Identifying and Amplifying Growth Channels– Review 3/12
Olawale Adeniyi
Strategy | Growth & Performance Marketing | Product Manager | Scrum Master | Certified Project Manager | Product Owner | Venture Builder | P&L Management | NUTM Scholar 2021 | Fellow, Oxford University Foundry YELP 2022
Identifying and Amplifying Growth Channels– Review 3/12
This week’s article is on “Identifying and Amplifying Growth Channels”, a part of Growth Marketing from CXL Institute https://cxl.com/ . In last week’s article, I wrote on “User-Centric Marketing”. You can read it here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/user-centric-marketing-review-112-olawale-adeniyi/?trackingId=ted3Rwt8Rw6p4zZfkk5PlA%3D%3D
Introduction
What is working for your competitor may not work for you. How do you then know the right channels for business growth?
The digital space provides opportunities to reach customers at different stages in their journey. These opportunities are channels companies use to reach customers. With the sole aim to first convert the customer and improve loyalty. Due to the different natures of the digital channels, customers’ behavior on each of these channels differs, which then influences the acceptable job-to-be-done. For companies to lead successful marketing expeditions, they must first be able to identify the right channels for their product/services, then amplify these channels for optimum performance.
Significance of Identifying Growth Channels
1.??????Resources
By nature, resources are scarce, so is the marketing budget. For successful allocation of marketing budget, you need to ensure your budget is spent on the right channels where your customers are active. For instance, a B2B company should not necessarily bother with Facebook ads. By nature, of Facebook, it is suitable for B2C – and mass-market products. This does not mean you cannot achieve some results with Facebook as a B2b company, but you are better off spending that resources on other channels.??
2.??????Focus/Niche
Ability to focus crave a niche, especially to own a channel is another significance of identifying growth channels. A company may want to own a channel, capture the most value, especially to be in the face of the customers, and discourage another competitor from using that channel.
For instance, Search Engine Marketing involves buying important, high-usage keywords relevant to your business. Companies with large resources might be able to buy all or most relevant keywords, outbids, and eventually prevents a competitor from being able to use that channel.
3.??????Competition
When competitions are fierce on a channel, how else can we compete favorably? We explore other channels.?There are emerging fast-growing channels companies can identify to reach customers without overreliance on popular and highly competitive channels. Apart from emerging channels, there are also under-utilized channels that will bring similar business outcomes to the popular and competition-saturate channels. An example of an emerging channel is Tik-Tok – an important channel for a company whose value proposition is targeted at Gen Z. An example of an underutilized channel is Quora – an important channel for a company whose value proposition is content-driven.
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Audience Distribution (find the audience on each social media)
Facebook has 2.7 billion active users, 25-34 years old are the largest age group with 26.3%, the gender distribution for female and male is 44% and 56% respectively. Average time spent per day is 38 minutes.
Instagram has 1 billion active users, 25-34 years old are the largest age group with 33.1%, the gender distribution for female and male is 57% and 43% respectively. Average time spent per day is 29 minutes.
Twitter has 187 million users, 30-49 years old are the largest age group with 44%, the gender distribution for female and male is 32% and 68% respectively. Average time spent per-day/week is 3.53 minutes per session.
LinkedIn has 738 million active users, 46-55 years old are the largest age group, the gender distribution for female and male is 49% and 51% respectively. 63% of the users access the platform monthly and 22% weekly.
Pinterest has 400+ million active users, 30-49 years old are the largest age group, the gender distribution for female and male is 78% and 22% respectively. Average time spent per-day is 14.2 minutes.
TikTok has 100 million active users, 18-24 years old are the largest age group, the gender distribution for female and male is 59% and 41% respectively. Average time spent per day is 45+ minutes.
Snapchat has 265 million active users, 13-34 years old are the largest age group with 75%, the gender distribution for female and male is 58% and 42% respectively. Average time spent per day is 26 minutes.
Youtube has 2 billion active users, 15-25 years old are the largest age group, the gender distribution unlike for Youtube unlike other channels, has 72% of all female internet users and 72% of all male internet users. Average time spent per day is 41.9 minutes among viewers above 18.
Quora has 300 million monthly active users, 25-34 years old are the largest age group with 32.5%, the gender distribution for female and male is 43% and 57% respectively. Average time spent daily is 4.11 minutes on the platform.
Reddit has 330 million monthly active users, 1.6 billion visits between February 2018 and March 2019. Average time spent per day is 16 minutes.
领英推荐
Email – it could be said that almost every who has a smartphone today, has an email account. That is more than half of the world’s population
Identifying Growth Channels
To identify and decide on the growth channels to use, it is important to know your audience, where they are at, what they are doing, what websites they are looking at, type of the advertisement on the websites and relating this to your business outcomes and objectives.
It is difficult for an early-stage company to be great at all the channels and, difficult for an established firm also. We first must understand where your customers are and what they are doing.
Strategic Approach to Channel
1.??????Study the Channel
·??????Is your audience active on those channels, are they using it?
·??????Identify the channels that are a mismatch for you
·??????Avoid channels that are most competitive
2.??????How do we measure results?
This depends on your business objectives
·??????Identify your business objectives?
·??????Measure High Returns on Invest
·??????Measure High Ability to Scale
3.??????How do know when a channel has failed?
·??????When it is no longer producing revenue and bringing in ROI
4.??????How to double down on a performance channel?
·??????Be patient – the opportunity to scale takes years
·??????Increase engagement
In Conclusion
What is working for your competitor may not work for you. You must use data to test what works for you and double down on those to extract exponential growth. Smaller companies have an advantage over larger competitors. They can test faster, move faster, experiment faster than bigger companies.
If you have resources, test the different channels, and see which ones are working. However, SEO and social media are great for the low budget constraints.
References
Leading Startup Attorney @BlackCrest LP I TEDx Speaker I Startup Coach | Chevening Scholar '22 I Human
3 年This was very insightful Olawale. I and my team are currently using email marketing to generate leads for our platform. It works wonders. We play in education information space and people applying for scholarships, graduate school and the like actually take the time to read their emails. You are absolutely right about determining the channel that works best for you. Kudos for excellent content as always.