We Develop Small & Medium-sized Enterprises

What is growth marketing “hacking”?

The digital world is a constant battlefield on which marketers are fighting to achieve the greatest competitive advantage. Faced with the surplus of competitors, constraining budgets and limited resources, it’s no wonder new strategies are on the rise. The conventional approach to marketing is no longer enough. The only way to survive is to adapt. As marketers searched for a way to manage more data and react more quickly to insights, a process called “Grow Hacking” evolved.  The term “growth hacking” sounds like one of those annoying Silicone Valley buzz words. But the reality is that this method of business development has helped companies to grow quickly and increase sales. In the same way that computer hackers explore new methods of gaining access to systems, a growth hacker thinks outside the box to gain access to their target audience. The growth hacker, in other words, finds the right ‘trick’ or ‘hack’ that maximizes and accelerates growth. Growth hackers utilize a combination of marketing, product knowledge, analytical and creative thinking to achieve their goals. Unlike marketers they have knowledge in statistics, programming, analytics, and how to use their skills to leverage A/B testing and metrics to their advantage. They approach their work with one question in mind: What is the most effective impact on growth?

Here at Business Growth Managers, LLC, we like to use the term “growth marketing” instead of “growth hacking.” Where a hacker might focus on “black hat” or unethical means of marketing your business, we focus solely on honest, effective methods of growing businesses.

So, what’s the difference between growth marketing and regular marketing?

Growth marketing refers to a set of both conventional and unconventional marketing experiments that lead to growth of a business. The best growth hackers are marketers, engineers and product managers that specifically focus on building and engaging the user base of a business. Growth marketers often focus on low-cost alternatives to traditional marketing, e.g. using social media, target leads, and viral marketing instead of buying advertising through more traditional media such as radio, newspaper, and television.

Regular marketing, on the other hand, focuses more on the traditional branding and media usage. For example, a marketer could use engagement rate to analyze an overall goal of building brand awareness. A growth marketer, by comparison, could set a goal of increasing social sharing by 70%. Hence, marketing activities can have a broad focus that encompasses any part of the funnel, whereas growth marketing depends on setting highly defined, achievable goals in order to reach a specific, singular outcome: business growth.

Growth marketing impacts the scale of startups, just as much as existing corporations

The goal of any marketing strategy should be long-term sustainable growth. Not a short-term gain in sales. Growth marketing is a great launching point and is particularly prevalent with startups, when the goal is rapid growth at an early launch phase. The focus is usually lowering cost per customer acquisition, with a strategy for long-term sustainability and customer retention.

Growth marketing is about optimization as well as lead generation. It’s the reason we get to see a few new startups each year with absolutely ridiculous growth rates. Growth marketing has only been around for a few years, but it’s already catching fire.

Growth marketers have been a staple of startups since their rise in the 2010s. But growth marketers are now also in high-demand from companies looking to revamp their business model to apply more modern forms of marketing.

Successful growth marketing utilizes analytical thinking, creativity and engineering capability to scale successful growth in startups from zero to millions or hundreds of millions of customers in a few years. And more customers and raving fans translate later into solid brand identity, word-of-mouth and more money.

In general, the strategies of startups and larger corporations take into account a different breed of analytics. Starts-ups, for example, may focus on a growth of 15% monthly, while an existing corporation may be satisfied with 5% growth annually. While startups have the uncertainty of business development or how a new product will perform, established companies have the advantage of brand awareness and a loyal customer base.

In startups, growth marketing is a discipline that can be cultivated within a marketing plan of the organization. It is used for a while now by savvy marketers in the background of startups that have become the biggest names on the web. Growth marketing is responsible for growing companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Amazon, YouTube and Quora.

These companies hire experts to help them “hack,” optimize and escalate their growth. For example, LinkedIn gained access to their initial user base by focusing solely on business professionals. They used the idea of exclusivity by inviting only professionals to the site. This “exclusive” content hack appealed to their target audience directly and created a perfect environment for fast growth for the company.

Here at Business Growth Managers, LLC, we saw the rise of this new form of marketing firsthand. We saw new companies leveraging both creativity and analytics to rapidly and significantly increase a growth. That’s when we knew how much this could work for our clients.

