Whatever business a brand is involved in, it needs an effective marketing strategy that can bring in more customers and help with its overall growth. Growth marketing is that particular approach. 

What is a Growth Marketing Channel?

In marketing a growth channel is the medium through which you acquire new customers into your business and retain them. 

A growth marketing channel is any medium used to deliver marketing campaigns to the audience. Brands can acquire and retain customers for their business through these mediums. 

There are several growth marketing channels that brands can make use of in order to set up growth marketing campaigns. They can identify the channels that their target audience frequents most and use them to accelerate their business growth.

Growth marketing channels are an easy way for businesses to grab the attention of their target customers. Especially once sufficient data is acquired, they can help to create an effective growth marketing strategy, while allowing you to run campaigns in a progressively more efficient way on those specific channels that have demonstrated their ability to generate conversions.

 The reality is that growth marketers use multi-channel marketing strategies to increase user engagement and earn loyal customers. These strategies include e-mail marketing, SMS marketing, direct mail, social media, and other channels. Growth marketing allows businesses to more efficiently acquire and retain customers by targeting every stage of the purchasing process or growth funnel with an array of marketing channels as well as specific tactics. It involves using marketing strategies that can be tested, analyzed, and optimized.

Why No Growth Marketing Channel Is Really Better Than Any Other

There is no one "best" channel that works for every business.  However, make no mistake.   Choosing the right marketing channel for your business is crucial to attracting and retaining new customers.

How do you find the best marketing channel for your business? 

The products or services you offer, your target audience, and where your competitors have a strong presence all impact your ideal business channels. Identifying the gaps in the market and knowing where your ideal customers focus their attention (and where your competitors aren’t) help to determine the right marketing channels to communicate your content in order to funnel growth. 

5 Growth Marketing Campaign Best Practices

Regardless of the channels that you choose to focus on in your strategy, here are some basic best practices for creating growth marketing campaigns.

1) Pay attention to the entire growth marketing funnel

One of the key differences between traditional marketing and growth marketing is the emphasis growth marketing places on the entire customer journey. It can take up to eight touchpoints with a potential consumer to create a sales lead.

Growth marketing is interested in making the most of every point of contact, no matter how minor it may seem. Whether a social media post, a push notification, a landing page, or a marketing email — every marketing tactic along the entire funnel is important to the end goal of conversion.

When you focus on all the touchpoints along your marketing funnel, you can optimize each according to the target audience.

2) Repurpose your content

A solid growth marketing strategy will involve diverse channels and complex marketing funnels. This means you’ll need a lot of content to support your activities.

Creating content is time-consuming and labor-intensive. But if you recycle existing content into new formats or for new audiences (known as creating evergreen content), you can maximize its value.

For example, take an existing blog post and repurpose it as an infographic or short video. This makes it more effective for audiences that prefer visual or audio content. What you may need to do is simplytake an older article and refresh it with updated statistics or a different angle. It can then be refurbished and repurposed for new audiences who haven’t yet seen it.

3) Get your customers actively involved

A critical aspect of growth marketing is having a deep understanding of your audience. When you can connect to their pain points and interests, you can deliver the kind of content and messaging that will appeal to them. This is what leads to conversions and sales.

How can you get to know your audience? By giving them plenty of opportunities to interact with your brand, such as providing feedback, participating in a forum, or becoming part of your brand community. You can do this by engaging customers on social media with polls and surveys; responding to customer comments, chats, and email inquiries; creating groups and forums on social media networks; and more.  This will help you understand how they go about finding businesses like yours as well as know where they spend most of their time

4) Measure and track everything

Growth marketing is just not possible without data. Every online marketing asset, activity, campaign, and interaction with customers should be tracked, measured, and analyzed. This is the only way to truly understand the ROI of your digital marketing efforts.

Data tracking also provides you with real-time, scientific information about the areas you may need to improve or optimize. There’s a wide range of online tracking tools you can use to keep a close eye on your progress such as website analytics (ex; Google Analytics, Google Search Console), social media measurement, mention trackers, SEO tracking, and more.

5) A/B test your way to success

Tracking and measuring online data lies at the heart of your growth marketing strategy.  However, what goes hand and hand with measuring data is testing and conversion optimization.

