Growth Marketing: How the Biggest Online Brands Create Scalable Marketing

For our latest Google Marketing Platform meetup I spoke about Growth Marketing and how the biggest online brands create scalable marketing.

Today, we’re going to talk about “standing on the shoulders of giants”, a summary of what I’ve learned from some of the fastest-growing companies and how you can learn from them.

What we’ll cover:

• Growth Marketing: Lessons from Marketing Giants
  • Search for Consistency
• Growth Marketing Formula
  • Characteristics of Growers
• Revenge Formula
  • Fit
  • Action
  • Momentum
• Digital Marketing Maturity
  • Development
  • What is Digital Marketing Maturity?
  • Scarcity
  • Benefits
  • Brands
  • Digital Marketing Maturity Funnel
  • How to Become Multi-Moment
  • Maturity Pathway
  • Steps
  • Checklist
• Growth Marketing Learnings

tl;dr skip to the slides.

Before we begin, a little about me:

PAUL HEWETT

• Commercial Partner @ IMWT
• Growth Engineer First. Executive Second

What is a Growth Engineer?

• Someone that designs and builds growth into businesses 
• We’re not sales, marketing or product – somewhere in between 

1. We analyse – we can analyse data (SQL)
2. We solve problems – figure out how to create opportunities
3. We create solutions – workflows, systems
4. We optimise performance – measure, improve

About me:

1. From Wales  
2. Live in Sydney 
3. Work Global

20 years experience:

• Analysis
• Product 
• Sales 
• Marketing
• Design

Multi-award winner

• • Design: New Designer Award 
  • Marketing: Chartered Institute of Marketing 

Diverse experience

• Startups, scale-ups and enterprise
• Consumer, business, charity & government 
• Global experience

Growth Marketing: Lessons from Marketing Giants

What I’ll cover:

1. Why I started watching giants 
2. What I learned about growth marketing
3. How you can mimic giants

View the slides below and read on to learn more:

 

Search for Consistency

Story:

• 2013 started a digital agency
• Range of customers 
• Our results varied significantly
• Our input was consistent 
• 70/30 success

Bad experience:

• Online baking accessories company
• Signs were good – it turned out bad 
• I did everything right or the same as previous

My questions:

• What are the factors which drive results?
• What can I control?
• How do I only work on successful projects?
• How do I only work with growers?

Finding answers:

• Mapped my processes = fairly consistent
• Mapped client projects = not consistent at all 
• Clear trends emerged
  • Not budget 
  • Attitude, product, strategy, execution, consistency

Only work with growers and giants

• Stack the odds of success in my favour
• 90/10 success

Growth Marketing Formula

The output of my mapping

• Revenge Formula  
• Formula for growth marketing
• Any fast-growing company can be mapped against it
• Following the list you will become a “Grower”
• I run through this formula with every company I speak to
• Stack odds in my favour

So what’s in this growth formula?

5 characteristics Growers share

• Top-down traits adopted and promoted by organisations
• These are visible in most growers

3 areas growers focus on 

• The building blocks of systemised growth 
• The building blocks are at work in most growers 

In this presentation:

• Summary of each 
• Deep dive into the most relevant area for our community

Revenge Formula

5 Characteristics of Growers

1. Reverse Engineer

• The most important element 
• This is all about designing successful outcomes at a macro and micro level
• Act like an engineer 
• Research and define successful outcomes 
• Design the solutions, systems and process to achieve them

Macro

• Business operation
• Business KPIs

Micro

• Team operations 
• Team KPIs
• Personal tasks 

2. Marginal Gains

Long term success is compounding margins.

• Relevant for startups and established companies
• Companies work hard for larger wins
  • Inconsistent growth 
  • Inconsistent results
  • Absorbs focus, resource & capital
  • High risk

Whereas marginal gains – low risk & high impact

• Continuous focus
• Consistency provides a rhythm
• Consistent results 
• Compounding growth effect MoM, QoQ, YoY 
• Low risk & high impact 

An example of success in the margins:

• Margins are very obvious at the top of your game
• Who has heard of Richard Thomson? 
• Who has heard of Usain Bolt?
  • Can you guess how much slower Richard is?
  • 0.24 seconds (9.58 vs 9.82)
  • 2.5% 
  • Yet few people have heard of Richard Thomas
  • Usain gets all the glory

Compounding effect is interesting to growth companies.

