the problem your product solves. In the growth phase, you have the advantage of early adopters and data to tailor marketing (and product development) strategies based on customer experiences. 
Use quantitative research to glean standardized facts related to users’ experience with your website, brand, or product features. 
Wise, for example, found that 67% of its customers join through recommendations. The better the experience, the more they recommend the product to others:

Wise then used Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys to determine if users would recommend it to friends.
They found that the higher the NPS of a customer, the more recommendations they make.
Using the results of this quantitative research, Wise works on creating positive experiences to keep scores high:
“Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. We know that in order for every user to become an advocate for Wise, our product has to be worth talking about. We try to be 10x better and more exciting than the competition.” – Nilan Peiris, VP of Growth at Wise




The result? Wise (formerly TransferWise) has the strongest advocates in YouGov’s BrandIndex.

Combine quantitative research with qualitative research by:
Conducting usability testing
Reviewing live chat transcripts
Interviewing customers one-on-one
Running customer surveys




Qualitative research gives you the why behind the what. For example, if a user wouldn’t recommend you, ask them what specifically about your product, brand, or experience put them off. Then use this feedback to improve.
Use your findings to fine-tune customer personas and make data-driven UX decisions.
Seek user input on new features and updates to help you build a more user-centric product. It will also make customers feel valued and appreciated, both of which are key to winning loyalty. 
How do your brand and product compare to the competition? Look outwards, carrying out a competitor analysis by:
Setting goals;
Identifying the competition;
Conducting a competitive usability investigation;
Comparing value propositions;
Interviewing competitor customers;
Running competitive design analysis;
Making a quantitative competitive investigation;
Running a functional investigation.




This deep dive will help you establish how your messaging stacks up against your rivals and which aspects of your brand and product will help you stand out.
Control the narrative with a compelling value proposition
Your value proposition is the promise of the value you deliver. It tells people why they should choose you. 
An effective value proposition must be relevant to the problem or situation your target audience experiences, and it must be benefit-led. It should also act as a differentiation tool. 
There are no set ingredients for a value proposition, but it should typically include the following.
A headline: A catchy summary of your offer;
A sub-headline and supporting copy: An explanation of your product and why people should use it;
A hero shot: A product image or video that reinforces your message.




Take Hotjar’s homepage: 

Its headline immediately communicates the value of the product: 
“Understand how users behave on your site, what they need, and how they feel, fast.”




The supporting copy illustrates the problem Hotjar is solving:
 “The slow, manual days of collating data and feedback are over.”




Followed by an explanation of what the product is: 
“Hotjar is an intuitive, visual way to discover, consolidate, and communicate user needs.”




An introductory video reinforces the message. It uses the PAS formula to create an emotional connection:
Problem. Identify the user’s biggest pain point.
Agitate. Reinforce the issue and add emotion.
Solve. Introduce the product as the solution.




Finally, Hotjar adds in some value proposition “boosters,” small value-adds that instill confidence in the reader:
“No credit card required”;
“25,435 companies signed up last month;
“GDPR- & CCPA-ready”.




As a complete package, it ticks the boxes for a good value proposition:
Easy to read and understand;
Communicates real results;
Provides assurances;
Avoids hyperbole.




Creating a unique value proposition (UVP)
A compelling UVP is born out of brainstorming and experimentation. Come up with several options and stress test each of them. 
Follow the steps conversion copywriter Momoko Price recommends in her product messaging course:
1. List your product’s key features;
2. Pinpoint those that are unique;
3. List customer pain points for each feature;
4. Define desirable outcomes for each pain;
5. Score pains or outcomes by severity and frequency;
6. Edit top-scored pain outcomes into UVPs; and
7. Score the UVPs (and go with the best ones).
Test your UVP using:
A/B testing. Split-test the top candidates and measure sales conversions, lead counts, click-throughs, etc. 
Pay-per-click advertising. Split-test different ads targeted at the same customer. Measure click-through rate and landing page conversions.




Reward users with tailored marketing experiences to create brand advocates
Multiple case studies have shown that the fastest route to growth is through happy customers. For example:
Slack grew from 8,000 to 500,000 daily users in a year thanks to word-of-mouth reviews from users of its freemium platform;
Canva grew to 15 million users in seven years with a combination of great user experience and community building;
Dropbox went from 100,000 users to over 4 million users in just over a year thanks to the creation of a referral program; and
Xero increased paid subscriptions and reduced churn with a partner program.




Happy customers have an emotional connection to your brand, which results in a 306% higher lifetime value. They also recommend you at a much higher rate than satisfied customers (75% vs. 45%).
Create brand advocates by connecting with customers and rewarding loyalty using the following methods.
Stay close to your audience on social media
There are two ways to break down the barrier between customer and company on social media.
Customer service
When a user reaches out to you on social media, the majority expect a same-day response. Meeting that expectation has been shown to increase loyalty. 
It also gives you a competitive advantage. Around 44% of consumers say social media customer service distinguishes a brand from its peers.
Set up social listening tools to monitor brand mentions and respond to customer questions and comments efficiently. If you’re active on several channels, consider merging comms into a single platform to maintain customer satisfaction with fast, consistent responses.
For example, Lemonade delivers timely, personalized interaction across Instagram:

Twitter:

And Facebook:

This personal touch keeps satisfaction high among users. It also makes a good impression on followers yet to try the insurance company. By engaging on social media, followers will make the link that Lemonade cares about its users.
Where you’re unable to engage promptly in person, keep response rates high by using a chatbot to answer frequently asked questions and direct customers to appropriate support channels. 
Fandango’s Facebook Messenger Bot helps people watch movie trailers and find local theaters: 
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Its bot tackles common queries, freeing up the social media team to deal with more complex or pressing issues.
Community building
You can build a social media community anywhere people interact online. It can take many forms:
Discord
Facebook Groups
Slack channels
Branded hashtag
YouTube channel




Studies show that building a social media community can increase brand trust. It’s a great way to glean insights from your audience while making them feel valued. 
Survey your customers to establish their interests and problems. Ask what types of content they like to consume and who they like to connect with.
Build your community around these like-minded people. Let persona-driven insights guide the content you produce.
Most importantly, actively participate. 
Around 70% of customers feel more connected to brands with CEOs who are active on social media. And 72% feel the same when employees share brand information. Your team members are your earliest brand advocates; empower them to start and engage in conversations.
Personalize the customer experience
You don’t have to have Netflix’s personalization algorithm to show customers relevant content. There are plenty of ways to deliver a thoughtful, tailored experience.
For existing customers, use personalization to show that you know them. Leverage data to:
Send tailored offers based on previous purchases; 
Remind them of their progress;
Deliver customer-only discounts and sales promotions;
Celebrate special occasions with them;
Show them location-specific content.




Snapchat uses geofilters: 
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Starbucks pushes notification discounts (to users with this feature enabled):
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Grammarly sends personalized reports that show how users improved their writing:
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These companies use the data they hold to personalize the user experience. And with good reason.
Around 83% of consumers surveyed are willing to share their data to create a more personalized experience. 
Additionally, more consumers are annoyed by a lack of personalization when engaging with a company. According to Accenture, 41% of consumers switched companies because of a lack of personalization and trust. 
Reaching your customers with creatively tailored content is becoming an increasingly critical tactic to deploy. 
There is a multitude of software options you can use to help you do this:
VWO;
Optimizely;
Convert;
OneSpot;
Personyze;
Singular; and
Vero.




Once you’ve found the right tool, get started with personalization using this three-step process. 
1. Choose your variables: These could be your top market segments and keywords, location, visitor frequency, etc. This will largely depend on what data you hold on your customers.
2. Configure rules and create segmented content: Enter your variables into your chosen personalization software and configure your rules. What will happen if a customer that meets your criteria takes the chosen action? (e.g., when a customer from the U.K. visits your website, ask them if they’d like to see prices in GBP) 
3. Launch your personalized content: Run it for a period and analyze results based on performance. Continue optimizing your campaign until you’ve achieved the desired results.
Drive loyalty with incentives
Much like personalization, incentives are a way to show customers you care. While personalized content is based around customer satisfaction (i.e. creating positive sentiment), incentives are powerful motivators for repetition and brand advocacy. 
Use incentives to optimize customer retention and advocacy through gamification.
Postcron encourages repeated actions by letting users earn and stack rewards:
Image source
Every time a customer refers a friend, they get a free month of Postcron Premium. New customers also get a free month. The more they add, the more free use of the premium plan they get. 
You can structure gamification rewards around:
Points;
Achievement; and
Competition.




