A Marketing Process To Test New Ideas (really fast)

Whenever I speak about Growth Marketing people invariably jump to tactics (Dropbox referral scheme, the Tinder bus etc) but do you know what’s really sexy about growth? The process that underpins it.

This is the second article in a four-part series where I explore the core components of Growth Marketing.

Prerequisites

Growth isn’t for everyone. If you don’t have a sustainable business model or a clear value proposition you’ve got motions to go through before scaling.

This diagram illustrates what is required. I’m not going to explore the top line today but if you’ve got questions, feel free to get in touch. Here’s a link to download the canvases below: https://grow.ac/bmc

AAARRR & OMTM

The importance of the Pirate Funnel (AAARRR - get it?) and the One Metric That Matters cannot be understated so I won't skip them. An understanding of both is essential for any business, at whatever stage, to align and focus.

No-one today would subscribe to the notion if you build it they will come yet, sales and marketing is often an afterthought of product building which is crazy because, arguably, distribution has never been more challenging with saturated markets, dwindling attention spans and increasing cost of acquisition.

And part of the problem is our obsession with new customer acquisition. It’s super important but, time and again golden optimisation opportunities are missed though blinkered vision.

The book Lean Analytics makes an emphatic case for focus on one element in the funnel at a time. You would be forgiven for concluding that businesses jump to the bottom line (revenue) however, focus across the funnel delivers bottom line growth through optimising your customer's journeys to it.

So now, we've reviewed our funnel and focused on one part for our next sprint. Now it’s time to grow(s).

G.R.O.W.S - Gather Ideas

This can be pretty high level (i.e. I think retargeting people on Facebook will drive uplift in website leads) but the more detail the better.

This stage of the process is creative and collaborative. We encourage everyone from the business to contribute because that brings different expertise, experience and perspectives.

This can be done formally or contributed to at whatever time you like because thankfully, GROWS has a beautiful app that underpins the process.

G.R.O.W.S - Rank Ideas

Now a core team identifies low hanging fruit, strategic initiatives and ideas for next year, (maybe?).

We use prioritisation frameworks to do this. This scores levers (see below) and multiplies the numbers. Some frameworks add but it’s important to multiply because if any levers rank low, multiplication impacts the overall score significantly (and correctly!).

We recommend BRASS (blink x relevance x availability x scalability = score) for awareness and PIES (probability x impact x ease = score) for the rest of the funnel.

G.R.O.W.S - Outline Experiments

What does good look like? When am I going to start and end my experiment? Do I need IT? Do I need to buy new tools?

These questions (and others) need defining and are formatted into an experiment card.

G.R.O.W.S - Work

This stage differentiates people/teams who come back with results and excuses.

It requires a lot of discipline and I'm not talking about putting the hours in. Sticking to what was agreed on the experiment card can be easier said than done!

G.R.O.W.S - Study

Often an afterthought (particularly when experiments are run ad-hoc) but understanding results is key. Put simply, how did our experiment perform vs the success criteria we set out in our experiments design (see ‘we are right if’ box in the image above).

When an experiment is a success we double down and iterate within the process again. And if it was a fail, we categorise it as such, try to understand why (and if this can’t be done flag it as inconclusive) and move on. Either way, the experiment is documented and closed.

Conclusion

As the old saying goes, process is professionals and the GROWS process for rapid experimentation is, in my opinion, the main reason Growth Marketing has evolved from a cornerstone of start-up success to being a methodical, collaborative and scalable way for marketeers to succeed in organisations of all sizes.

And what does this look like? Well, based on feedback from our clients, something like this: