Learnings from top growth marketers to help you handle your next growth challenge

As businesses strive to grow and reach new heights, they often turn to expert growth marketers for advice. These experienced professionals have learned a great deal about what works — and what doesn’t — when marketing a product.

In this article, we’ll share key learnings from top growth marketers. From the importance of customer focus to the necessity of insights-driven decision-making, their tips will help you with any growth challenge.

Fast forward >>

• What is growth marketing?
• What does a growth marketer do?
• Growth marketing strategy examples
• Growth marketer learnings

What is growth marketing? 

Growth marketing is an insights-driven approach to marketing that focuses on acquiring and retaining customers. Growth marketers employ a variety of tactics to achieve these goals, including paid advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, community engagement, and social media marketing.

The above tactics also aim to increase a company’s revenue and customer base as quickly and efficiently as possible. To achieve this, growth marketers believe that gaining new customers—acquisition marketing—and keeping existing ones—retention marketing—are key.

What does a growth marketer do? 

Growth marketers apply diverse insights-driven approaches to win customers, keep them engaged, and convert them into brand advocates. They plan and execute every marketing funnel stage and work closely with businesses to continually optimize their efforts.

These experts are also constantly testing and experimenting to find new ways to expand a business. While traditional marketers tend to focus on top-of-the-funnel methods, growth marketers observe the entire cycle for opportunities to innovate. 

In short, growth marketing is marketing that looks at the entire funnel and beyond. 

Growth marketers are masters at experimenting, strategizing, and finding creative ways to expand. They also embrace testing and analysis to broaden their user base as efficiently as possible.

Growth marketing strategy examples

When it comes to increasing their revenue and customer base, there are many different marketing growth strategies available to businesses, including these most common methods:

Paid advertising

Paid ads can effectively and quickly get your message in front of a large audience of potential customers already interested in what you have to offer.

SEO

Optimizing your website and content for search engines can increase your brand’s visibility in search results and attract more organic traffic to your site.

Content marketing

You can reach new customers, promote your business, attract attention, and build trust with your target audience by creating and distributing high-quality content.

Social media marketing

This is a great way to share engaging content, interact with your followers, connect with existing and prospective customers, build relationships, and boost brand awareness. Most companies run marketing campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

Email marketing

Reach out to potential and existing customers through targeted emails to promote your products or services and stay top of mind with your audience.

Insights-driven decision-making

This is one of the most important growth strategies. To make informed decisions about your marketing efforts, you need to track your progress and analyze your results. By doing this, you can constantly optimize your campaigns and get the most out of your marketing budget.

Most importantly, when planning your growth strategy, consider the many ways to reach your audience, consistently deliver across those channels, and test until you find what resonates with them.

Top growth marketers share their learnings

Every business hopes to be insights-driven. After all, data is the new currency and the key to unlocking growth. But what does it really mean to be insights-driven, and how can business owners become more data-aware?

Below, we’ll look at the top tips by expert growth marketers on how companies can maximize tools, techniques, and resources to make insights-driven decisions that lead to growth. Here are some of the learnings from: 

• Wiebke Arendt, Growth Marketing Strategist at Advance B2B
• Mari Luukkainen, Principal & Growth Expert at Icebreaker.vc
• Madhuparna Chaudhuri, Growth Marketing Manager at On-Time Research Solutions 
• Khrystyna Grynko, Data Analytics Specialist at Google
• Ole Dallerup, Founder & CTO at Dreamdata
• Minna Tuikka, Senior Growth Marketing Manager at Supermetrics

Use the data you already have 

One of the most common mistakes companies make is overlooking existing data. Many marketers wish for access to fancy tools and resources, not knowing they have valuable information on hand. Start by studying your customers’ database and identifying patterns or trends.

Make mistakes

One of the biggest hurdles to growth is the fear of failure. We often think we need to have everything figured out before making a move, but that’s not the case. 

Learning to deal with failure—or even minor mistakes—is a tough pill to swallow. In growth, we need to fail to get better. But so many people are afraid.

Ask anyone, and chances are you’ll hear them say that they’d rather not fail. But not failing also means not growing. In fact, most successful businesses are those that are constantly trying new things and learning through failure. The key is to learn from mistakes and use them to improve.

Most of us have been taught to avoid them in formal education. While we can’t change society, it’s crucial to foster a company culture that makes space for learning from mistakes, even though people are inherently wary of making mistakes. Sometimes, all it takes is a few people who dare to fail and openly share those learnings.

Invest in the right tools and resources 

If your goal is to arrive at insights-driven decisions, you need the appropriate tools and resources at your disposal. These will give you an easier understanding of your data and guide you towards informed decisions that drive growth.

Various software platforms and apps can help you collect, track, and analyze data. Some of the most popular options include Google Analytics, Moz, Supermetrics, and Tableau.

An insights-driven approach to decision-making opens up endless possibilities. So, rather than be overwhelmed, find the best tools for you and your team.

Once you have the right tools, ensure you use them to their full potential. Part of being insights-driven is the willingness to go through trial-and-error phases.

Nurture customer relations—even offline

When a lot of our day is spent online, it makes us forget that the online world isn’t all there is. Whether you’re a veteran or a newbie in the business, you need to connect with customers offline as well.

Face-to-face interactions and building in-person relationships are invaluable. These efforts will help you better understand your customers and their pain points. The information you gather can be the basis of better targeted and effective marketing campaigns.

At the core of marketing, after all, is an in-depth knowledge of your target audience’s needs and catering to them. Investing in customer relations will help you build brand loyalty and keep your customers coming back. It’s a building block for long-term growth and shouldn’t be underestimated.

Take risks

Validation is the only way to know if your hypothesis is correct. But it also means having the willingness to take risks. 

On that note, an experiment doesn’t have to be elaborate. Often, it’s as simple as experimenting with terminologies that could help your brand connect with its target audience.

Especially in industries where everything must be precise, such as finance, the importance of experimentation in marketing is often overlooked or even dismissed. 

Here’s an example of how changing words can completely shift the way customers react to a brand and how this simple change can lead to growth:

• A Finland-based company rebranded its website to describe its product as a tool for payment reminders. It helped them reach the target audience they wanted—decision-makers in finance. 
• The product was being used in various sectors such as healthcare and marketing. However, the company still decided to focus on finance.
• Through a series of meetings with people with different job titles, they found their target market was credit officers and debt collection agencies in general. 
• This helped them increase conversions and consequently reach their desired growth.

If you’re stuck in a rut, take risks—you never know what might work.

 

It’s all about collaboration 

Collaboration with different teams is the key to success. You can solve your and other teams’ pain points by teaching growth methods on a smaller scale. Don’t dismiss what you can do with your teammates in sales, product development, and even customer support.

These are just a few of the many lessons you can take away from the industry’s growth marketers. Keep learning and growing, and never be afraid to take risks. With the right mindset and approach, you can achieve the growth you’re after.

About the author

Serena is a Content Marketing Specialist at Advance B2B. Together with her team of marketing experts, Serena helps businesses tell stories using the craftsmanship of a storyteller and the analytical mind of an analyst.