With 1/3 of CMO budgets going to marketing technology. Having a campaign that delivers results is crucial. 

That’s why many organizations are turning to growth marketing. It is a more focused, data-backed approach to strategy. With more success than traditional marketing. 

Adopting a new system can be concerning. 

But, CMOs who know which questions to ask. Will feel more confident in deciding if a growth marketing strategy is right for them.

So, think you’re ready to integrate a growth marketing strategy? Here are the questions you should be asking.

What Are Your Goals? Is Your Current Marketing Strategy Supporting Growth?

Seventy-four percent of CMOs have little to no confidence in their current technologies. They don’t even think the tech tools they use align with their overarching goals. 

A successful marketing strategy is reliant on one key thing. The alignment with an organization’s business goals.

That includes every department’s goals. Like human resources, recruitment, and sales. 

It’s nearly impossible to expect one area of a business to grow. If it doesn’t work harmoniously with all the other parts.

That’s why growth marketing is such an excellent solution. It gets every department on the same page. All moving together with the entire organization upward. 

Think of a company like a small machine. The machine first needs a purpose (goals). Then multiple parts (departments) to work together to support that goal. 
This mindset is especially important for growing companies. Who need to meet growth milestones.

Reflection Point: Has your organization communicated its overarching goals to the marketing department? Does the current marketing strategy support these goals? What about the other departments in the company? Are everyone’s strategies moving towards a singular goal? Are there ways each department could better serve each other?

Is Your Current Strategy a One-Size Fits All? Or Customizable to Your Needs?  

Many companies often find themselves committing to templated marketing strategies. Designed in the interest of the agency serving them, not in the best interest of the company itself.

This is apparent when you feel like the social media networks you’re on don’t make sense for your business. Or you’re not feeling the benefits. Or like a strategy really aligns with your goals.

These strategies are often based on industry standards that work for most companies. But, what’s standard does not always engage every type of audience.

Why should an organization pay a “standard” fee? If it only provides a fraction of the desired results? 

This is why starting with growth strategy is so important.

A growth marketing strategy is experimental. But is backed by data.
This rules out what an audience actually responds to, versus what it does not respond to.

Over time this fine tunes a marketing strategy. It better places time and resources. Into the areas proven to drive results. 

Reflection Point: Are you carrying out tactics purely because you think you should be?  Not because they are actually wielding results?

Could Automation and Tools Help? 

There’s a tool for everything in today’s world of automation. But before jumping on the bandwagon. It’s important to take the time to analyze which tools will actually be beneficial to you.

Not doing this will just waste time and assets.

Choosing how to rate a tool, comes down to the company’s overarching goals. The right growth marketing strategy will use tools that make processes easier. Not more difficult. 

Here are some of the core tasks in a marketing department that can be easily automated:

• Lead nurturing. Automation can make the process of cold emailing and maintaining relationships simpler. It gives marketers more time to focus on more management and creative projects. Making processes more effective.
• Inbound lead generation. Instead of manually sifting through contact lists and social media profiles. Automation tools can do the work. 
• Automated customer journey. These tools connect all your digital assets. They allow a marketing team to analyze them, and to see how they work together. 

When the right tools are utilized teams will feel a sense of relief. Processes will seem to go faster, and there will be more time for a team to focus on other undertakings. 

According to McKinsey, demand for higher cognitive skills like creativity will grow by 20% by 2030.

Having the right automation tools in place to carry out monotonous tasks. Will set a team on the right track for customer’s needs now and in the future. 

Reflection Point: Do you currently use tools? If so, do they seem to distract your team? Or make them work more efficiently? If you don’t currently use a tool, which tedious tasks could automation improve? 

Are You Getting the Leads You Should? Growth Marketing Can Help

When it comes to your lead strategy. Red flags aren’t always easy to see.

It’s not always as clear as, not getting the desired number of leads equals failure.

What good is reaching a quota if none of the leads are resulting in sales?

The quality of the contacts is more important than quality. You want to target the right decision-makers. In the right target audience.

This is where growth hacking comes into play. The right growth marketing strategy will be experimental. It will many different avenues for obtaining the right leads.

Until the correct target market is reached.

The right growth strategy will take an in-depth approach. To focus on specific buyer personas in the right stage of the customer journey. 

Reflection Point: Is your current lead strategy generating organic traffic consistently? Are you utilizing your website as a source for leads? Are you building relationships with the right buyer personas? 

Are You Really Utilizing Data in the Best Possible Way?

The possibilities of data seem endless and promising.

But data is no good if it isn’t managed, and the right metrics aren’t analyzed.
If a business isn’t utilizing data at all. There’s no clear way to define success and failure. 

A data-driven growth marketing strategy pulls data from many sources. It encompasses SMO, SEO, and other metrics to create a clear picture of the state of marketing.

This helps create an actionable plan that promotes company growth.

Implementing a data-driven strategy can benefit an organization in a few key ways:

• Direction. A strategy that only utilizes trial and error can have a team running in circles over time. Data reveals achievements plainly. Without direction, it can be impossible to know if a strategy is growing in the right direction.  
• Market Segmentation. Data helps to understand and connect with customers on a deep level. Knowing the customer makes it easier to see what problems a business can solve for its target market. Market segmentation helps identify groups within an audience and better serve their needs.
• Action: Data makes goals better defined, more measurable and trackable.
• Improved Conversion Rates. Data makes it easy to count how many downloads a product has had. How many emails were opened. How many new followers you gained during a social media campaign. And how many customers have submitted their contact information on a website. Analyzing these can reveal which conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies you need.
• Greater ROI. Tracking ROI for assets like content and social media is challenging. It takes a skilled marketer to understand exactly which metrics are meaningful. And how to calculate what is actually reeling results. Tracking the right data is the only way to understand ROI. 

Reflection Point: Does your current marketing strategy have clear, trackable and measurable results? Is ROI elusive? Is your team able to analyze what is working and what’s not? 

Are You Providing the Right Support to Reach Your Goals?

The only way for a growth marketing strategy to succeed. Is if it has a champion in the executive boardroom.

As discussed earlier, marketing, sales, recruitment, human resources, and other departments are connected.

The marketing department shouldn’t be a little lost island. All alone somewhere within your organization.

It needs to be part of the bigger conversations. To promote sustainability in business.

Before attempting any new marketing method. Decision-makers must ask themselves if the current infrastructure supports growth. Are you ready for the changes you seek?

Consider these things: 

• Does executive leadership support the marketing departments efforts? 
• Is the marketing department staffed correctly? Are there enough people with the right skills to carry out future strategies? 
• Does the budget realistically support the rate of growth desired? 

Reflection Point: Does your framework support a growth marketing strategy? Do you need to restructure? Are there new roles that need to fill? Old ones that no longer serve your goals? What Will a Growth Marketing Strategy Look like?

What Will a Growth Strategy Look like?

If you’ve chosen to move forward with a growth marketing strategy. The next step is to choose the right guide for the journey.

Here’s what to expect after you’ve chosen an agency.

• An in-depth audit of all the current marketing initiatives. CMOs can expect to provide a lot of different types of information during this process. Not only simple information like logins and passwords. But reports, historical documents, budgets, branding information to name a few.
• The goal is for the marketer to completely understand the current state of marketing. Where successes and failures have been. Where improvements can be made in the processes and product. 
• Realistic, measurable and trackable goals will be set. After a thorough phase of research and communication has concluded. Goal setting will be the next step.
• Expect an initial, collaborative meeting that may result in a handful of revisions.
• Before a final set of objectives are finalized by all executive members. 
• The science experiment begins. As learned in elementary science class, a hypothesis is nothing without tests to back it up. The next step will be a slew of campaigns and tactics. Some will be fruitful.
• Some will not be. But by the end of the experimentation period, it will be clear what works and what doesn’t. The key to experimentation is giving the experiments time for catalysts to erupt. 
• Results reviewed. After months of experimentation and campaigns. Data is analyzed and compared. A clear view of which marketing avenues lead to the desired target audience and results. 
• Optimization. What works is now the focus of the growth marketing strategy. Along with finding new ways to make it work even better. 

Reflection Point: Is the process above the one you can support? What would need to happen to get to this point? 

Growth Hacking Questions Answered

Now that CMOs know what questions to ask themselves. It’s time to do the asking.

If you’re ready to really get serious about switching to a marketing strategy that better allocates assets and wields results.

These are the key ways a growth marketing strategy will help a company.

• Growth hacking will focus on the organization’s current marketing budget, yielding more results. 
• A growth strategy will be data-driven. With trackable, measurable and realistic goals that will clearly document successes and failures. 
• The right infrastructure and support system must be in place for a growth strategy to work. 

Still, need a growth hacking pro? Ready for a manager or consultant to take over the growth marketing strategy? 

Need a team of scientific marketers? At The Growth Agency. We use data-driven marketing strategies to help businesses reach their goals.

Talk to a TGA Strategist to see if you qualify for a free growth audit! We also have a lot of playbook results that can be implemented inside the articles. These results will be written by our team.

Request a FREE growth marketing proposal today.