Let’s take a look at a company…

Starting at the same point:

• Users: 1000 
• MRR: $49K

By focussing on margins:

• Increasing acquisition by 2%
• Reducing churn by 2%
• 2 very different businesses are created

2 years on – focus on marginal gains:

• Acquisition is 31.5%
• Churn is 6.3%
  • Acquisition has improved >50%
  • Churn is reduced by >25%

Customer:

• 9K 
• 36K

MRR:

• $439K 
• $1.8M

How?

• Acquisition: +2%
• Churn: -2%

3. Power of Systems

Observed in failures:

• Marketing is ad hoc 
• Marketing is inconsistent 
• When people change marketing strategy and priorities change
• There are no systems to deliver objectives or strategies 

Observed in growers:

• Marketing is always on 
• Marketing is consistent 
• When people change the system continues 
• There are systems to deliver the objectives and strategies

Red flag:

• Don’t work with companies that are unwilling to build system 
• The company will fail – You will fail 

4. One Function

A good customer experience is a single experience

• Growers know and optimise for this
• Seamless integration between functions:
  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Product
  • Customer Service
• Think & act as one experience

Red flag:

• Don’t work with businesses with a hard divide and no connection between sales, marketing and product
• It may not fail, but it will be hard and likely not a leading company in the niche

5. Deep Expertise

Marketing is more complex than ever. 

Good marketing takes deep expertise:

• Strategists 
• Data & analysis 
• CX & UX 
• Paid Specialist 
• Organic specialist 
• Content Creators 
• Copyrights 
• Designers 

Generalists deliver mediocre results:

• Don’t hire them
• Build a team of specialists
  • If your budget is restricted: take 5 experts 1 day per week over 1 generalist 

Red flag:

• No deep expertise in-house is dangerous = do not understand what needs to be done or the context of what experts are doing. 

Revenge Formula

What I’ve Learnt from Watching Giants

This is what I’ve learnt from watching giants:

• Growth can be split into a formula
• 3 Expressions

Growth is equal to:

• FIT divided by 
• ACTION multiplied by 
• MOMENTUM

Fit Expression

Have something that people want.

Fit is equal to:

• MARKET NEED divided by
• COMPATIBLE SOLUTION 

PMF (Product/Marketing Fit) is THE most important factor in the formula. 

• I don’t work on anything which doesn’t have a clear PMF

Market need:

• What is the need?
• How big is the need? 
• What are the market factors?

Compatible solution:

• How does it meet the need? 
• To what degree does it meet the need?
• Is it the right price?

Action Expression

Doing the right things to get results.

Action is equal to:

• OBJECTIVES divided by 
• STRATEGY multiplied by 
• TACTICAL EXECUTION 

This is where many businesses fall down

• People good at setting objectives
• People NOT good at building systems to accomplish them
• Lack of reality and follow-through

Rules of thumb:

• Mediocre strategies consistently executed beat incredible strategies which have been poorly executed
• Think “Is it realistic?”
• Think about HOW
• Build the HOW

Objectives:

• WHERE are we going? 
• WHAT do we want to accomplish? 
• SMART objectives
• Measurable

Strategy:

HOW will we get where we’re going?

Execution: 

• WHAT are you going to do? 
• WHEN will it be done? 
• WHO will do it?
• HOW much will it cost? 

Momentum Expression

Build momentum behind your marketing operation.