Unearth which one is right for your users in your user research and testing. In every case, they must add value to the customer experience and be simple to execute. 
If people have to jump through hoops, your program will likely fall flat. Similarly, it can’t be a fad or used to paper over the cracks of a poor product or customer experience.
Drive growth with experimentation
With competitors offering the same solution and marketing to the same audience, you need to do one of two things:
1. Come up with innovative ways to sell your product; or
2. Do what the competition is doing better than they’re doing it (e.g., through better customer experiences).
Design growth marketing experiments (i.e. growth hacking) to tackle these tasks. 
Growth hacking is built on experimentation and failing fast. Come up with new ways to grow your brand and let the data inform decisions. If a strategy doesn’t show growth, drop it. If it does, run with it.
For example, when ConvertKit began to grow its user base by cold-emailing bloggers, it doubled down on the tactic and scaled it up to include an affiliate program and webinars. The result? Revenue grew by 637%. 
On the back of that tactic, ConvertKit now drives $1 million in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MMR). They’re also testing evangelists, listing it as one of the components that make up their culture.
Image source



To get started with growth, choose a goal and define a series of experiments to help you achieve it. Run A/B and multivariate tests to determine the success of experiments while gathering insights along the way. 
According to WeTheFuture.org founder John McBride, your experiments should go three layers deep:
1. Learn whether the strategy (e.g., email campaign, push notification, or landing page) affects conversions;
2. Figure out the right message, offer, or campaign, and then;
3. Tailor the message to individual customers.
John says that the third layer is the most powerful:
“You can probably get to 10% or 20% improvement by just testing different messages or different campaigns against each other at the macro level. Learning what is the best thing for each individual, that’s when you get to the point where you’re at 30%, 40%, 50% better than your current baseline. That’s where you can differentiate versus your competition.”




Use your qualitative user research and competitive analysis to understand what customers want and what they’re not getting elsewhere. Brainstorm ideas to engage them and experiment to find the best formula for growth.
Conclusion
The growth stage is your chance to capitalize on the early promise of your product so that when the market reaches saturation, you’ve already positioned yourself as the go-to brand. 
The key to growth lies with your customers, so make the most of early adopters. Analyze their behavior and learn how they think and feel about your product. Use this data to shape your messaging and fuel growth marketing experiments.  
Deliver positive experiences at every touchpoint, and customers will become your competitive advantage, setting you up for a profitable maturity phase and staving off decline until the time is right. 
Learn how to design and execute growth stage experiments in CXL’s Growth Marketing Minidegree.

The post Marketing Objectives for the Product Lifecycle Growth Stage appeared first on CXL.

Groove’s customer service platform almost died in the introductory stage because they forgot to listen to their customers. They drew people in with a product they assumed would be a hit and pushed forward without taking in customer feedback.  The result? People had a terrible experience using their product. After turning their attention toward feedback […]
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Marketing Objectives for the Product Lifecycle Growth Stage

Growth hacking is how Slack went from 15,000 to half a million daily users in its first year. It’s why Canva can call itself a multibillion-dollar platform and how ConvertKit pulled itself up to compete with goliaths like MailChimp and Campaign Monitor. Growth hacking isn’t about deploying sleazy tricks. It’s about making calculated, data-driven moves <a href="https://cxl.com/blog/growth-hacking-marketing/" class="more-link">[&#8230;]</a>
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Growth hacking is how Slack went from 15,000 to half a million daily users in its first year. It’s why Canva can call itself a multibillion-dollar platform and how ConvertKit pulled itself up to compete with goliaths like MailChimp and Campaign Monitor. Growth hacking isn’t about deploying sleazy tricks. It’s about making calculated, data-driven moves […]
The post Acquire New Users by Adding Growth Hacking to your Marketing Strategy appeared first on CXL.

Acquire New Users by Adding Growth Hacking to your Marketing Strategy

Founded in 2015, revenue intelligence startup Gong is now valued at $7.25 billion. They’ve grown to attract big-name clients like LinkedIn, PayPal, and Shopify, mostly through social media channels rather than organic search. Gong is an excellent example of a company dedicated to finding the best content marketing fit and delivering insights that resonate in <a href="https://cxl.com/blog/social-media-brand-marketing/" class="more-link">[&#8230;]</a>
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Founded in 2015, revenue intelligence startup Gong is now valued at $7.25 billion. They’ve grown to attract big-name clients like LinkedIn, PayPal, and Shopify, mostly through social media channels rather than organic search. Gong is an excellent example of a company dedicated to finding the best content marketing fit and delivering insights that resonate in […]
The post How to Build an Audience with Social Media Brand Marketing appeared first on CXL.

