Growth-Driven Marketing Checkup

In order to achieve sustainable growth, businesses need to build a successful growth marketing structure. This requires an ongoing, data-driven approach starting from the very first step, while constantly optimising the whole process according to gained insights and data-driven results.

Building an efficient growth structure is only possible when every process is linked to the other. That’s why every stage in growth-driven marketing needs to be built and supported with data to lay a solid foundation.

Internal Checkup

Everything starts with your brand. Whether you are a start-up or an established entity, if you want to adopt a growth-driven marketing methodology, you first need to prepare your brand checkup by carrying out market research.

This initial phase is essential as it creates data and insights for future stages and will determine your strategy.

The main aim of an internal analysis is to define each product, solution, or service under your umbrella brand explicitly by covering the 4Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. This checkup helps you define the “why” of your product. Why does your product exist, and what is its purpose, cause, or belief?

At the end of this stage, you might realise that some of your products or services speak to the same persona or cater to a mutual need; therefore they should be considered as one solution. Or vice versa, you might need to separate some of your solutions when you analyse a wide range of parameters in your product and solution mix.

So when you complete your internal analysis, you may end up with an umbrella brand and sub-brands, or different solutions under an umbrella brand, catering to different demands.

Let’s go through each step so you can smoothly carry out the first analysis– an internal checkup.

The start of our growth journey, the internal checkup, includes 6 steps:

1. Brand / Product Analysis

We initiate the checkup process by defining our brand. There are a few key points to consider at this stage.

• Business Model: Clarifying your business model is essential because your cost structure, revenue stream, customer segments, and distribution channels will vary for each business model. It will also determine your growth strategy, growth funnels, and growth marketing campaigns accordingly. So you need to specify your business model, such as B2B SAAS, B2B Enterprise, B2C Ecommerce, B2C Mobile App, B2C Marketplace, or Publishing/Media Sector.
• Revenue Structure: In this area, you will need to identify how your customers are currently paying for your services. A change or innovation of the revenue model can influence and change the entire business model of a company. Moreover, after conducting a competitive analysis, you can use the revenue model as a unique selling point. Netflix is a great example of this, by changing its structure from renting to subscription fees. Revenue structure examples include:
  • Asset Sale
  • Usage Fee
  • Subscription Fees
  • Lending/Renting/Leasing
  • Licensing
  • Brokerage Fees
  • Advertising
• Cost Structure: This area is to determine the most important costs inherent to our business model. The main objective of any organisation is to be profitable, and an important aspect of this is cost management. Cost management requires a deep understanding of the cost structure of an organisation. And such understanding can enable a sustainable competitive advantage. Ask yourself: which key resources and activities are the most expensive for my business? Below is a list of possible cost structures:
  • Team costs
  • Technology costs
  • Marketing costs
  • Sales costs
  • Operational costs
• Distribution Channels: Here you should determine which channels your product will be distributed through. A distribution channel must be efficient and effective, looking into the market, product, and company characteristics, as well as your competitors. Brands can determine which distribution method would be ideal for them to maximise profit generation via sales, value addition, and consumer reach. Examples of distribution channels:
  • Website
  • Mobile app
  • Offline store
  • Through partners
• Sales Process: Here, you will identify your sales cycle and onboarding process details, clarifying how you close your sales (online/offline, etc). Sales processes of each company are shaped by factors like the nature of its industry, its target personas, its market position, and the structure of its sales organisation. It identifies their sales cycle and onboarding. Your sales process can also set you apart from your competition. Examples of sales processes include:
  • Online sales through website or mobile app
  • Online lead generation & sales through sales team
  • Sales through partners
  • Sales through offline stores
• Markets: As the final step, consider the countries you are currently active in and the countries you want to operate in (target markets).

You have finished the Product, Pricing, and Place, so now it’s time to analyse the Promotion part of the marketing mix. At this stage, we will go through the owned, paid, and earned media activities you currently perform.

2. Website / Mobile App Analysis

At this stage, you have the chance to elaborate on your current website and/or mobile app promotion activities. Website and app engagement is essential to growth. Online engagement can lead to higher conversion rates, revenue through cross and upselling, and brand loyalty. This is an important step to analyse your digital visibility and engagement with potential customers.