The basis of our business model, “The 4P Advanced Success System™” utilizes growth marketing, financial intelligence and market insights to help our clients with a holistic approach to their business needs.

Below is an illustration of our cross-functional approach to business development

Disclaimer: This chart is for demonstration purposes and not to be taken as accurate numbers.

We bring your entire organization under one integrated unit to grow and scale all departments for productivity and profitability to build your company into a mission-driven profit vehicle.

A growth marketer implements a process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels and product development to identify the most effective, efficient ways to grow a business. Our smart growth marketing strategy considers the performance of each department, in cross-functional roles, with the focus on creating an effective sales funnel. We analyze the key components, roles, costs, contribution, fulfilment, productivity and results of all departments. Then, we create a new growth strategy for each aspect of your business. Followed by testing to find the perfect blend of growth strategies to sustain your business development. This process is reviewed and repeated throughout the life of the business with the intention to build a thriving and lucrative business.

Growth marketing is demonstrably useful and it’s here to stay. Many companies are not yet aware of its benefits. Countless companies stagnate or even fail because they haven’t evolved their marketing efforts. If your profit is suffering, it may not be too late to implement a growth marketing strategy. Behind any effective growth marketing activity is a rigorous, structured process that’s rooted in repetition and scalability. Whether you’re a startup or large organization, B2B or B2C, this process can be customized and incorporated into successful growth strategies.

If you would like to implement Growth Marketing on your own, you can swipe our DIY Growth Marketing Cheat Sheet.

If you have a website that isn’t bringing in as many leads as you’d like, click here to get leads.
For further information to create your growth strategies you can contact us here.

DOWNLOAD MY GROWTH MARKETING SWIPE SHEET HERE

Are you using Antiquated Sales Strategies?

We are moving in a fast-paced world where time is an important aspect of everything we do and we emphasize moving with equal speed. When we still lag behind with old methods in any fast-moving environment visions can become dim and time is wasted needlessly. For every company, sales team is the most valuable asset.  However, without proper management of time, the most talented representatives and most forward-thinking sales managers will always come up short.

The million-dollar question is : What can sales managers do to leverage the time they have to connect with decision-makers within their customer niche?

In the modern landscape of inside sales, representatives are required to do much more than call decisions-makers and make their pitch. They must sift through leads, identify and engage entire buying team, select the best opportunities to work, tailor their presentations for specific opportunity, find the correct marketing materials, and pass along the proper contract paperwork at the right time. Forced to juggle all of these tasks, it’s not surprising that most inside sales reps feel pinched for time. Recent studies show that the average sales rep spends 6.5 hours a week searching for the right content to send to prospects.

In addition, they spend countless hours logging correct information into their CRM, identifying and removing non-buyers from the pipeline, and finding necessary paperwork to complete the deal. Facing this dilemma, sales managers are always searching for ways to give their reps more time to finish work load. Unfortunately, they can’t extend the hours available in the workday (legally, at least) or number of weeks in the quarter. Instead, they must give their reps the tools and training they need to use time more efficiently. Broadly speaking, this is sales enablement, and refers to organizational efforts to provide sales reps with the resources, documents, information and people required to carry out their duty. Typically, this has the ability to align sales, marketing and operations to have the same goals, and priorities and then work together to make the sales process as smooth as possible.

How can a sales manager institute the correct policies, priorities and practices to ensure that his sales reps optimize their time?

Where should he start and how can he measure success? How can he optimize sales, increase efficiency and productivity without wasting time? I’m not saying cold calls are ineffective. Some companies have perfected a system of cold calling and cold prospecting. Yet, this is not the best method, this method is much more difficult and wastes valuable time to produce. For the cold call to be productive, it should establish contact with actual demand for the product or service and which in turn is converted into a customer. And you should not have to manually do all the work yourself. There’s a good way to automate your lead generation and a better and faster way to find more prospects.

The Internet has completely revolutionized the sales and marketing landscape to find leads.