Testing is a core component of growth marketing. With advanced online testing tools, you can test your marketing campaigns in real-time, so you can adjust and optimize them quickly. This agility is critical to maximizing your growth marketing strategy at every moment.

A common testing practice is A/B testing or split testing. This involves running two campaign versions, with only one element different in each so as to establish a standard, and then a variable that you want to test for the sake of enhanced optimization.

For example, you could promote a native ad campaign with two different images or headlines. Then, you’d track the campaign and see which version performed better. The high-performing ad could then be A/B tested against another version, and on and on. Each round of testing brings you closer to the ideal optimized version that will bring the best results and ROI.

8 Factors That Make for an Effective Growth Marketing Channel

Now that we have established some main factors that impact the success of a growth marketing campaign, determining the right channel for you is also equally paramount.  Here are some factors that will impact your choice of growth marketing channel.

1. The nature of the product or service your business offers:  Put simply, the nature of your product or service will definitely play a role in where and how you promote it.  After all, it generally makes no sense to promote your clothing business on Linkedin, just the same as it is not logical to promote your Saas business on Pinterest.

2. Understanding how your customers decide on what they need:    This is where understanding your purchase process or growth marketing funnel is extremely important.  After all, if you know that your customers need a long time to make a decision (as is usually the case for B2B-oriented businesses), creating white papers that show your expertise as it pertains to the information that is needed for them to make an informed decision would not only be helpful to them but would allow for a positive association for your business.  Once they are closer to either making a decision or narrowing down to a few possible alternatives, perhaps spurring them to try out your service or requesting a more detailed consultation would be in order( via a remarketing or PPC text ad )might be in order.

3. The nature of your business environment:  Following a similar thought process from the previous point, if your business for instance is highly regulated or research-oriented, you might be well-advised to demonstrate thought leadership via whitepapers, useful articles, Linkedin,  or even industry-specific podcasts or YouTube videos.  On the other hand, if you are promoting a peer-to-peer fintech platform (as an example),  perhaps affiliate marketing might be a better channel as a way of spreading the word about your platform in order to attract users provided the cost of customer acquisition is reasonable or can be driven down considerably with time.

4. The Level of  Competition in your Industry:   On the one hand, if a lot of your competitors are advertising in a particular channel, for the sake of standing out, you might perhaps choose another tactic.  On the other hand, you might look at the fact that a significant number of your competitors and contemporaries are advertising within a particular channel as a signal that this is where your business ought to be.  If this is indeed the case, looking for ways to stand out with your messaging and creative would be of paramount importance.

5. The Stage at Which Your Business or Organization Is Currently At: Clearly startups and more established businesses may very well choose different tactics simply based on the resources they have on hand.  Startups, as a result of their comparably limited financial resources (generally speaking), for example, may choose to invest time and a certain amount of money into content marketing and SEO simply because there is less of a financial cost to creating content compared to paid advertising.  

6. Whether a growth marketing tactic actually can exist within your industry space?

One of the first things you should be thinking about when building your growth strategy is what could you be performing that doesn’t exist in your business yet. 

Perhaps you need to introduce a new email funnel to nurture your customers to purchase. 

Do you have a content and SEO strategy in place? This is something that is important to compound your growth over time. 

Word of mouth should never be overlooked. It’s very common for people to find out about your business from their friends - it could be time to introduce a new referral program to harness that energy and incentivize your growth. 

These are just some possibilities but the key here is not to discount novelty, simply for the sake of a tactic being new or never having been tried before.

7. Looking out for growth marketing tactics that are actually not working

Sometimes you need to pivot from strategies that already exist but are not working as intended. Take some time to investigate what is fundamentally broken about your funnel and determine what you might do to fix it.

Do customers need to make it through your onboarding process? Do you have a high bounce rate on your pricing page? Are your users churning after their free trial ends or after they have gone through a demonstration with you?

Identifying what you know isn’t working in your business can help you bridge the gaps in your growth marketing funnel.

8.  Where Are You Seeing Untapped Potential?

Look for places where you are seeing signals for potential growth. Do you have really high engagement rates on your content? Maybe you’ve gotten a bunch of customers from a referral channel.  If so, perhaps you can further leverage this by working to progressively drive down the cost of acquisition.