How to Build an Audience with Social Media Brand Marketing

Humans love shortcuts to decision-making. Brands do that.&#160; More than three-quarters of consumers (76%) say they would buy from a brand they feel connected to over a competitor.&#160; Building that connection with customers requires a clear brand strategy to define why you exist and a solid marketing strategy to communicate that purpose with your customers. <a href="https://cxl.com/blog/brand-strategy-vs-marketing-strategy/" class="more-link">[&#8230;]</a>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://cxl.com/blog/brand-strategy-vs-marketing-strategy/">Brand Strategy vs. Marketing Strategy (And How they Work Together)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://cxl.com">CXL</a>.

Humans love shortcuts to decision-making. Brands do that.  More than three-quarters of consumers (76%) say they would buy from a brand they feel connected to over a competitor.  Building that connection with customers requires a clear brand strategy to define why you exist and a solid marketing strategy to communicate that purpose with your customers. […]
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Brand Strategy vs. Marketing Strategy (And How they Work Together)

There are two cans of soda on a table. One is a Coca-Cola can, and the other is a cheaper, white label cola brand. Which do you choose? You’ll probably choose Coke because it’s more familiar. It’s the safer bet.&#160; Coca-Cola has brand equity that makes people gravitate towards it. With the right framework, any <a href="https://cxl.com/blog/what-is-brand-equity-in-marketing/" class="more-link">[&#8230;]</a>
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://cxl.com/blog/what-is-brand-equity-in-marketing/">What is Brand Equity in Marketing? (How to Become Memorable)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://cxl.com">CXL</a>.

There are two cans of soda on a table. One is a Coca-Cola can, and the other is a cheaper, white label cola brand. Which do you choose?
You’ll probably choose Coke because it’s more familiar. It’s the safer bet. 
Coca-Cola has brand equity that makes people gravitate towards it. With the right framework, any startup can achieve this in their industry.
In this article, you’ll understand what brand equity is and how to build it so your audience reaches for your product, service, or solution over the rest.




Why brand equity matters now more than ever
Every day in the U.S., almost 12,000 new business applications are submitted. In the SaaS industry alone, it’s estimated that every company founded in 2019 had around ten competitors on average.
If you haven’t invested in brand awareness and built connections, why should anybody choose you over all that competition? 
Without brand equity, you can’t tap into a customer’s “consideration span” when they’re ready to buy.
Invest in relationships so when the time comes, your audience will instinctively choose your solution to fill their need.
Take Shopify. It’s one of many ecommerce software platforms on the market but only the fifth most popular by market share.
Image source



It’s also not the cheapest ecommerce platform: Squarespace plans start at $12 per month, Woocommerce has a completely free plan, and Shopify’s plans start at $30 per month.
Yet, in 2021, Shopify posted record sales, growing 113% year-over-year and doubling in brand value to $828 million. Squarespace on the other hand, grew 24%.
Why did entrepreneurs turn to Shopify to launch their start-ups and not one of the more widely used and cheaper platforms like Squarespace or WooCommerce?
Brand equity. 
Since its launch in 2006, Shopify has positioned itself as the best solution for small-end and startup entrepreneurs.




Whereas, Squarespace’s value proposition is more about building a beautiful website.
Image source



Shopify has also funneled a ton of resources into educating its audience and helping them succeed.
Its tools are designed for beginners and its brand marketing focuses on helping would-be entrepreneurs build successful businesses, as evidenced by their Quickstart Guides: 




And its customer stories, which act as social proof to show customers what people like them have achieved on the platform: 




Shopify boasts 891K followers on Instagram, compared to Squarespace’s 294K followers and WooCoommerce’s 36.3K followers.