Social networking marketing is a wholly new, but vital portion of internet marketing has taken off in the past couple of decades. Buyers are flocking social media in search of sellers more often than waiting for information about the sellers’ products and services to come to them. Because of this increased focus by prospective customers, companies must revamp their entire marketing and sales strategy. Now more than ever, companies seek to radically align their marketing and sales force by combining efforts to connect to more people, boost brand recognition and drive sales. Many companies are experiencing the shift in revenue volume and saving time by making a few simple changes to leverage social media to generate quality leads and close more sales. Socializing online does not require you to leave the workplace and as a result saves time and can enhance productivity, if done well. If an organization employs these strategies and has the ability to positively impact their public relations then this is sometimes a big advantage. But it is important to follow the trends and understand how to move in the right direction.

Social media is changing rapidly, if you miss out on one month of keeping abreast of the constant flow of new stories, articles, opinion, technologies, news, memes and information, you will fall behind in the game.

This fast-paced movement in social networking also affects the rhythm of business for businesses. In earlier years social media was more for B2C, but now social media is for everyone and B2B are rapidly joining the force. Many social media platforms were seen as a way to connect to families and friends but now businesses are interacting with this network to communicate with customers on a personal level to conduct sales. In fact, many surveys conducted show there is a growing trend for marketers to focus on social media with great success.This type of interaction of buyers and sellers is very advantageous because sellers are able to reach buyers without the intrusion of cold calls and prospecting. Buyers shop at their leisure and sellers delight buyers in a friendly environment. By displaying their goods in a store-like manner on social media, buyers come to sellers without feeling pushed or bamboozled.

Now more than ever, people are using social media and the Internet to shop for goods and services.

For example, trends show that between 2015-2016 Facebook users increased by 220 million and Twitter by 9 million. An increased audience means greater volume of potential customer reach. Hubspot reported that print and outdoor marketing were now considered less effective and that social marketing is one of the more effective marketing tools. In the future, it is expected that more people will be involved in social media. Use of social media is no longer limited to families meeting and exchanging pictures to reduce proximity between one another.

Unfortunately, many businesses are not running on the best fuel if social media is not one an outlet for sales and marketing. Social media is one of the most focused marketing strategy today. For a business to survive, marketing and sales department must continue to adapt with a trend of mobility to be ahead of the competition. A business cannot underestimate value of social media for its success.

This is how your company can adapt to connect to this growing pool of customers:

Your company’s sales process begins in marketing. This is where the leads that will ultimately become customers are generated, and where their first interactions with your company takes place. The effectiveness and efficiency of your sales process is heavily influenced by the way your marketing team functions. Because of this, it is important for sales leaders to understand how marketing departments in their companies operate and what they can do to make the work of sales reps easier.

A good start is an active repertoire of sharing relevant, tasty and engaging articles to nurture a committed following of your brand.
Setting aside an hour a day to look into the interactions and feedback on social media, finding out what your target market is handing out to your niche, and what your niche is interested in (measured by their number of “likes”), provides great value in exploring what platform to use and how to create an effective approach to your branding. As you reach out to your prospects, they get to know, like and trust you. And you will be more productive by understanding the needs and behavior of your niche and will get a closer view on the impact of your product. This will help you to plan your business growth implementation better and augment your revenue.

Because social media is an easy accessible way to study your market, consider how you will be able to get to know your customer by following and tracking where they go and how they will follow you in return. For example, as an Architect, you wouldn’t go to a bridal shop to find customers, you would probably go to a builders’ convention. The same concept applies with social media, you go where the customers are and where you’ll have the opportunity to find the most customers. Get acquainted with the venue and the technology your prospects are comfortable with and active on, especially when deciding how to communicate. For example, some prospects may prefer a phone call, while others may prefer to keep communications on a messaging platform until the final transaction. Your goal should always be to simplify everything for them, meet them where they are at.