The important thing to realize is to pay attention to these growth signals and double down on them. With some time, resources, and attention you can nurture these channels into growth opportunities. 

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Growth Marketing Channels that Businesses Need to Consider to Spur Revenue Growth

Growth marketing channels are the mediums that act as a bridge between brands and their customers. They help businesses reach new heights by getting more customers. 

Some of these avenues are well known, but some may be a little less obvious or are not the first that one tends to think of as channels that can drive growth.

Now, let’s look at some of the growth marketing channels that help businesses to increase their customer base and revenues.

1 )Personalized or Segmented email marketing

Personalization is something that must be applied in any marketing tactic. Personalization is especially effective in email marketing. Behavior-based email marketing is one of the best ways to connect with customers. 

To successfully run behavior-based email marketing campaigns, one should thoroughly understand their target users’ behavior and create email workflows that align with the customer’s activity. 

Many organizations use email marketing, and it is versatile in promoting the growth of a business. As it targets buyers at every stage of the marketing funnel, it is a great way for businesses to acquire valuable customer data and use it for future campaigns. 

2. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is arguably one of the most fundamental and essential marketing channels. It involves optimizing a website to rank higher on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This can ultimately increase organic traffic and generate leads and conversions without spending too much money. 

Unlike paid advertisements that only give you results as long as you pay, SEO gives you steady, long-term results by helping customers find businesses online. 

In reality, SEO is necessary for all brands, regardless of their business model. Ranking higher in the SERPs can increase website visibility and get more people to visit the website.

Here is the average percentage of clicks the websites that rank in the first three positions in the SERP get.

• 1st rank – 32%

• 2nd rank – 17%

• 3rd rank – 11%

• Other sites on the first page of SERP –  1 to 2%

99% of the clicks on SERPs happen on the first page and the rate increases noticeably the further up you go on the first page. Clearly, optimization for SEO ranking provides an obvious and apparent benefit.

3. Search engine marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing also means engaging in paid advertising in various forms on search engines.  It involves paying money to increase the visibility of your advertisements on the SERPs. 

It is important to understand that Search Engine Marketing is different from SEO. SEM requires using paid ads, while SEO can help brands rank organically with minimal expense. 

Using paid ads, even though expensive, can help increase exposure and allow brands to have an edge over their competitors. By dominating the SERP by ranking both on SEO and on paid search engines, brands have a higher chance of users clicking on their ads.

4. Content marketing

Brands should understand that content is the foundation for any marketing strategy. The quality of content determines whether the users are interested in a brand and wish to buy their products. 

Content marketing involves the use of various types of content, including

• blog posts,

• videos,

• social media posts,

• infographics,

• podcasts, and much more.

Not all content is created for promotional purposes. Some are created to add value to customers, provide information about a product, entertain users, or solve a problem. 

Content marketing can help brands create an authentic, organic image for themselves.  More importantly, it can help businesses establish themselves as experts or thought leaders.  Here are some tips for creating content for customers.

• Keep your content updated. Like SEO, content should also be optimized on a regular basis

• Provide the audience with the information they are looking for. 

• Provide helpful and valuable information to the audience. 

5. Social Media Marketing

Like Search Engine Marketing which involves using paid ads to increase visibility in SERPs, Social Media Advertising involves using paid ads to increase a brand’s visibility on social media platforms. 

Social media are very useful for small and medium-sized businesses to connect with their audience. It helps them create customized campaigns, market their products, and promote their business. 

Most people nowadays spend more time on social media than on other sites. Businesses are best served by identifying the platforms their customers frequent and spending money advertising (optimally) on those platforms. This can help them reach a wider audience and get more leads. 

Organic Social Media Marketing is anything that you post on social that is not a paid promotion. This includes posting content, replying to comments, engaging with followers, using hashtags - basically any social media activity that can be done for free. 

Both paid and organic social media marketing have their place within growth marketing.

GoPro has leveraged user-generated content in its organic social media strategy. GoPro realized early on that users liked tagging the brand in content that they created using GoPro’s camera.

