Growth and User Centric Marketing, is it here to stay?

Growth marketing seemed like one of those fads that were over hyped thanks to a select few, in Silicon Valley. Fast forward 3 – 5 years and it is still here. But what exactly is growth marketing and how does customer centric marketing fit into the picture? But first, some context. Digital Marketing has been around for long enough. The challenge most digital marketers face is they need to be a jack of all trades, also knowns as full stack marketers. From copywriting, social media, SEO, Content Marketing, Email Marketing to paid traffic channels all on a host of different platforms and technologies requiring their own skill sets. One needs to understand how each medium works. At the rapid rate of change within the industry, being able to specialize in a specific medium or channel has its own set of risks and challenges. 

Growth Marketing is a specialist role within the digital marketing arena. A T-Shaped Marketer, that specializes and focuses on all areas of growth within the funnel. But it goes deeper than just the skill sets. A Growth Marketer requires a growth mind set, always searching for the next one or two percentages of growth, anymore an absolute bonus. The incremental changes to help a business go from good to great, which can only be achieved by carrying out experiments throughout the funnel based on a hypothesis.

Having spent the last 3 years primarily in the acquisition space, as my preference, and with the skill set of direct response copywriting and funnels, I had been searching for something ‘more’. Having heard the term of “becoming a T-Shaped Marketer” some 12 months or so prior, and having previously undergone full stack marketing certifications, I never really took much notice of it, until I was forced to. The pandemic changed a lot of what and how I used to do things. Bottom-line I needed to upskill, and fortunately having 3 – 6 months to do so. I looked at what was happening in the digital space. Specifically, at work availability and came across the Growth Marketer role. It shouldn’t be too hard to transition…right?!

The ah ha Moment – The Growth Marketing Mini-degree

So, to answer my own question I signed up to CXL’s Institute Growth Marketing Mini-degree. A total of 111 hours and 41 minutes to completion, means it will take 3 months to complete at 10 – 15 hours per week. It is an immersive course designed and instructed by some of the top growth marketers covering the main methodologies and processes they use. 

Designed for “full-stack marketers/marketing generalists who want to specialize”, the program aims to “take participants from novice to advanced level growth marketers”, developing skills that can be applied “equally well in ecommerce, SaaS, or B2B enterprises”.

Having looked at few growth marketer courses ranging from $499 to well over $2500. CXL’s Mini degree was the one that really stood out for me the most as the ones that would live up to their promise. Let’s face it courses are expensive, especially if you are not earning entirely in Dollars and there are a lot of gurus out there that make ridiculously lavish claims.

As I mentioned earlier – having worked in digital for over 3 years, the thing I look for most is learning about processes, strategies, and tools that I can quickly apply to test the results. If I fail, try something different to see where I finally get the results. Any possible means of being able to review or re-evaluate past work, to progress and get better results, is always top of mind for the next campaign.

With there being so many changes, so quickly in the industry. Have you ever looked for a source that can help you, or confirm you are on the right path, or help you divert course quickly? That’s what I look for in the courses I enrol in.

Full Disclosure: I’m taking the Growth Marketing Mini-degree as part of a scholarship, and obligated to write one review post per week, over a twelve-week period as my part of the scholarship. I am also an affiliate for CXL Institute and may earn a commission on any links clicked.

What You’ll Learn in Week 1

There are three lessons within the first unit, Growth Marketing Foundations, covering the ‘Growth mindset: growth vs traditional marketing’, ‘Building a growth process’, ‘User-centric marketing’, and ‘Identifying and amplifying growth channels. 

The Growth Mindset & Building a Growth Process

John McBride (ex-Lyft) starts the unit off by explaining how growth marketing differs from traditional brand marketing. As mentioned earlier growth marketing focuses on the entire funnel whereas brand marketing focuses on the top of the funnel. In all honesty, I only ever considered brand marketers a relationship builder that drive awareness and not even part of the acquisitions but here I am…learning something new!              

The amount of overlap between a full stack and a T-Shaped marketer is insane. Both need to develop channel level expertise, analytical prowess, and cross functional strategic thinking. However, the growth marketer is constantly experimenting with the different channels, campaigns, or pretty much anything you could put a hypothesis around for testing and experimenting.

The next set of videos led by McBride are devoted to the importance of having a growth program, the value it offers companies, and how to implement the ideas. He walks you through the 3 phases of building out your growth process, by figuring out your high-level strategy which requires you to define the growth model, map out the customer journey and identifying your growth channels. McBride then moves into the second phase of moving into quarterly planning and how you should be exploring your data, identifying the quarterly goals and ultimately start building the road map for you to execute on, and achieving your goals. The final phase is the in-quarter execution which ensures you have a high tempo growth process for you to build and ship your experiments on the minimum viable marketing campaign to either analyse the data and automate the process or, scrap it and move on to the next hypothesis.

User Centric Marketing

Paul Boag carries out the next lesson on user-centric marketing. A strategy that focuses on the user or customer and not on the product. Although it has been around for some time, the tactics and techniques Paul suggest, in my mind at least, would hamper the high tempo needed in the growth marketer role. Don’t get me wrong, his teachings on empathy mapping and aligning it to the customer journey map for me was an absolute epiphany and would cut out at least 1 full document in my arsenal, which means there is more time to do other meaning full work. There must surely be a better way to get data and insights from users other than having them go through tasks such involving in the design and testing their mindset with card sorting. The search for improvements will continue.

Round-up

All in all, the course has answered my primary questions about growth marketing and provided some great insights that I had previously overlooked, or not even thought of. Defining your customer journey around your user or customers input, naturally will add massive value to both your customers and the business. With businesses trying to normalize out of the pandemic and digital moving into a trust-based economy. Personally, I cannot see how either of these will leave us any time soon. If you’re interested in learning more about CXL’s Institute Growth Marketing Mini-degree, you can read more about it on their website.

#GrowthMarketing #UserCentricMarketing #DigitalMarketing