Another important element to examine will be the inter-department communication within your company.
Many companies are experiencing issues within their sales and marketing teams. I often find faulty communication between Marketing department and Sales department regarding passing off leads. Marketing complains of lack of follow-up and Sales complains that the leads are not good leads, so they can’t close them. I’m not sure if this is happening overtly or quietly in your company, but this is present because everybody believes they are doing all they can do within their given roles. The best way to deal with this is set a procedure that keeps both departments in sync. More importantly, when using social media as a venue for finding leads you will notice that these leads are easier to convert into customers. Prospects from social platforms are readily building a relationship with your brand and find it appealing. This way Marketing could be trained on what to do to find the leads and hand off to Sales to close leads that Marketing already have built a relationship with your brand. Both teams should be trained on how to handle every situation and scenario that can occur. For example, marketing may initially answer a question on social media, qualify the sales and then notify Sales that the person is a potential customer, and so on. Then Sales can take over the conversation through the sales funnel to close without wasting quality time. This will increase your company workforce productivity and scale revenue.

Equally critical is to remember that after you have created social media momentum, a plan should be devised to maintain it over time.
Effectively developing a social networking presence is not as hard as it looks. Social media is not rocket science. Whenever you’re scrolling through social networking, get real. You might also re-post or re-tweet different people’s content, and provide them a shout-out. There’s an amazing quantity of content on the Internet. Employing the most suitable hashtags, keywords and descriptions also increases the campaign so people may discover your videos utilizing the tags. One of the most instantaneous communication mode is to participate in a group in your specific industry or one which you need to enter.

While there are a number of social networking platforms to pick from, my advice is to begin with one and get excellent at it.
You must also know your audience. For example, what’s proper for a “single” audience may not be relevant for a “married”, or whatever appeal to a “younger” audience may not work for an “older” audience. Likewise, utilizing humor for a specific audience may be necessary or being formal may be better for another. You must know how to mold your voice and strategies towards your ideal customers. If you can’t handle social media to execute a thriving social networking marketing campaign, then find an expert or outsource it. The entire point of social media is to advertise you, build your brand by showcasing your nature with a human touch. In today’s world, this is extremely important for business survival. An image is really worth a thousand words and thousands of people are on Instagram or Facebook daily looking for photographic inspiration, a video or ways to improve their lives. They are on Pinterest trying to find quick access to gold mine information. A fantastic write-up on Facebook or Twitter has the largest potential to entice people organically, and they are going to stay around much longer to keep getting more.

Consequently, as your company advertising and marketing campaign get underway, you need extensive monitoring to recognize any current or future gaps.
Marketing is crucial to any business and is one of the most essential part of any business strategy. It is affordable communication at its best since its effectiveness means money. And a communication medium is always the vital organ with the lifeblood of your business. Research and analytics are essential to a successful advertising campaign. In the modern market, businesses cannot expect to do well while dismissing social media as a means to acquiring good exposure to possible customers, together with having the ability to boost their company brand. Social networking tools gives you access to millions of individuals. A lot of time wasted promoting your company the old way is a costly endeavor. Save time and money and drastically increase revenue by automating your sales and marketing.

In the world of business, what really is a brand? A brand is the identifying character traits of a service or product. It is the unique symbol, design, or words, or a combination of these that gives birth to creating an image that identifies a service or product and differentiates it from its competitors. It is this image that later becomes associated with quality, satisfaction, credibility, etc. Therefore, from the start you should by defining a clear value or benefit you want to deliver to consumers. When a brand identifies a company, it is called the brand name. A brand name connects visual and verbal elements to its target audience to build total experience and the value-added benefits.
Having a brand portfolio that speaks volume in the marketplace is essential for growth. It is one of the most valuable assets of a company. However, having too many sub-brands can clutter your portfolio, limit speed to market and slow down productivity and growth. We will help you identify, streamline and hone the characteristic of your brand, so it will act as its own “person” alluring, precise and engaging. The best results for brand identity is optimizing your brand to dramatically impact the future success of your company in its industry.

Brand optimization is a narrowly focused, polished and carefully positioned product or service, crafted to connect with specific audiences, to meet them where and when they’re looking for what you offer. An optimized brand presents key messages and vivid images that utilizes online methods to attract your target audience and move them to the next action.  We work from your audiences’ perspective and the critical points of choice, the point where they are clicking, signing up, joining, buying. This connecting point when and where your target is choosing to be converted to a customer is critical to so many components of branding. An optimized brand rises above the noise and chaos to create clarity and a connection to a wide range of audience in the long-run.

