Let me ask you something.
And I want you to be completely honest.
The question to you is: Do you know how your customers buy?
I don’t mean if you know the features and benefits of your software – I’m sure you do.
And I don’t care if you know how to answer every objection.
No, all that’s par for the course – but I’m interested in knowing if you know how, why, and when your customers purchase your software.
Do you know what you’re doing with your marketing?
Do you know the “How” and “When” of implementing growth marketing strategies and tactics?
If your work revolves around increasing leads and sales, the struggle is not about “If” you should use high-growth marketing, but more about “When” you should.
For many, the challenge facing anyone responsible for achieving growth via marketing is understanding where you are right this moment – and acting accordingly.
As a CMO, VP of Marketing, or anyone in Marketing, it’s not a question of “If” or “How” anymore, it’s a question of “When”.
You’re not going to win the “marketing lottery” with a campaign that generates hockey-stick growth.
You will probably never go “viral” or be a YouTube sensation.
The days of global vitality is largely over, as channels are becoming more fragmented and niche, while simultaneously disappearing.
For a B2C company, you don’t want to go viral anyway – you want bursts of growth that gives you momentum and vitality does not.
For a B2B company, your target market is not big enough – and that’s a good thing.
But you can, actually, achieve “hockey-stick” growth.
If you’re a B2B software/tech company, how do you go from traction to scale?
That’s a big question that can’t be answered in one, single blog post, but the start of a solution comes down to:
There are a few more points that I’ll leave for now, but that’s where you need to begin.
Now, whether your team consists of 1 or 10, and anything in-between, before you start publishing lead magnets (whitepapers), populate your site with landing pages, and push PPC in classic omni-channel flair…
Direct mail, as a marketing tactic, went out of style for a while.
The reasons why are understandable, but mostly a result of people doing it wrong.
The effectiveness of it hits a point of diminishing returns once you try to do it at too large of a scale.
But done properly, by keeping to these strict guidelines, it can reap immense rewards:
I don’t always post on Twitter, but when I do, I use the shotgun approach.
Recently I started firing off questions and comments regarding the term “growth hacker.”
I’m not a huge fan of that label — I prefer “growth marketing” — but have made peace with its existence and usage.
I know you don’t like to be compared to everyone else.
I know you’re unique.
But I’m willing to bet $100 that your online marketing funnels are probably lacking in scope and size.
I’m saying that because no matter who I work with, and how big they are, there’s always a missing piece to their funnels.
And those missing pieces add up and end up costing you.
You don’t get as many qualified leads as you could have.
You don’t get as many sales or repeat sales as you could have.
I’d say that’s a problem.
And I’ll even add that it’s a problem worth fixing – now.
It seems pretty fundamental and obvious: without buyers, you don’t have a business.
And without knowing your market, your clients and customers, you can’t serve them well or offer valuable products.
Yet, businesses continue to act as if it’s not true or important — especially in their marketing.
You see this when marketers elevate one particular approach over another, supposedly heralding and ushering in the New Age of Marketing.
You can spot it when marketers are still talking about their Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and differentiating themselves.
It’s painfully obvious when marketers take it upon themselves to declare any tactic or strategy “dead”.
Marketing, especially online, is more closely related to doing things based on heuristics, as opposed to algorithms.
It’s more about “Playbooks” than strict and rigid Operating Procedures (we’ll talk about how to fix that, too).
What does that actually mean?
Let’s start with basic, sound, fundamental business practices we can all agree on: Without your buyers — your clients and customers — you don’t have a business.
Peter Drucker himself, all Business MBA programs, and scores of prime business minds are all nodding their somber heads in agreement right now (you are too, I’m sure).
If you’ve ever tried selling a product that no one wants, you’ve quickly realized it’s the surest, straightest path to not just failing to put food on the table but you can’t even afford a table to begin with.