GoPro wanted to encourage more of this behavior so they started reposting user content directly onto the brand’s official social media accounts. This strategy has enabled GoPro to grow its YouTube channel followers to 10 million subscribers and its Instagram account to over 17 million followers. This improved brand awareness has clearly improved its bottom line too, given the fact that its revenues surpassed $1.09 billion last year.

6. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is creating a partnership between a brand and an affiliate who advertises the brand’s products or services. These affiliates bring leads, clicks, or downloads for the brand, and in turn, the brand pays them a commission. 

7) Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is an effective form of marketing. It involves having a person who has a high social status in society promote your products to their audience. The goal is to capture the influencer’s audience and convert a portion of these into the brand’s customers.

The influencers are responsible for influencing their audience’s tastes and purchase behaviors and persuading them to buy the product they are suggesting.

Businesses are best served by working with and collaborating with influencers who specialize in niches that are sufficiently similar to their own and use them to capture relevant audiences for their sites. 

8) Customer referral programs

A referral strategy is an organized way to encourage recommendations from your existing customers. Word of mouth can lead to exponential growth when customers share their experience with their network.

Uber has done a great job of building this referral channel straight into their product. When users download the app, they get a personalized referral code that they can share with their friends. Both the referrer and the referee get a free ride once the personalized code is used. 

They found that when both parties are rewarded for using the referral code, it is more likely to be a successful channel for growth. This personalized incentive approach helped Uber grow to become the most popular ridesharing service.

9) Video Marketing 

Specifically, as it pertains to YouTube & Tiktok.  These platforms differ greatly because they focus on video-based content instead of image or text-based content. With billions of active users worldwide, these platforms host diverse users from various backgrounds and locations.

Don’t be fooled into thinking only younger generations care about video platforms. While Millennials and Gen Z DO spend significant time watching video content, Gen Xers (users between the ages of 40 and 54) contribute to over 1.5 billion YouTube searches daily. 

Whether you’re using videos, tutorials, or influencer collaborations, both platforms offer a unique and exciting way to showcase your products or services in ways text copy alone cannot, as well as conveying a personality to your business.  This is something that B2B-oriented businesses struggle with and videos, whether they are how-tos, knowledge authority, or product troubleshooting videos can definitely help with this.

10) Podcast Marketing

As of 2020, 55% of the U.S. population aged 12 and above listens to podcasts, and 37% listened in the last month for an average of six hours per week. Audio content is in demand, so it’s worth considering as a platform to reach your audience.

Podcasts are an ideal platform for reaching people during their morning commute while walking their dog, exercising or doing chores, or at any point where their attention span is fairly high.

Furthermore, storytelling is an excellent way to capture your audience's attention while also making your brand seem more personable.

The human brain is programmed to crave, seek out, and respond to a well-crafted narrative. This is something that will never change over time. Only 1 in 3 marketers reported leveraging podcasts or other audio content in their strategies, but 53% of those that do say that it is the most effective media format they use.

In 2023, podcasts will see the 2nd highest investment, second only to video. In fact, 10% of marketers said they would invest more in audio content than any other media format.

11) Industry-Specific Community Groups & Forums

industry groups and forums are profitable marketing channels because their niches or topics tell you not only what their focus is, but exactly how to market to that group. 

For example, you already know a LinkedIn group for “Aspiring Sales Leaders” will be interested in the material around leadership and sales. Members of these groups and forums are typically highly engaged and active in seeking information, advice, and solutions related to their industry.

Best of all, joining these groups is usually free or low-cost. This gives you a budget-friendly way to position yourself and your product or service as a valuable resource the group could benefit from.

Finding the appropriate growth marketing channel is an integral part of growth marketing fundamentals

Establishing the right growth marketing channels is  paramount for revenue growth and improved brand recognition

Growth marketing is integral for a company, allowing it to establish and maintain an online presence, develop brand loyalty, and acquire and retain more customers.

This article breaks down some of the best, wide-ranging, and versatile growth marketing channels to help your business build and establish its presence

Certainly, while some of these are nearly (though not completely) universal, others are a good fit for certain businesses of a certain type, or at certain stages or particular points in the product market lifecycle. 

There is good value in consulting with a growth marketing expert when it comes to either determining the growth marketing channel that is right for you or even one that you had not really considered.

Reach out to us if you need any help figuring this out.  We look forward to meeting with you.