Growth Marketing: Advice for More Conversions
How does growth hacking work ? Which strategy and which team do you need for this? These advises will help you grow with your business. A contribution to our focus on online marketing.
Growth, more conversions, more revenue and profits. After that aspire marketing, sales or business development. But how can this be implemented pragmatically in everyday business? Which team has the right impact? What are the right levers and tools for efficient growth hacking ?
On September 3rd, CRO guru invited Andé Morys, founder of Conversion Force, back to the largest and most exciting German-language conference on growth marketing - the 2019 Growth Marketing Summit- to get to the bottom of these questions with renowned speakers.
This year, the event took place for the first time in the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, a very representative location with a lot of charm, in order to be able to grasp the meanwhile around 700 growth marketers. You had no chance to be there? No problem. Here are five key takeaways that we've picked up for you and can warmly recommend to all Growth hackers.
1st UX: Think outside the box!
Most CEOs make an essential mistake, says Ruppert Bodmeier, CEO and Co-Founder of Disrooptive: They focus on their own industry in the competition analysis. But truly innovative solutions can not emerge as long as each company is only looking for best practices within its own industry. In the end everyone knows the advice: "Think outside the box".
And exactly this principle has been practiced daily for years by successful companies, but should be applied much more often in the minds of many CEOs and employees. But how do you do that? Building a well-stocked UX library that directly stores best practices when and where you need an innovative UX solution would be a good place to start.
2. No growth without valid data!
One thing is clear: you can only grow if you really understand what users want and what really works. It is not enough just to interview a few customers. It depends on the result of numerous iterative optimizations. And for the correct evaluation of these continuous tests valid data are the basic requirement for growth and success.
Even Lukas Vermeer, Head of Experimentation at Booking.com, once again makes it clear that gut feeling is usually not a good indicator of whether something is a good idea or not. And you can believe it - after all, over 1,000 tests run simultaneously at Booking.com, which are designed, prioritized, created and finally evaluated by more than 2,000 testers.
It depends on three factors, all of which must fit in order to grow successfully: Have the user needs been met? Have the tests been properly prioritized? Was it measured correctly? It's best to make a specific hypothesis for each test in advance, prioritize all tests for presumed impact on key business KPIs, and make a short scribble before you start.
3. Keep it simple + do not make me think!
Most tests will not produce better results, warns Lukas Vermeer. But if one out of ten tests works, it's worth it. All other tests will be stopped as soon as possible and rolled back to the state before to minimize the negative impact.
Go on a search for "Low hanging fruits" and the "Biggest small steps". In other words, you should always start with the simplest tests that have the potential to have a major impact on the relevant business metrics. Often it already helps, according to the well-known Design Thinking Principles "Keep it simple" and "Do not make me think" to completely dispense with individual modules or information or to hide them temporarily.
If that actually brings an uplift in the conversions, you can be happy. Otherwise, you would have been annoyed otherwise, much time and money with the extensive conversion of individual modules and content to have burned, and in the worst case, it also reduces the conversions.
4. Power to the people!
Ideally, to be successful in growth marketing, you need a cross-functional core team consisting of: Developer, CRO Manager, Designer, Analyst and Executive Champion. Executive Champion? In short, a person who understands not only professionally what growth-hacking is all about but also has the necessary leadership skills and influence at the C-level level.
Because the sticking point, which almost every speaker of the conference called, is this: You can only operate successfully growth marketing, if you have full support of at least one managing director and all tests as independently as possible and without influence of other departments such as one Brand Team can perform.
Basically, the goal should be to create a corporate culture in which each employee has enough freedom and tools to set up their own tests. As Lars Giere, Global Head of Financing at Ebay, summarizes in his speech:
5. Inspire, Educate, Inform
How does one create in his enterprise a culture, in which as many coworkers as possible experiments for the continuous optimization and advancement want to implement? This question was answered by Natasha Wahid, Head of Marketing at GO Group.
The solution is quite close and forms a cycle of three essential building blocks: Inspire, Educate, Inform. First, however, a kick-off workshop should be held with all employees to present the vision of an agile company and the aspired new culture of experimentation.
So many questions and concerns can be intercepted well in advance and skip a first spark of inspiration to the team. Perhaps a short time later, a first core team of growth hackers has formed, which then regularly start and evaluate experiments.
It is important to regularly present the planned and already completed tests, so that the whole team can learn from it, no one feels detached and can come up with new ideas. Resistant skeptics often only need additional one-on-one interviews to ease fears and worries and give them the many opportunities of growth hacking.
As mentioned in the previous piece of advice, the most important thing is that everyone works towards a specific goal, which has been defined as a fixed star in the sky for the next quarter or year, in consultation with the management. This is the only way to avoid unnecessary trench warfare and time-consuming discussions that would otherwise be in the way of growth and success.
So that the whole team can learn from it, no one feels detached and can come up with new ideas. Resistant skeptics often only need additional one-on-one interviews to ease fears and worries and give them the many opportunities of growth hacking.
As mentioned in the previous piece of advice, the most important thing is that everyone works towards a specific goal, which has been defined as a fixed star in the sky for the next quarter or year, in consultation with the management. This is the only way to avoid unnecessary trench warfare and time-consuming discussions that would otherwise be in the way of growth and success.
So that the whole team can learn from it, no one feels detached and can come up with new ideas. Resistant skeptics often only need additional one-on-one interviews to ease fears and worries and give them the many opportunities of growth hacking.
As mentioned in the previous piece of advice, the most important thing is that everyone works towards a specific goal, which has been defined as a fixed star in the sky for the next quarter or year, in consultation with the management.
This is the only way to avoid unnecessary trench warfare and time-consuming discussions that would otherwise be in the way of growth and success.
To dispel fears and worries and give them the many opportunities of growth hacking. As mentioned in the previous piece of advice, the most important thing is that everyone works towards a specific goal, which has been defined as a fixed star in the sky for the next quarter or year, in consultation with the management.
This is the only way to avoid unnecessary trench warfare and time-consuming discussions that would otherwise be in the way of growth and success. to dispel fears and worries and give them the many opportunities of growth hacking.
As mentioned in the previous piece of advice, the most important thing is that everyone works towards a specific goal, which has been defined as a fixed star in the sky for the next quarter or year, in consultation with the management. This is the only way to avoid unnecessary trench warfare and time-consuming discussions that would otherwise be in the way of growth and success.