Questions to consider during website/app analysis:

• Are you performing SEO / ASO activities regularly?
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of increasing the quantity and improving the quality of traffic to a website or a web page through organic (unpaid) search engine results. It refers to increasing the visibility of a website to users of a web search engine. Therefore, SEO excludes direct traffic/visitors and paid activities. There are many SEO tools for different purposes, but some of the most popular ones in the market are Google Search Console, SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, DeepCrawl, and Moz, etc.
  • Working for the same purpose as SEO, ASO (App Store Optimization) is the practice of improving the visibility of a mobile app in an app store in “Search” (when users are looking for apps) and “Explore” (when users are browsing). Simply put, SEO is for websites and ASO is for mobile apps, and both have the main goal of acquiring organic traffic. Some of the most well-known ASO tools in the market are Mobile Action, Apptweak, Sensor Tower, Google AdWords Keyword Planner, and App Annie.
• Do you regularly conduct A/B testing for your website and/or mobile app pages?
  • A/B testing is a way to compare versions of a website or mobile app page by testing users’ responses or behaviour and determining which variants are more effective. These experiments give insights on how to optimise certain elements of a website/mobile app page. There are many things that can be experimented with depending on your goals, such as changing the CTA (call to action) wording, colour scheme, button placement, navigation menu, pricing display, and more. Some popular A/B Testing tools are Google Analytics Experiments, Optimizely, KISSmetrics, and Unbounce.
• Do you regularly use engagement tactics?
  • There are various user engagement tactics for websites and mobile apps. They are used to get the users’ attention and encourage them to engage.
    • Push notifications
    • Chatbots
    • Pop-ups
    • Automated emails
• Which type of content are you creating regularly?
  • This stage is basically about content marketing activities that significantly increase organic traffic but also improve every stage of your customer cycle with relevant, valuable, and consistent content. Content types will differ depending on whether you are a B2B or a B2C brand. For example, blog posts, videos, and guides can cater to both B2B and B2C, whereas infographics, use cases (case studies), ebooks, and whitepapers are mostly created for B2B businesses. Let’s go through the content types briefly and see in which circumstances you can serve them to your potential or existing customers.
    • Blog posts: Whether a business is B2B or B2C, a blog post is the most common content type that businesses use since it’s the best way to generate organic traffic with the right keywords.
    • Infographics: Infographics briefly cover data on a particular subject through minimum text, more on graphics/numbers, and visuals. The main advantage of an infographic is that it can be more easily distributed and more likely to be published by 3rd party publishers.
    • Use cases: Also called “case study” or “success story,” use cases are used in B2B businesses where you can explain the benefits of your product/solution through a real experience you had with a customer. In a use case, you should address what the customer challenge or objective was and how you solved this problem or supported the customer to achieve their goals, preferably through real numbers.
    • Videos: Businesses use videos often for short product descriptions or to describe a feature of a product. They are really useful for explaining a complex subject rather than with text-based content. It is recommended that their length does not exceed 2 minutes.
    • Whitepaper/Ebooks: Usually used in B2B and in some cases in B2C, these content types cover your product/solution in-depth and generally include a detailed analysis of the industry you’re in. Compared to other contents, they are similar to academic articles regarding length and language and offer solutions for a particular problem. While whitepapers are mostly for professionals and include very technical information, ebooks teach the reader about something or provide a “how-to” guide with less technical and more easy-to-understand content.
    • Podcasts: Becoming more popular every day, podcasts are basically digital audio files that users can download or stream to listen to. A podcast episode can feature more than one host, and it is a great way to have long discussions about a topic, without boring the listeners.
    • Webinars: Webinars have become an effective form of content marketing that allows companies to host meetings or discussions concerning industry-related topics. Businesses utilise webinars to engage with customers or prospective customers.
• Are you using any analytics tools to track your website and/or mobile app performance?
  • Web/app analytics tools are used to collect information from your website/mobile app and provide you with reports to give insights into your visitors/users. These reports can include a wide range of analyses from what keywords are bringing the most visitors to your pages to traffic sources and goals. Some examples include Google Analytics and Firebase.

Give yourself a pat on the back! You have completed quite an important stage.

