GROWTH MARKETING 101: SSM Thoughts Bridge Review (Part 2)

This week I want to write about growth marketing channels and user-centric marketing approach. How marketing has become all user-centric and by using these approach we can be successful.

GROWTH CHANNELS

There are many growth channels around us including the emerging ones. But there can be 5 Major growth channels that cannot be ignored and it will amplify the business growth if used successfully. I want to mention here in this article that how to choose which channels to focus on and myths of each of the channels accordingly.

Major Growth channels:

1. SEM (Search Engine Marketing) / PPC (Pay Per Click);

2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization);

3. Social Media & Display Ads;

4. E-mail Marketing;

5. Content Marketing;

These 5 major channels were suggested by Sophia Eng, Digital Marketing Strategist, InVision App.

Identifying, testing and measuring growth channels:

Having a proper balance in growth marketing through all channels are key to success. Not every channel will work for everyone. Maybe some channel will work for some business others will not yields the same success. Therefore the testing as many channels are recommended before automating anything.

·        Exploring all channels

·        Testing all channels by shipping multiple experiments;

·        Measuring growth channels

Even if some channels are popular and at peak stage does not mean your business will work out effectively by investing in that channels. So choosing the right channels after experiments are important.

Measuring growth channels: If a growth channel gives good return on investment and we can scale that platform then that can be considered as an efficient channel. Where the channel that does give high return on investment but there are no ability to scale then that platform are not considered as an efficient ones. Failing channels are those where both return on investment are low and there are no scaling ability. Channels which are tested with valid data are the ones we should follow and start with.

Studying consumers and audience, choosing a channel and testing it out and measuring the results to automate or scale it are key steps for identifying and amplifying growth channels.

Myths about Growth Channels:

Social Media: There are myths like social media return on investment are not quantifiable where as social media data are the most important metrics for understanding or knowing consumer behaviors and trends. With the help of UTM tracking, Pixels tracking social media has become too beneficial for taking data-driven decisions.

Another one is, Social media marketing are just branding. That is absolutely true but not entirely true. Social Media Marketing obviously plays a big role in branding where it is also play a significant role in listening to your consumers, generating leads and driving leads. And also to establish strong brand visibility.

SEO: SEO is one of the top growth channel. But there are some common SEO myths which are like: SEO is an automatic process and focusing in it will not yields good results. This is not true. Search engines algorithm are constantly evolving to make it even better for the audience with SERP results. Same way brands and businesses need to constantly optimize for SERPs. Your business should appear in the first page of the SERP which will drive sales.

Secondly, you have to rank #1 for certain keywords. Well, keyword is a different game overall. It is not always about ranking #1 with certain keywords which are most searched terms whereas good result can come from long tail keywords with engaging and relevant content. Targeting the right keywords are the important thing to do rather than going after most searched keywords. Creating domain authority, page authority, content schedule and popularity of contents are important to optimize.

Thirdly, SEO is dead. Well, it is not dead. Its being updated constantly. Google and bing are constantly making updates for the best optimizations, for the best experience for their users, and therefore it kind of forcing our hands as business in all across different industries to take a look at what the best experience is for our users, whether it’s, in all aspects from SEO keyword optimizations and on page optimizations.

SEO is not dead, it is alive and breathing

PPC: PPC channels are too expensive. All we need to do is finding the right channel for pay per click marketing. 

Content Marketing: Many small business sometime big business also are not getting content marketing right. They think content marketing is about writing blogs or sometime influencer marketing. Yes these two includes in the content marketing but not limited to. Content marketing is about everything we share and interact with our customers and potential customers. I wrote about an article how we can use the 

Another topic I want to include in my article is that User-Centric Marketing Approach. Let’s begin with that.

User-Centric Marketing:

Today’s digital marketing has the characteristics that we did not have in traditional marketing. Traditional marketing was all about broadcasting towards consumer but digital is all about listening and respond accordingly.

Listening to whom? Well, listening to your patenting buyers. Understanding audience is the key things to do. Using customer decision journey, empathy mapping, experience mapping these are all elements we can use to know more about our potential buyers. Since today’s marketing is all about the entire funnel experience so gathering information from each touch-points are essential. For understanding audience there are couple of practices and exercises according to Paul Boag.

·        Surveys

·        In-Person Meeting with audience

·        Top-Task Analysis

·        Customer Journey Mapping

·        Campaign’s design testing

·        Card Setting

·        Testing website with unfacilitated usability testing

Building a picture of audience by using surveys: With a clear goal and objectives we can understand the initial picture of our potential audience. But there are best practices which are we should not throw the survey once they arrive in our site. Rather waiting for the right opportunity with a good incentives are useful in this case. Starting with close questions, asking for goals, tasks, objectives, pain points are most important to extract more from survey. Survey needs to be very clear at the first place. Short, focused and easy to complete.

‘Present incentives once they complete the survey as surprise this yields great results and creates word of mouth’ – Paul Boag.

In-person meeting with audience: Meeting with audience is a great practice. Which gives great insights about the consumers. Spending as much as time with consumers are essential in today’s world of user centric marketing approach. There’s a saying that is, content is king but actually according to today – relationship with your audience is king. Meeting with audience once a month with at least 3 users can help to grow. Meeting one-to-one is ideal. Also it’s a good practice to meeting with them who are not yet customers.

Top-task Analysis:

The task users most wanted to complete on a website are considered as top-task. People usually spend 8 seconds maximum in a web site. If we can focus on the right questions or pain points of users then conversions are likely to increase. Landing page need to communicate the right message instantly.  Firstly we need to brainstorm user’s objective and questions and gather at least 60-100 elements. Making a questionnaire and figuring out what customers are really interested in. Website need to be simple and commonly understood. After the top-task analysis we need to prioritize the things to do in the website. Things to keep in mind that this is not a magic solution and will not solve marketing problems but helps to focus to communications.

Customer Journey Mapping:

Buyer persona or empathy mapping are static image. Using Customer journey rather than using empathy mapping is better because empathy mapping represents a snapshot in time but does not represent the dynamics of the user’s journey. Customer journey map contains:

-         Steps in the journey

-         Information about the user

If we look in to the above picture we can see, there are specific tasks for discover, research, purchase, delivery and post-sales stages as well as questions, touchpoints, emotions, influences and weakness for each of the stages. Creating workshop for designing the map is a best practice. It works well and worthy. Feedback from users should be invited to the workshop. Workshop should include people from each departments where they work with customers. (E.g. social media for insights, IT for data, sales and service and also somebody from senior level etc.)

Having a simple map is good. Maximum 5/6 steps should be ideal. Deciding touch-points with members first. Then adding questions from all members in sticky notes. Accordingly vote and narrow down the questions, (e.g. 3 voting option from each person) to display in final map. The workshop should continue about couple of hours. Getting designers to visualize the final one with expiry date is important.

There are campaign’s design testing with user, Card storing exercises, Keywords extracting, famous person exercise for representing the company are great help for gathering customer thoughts and behaviors.

I have learnt about all these amazing insights from CXL Institute and here I tried to summarize what I have learnt. My experience of learning from CXL is outstanding.

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Sheikh Shafi Mahmud is an Economics Graduate of Notre Dame, Digital Marketer, Social & Content. Author and Founder of SSM Thoughts Bridge. He is also the Co-Founder, Music Composer & Producer of Apeiruss. Can be reached at sheikhshafimahmud@gmail.com