Thoughts on Growth - March Edition
We're almost at the end of Q1 2024, I hope you are tracking towards your quarterly objectives and goals!
At Growth Division it's been a very busy couple of months with over 20 referrals and lots of proposals being generated.
To keep up with all this demand we have brought on two new Growth Strategists to the team, Daniel and Luke .?
? ? Growth Division's North Start Metric = 108 Channels Under Management
?? Growth Channel Insight - Business Development (Partnerships)
Building partnerships is one of the most scalable, sustainable channels of growth.
It sounds so easy, doesn't it?
Find another person/business/organisation "fishing in the same customer pond" as you, agree to share your audience/leads/customers, bring home the big bucks.
But alas, it's never that simple, is it?
I've learnt the hard way. Throughout my career I've had partner conversations with some names that would be transformational for my projects and businesses. The meeting goes well, and everyone is excited. We have a plan! Then... maybe one or two leads trickle through. But after that? Silence.
Recently however, I have come to learn what makes a good, long-lasting partnership work.
Here are a few of my top tips:
?? Align incentives effectively. Give partners an extremely lucrative upside for referring your business.
? Be overly generous here, it's important. Choose partners carefully. It's easy to waste time building a partnership that doesn't fit your "Ideal Partner Profile".
?? The relationship is absolutely key. Meet in person where possible. Meet regularly to build a strong partnership.
?? A partnership should work both ways. Monetary payouts is a good start, but social capital is also important. Give back as much as you can.
?? Quick validation of the partnership is key. Have a deal on the table within days of agreeing the partnership.
?? Growth Resource - Measure what matters
Goal setting can be difficult.
What should you focus on?
What is important right now?
What target is reasonable and achievable, whilst still being ambitious?
And what do you need to measure to ensure you are on track to hitting that goal?
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At Growth Division we have a North Star Metric (NSM), or a one metric that matters. In fact, we promote it in this very newsletter (see the Channels Under Management number above). It's the metric that unites everyone in Growth Division. All key activities throughout the organisation should have this goal in mind.
Below the NSM we use Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to keep us tracking towards key objectives that work towards the NSM. Setting effective OKRs is a skill in its own right. I love the article linked below covering what OKRs are, how to set effective OKRs and how to use the framework on an ongoing basis.
?? Growth Experiment - Test personal news and updates on Tristan's LinkedIn profile to boost monthly engagement
Each month we aim to show you a recent channel hypothesis, the experiment we launched off the back of the idea, and - of course - the results (good, bad, or ugly!). Last month...
Hypothesis: We expect that sharing personal stories in LinkedIn posts will increase monthly engagement on the founder Tristan's profile by 20%, measured by the total number of likes, comments, and shares.
Description:?
1. Work with Tristan to identify and craft several personal stories that resonate with the target audience and align with the startup's brand message. These can be planned using a content calendar template.
2. Schedule a series of LinkedIn posts incorporating these personal stories. These posts should be spaced out over a specific time period to allow for data collection and comparison.
3. Track the engagement metrics for each post, including likes, comments, shares, and profile visits. You can use a social media management tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule and track the performance of posts.
4. Ensure there is a control group of regular non-personal story posts to compare the engagement metrics accurately.
5. Monitor the performance of each post and the overall increase in engagement resulting from the personal stories.
6. Analyse the data collected to determine the effectiveness of sharing personal stories for increasing engagement on Tristan's LinkedIn profile.
Variable metric: Engagement Rate
Expected outcome: If the total engagement (likes, comments, shares) on posts containing personal stories is 20% higher on average compared to regular posts, personal stories will be deemed successful in increasing engagement.
Baseline: 286 engagements
ICE score (out of 1000): 162
Experiment result (out of 5): 339 (18% increase)
Result: We set 20% increase in engagement as the success metric and came pretty close to that. I can see personal stories are a good option to increase engagement on LinkedIn, despite just falling short of the original goal I'd classify this as a successful experiment.
?? Final note, the above experiment was generated using our AI-powered Growth Experimentation tool.
Something we are offering to the upcoming 12-week Growth Programme we are running at Growth Squared - https://growthsquared.ai/
All the best,
Tristan