3. Social Media Analysis

Social media engagement is no longer an important aspect but a critical cornerstone of digital marketing tactics. Social media impacts the entire funnel, increasing brand awareness, conversion rates, and brand loyalty.

Questions to Consider:

• Which social media channels are you posting on regularly?
• Are you using any social media monitoring tools?
• What is your monthly average of published posts?
• What are your monthly average interactions (likes, comments, reshares, etc.)?
• What are your monthly average impressions?
• What are the monthly average clicks you generate?
• What's the monthly average conversion you generate?

4. Email Marketing Analysis

Email marketing is one of the most cost-efficient communication channels. You can effectively leverage your owned media channels and get a better return on investment (ROI) than other strategies. You can use email marketing for several targets, including attracting more traffic, cross-selling and up-selling, taking customer reviews, and lowering sales cycles.

Questions to Consider:

• Do you have an email database? How many contacts do you have in your opt-in database?
• Is your database segmented?
• Do you send regular newsletters to your email database?
  • Announcements
  • Newsletters
  • Deals & promotions
  • Webinar invitations
  • Gated content
• Do you run drip campaigns/email automation workflows?
• What are your email open rates?
• What are the monthly average clicks you generate from emails?
• What's the monthly average conversion you generate from emails?

Before sending any emails to your user database, make sure you are compliant with the privacy rights and data protection laws such as GDPR, California Consumer Privacy Act, or any regional data protection laws.

5. Paid Media Analysis

Paid media includes any content that you pay to place in front of an audience. Paid media is important because it has the power to produce fast, measurable results, reach relevant audiences, and improve brand recognition. With paid media, you can run campaigns and boost sales without having to depend on SEO or Google algorithmic changes.

Questions to Consider:

• Which paid media channels are you using?
• Are you tracking your paid media performance end-to-end?
• What are the monthly average impressions you generate from paid media?
• What are the monthly average clicks you generate from paid media?
• What’s the monthly average conversion you generate from paid media?
• What’s your ROI / ROAS from paid media?

6. Earned Media Analysis

Earned Media refers to publicity gained through promotional efforts, such as news coverage, word-of-mouth, reviews, comments, feedback, likes, shares, mentions, and various promotional efforts, outside of paid media activities or owned media branding. Earned media can earn consumers’ trust by building credibility. This also keeps your brand relevant with target audiences, because consumers prefer authentic relationships with brands.

Questions to Consider:

• Which earned media channels are you using regularly?
• What are the monthly average clicks you generate from earned media?
• What's the monthly average conversion you generate from earned media?

Your checkup is complete! This internal analysis is essential in understanding your brand and its digital assets and visibility. This will be crucial in your next steps as you analyse your competitors and customers in order to understand where your brand stands.

Competitor Analysis

As an important component, the second part of your brand checkup is competitor research. This stage provides crucial insights into the competition in your field and will help you determine your strategy accordingly.

Every brand claims to have the best idea or the next big thing. But none of that matters if you don’t first understand what kind of competition you’re going up against. This analysis includes 6 steps:

By monitoring and analysing your competition according to the 4Ps, you’ll be able to determine who are leaders and game-changers in your industry.

This process will give you essential insights on:

• The pricing of your competitors
• Marketing activities of your competitors
• Your brand positioning
• Customer/persona targeting
• Customer acquisition
• New competitors
• New practices or the mistakes your competitors make

In order not to lose focus, we recommend that you analyse the top 3 to 5 main competitors. You should conduct the following process separately for each competitor.

1. Determine Your Competitor

• Business Model: Your competitor’s cost structure, revenue stream, customer segments, and distribution channels will vary for each business model. So you can compare your growth strategy and growth marketing campaigns accordingly.
• Revenue Structure: Here, you will need to identify how your competitor’s customers are currently paying for services. Based on this, you can decide how you can innovate your revenue models.
• Distribution Channels: You should choose which distribution channels your competitors are using. Whether your competitor is using a website, mobile app, or a store, determining this will help identify ways they distribute their solutions and how your brand should as well.
• Sales Process: Here, you will identify your competitor’s sales cycle and onboarding process details, clarifying how your competitor closes its sales (online/offline, etc.).
• And as the final step, determine the countries where your competitor is currently active.