Studies show that only 5% of B2B customers are ready to buy. To grow a brand, you have to be familiar to the other 95%. When they’re in the market, they’ll remember you.
This is why Shopify doesn’t have to be the most widely used platform or try to compete on price. It builds brand equity with its entrepreneur audience by sharing helpful resources and creating a community of like-minded business builders.
Building brand equity helps businesses compete through brand-relevant memories. It grows your brand by investing in future buyers, while lowering CAC (less spend on ads) and increasing ROI.
What brand equity looks like, as demonstrated by customers
So, why do people gravitate towards Coke instead of the cheaper alternative brand?
Trust.
It’s the reason that 69% of people buy from a brand they know over one that gets better reviews. 
It’s also why companies can charge a premium for products even when they can’t demonstrate their superiority. And it’s why three-quarters of people will stay loyal to a brand, even if another starts trending. 
Brand equity helps build the relationships between the perceived benefits and perceived costs that people relate to that product. That consumer perception can be positive or negative.
If consumer perception is positive, it indicates that:
They’ve heard of you
You’ve built trust




Brands that have built positive brand equity can usually charge a premium. Negative brand equity, on the other hand, means customers would be willing to spend more on a generic product than a well-known brand. 
Negative equity often happens following major recalls, or when a company causes some publicized CSR crisis. It’s why reputation management and following good business practices is a critical but unseen part of a company’s brand.
You don’t have to have been a HubSpot customer to know they’re a go-to company if you ever need a reliable CRM. 
HubSpot built brand equity through community-building, blog posts, social media marketing, and its HubSpot Academy. 




HubSpot has built its brand to over 100,000 customers and $1 billion in annual recurring revenue in 2020. Despite the uncertainty of the times, companies believed in HubSpot and used the CRM to scale their businesses.
Their appreciation of the business didn’t go unappreciated:
Image source



On brand building, Intuit co-founder Scott Cook once said:
“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is, it is what consumers tell each other it is.”




If you’re creating a brand people like, they’ll be happy to sing your praises on social media and in forums.
Take this thread from the Superpath community, where a marketer is seeking some insights on Clearscope and SEMrush. 




By delivering a positive experience, Clearscope has created customer loyalty. This has produced an army of community advocates.
Every word-of-mouth recommendation that Clearscope receives strengthens brand equity. That’s because 90% of people are much more likely to trust a recommended brand, even if that recommendation is from a stranger. 
In this example, HubSpot engages with praise and feedback it receives, strengthening customer relationships:




While the internet has enabled people to advocate for the brands they love, it’s also empowered them to share negative feedback and lodge complaints.
Sprout Social research shows that only 8% of dissatisfied customers would stay quiet on an issue, and 47% of those voicing their opinions and experiences do so on social media. 
Image source



Every complaint posted publicly is seen by a person’s friends and followers. And the further a post spreads, the bigger the dent it can make in your brand equity. Stay ahead of this by responding to negative feedback immediately.
Trello works hard across its social media accounts to address complaints and feedback from its target audience:




More than four in five people expect a brand to respond to social media comments in a day or less. Trello counters any negative impact the original comment has made on people browsing YouTube comments by getting involved early. 
Trello is only able to do this because it’s using social listening to gauge and manage brand sentiment. It only takes a single bad review to strip away your competitive advantage.
The components of brand equity (and how to build and acquire them)
When it comes time to decide where to allocate resources to build brand equity, it seems like the best way forward would be to drive a brand awareness campaign.
But if your market is crowded, you’ll need to stand out with more than just recognition. You’ll need to build an emotional connection, too.
In the current landscape, it’s important to both create a strong positive emotional response and to be instantly recognizable. 
When something new and disruptive is around the corner, achieving recognition and connection is critical to establishing long-lasting brand equity. 
To do this, revisit your branding strategy.
1. Brand awareness
Become the top-of-mind brand by tapping into what makes your audience tick. 
Reverse engineer customer behavior by digging into your existing data to find out how they interact with your business. Ask: What resonates with the target audience? Which current marketing tactics get the most engagement? What images and messaging inspires action?





Talk directly to your customer base. Use surveys and courtesy calls to establish how customers found out about you, and what they most like (and dislike) about your brand and products. 





Employ social listening to find out what people are saying about your brand online. 




Use this information to drive your marketing and create campaigns that people want to share and shout about online.
At this stage, the aim is to achieve brand recognition, so focus on value.
One way to do this is through useful content. Document collaboration tool Bit.ai, for example, created a resource to help its target audience make an onboarding checklist:




Not only does this offer tangible benefits (people learn how to create a checklist), it helps position Bit.ai as a helpful, authoritative brand. 
For readers, when the time comes to purchase a document collaboration solution, they’ll remember Bit.ai as the brand that helped them solve a problem. 
Another way is by giving away something for free, such as a trial period or tool. CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer is a standalone tool to help marketers improve their headlines.




