Growth Mindset | Week 1 | Reveiw

Growth vs Traditional Marketing 

This is the beginning of a series of blog posts in which I will sum up my learning experience with CXL Institute attending their Growth Marketing Minidegree in key takeaways.

#Marketing with a growth mindset

Okay, here we go. I have started my 1st lesson with John Mcbride explaining what Growth Marketing is and I was hooked since min one. even though I am so excited about the whole "Growth Marketing" thing, but I was hooked as he explained more and more about the concept of GROWTH itself because everything he says seems so relatable on a human level (Personal Level). We as human beings grow by learning from our experiences, by experimenting and by testing ... we take a sip of hot tea on our tongue and we got hurt, then and only then do we learn that we don't do that in the next time and think of a simple strategy like waiting for a while till the drink be drinkable. 

And so is growth marketing as I understood it, instead of just focusing on top-funnel as a brand marketer you tend more as a growth marketer to focus on the full funnel. it makes perfect sense to me, why marketing exists in the 1st place?! a better question is how business exists?! is not it all about the CUSTOMER. The better you get to know more about your ideal customer, the better you can have a long relationship with him/her a relationship based on the exchange of values. 

#Fast Expermenting = Rapid Learnings

The great question now is how do you know about your ideal customer? The answer is simple, by continuous experimentations. You start with a basic core hypothesis about what your customer wants then find the fastest best way to test this hypothesis, define an experiment where you can validate or invalidate the hypothesis. and here guys and only here do you get to LEARN more about your customer. The more you learn the more you earn.

Let's imagine you're running a business or you're a marketer responsible for client's business and it is the beginning of the last quarter, Now as a growth marketer thinking experimentation you will 1st set business goals for Q4 then you will start brainstorming to find strategies to achieve the goals, you have the strategies and you will start experimenting. the question now is how deep can I go with experimentation?!

Performing experimentation can go in three depth layers as I understood it from john:  

1. The top layer is to decide whether or not the strategy you're experimenting with works, to begin with.
2. The middle layer is to determine the right message, right offer or right campaign.
3. The bottom layer is when you get to tailor a message for a very small group of your customers.

On the bottom level, things get really serious because now you've a true understanding of what individual customers really need. Turning that understanding into fortunate by communicating with them the right message at the right time. 

It's not easy to get there, but absolutely worth it. 

#What Defines a Growth Marketer?

A Growth Marketer can be defined by three key components:  

• Channel-Level Expertise; having experience on different marketing channels
• Analytical Capability; Being able to extract data and learn insights out of it.
• Strategic Thinking on a cross-functional level. 

As a Growth Marketer, you use these three main components to implement your ideas and strategies through a well-planned growth process

#Building a Growth Process

After I have learnt about growth marketing what it is and how to work in it, I started to learn more from john about the growth process.
Personally what I best like about the upcoming section, in which I will explain more about my learnings, is the structure of the courses. it's amazing for a well-organized individual like me because it's like taking me on a journey where I first get to know them very basics of what that term "Growth Marketing" is, then getting to a deeper layer where I get to have a hands-on level view where it enables me to see the meaning of the term in action. I see this way as a powerful learning experience which I am so delighted and excited about.

Back to the growth process, starting with a growth foundation, how can I build a growth foundation as a growth marketer. 

John explained here three main phases when building a growth process: 

• Defining a Growth Model; 
  Situational analysis of the current situation for the business, what's your goals and what do you have to achieve that goal. The best way to identify that is through an entire view of a funnel. The most common framework for a growth model is generally Dave McClure's Pirate Metrics for startups, which is the AARRR framework.
  
  
• Customer Journey Mapping;
  What customer journey looks like from the perspective of the customer? and mapping this journey with a growth model and tied to growth metrics.
  
  
• Growth Channels; 
  Drawing the golden path in which you imagine the ideal way your customer go through the journey. Think organic, referral and paid paths separately.

Time is now to create the roadmap achieving your goals

#Quarterly growth planning

Your initial planning process. How to plan for your quarterly growth? Well, at this stage we already have the basic foundation of the growth model, the understanding of our growth channels mapped to the customer journey. So planning can start by Exploring Data; Identifying the biggest areas of opportunity where there's a gap to fulfil and the biggest areas of pain points to cover. Moving on to Setting Your Quarter Goals; using a goal-setting methodology like OKRs can help. having an objective and key results tied to that objective measuring your growth. when setting goals try not to be dreamy and also not be easy, choose goals that are achievable with a few ambitions and goals that are really ambitious and hard to be obtained. Finally setting up the Road Map to achieving goals; setting goals quarterly and monthly is optimal to give enough space to test your experiments. Teams can be split into two sides, one focus on Acquisition and the 2nd focus on Retention Or if the team is small you can work same focus but in sequence. 

Here it is for this week, to be connected once again on the next week with new exciting topics.