The Sustainable Growth Marketing Imperative

In today’s constantly evolving world of marketing tech and platforms – is it even possible to have a “sustainable” strategy? This has been the central question I have been asking myself and challenging my agency to solve. It seems at every turn just when you figure out a social media platform they change the algorithm.

Change is inevitable so how do you build something that is always constantly changing and evolving?

With all this change you now have to be “Brave” and constantly experiment. To me, this sounds like the adage of throwing mud at a wall and hoping it will stick. Why does it have to have so much risk? This approach forces the marketer to cross their fingers in hoping they found a loophole, a hack a rare growth curve.

As a marketer the one thing that is in crisis… content. You need to produce more content, activate it, people need to engage with it and the life spans of each piece of content are about like a piece of lettuce in the summer sun. Very short lifespans partially from audience apathy and attention combined with the platforms pushing audience attention to paid forms of content from ads to boosted posts.

Even your paid ads are now competing with expertly developed content sure to distract them instantly from your message – from beautiful scenes of some Bali yoga resort to pandas going down slides. Both likely are more interesting than your ad.

What is a marketer to do? Keep testing and experimenting. Yes. But that is only part of the story.

One of the best books on HOW to experiment and figure out your growth model is the book?“Hacking Growth”?– I have read it twice it's that good. Authors Sean Ellis / Morgan Brown created "the bible" for growth in my view. They outline how to prioritize your growth experiments and build smart growth models.

I agree that testing and experimenting are critical and the authors go further into how interwoven marketing must be in the business itself. So it could impact your product development and business model at its core.

For innovation and improvement, this is totally on point.

I have an additional perspective that should be considered throughout the process. It's less sexy and slow but in my view, it IS the sustainable growth marketing imperative… its patience combined with foundational marketing programs in a platform ecosystem.

Having the right combination of automation and on-demand content that can be developed, deployed and activated – sustainably. When you have the basics executed every day and your processes combined with automation and social media platform and digital properties aligned – then only then should you go and experiment.

Over the past 10 years, I have seen more companies focus on short-term growth and they can’t even capitalize on the growth to impact anything more than the campaign effort itself. When you have the foundational programs in place you now have the ability to capture future growth on all the audience attention that you purchased but did not buy.

I call this a “buy or go away strategy” and it's a failed one. Just think about how many people do not respond to a “buy now” ad but would respond to a “We have this thing of extreme value here – just subscribe or follow us here” If you don’t have these basics down and something that is compelling for all the prospects who you are not ready to buy from you – then all the growth hacks and ad buying is a roller coaster ride of results.

Get off the circus ride. Make your experiments and ad campaigns – boost, augment and support your foundational efforts. Think of them as an “Extra” bump in results but month over month. Your company’s foundational unsexy content and marketing must perform first before you start being brave and throwing mud at the wall – hopefully, you will read Hacking Growth and prioritize what mud to throw for better results.

Listen to my podcast interview with Sean Ellis on The Groundswell Podcast

Footnote: I originally published with Business 2 Community Dec 2018 (and someone has wrongfully claimed they wrote this article. See this tweet