2. Competitor Website / App Analysis

There are various user engagement tactics for websites (chatbots, pop-ups, automated emails based on user behaviour/action, etc.) and mobile apps (push notifications, in-app messages/notifications, etc.). They are used to get the users’ attention and encourage them to engage. So it is important to indicate if your competitor is using any engagement tools or tactics. Also, track how much traffic your competitor is bringing in through different keywords.

You should ask yourself:

• What are your competitor's digital assets?
• Does your competitor regularly use engagement tactics?
• Which type of content is your competitor creating regularly?
• How is your competitor’s app/website performance?

3. Competitor Social Media Analysis

It is essential to identify what social media channels your competitors are using regularly for their brand. Social media can be highly competitive, so analysing your competitor’s social media presence can give you insights into what gaps there are and how you can fill them. Find out how your competitor optimises their engagement with audiences.

A few questions you should ask when analysing their social media include:

• Which social media channels is your competitor posting on regularly?
• How many followers does your competitor have on each platform?
• What is your competitor’s monthly average published posts?
• What are your competitor’s average interactions (likes, comments, reshares, etc)?

4. Competitor Email Marketing Analysis

You should determine if your competitors are using any email marketing strategies and how they are conducting them. Pay attention to every detail of their emails.

Ask the following questions when analysing:

• Does your competitor send regular newsletters?
• Does your competitor run drip campaigns/email automation workflows?
• What details stand out in your competitor's emails (send dates and times, subject lines, CTAs, and frequency)?

5. Competitor Paid Media Analysis

Any content that your competitors pay to play in front of audiences can be considered as paid media. Find out how they are maximising on this and what they’re missing out on.

Try to answer these questions:

• Which paid media channels does your competitor use?
• Which keywords does your competitor bid on search engines?
• What details of your competitor's ads stand out?

6. Competitor Earned Media Analysis

Look into examples of how your competition is using earned media to promote their brand. Some examples may include:

• Influencers
• Social bookmarking
• Publishers (directly or through an agency)
• Referral campaigns
• Viral campaigns

Pay attention to how much traffic they’re bringing in through backlinks and collaborative content.

By looking at these types of earned media, you should be able to answer the following questions:

• Which earned media channels is your competitor using regularly? 
• What details of your competitor’s earned media efforts make them stand out?
  • Types of influencers they’re working with
  • Social bookmarking details
  • Structure of referral and viral campaigns

We have now finished the second step of building a smooth growth marketing strategy. This competitor analysis will be critical in understanding where your brand stands and how it can uniquely reach your target persona. 

Customer Research

We have reached the third and final step of our checkup! Let’s dive into customer research to complete our growth marketing checkup.

Customer research is the best way to understand and create your personas.

A persona is the representation of your ideal customer, which helps you build your customer segments based on customer research and/or real data about your existing customers. Knowing who your ideal customers are in terms of demographics, motivations, behaviour patterns, challenges, and goals will build the foundation of your marketing activities.

So at this step, you should focus on identifying your customers with as many questions as possible – in order to create the right personas for the next stage of your marketing strategy. There are people out there that really need your product or services and are willing to pay for them. These questionnaires will help you find those people and your niche. This research can be done before launching a new product or just to scale your business. It can be essential in looking at your database and understanding which customers are your most profitable and what traits your most successful customers have in common. These are your primary target persona.

In this section, we will explain which information you need to get from your current or potential customers in order to gain insights for your future marketing activities.

Before you start, make sure you have completed your Internal Checkup and Competitor Research and Analysis.

The questions will vary based on whether your company caters to businesses or individuals (B2B or B2C), so you need to identify your customer type first.

B2B Customer Research

There are 4 steps of this process, including questions about:

• Demographics
• Business
• Role, goals & challenges
• Purchasing preferences

You can ask these questions directly to your existing customers or conduct a survey for your potential customers. 

1. Questions About Demographics

You can ask your current/potential customers about their demographics to gain insights into their personal information. Demographic information will allow you to better provide related communication in your marketing activities.

Questions you should ask:

• What is your name?
• How old are you?
• What is your gender?
• What is your household size?
• What is your monthly household income?
• What is your education level?
• Where do you live?

2. Questions About Business

This step will include questions about your current/potential customers’ businesses. Information about their businesses will help you eliminate less qualified leads.