Here is a summary of the brand portfolio that we offer:

Brand Design

We will create visual presence for your brand by designing the look and feel of your brand image to communicate your offering. Coloring, aura, symbols, signs are types of expression to present and identify the image you want to present in your market and industry. This includes   your logo design, typography, photography, images, corporate design, communication design, web design, and so on.

Competitive Intelligence

Our competitive analysis report ethically dissects your competition and help you differentiate your brand to stand out. This include market intelligence, industry intelligence to form a business strategy for your brand environment. Having competitive intelligence (CI) help you to harness a detailed portrait of the competitive landscape as well as your target customers, so that you can anticipate and respond to trends, threats, challenges and problems before they arise.

Social Media Optimization

Social networks are marketing tools that when properly optimized, can bring traffic, leads, and new customers to your business. This is where our social media optimization services come in and we can do this on auto pilot with a landing page. Using our optimization process will generate publicity and increases awareness about a business and brand, through various social media networks and platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Google+ and Twitter.

Website Optimization

No matter how good your marketing campaign is, the point of connecting your prospects must be strong for them to convert into paying customers. If you have a website it should not be poorly designed because visitors can become lost, frustrated or discouraged and will not convert into customers.  We will analyze and optimize the fundamentals of your site including Page Analysis, Meta Tags Optimization, Webmaster Tools, Analytics Setup, Target Page Optimization, and more. The goal is to thoroughly analyze and fix all issues and errors found on your website. Then we will reproduce or revamp the navigation and content to be more user-friendly and to articulate your brand’s message clearer.

Content Marketing

It takes a substantial amount of time, diligence and organization to manage a thoughtful content marketing strategy. However, with our content marketing report, we will show you the popular articles in your niche. If you are a blogger, for example, we will provide relevant information on top articles that are driving traffic to your competitors’ sites so that you can write content that goes viral. We can also help you compile and write your blog posts, and marketing and sales copy to educate, inform and engage your audience while addressing common issues and providing niche-targeted answers to questions.

Search Engine Optimization 

There is a great bonus with our brand optimization. Since it involves content marketing, the bonus is having your content and articles syndicated and shared via inbound links to Google and this provides a great degree of authority. We also syndicate your content through ethical methods such as RSS feeds, IFTTT, link building, back links, Google stack, and more, to promote your site and increase ranking properties in search results.

Reputation Management

For brand image, reputation is no longer marketer-driven, but consumer-driven.  Marketers no longer are in control of the message. Consumer dictates how a business is perceived and accepted. Most consumers who are about to make a purchase decision will look to engage with review content. So, you simply cannot ignore reviews, because they impact your reputation and should be part of your long-term strategy. Therefore, you should proactively encourage and request online reviews and customer feedback. Our reputation management service build and protect your brand reputation. We share your brand’s best reviews on Twitter and other social network or post a link that facilitates the generation of fresh reviews. We offer reputation review management, such as responding to enquiries, or replying to comments Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. We help you take control and bolster your brand reputation. Our reputation tracking software offers fast suppression of negative search listings.

Core Benefits of Brand Optimization

Accelerated growth: Surge in leads, Faster sales, Increase conversion rates

Boost SEO for higher ranking: People can find you easily, Increase organic leads

Educate prospects to see you as the best choice: Creates brand awareness, attract qualified high paying clients; offer wider reach to facilitate followers, fans and their friends and connections

There is a clear call to action: Messages and visuals capture attention and entice response, your unique value and benefits are easily understood, appeal to the deepest desire of audience

Builds a continuum of contact: Fuels relationships with people who like your brand, the brand design is quickly recognized, humanize your brand, you become known in the market and industry

You become the source for expert information: Become a reliable source of information, gain positive recognition, gain more market and competitive knowledge, attract readers looking for relevant content

Content can become viral: Your content remains on the internet and stays there indefinitely (evergreen content). And if it is great content it can become viral.

Increased competitive advantage: Increase economies of scale, deliver higher return on investment

Monitor and protect your brand’s reputation: Build a brand that customers know, like and trust; quickly understand your customers sentiments at every location of your business, gain valuable feedback and insights on what your customers really want, help you understand how to improve quality control