Right now, marketers are looking to spruce up their headlines. Further down the line, they might be looking to improve their entire marketing campaign. 
And when comparing options, which is going to be more appealing? A brand they’re seeing for the first time in SERPs, or the brand that helped craft a great headline a few months ago? 
2. Positioning
Brand positioning is hard work. Offering a great product or service isn’t enough—that’s table stakes. It takes work to discover what your actual value is to your customer and how you should sit in the mind of your customer.
Once you’ve settled on a position, you need to commit to it consistently. Create a consistent brand message that conveys your core values and mission across every channel so that people know who you are and how you’re different from the competition. 
For example, Toggl is a set of tools designed to help teams work more effectively:




Its USP for its most popular tool, Toggl Track, fits in with the company’s mission to be effective, empowering, and effortless. 




And as any great positioning statement should, it makes it clear who the product is for (teams) and backs it up with substance: “Reliable time tracking software loved by 5M+ users.”
Establish your message by nailing the following four elements:
1. USP. Come up with a compelling unique selling proposition that combines what your customers want with what you do well. Toggl’s target audience wants to work more productively; Toggl Track helps them do this. This is communicated in its USP: “Time tracking for better work, not overwork.”
2. Your target audience. Use customer personas, social listening, voice of customer research, and surveys to learn your audience’s interests, goals, and pain points 
3. Your story. Listen to what your customers say to identify what they consider most important. Then, tell stories that speak to those values to build an emotional connection 
4. Your message strategy guidelines. Develop guidelines that set out how your team will create materials. These should include your mission statement, USP, value proposition, and brand pillars. Build everything from your product to your brand marketing campaigns with these guidelines to ensure your position and messaging are consistent across every platform.
3. Relationships
Give people a reason to gravitate towards your brand from their earliest interactions by showing them you’re a safe bet.
This can be done with social proof in the form of reviews or customer stories, or with brand associations. 
Buffer, for instance, lists its marketing partners and clients on its homepage.




The marketing partners speak for themselves. However, even if you’re not familiar with these client brands, that eight other companies have trusted, Buffer gives them enough credibility to warrant consideration. 
A similar effect can be had by working with influencers.
Take Wix, which partnered with influencers like Karlie Kloss to create instructional ads on YouTube.




If you’re a fan of Karlie Kloss or are familiar with her work, knowing that she uses Wix for a website immediately builds a degree of trust in the platform. It also gives Wix brand equity over competitors that aren’t using similar tactics. 
Trust-building and trust-maintenance are both important. Track and listen to conversations around your brand and become an active voice in the community. Thank customers for their praise and address their concerns, like in the HubSpot and Trello examples. 




Every touchpoint is an opportunity to influence and build sentiment toward your brand. From experiences with your website to conversations with you on email and live chat, to how you reward them for their loyalty, every interaction point needs your attention. 
4. Storytelling
Brands use stories in a variety of ways: to be funny, to incite a movement. Ultimately, the goal of storytelling is to resonate with your audience and build connections in their memories.
“Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.” – Ed Sabol




Good brand storytelling can stir emotions and encourage audiences to make recommendations.
Regardless of industry or medium, compelling stories share the same fundamental elements: 
Plot and conflict. A series of events and actions that relate to the struggle between protagonist and antagonist.
Characters. The hero of the story (protagonist) and who or what they’re faced with (antagonist).
Setting. The time and place that the story happens, brought to life by landscape, scenery, buildings, seasons, or weather. 
Theme. A central idea or belief that defines the purpose of your story and why you’re telling it.




For example, in this Mailchimp presents story broken down by Erica Schneider in her guide to business storytelling, the main character is a software developer. The plot is focused on him trying to successfully work from home, but he’s facing conflict from constant interruptions that are derailing a video call. 




