Introduction to Growth Marketing: The Growth Mindset and Process (CXL Growth Marketing Minidegree Review)

I'm excited to be starting a Growth Marketing mini degree with CXL through their scholarship program. And as one of the requirements for it, I'll be taking you all along with me on this journey with weekly posts for the next 12 weeks.

You see, the first time I heard about Growth marketing was on Twitter. Someone gave a detailed explanation of the rising career paths in tech and listed it as top ten.

However, I developed an interest in it after reading a material about startups. The book talked about how growth marketers are usually one of the first hires in a startup trying to gain users and retain them. Plus how they are pivotal to generating profit in a startup in its early stage.

And that's how my fascination with the career began.

Growth marketing with an emphasis on growth is different from traditional marketing that we know. And while Digital transformation has managed to bring with it a change in how we go about marketing, many brands and businesses still miss it.

Growth marketing differs from traditional marketing in the following ways:

1. The focus: with traditional marketing, the focus is usually at the top of the funnel. This is unlike growth marketing which has a 360degrees bird's eye view on the marketing funnel. So growth marketers try to address the problems companies experience with customers from the top of the funnel to the bottom.

2. The Growth Process: growth marketers operate like scientists. In their case, the marketing funnel is their lab, and the campaigns and programs are the experiments they run. And in a truly scientific fashion, they start with a hypothesis, which is just an assumption on a method that should help solve a problem for customers, before going all-in with what works.?

From that hypothesis, they work with a small sample size of the specimen (the customers).? After which they test the viability of an idea, and if it works well, they go full scale with it. If the result is not favourable, they abandon the approach and try something different.

Here's an easy way to illustrate it:

Hypothesis - Start small - test for results - if positive, go all-in with the marketing budget and keep iterating - if negative, cancel the plan and try something new

So it's safe to say that as a Growth Marketer, you have to be flexible and agile with your approach.

On the other hand, traditional marketing doesn't work this way. Campaigns just run campaigns without tests, which can either be a waste or a success. No in-betweens.

Experimentation at the Core of Growth Marketing

The success of a growth marketer rests on the success of their campaigns and how well they can scale it up. A primary reason why every growth process should start with experimentation.

This experiment can come in the form of:

1. Testing of channels.

2.?Testing of different types of messaging and effectiveness of copy.

3. Research into external factors apart from the channel used and the messaging that affects the success of a campaign.?

An excellent way to experiment in small numbers while getting fast results is to split test the audience. Split testing has to do with taking a sample size of the audience, like 10-20% of them and trying different ad types and copies on them to pick the most effective one. Then run A/B tests for the copy.

Thus, the growth process is divided into three stages:

1. Finding out the effectiveness of a campaign or program.

2. Beating the competition through better messaging and offer.

3. Creating tailored messages and campaigns for your customers by segmenting them and understanding them individually.

In recent times, growth marketing has been described in different ways, and one of such terms is growth hacking. Growth hacking originally referred to the mindset of scaling fast without obsessing over a perfect solution but using every approach as a way of learning.

Now, it has been bastardized to mean impossible shortcuts to achieve exponential growth. Like growing from 5% - 60% within a short period, a feat that is quite unachievable in the marketing space.

What Makes A Successful Growth Marketer?

If you're trying to break into, or accelerate your career as a Growth Marketer, here are three areas to focus on:

1. Channel level expertise refers to your skillfulness in utilizing a particular channel like social media, email or SEO to get results. However, this should not be considered a priority in your beginner days as an early Growth Marketer. Instead, your focus should constantly be fuelling your passion for the career and its demands while allowing your eagerness to learn to shine through.

2. Analytical Capability:?your ability to make informed decisions for marketing's sake by drawing insights from data says a lot about your success as a Growth Marketer. So, be good at Microsoft Excel or SQL.

3. Strategic Thinking: this is where your people skills should shine through. Showing that you can work with others while being a fast thinker will help you a lot as a Growth Marketer. Especially as growth is crossfunctional.

How to Become a Growth Marketer

Going into growth marketing is a good way of getting into tech, especially since the work type is best suited for the fast pace found in startups.?

I've already highlighted what makes a successful marketer (given above). So, you can start by learning more about channels and coming up with ideas for experimentation.

Then, you can check out case studies of past successful growth stories and what made them stand out. For example, growthhackers.com will help with that. Then after studying and researching, try to observe the industry and relate it to the kind of work done in your company or your dream workplace.

Finally, look for holes in their marketing, and make a convincing case on how you can help—again, backed by data and research. Just be professional about this, not condescending.?

Building A Growth Process

This means coming up with different growth tactics that focus on Acquisition, Activation, Retention Revenue and Referral (AARRR). These tactics should be thought of from the customer's point of view. Heres' how to go about it:

A. Start with a Monthly Growth model: by focusing on the customers and their program, you'll also understand specific details about them and their behaviours at different stages of the market funnel.

B. Set Quarterly goals: This will help you prioritize what needs to be prioritized while giving you a bird's eye view of how welcoming the market is about marketing.

Use this period to interact with your users and conduct user research.

To set these goals, you must interact with your team first to ensure no one is left behind.?

Hence, the success of your quarterly goals will focus on you: designing the experiment, shipping it, analyzing the results before automating for work at a larger scale.

That's it for this week.

I learnt a lot and am already experiencing a gradual mindset shift on how I view marketing.

In the next article, I'll talk about user-centric marketing and growth channels.