12 Steps to High-level Growth Marketing Plan
A business success story doesn’t just happen overnight. As in just about any area of life, reaching your business goals demands a solid (marketing) plan. And to make that plan, there are 12 steps to follow. Let me walk you through them.
1️⃣ WHO ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS?
Outline the profile of your brand’s dream customer
Always start with targeting your audience. Who’s your persona? Sketch it out. Also, make sure you over-index on that persona while making value a priority. Don’t know where to start? Take advantage of the existing tools! In this case: the Facebook Audience Insight Tool is very helpful. It allows you to create your ideal customer’s avatar, which is pretty cool! Dig for some extra tools as well & have a read at the great article Ad Roll published about them. Check it out.
2️⃣ LOOK AT THE COMPETITION: HOW DO THEY DRAG TRAFFIC?
Competitive Analysis
Tools like SimilarWeb, Ahrefs, SemRush, Ubersuggest, etc. were made to assist you in analyzing the top traffic drivers, keywords & backlinks. Once you’ve got your finger on those, have a closer look at how they’re getting traffic before reverse-engineering that on your own brand!
3️⃣ WHAT MAKES YOUR BRAND DIFFERENT?
Define Value Proposition
Know what the Jobs to be Done of your product or service are before elaborating a matching value proposition. A clear & striking value proposition can get your brand 10 times more interest than your competitors. Keep a close on what your customers say about you & include their thoughts & phrases into your messages, also through reviews and testimonials.
4️⃣ INVEST IN ORGANIC TRAFFIC TO SECURE LONGEVITY
Seo & Keyword Analysis
SEO is still by far the best way to find sites. It also shows to have the highest potential for ROI. Therefore, start by performing a technical SEO audit of your website. Through keyword demand and on-page performance analysis, you can measure the impact of organic traffic on your brand.
5️⃣ TURN YOUR BRAND INTO A CONVERSION MACHINE — ALWAYS!!!
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is key for growth
Did you know that 98% of your website visitors won’t buy from you today. A comprehensive conversion plan starts with an CRO audit that will help you optimize full-funnel, resulting in turning more visitors into buyers.
6️⃣ GET STARTED WITH PAID CHANNELS
Are you building a Winning Paid Ad funnel?
To grow rapidly, there’s no secret: you need to embrace the omnichannel approach, led by Facebook & Google Ads Campaigns. Get busy building some solid foundations through a consolidated Facebook campaign structure. Focus on costs (CPAs) and budgets calculated off your own profitability targets. Once you’ve tackled awareness and have managed to create demand, make sure you have a thorough Paid Search plan ready to give that demand a proper answer. In that process, beware particularly of branded AND categorical search.
7️⃣ SUCCESS SHOULD BE MEASURED. HERE’S HOW:
Set Up Analytics Infrastructure & Always think in terms of CLV:CAC
Implement Google Analytics & url tracking best practices to measure the reach of your marketing campaigns. Identify benchmarks by industry to determine how you live up to the competition.
Here are four quick data-driven definitions* your brand should stress on:
Customer lifetime value (LTV, CLTV, or CLV): Those represent the revenue value over the course of an average customer lifespan — i.e., future cash flows over his or her entire relationship with the company.
Churn: It gives you the absolute number or percentage of customers (churn rate) who stop reordering; it is the opposite of returning customers.
Customer acquisition costs (CAC): That is the total amount it costs to acquire an average customer, agency fees included.
Cash multiplier (CM): That represents the revenue value of specific customer segments over limited time frames — payback windows — adjusted for sources and entry points.
*Source: Commonthread
8️⃣ TOOLS MATTER. CHOOSE THEM WELL.
Create a Marketing Tech Stack
Depending on the budget & the mission of your brand, there’s a plethora of marketing tools for you to choose from. I have a backlog of 100+ marketing tools based upon types of industries. For example, I can tell you that Shopify brands should be using a combination of Nosto, Klaviyo, reviews & Search tools if the dream is to scale their brand from 1M to +10M.
9️⃣ BUILD A BACKLOG OF EXPERIMENTS TO INCREASE SALES
Growth Experiments Pipeline
Develop a pipeline of 75+ growth experiments to run with the goal of getting your marketing channels to deliver results. I prefer working based upon the ICE framework, coined by Growth hacker Sean Ellis. Basically, it all comes down to those 6 steps:
6 steps to successfully run a growth marketing experiment:
Step 1: Define your objective
Step 2: Hypothesize on what might happen on your growth path
Step 3: Set up the experiment
Step 4: Implement the marketing tools you picked
Step 5: Analyze the results
Step 6: Share your learnings
🔟 LAUNCH YOUR DTC BRAND ON AMAZON
Growth Experiments Pipeline
Far gone is the time where Amazon was just a e-commerce marketplace. With a score of 66% consumers beginning their shopping search on Amazon rather than via any other search engine, it can easily be said that it has become the most popular platform for prospects to discover new brands. Add Covid-19 to the mix and watch Amazon being propelled to record heights & officially becoming an effective for DTC brands to reach new customers.
11 WHY LEAD WITH LOYALTY?
The brands of the next decade will win with loyalty, not acquisition.
A good customer loyalty program can generate significant gains in recurring revenue for your business by improving the return on your marketing and sales budget.
As you might be thinking about leading with loyalty, I can only encourage you to reflect on your favorite brands. Which ones have made a meaningful impact on your life? What would keep you engaged and enthusiastic about this brand despite the many other options? Think outside the box!
One of my all time favorite Loyalty program is Hotel Pink, from Frankbody
The concept is completely tailored on their ICP. It looks fresh and fits into the Frank persona of a guy pampering the ladies. The Hotel Pink design is a full extension of their brand story, and fans who like it will share it with their friends. Storytelling is a crucial aspect of a Loyalty program, with potential for virality. Stories have a natural appeal and they will always be spread by the ones who’ve heard them to the ones that are hungry for fresh input.
If your brand focuses on telling exciting stories, there’s little to no doubt that people will remember it and will want to share it. The Hotel Pink design does that and it makes their fans share their product with their friends.
12 HOW DO YOU MAKE THIS ALL HAPPEN?
How to structure your growth team
Let me share some key areas of expertise that should be covered to achieve your growth marketing goals. The main thing is to have a team that can run all the growth experiments you have in the pipeline.
Your team should not be so dependent on external parties that it becomes a bottleneck. Also, keep in mind that Growth teams should work cross-functional and not on islands. My top roles usually are:
Growth Manager. That is the person who owns the growth objectives and the key KPIs that everyone is focused on.
Specialist or Expert: A marketing professional who specializes in the field for this team or project. I also recommend startups to first hire a specialist in the domain of your primary flywheel before hiring a growth manager or Head of Growth. For example, an SEO-focused copywriter who creates blog content or a videographer who develops video strategies.
Data Analyst. That is the person who collects and organizes data for growth experiments. They are also responsible for creating dashboards and presenting data at conferences. Developer/Designer. A technician or designer who can run digital marketing experiments. Tip: It’s okay for one person to take on multiple roles. For example, the growth lead could be the person who does the data analyst work and manages the team.
Hope this all sticks with you and those you can pass it on to. Happy growing!