It’s a universal story that Mailchimp’s audience of entrepreneurs can relate to. They can see themselves in it. This helps to create an emotional connection. 
In crafting your narrative, follow the tried and tested guidelines of storytelling, as laid out in Pixar’s 22 rules, which say that all great stories are:
Universal
Have a clear structure and purpose
Have an easy to root for underdog
Appeal to our deepest emotions
Challenge our perceptions
Simple and focused




Measuring the impact of brand equity
Brand equity is difficult to measure because it works with the intangible, like feelings and familiarity. There’s no metric to measure customers’ emotional responses and what impact those subjective emotions have on your business. 
You can get a general feel for how your brand is being received by using social listening tools. There are other brand awareness metrics you can measure to build out this picture, including:
Direct traffic. The number of people typing your website URL into the search bar
Overall traffic. The number of people viewing your content and spending time on your website
Social engagement. The number of people liking, commenting, following, reviewing, and sharing your content across social media.




These won’t, however, tell you the financial impact these measures are having on your bottom line. For this, look at figures such as:
Average transaction value. The total value of all transactions divided by the number of transactions over a set period (e.g., week, month, year). So, if sales of $200,000 were generated from 10 transactions in a year, the average transaction value would be $20,000. 





Customer lifetime value (LTV). The retention value of your customers, which can be calculated by multiplying customer value times the average customer lifespan. (Customer value is the average number of purchases times the average purchase value.)





Customer acquisition cost. Analyze how much it costs to acquire each customer by dividing your total marketing spend by your number of new customers over a given period.





Adoption of loyalty and referral programs. A growing number of sign-ups indicates brand resonance. If numbers are dipping year-on-year (or over a set period), it may be a sign that equity is suffering.





Market share. Calculate your market position to see how you stack up against your direct competitors. This is done by dividing total sales of a product line or industry by sales of your company over the same period. 




While these metrics aren’t wholly representative of brand equity (pricing, product features, and product quality will all influence sales, for example), positive numbers act as indicators that your brand is hitting the right notes with customers. 
Conclusion
Positive brand equity is a protective fortress for your brand. Your products might not always be the cheapest, newest, or trendiest, but if you give people a reason to care, you’ll be rewarded with advocacy and loyalty.
To become and stay relevant, listen to your target customer. Find out their desires and pain points. Establish what makes you different and tell stories that create emotional connections.
To learn how to build your brand’s equity, check out CXL’s Brand Marketing Minidegree.

The post What is Brand Equity in Marketing? (How to Become Memorable) appeared first on CXL.

There are two cans of soda on a table. One is a Coca-Cola can, and the other is a cheaper, white label cola brand. Which do you choose? You’ll probably choose Coke because it’s more familiar. It’s the safer bet.  Coca-Cola has brand equity that makes people gravitate towards it. With the right framework, any […]
The post What is Brand Equity in Marketing? (How to Become Memorable) appeared first on CXL.

What is Brand Equity in Marketing? (How to Become Memorable)

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In 2018, after two short years and $3 million raised in startup funds, recruitment AI company Ansaro shut down due to bad market fit. As it turned out, their AI interview notetaker didn’t address a huge pain point. Muun found a market need but failed to compete with bigger names that provided customers with authoritative […]
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Studies show only 5% of B2B buyers are ready to buy right now. You can’t force the other 95% into a buying position by spamming them with nurture sequences. When people are finally ready to make a purchase, your goal should be one of two things: Customers recall your brand, or at least;&#160; They recognize <a href="https://cxl.com/blog/brand-awareness-marketing/" class="more-link">[&#8230;]</a>
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Studies show only 5% of B2B buyers are ready to buy right now. You can’t force the other 95% into a buying position by spamming them with nurture sequences. When people are finally ready to make a purchase, your goal should be one of two things: Customers recall your brand, or at least;  They recognize […]
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Jeff Bezos’s private space technology company Blue Origin was founded back in 2000. You’d think that no one could recreate a product so sophisticated and advanced as space rockets, right? In 2002, Elon Musk created Space X. He was swiftly followed by Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic in 2004.&#160; With enough resources, products can always <a href="https://cxl.com/blog/brand-marketing/" class="more-link">[&#8230;]</a>
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Jeff Bezos’s private space technology company Blue Origin was founded back in 2000. You’d think that no one could recreate a product so sophisticated and advanced as space rockets, right? In 2002, Elon Musk created Space X. He was swiftly followed by Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic in 2004.  With enough resources, products can always […]
The post How to Radically Stand Out with Brand Marketing appeared first on CXL.