Questions to ask in this step:

• Which industry is your company in?
• How many employees does your company have?
• What is the size of your company in regards to annual revenue?

3. Questions About Role, Goals, and Challenges

These questions will provide you with insights into your customers’ careers, the nature of their jobs, their challenges, and their goals. Understanding your buyers’ pain points and goals will be the cornerstone of determining your whole marketing approach to each specific persona.

Questions you should ask:

• What is your job title/role in your company?
• How is your job measured?
  • Performance at work can be measured in various ways depending on the role. For instance, if your customer is in HR, their job can be measured by team productivity, employee engagement scores, project fulfilment, Glassdoor score, etc. The other most common examples would be sales volume, generated leads, revenue growth rates, net profits, net promoter score (NPS), return on investment (ROI), and unit KPIs.
• What skills are required to do your job?
• Who do you report to in your organisation?
• Who reports to you in your organisation?
• What tools do you use or need to do your job?
  • Clarifying what tools your customers use helps you determine which benefits to highlight in your product/service.
  • Some general tools include content management systems, CRM software, word processing programs, accounting programs, email, time tracking software, project management tools, cloud-based storage, and file sharing applications.
• What are your biggest challenges at work?
• What are your goals and objectives in regards to your job?

4. Questions About Purchasing Preferences

These are the questions you will ask your current/potential customers that can provide you with insights into their purchasing habits and how they consume information. These insights are very valuable to understand where your business should have an active presence and where you can meet your potential customers.

Questions to ask:

• How do you prefer to interact with vendors? (email, phone, etc.)
• Do you use the internet to search for vendors or products? If yes, how do you search for information?
• Describe a recent B2B purchase. Why did you consider a purchase? What was the evaluation process? How did you decide to purchase that product or service?
• How do you gain information for your job? (online sources, conferences, etc.)
• Which online/offline publications do you follow?
• What social media do you actively use?

Congrats! You have completed your first B2B Customer Research.

B2C Customer Research

If you have a B2C structure, you can gather information with the following steps by performing a new survey or using the information from a previously created questionnaire.

1. Questions About Demographics

These questions will provide you with insights into your current/potential customers’ personal information. Demographic information is essential for you to better provide relevant communication in your marketing activities.

Questions you should ask:

• What is your name?
• How old are you?
• What is your gender?
• What is your household size?
• What is your monthly household income?
• What is your education level?
• Where do you live?
• What is your occupation?

2. Questions About Personal Info

The following questions will provide you with insights into your current/potential preferences and character.

You should ask the following questions:

• Are you the main breadwinner in your household?
• Are you a risk-taker?
• Do you like to try new things, products, or services?
• Are you independent?
• Do you tend to follow what’s popular?
• Do you worry about what others think of you?
• What social media do you actively use?

3. Questions About Purchasing Preferences

These are the questions that will provide you with insights into customers’ purchasing habits. These insights are very valuable to understand where your brand should have an active presence and where you can attract your potential customers’ attention.

You can ask the following questions:

• How often do you purchase (your product)?
• What is your typical monthly budget for (your product)?
• Which channels do you use when you want to purchase (your product)? (e.g. online, physical store, app)
• If you shop online, which websites do you mostly use (e.g. Alibaba, Amazon, etc.) and which platform do you mostly use (computer, phone)?
• Which other brands do you love to buy/use for (your solution)?
• What are your love brands?

4. Questions About Purchasing Decision Process

These questions will help you understand what goes on in the minds of your customers when they are making purchase decisions. You will be able to align your marketing strategies accordingly.

Questions you should include:

• What are your top 3 concerns when deciding whether or not to make a purchase about (your industry/service/product)?
• Do you purchase (your product) spontaneously, or do you carefully consider before purchasing?
• How long does it take you to make a buying decision for (your product)?

You now have all the information you need from your customers. You can see a generic approach won’t be enough to meet the needs of your customers as every persona’s pain points and goals differ. Even though you only have one brand/product or solution, all of your marketing communications will vary according to each persona. For instance, an IT manager might be interested in a different product feature than a marketing manager, who also uses the same product.

So this customer research is vital because it will be the foundation for creating personas in the upcoming steps.