• Improve experience 
• Improve performance 
• Reduce cost

Momentum is equal to:

• OPERATION plus PROCESS
• Multiplied by DEVELOPMENT 

Operation:

• All of your marketing assets 
• Data, Technology

Process:

• Processes for all of your operations
• Document everything: 
  • Confluence, Slite

Development: 

Maturity of your operation

Digital Marketing Maturity

Development

• Development is important
• Development is maturity
• Maturity is a multiplier factor 
• This is understood by the fastest growing and biggest brands
• Covers how you use: 

1. Data 
2. Technology

Operational Impact: 

• Data integrations, workflow automation, automated decisioning

Business Impact:  

• Lower operating costs, increased performance

What is Digital Marketing Maturity?

NASCENT

• Siloed activity on Facebook & Google 
• Data not connected 
• Lack of attribution
• Example – Local Plumber:
  • Running search ads – GA & Ads not connected
  • Running FB ads – no conversion pixel

EMERGING 

• Some use of data in media buying 
• Examples – Plumber: 
  • Using Google Display to remarket website visitors

CONNECTED

• Data integrated, but not centralised 
• Activity linked to ROI 
• Example – Retailer Company
  • Retargeting product viewers 
  • Stop targeting at the point of purchase 
  • Enhanced Ecommerce to measure and report transaction values

MULTI-MOMENT 

• Dynamic execution optimised to single business outcomes 
• Personalised ad/message
• Personalised experience

Digital Marketing Maturity Scarcity

• Only 2% of companies are multi-moment
• Nearly 90% are in the middle
• IRL we see more companies in nascent & emerging

Digital Marketing Maturity Benefits

Average:

• Increased Revenue: 15%
• Cost Efficiency: 12%

2% – Multi-moments

• Increased Revenue: 30%
• Cost Efficiency: 20%

One million budget

• Power of $1.5M 

Digital Marketing Mature Brands

Multi-moment brands you know:

• Not just consumer brands
• Tech brands are very good at multi-moment 
• Travel 
• B2B
• Ecomm

A connected example which should be multi-moment:

 

What happened:

• Targeted
• Visit Site
• Download App
• Signed up
• Created List
• Acquisition Messaging
• Finished Bob’s Masterclass
• Remarketed Bob’s Course
• Acquisition Messaging  

My Expectation:

• Targeted
• Visit Site
• Download App
• Signed up
• Created List
• Activation: Start Course
• Finished Course
• Activation: List
• No Activity 
• Retention: incomplete course

Why?

• Personalised: using my data
• Journey Specific: uses behavioural data

Digital Marketing Maturity Funnel

 

At In Marketing We Trust, we create automated moment based messaging systems:

Signals:

• First-party and third-party data signals 
• Where are they in the journey?
• What is the next best action?

Action: 

• What is the call to action?
• What happens beyond the click?

Message:

• What is the right message for this moment?
• Messaging matrix

Format:

• What ad format is best for the job?
• What channel is best for the job?
  

Measure:

• How do we measure success?

How to Become Multi-Moment

How do you become multi-moment?

• Know your customer journey 
• Know your customer’s experience 
• Know your data

Integrate data:

• Google Marketing Platform 
• Google Cloud Platform 
• Third-Party Technology 

Optimise execution:

• Deliver personalised interactions
• Deliver outcome focussed interactions

Digital Marketing Maturity Pathway

BCG and Google have a digital marketing maturity pathway.

Includes 2 factors:

1. Organisational steps
2. Technical Steps

Digital Marketing Maturity Steps

The pathway has 3 stages.

• Technical steps
• Organisational steps

1. Set the foundations 
2. Build connections 
3. Make every moment matter

Digital Marketing Maturity Checklist

1. Data-driven Targeting – What data and how you can use it?
2. Automated Activation – How you can buy smarter and deliver the right content 
3. Measurement – What are you KPIs, what technology and reporting requirements do you have?
4. Organisational Collaboration – How do we work as a company to achieve transformation?

Growth Marketing Learnings

This is what I have learned from watching giants in growth marketing.

How can you apply this?

1. Characteristics – Act like a giant
2. Framework – Adopt a growth marketing framework
3. Maturity – Focus on developing operational maturity 

THANK YOU!

Join us at our next Google Marketing Platform event: