Growth Marketing Agency : What, Who, How to Hire

Want to grow your business by leaps and bounds? Do you want to take your business to the next level? 

That’s where a growth marketing agency enters the picture. This article will guide you through the nitty-gritty detail on understanding growth marketing and how you can use it for growing your business.

So, buckle your seat if you’re interested as we cruise through the essentials of growth marketing especially for small business or startups that you need to understand before moving forward.

What is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing, as a  general strategy, focuses on building customer loyalty and relationships. Its goal is to increase market awareness and boost demand using scientific methodologies and monitoring strategies results based on data, with the long play of creating authentic engagement to organically grow customer lifetime values.

To ensure company goals via numbers, Growth Marketing includes a complex process of designing and conducting experiments to optimize and improve results of a target or goal.

The Growth Marketer Defined

At the helm of the Growth Marketing strategy and execution is the Growth Marketer. A Growth Marketers schedule includes identifying success goals, developing funnels which in the immediate future will be constantly iterated or optimized with the aim of getting the best version of the funnel. It is more than the platform. It is being able to identify the metrics for growth and ensuring that a sustainable and measurable process flow is in place to amplify and scale the growth.

Goals of the Growth Marketers

Companies that understand the value of Growth Marketing hires Growth Marketers for businesses and brands. These businesses see that these new breed of marketers aim is to:

1. Realize and Prioritize Revenue. Without revenue, any business will fail. For these growth marketers, more than hitting the top of the funnel, the goal is to ensure that the company’s brand or service will reach every level of the sales funnel making marketing revenue focused.
2. Acquire New Customers Efficiently. Are you getting streams of customers on a regular basis? Is the acquisition effectively and efficiently refined? More than the channels they are working in.
3. Identify areas for leads, sales and conversion growth.
4. Designing, developing and conducting experiments for optimisation. 
5. Analyze results generated.

What is a Growth Marketing Agency?

A growth marketing agency is often called alternately as revenue growth agency, business growth agency, growth agency, and digital growth agency.

As defined, a growth marketing agency empowers business to achieve their growth and revenue targets through a combined strategy of marketing, sales enablement, technology and growth hacking. Its action plans and campaigns is geared towards understanding customer and its relationship to the brand, and how loyalty can be fostered. With authentic relationship and engagement, the campaign aims to increase customers lifetime value.

Upon hiring, the growth marketing agency will look into the digital and traditional marketing aspects of the business, and creating strategic marketing and sales action plans to move business identified metrics from ground up.

Growth Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

Traditional marketing is always tactic driven and circulates around a vast spectrum of marketing components. It focuses more on maximizing the client’s brand awareness to large audiences and selling their products through developing the most ideal creative. 

Traditional marketing are naturally inclined to acquisition processes only since other fields such as revenue and retainment are handled by someone else. 

However, one of the downfall of a traditional marketing is that there is innovation in your activities since you will just continue your plans over and over again or increase its frequency if needed but it’s still on the road.

On the other hand, growth marketing solely focuses on the key metric growth rather than the marketing channel with scientists-like experts that will allow you to yield growth-forward results through running experiments, assessing growth metrics, pursing successes, and sales on a flexible budget.

One notable difference between the two is that growth marketing are more centered around a holistic approach in obtaining a profitable customer acquisition called AAARRR framework which incorporates the five user-behavior metrics that will lead to growth identified as Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Revenue, Retention, and Referral.

Growth Marketing vs Digital Marketing

Here we have another type of marketing which is the digital marketing. Eventhough they are both involved in the field of marketing, there are still various differences between the two that every business should be mindful of.

One distinguished difference between them is the focus on the funnel, digital marketing only aims to attract the interest of the public on a specific product or service and sometimes fail to engage the audience and turn them into actual-paying customers.

On the other hand, growth marketing continuously search for inventive ways to convert customers into brand advocates as it covers the whole marketing funnels.

Another difference is connected to team effort, digital marketing lets the whole team to work isolatedly and perform their priorities away from each other which can prevent them from establishing a strong connection and interaction.

While in growth marketing, everyone contributes data to enhance the project outcomes and obtain their common goal which is growth.

Moreover, both types of marketing differs in leveraging data wherein digital marketing utilizes Google Analytics to perform data analysis which can sometimes be limited for your desired use. But growth marketing runs through several available sources of data and initiate feedback for a more accurate understanding.

Digital marketing also associates only with a fixed set of rules and processes while growth marketing applies a freedom of access to creative and elevating ideas as part of its trials.

The Growth Marketing Funnel

Primarily, the role of the growth marketing agency is to refine the growth process of any brand or business. The 5 critical stages of the funnel includes:

Awareness:

• Test behaviourally-segmented ads through social channels e.g. recent homebuyers, vs. those who follow personal finance media properties.
• Test demographically-targeted ads through social channels e.g. segment by age, gender or metro vs. rural populations.
• Test conservative ‘on brand’ ad creative vs. creative that pushes brand guidelines.
• Test effect of original research into investing trends, promoted through PR.

Acquisition:

• Test allowing users to register using their Facebook log-in details, without the requirement to add any financial details.
• Test the effectiveness of partnerships with financial influencers over three different channels – podcast, blog and Youtube, each sharing a bonus sign-up code which gives users $10 on sign-up.
• Test whether a content funnel with educational content that users must provide an email address to access delivers more sign-ups.

Activation:

• Users who register for the app but don’t deposit any money are called by a service team member to walk them through the process.
• Users who register for the app but don’t deposit any money are prompted via app notifications.
• Users who register for the app but don’t deposit any money are prompted by a 3 part email chain.

Retention:

• Test reduced fees for a longer commitment of time e.g. pay 9 months up front for a full year of service.
• Test different pricing levels for levels of service, allowing users to drop down to a lower fee structure if needed.
• Test gamifying achievements – rewards at one month, one year, at significant milestones etc.

Revenue:

• Test how offering 3 portfolio options vs. 6 portfolio options affects FUM.
• Test charging users a flat monthly fee vs. a percentage of invested assets.

Referral:

• Test referral bonuses e.g. offering users $5 for both the referrer and the referred vs. $10 for just the referrer.

Optimization of each of the steps of the funnel will have impact to your overall growth path. With experimentation in each of the process of the growth funnel, the effect will provide gains based on the identified goal.

Benefits of Hiring a Growth Marketing Company?

If you’re unsure of choosing the path in improving your business, growth agencies can be your best resource of guidance. Growth marketing companies combine technology, sales, and marketing services as one big outlet of growing your business in a more systematic procedure. 

Growth-oriented marketers mostly perform various experiments with a single performance measure with no bias in their data in which the marketing decision for the company will be based in hope to build your business’ future favorable and achieve your growth objectives precisely.

With their long-term perception of projects, they are majorly influenced by your desired goals and focus more deeply in the whole spectrum of growth in marketing rather than just focusing on a specific topic alone like search engine optimization or social media marketing – they offer the complete package!

Growth marketing company are hyper-focused on scaling your customers with their effective services & software solutions as their instrumental roles in the journey towards growth. To make it more simple, removing your doubt and uncertainties in hoping to improve your business is one of the most important benefits of hiring a growth marketing company because they can assure you with their methods and help you achieve your specific business goals in a hassle-free nature.

Advantages of Hiring a Growth Marketing Agency vs Digital Marketing Agency

Growth Marketing Agencies and Digital Marketing Agencies both have the capability to assure that the marketing professionals that you will work with and trust with your business are all trained and experts in providing your business needs with an internal quality control system.

Hiring the most suitable agency for your business will always be crucial since both types of agencies have their own unique services being offered and implemented process or protocols that they are following in order to fulfill your demands.

Growth Marketing Agencies can be helpful if you want to focus more on the overall growth of your business when you feel like you are ready to take the next level of marketing because it requires courage and commitment as these agencies will perform several trials in relation to your business before acquiring the most suitable outcome for a long-term favor.

Growth Marketing Agencies are also cheaper and more efficient than Digital Marketing Agencies because they will not waste your time and money on continuing the same method over and over again until you can reach your goal but rather, explore other creative options that will yield a more favorable result that is only fit with your allotted budget. 

On the other hand, if you’re only looking for a specific component of marketing that you want to improve in your business, digital marketing agencies should be your choice as each digital marketing agency focuses on a distinct field as their specialization such as SEO especially if you want to learn more on other fields.

Digital Marketing Agencies can also be your beneficial tool if you’re aiming for a short-term outcome wherein you already want to see an improvement in your business even for a short period of time after the campaign has started since their strategic methods are easily controllable just like in elevating your audience reach or creating a more impactful brand awareness.

Top Growth Marketing Agencies in the World

ESTRAT 360 Marketing Company is one of the leading Growth Marketing agencies in the Philippines. It is also perhaps, touted as one of the top growth marketing agencies to its clients. For us to #growfurther, we are benchmarking on the Top and Best Growth Marketing Agencies of the world.

Based on our internal metrics of reputation, portfolio and brand recall, here are the top and best growth marketing agencies that you need to follow:

1. SingleGrain.com.  They are one of the front runner of growth marketing in the world founded and headed by Eric Siu — a known colleague and business partner of Neil Patel. They pride themselves as a tribe of digital marketing specialists with combined tried-and-true strategies with innovative marketing tech to scale business and drive growth.
2. Ladder.io. Co-Founded by Michael Taylor in 2014, Ladder.io utilizes machine learning technology in helping your business with various specialization such as SEO, SEM, CRO, PPC and Growth Hacking. With its best features in driving revenue through a viable test with minimal investment, Facebook and other Fortune 500 companies have become part of their satisfied clients.
3. Swidia. Co-Founded by Chief Executive Officer Jack Chen in 2018, Swidia is a growth marketing agency that specializes in Performance Creative Testing, User/Customer Acquisition, Retention, Paid Social, Paid Search, and Growth Hacking with its deep focus on scaling users for consumer startups. One of their most notable client is Cameo in which they have a played an important role in its journey towards success especially in creatively and analytically scaling their users during Series A & B stages.
4. Tuffgrowth. Founded by Growth Expert Ellen Jantsch in 2016, Tuffgrowth provides tailored solutions with its expertise in Ecommerce, B2B, and startup. As it specializes in PPC, CRO, SEO, Social Advertising, and Growth Hacking, it creates various growth strategies that will best suit your business after consulting with your current data.
5. Growth Shop. Founded by Mark Patchett in 2019, Growth Shop focuses on an influential four-stage method which involves funnel’s forensic analysis, growth sprints, optimization, and scale. Through undergoing several data analysis and continuous testing, it has allowed Trouva, one of its clients, become one of UK’s five fastest growing companies despite of being a newcomer to the industry.
6. EmberTribe. Founded by Josh Sturgeon in 2015, EmberTribe fulfills their clients’ demand with an unconventional business model as it focuses more on results especially with tactical email marketing. Their approach has allowed Baltic Essentials, a jewely retail shop, to double its monthly revenue in just 60 days. Talk about talent!
7. OrangePegs. Founded by Vice President of Growth & Partner Jason Barbato in 2013, OrangePegs utilizes a hybrid approach of growth hacking and inbound marketing to boost brands, startups, and even B2B or B2C organizations. With their experimental model and expertise in Sales Alignment, they were able to improve their current client, Mark Arrow’s discovery and user experience strategically and fulfill his business goals.
8. Kurve. Founded by Oren Greenberg in 2008, Kurve has implemented scientific and data-driven approaches to grow a business brand especially with startups and corporates with their specialization in SEO, PPC, Conversion Rate Optimization, Growth Hacking, and Content Marketing. “Scientific rigor” was NextFree’s, one of their past clients, distinct feedback after closing a successful business transaction with the company.
9. Fantom Agency. Founder by Luis Camacho in 2017, Fantom Agency specializes in PPC & Paid Media as it applies a systematic approach that will make their clients feel like an extension of their team in order for them to stay connected with them for a long period of time – worked well in their favor! Eventhough they focus more on Paid Media, where they’re great at, Fantom Agency should still not be underestimated as it was able to increase one of their clients’ conversion rate by over 1130% and obtained an approximate value of $400k in a newly launched product’s revenue for only three months.
10. We Scale Startups. Founded by Daniel Johnson, We Scale Startups develops Growth Machines that can build up a scaleable growth even for some of the world’s fastest-growing startups such as Google Launchpad & the University of Cambridge. With its expertise in Strategy, Training, Paid Search, Customer Acquisition & Retention, Mentorship, Paid Social, Search Engine Optimization, and Product Development, it was able to gather 180,000 signups to the ICO of a specific client in just 30 days after the campaign has been launched.

15 Growth Marketing Strategies for your Business

Growth Marketing can sometimes be a handful of responsibilities especially if you are still not fully aware of its process and you don’t have the means to hire an agency. However, if you work smarter with the following strategies in mind, you can obtain your goal of business growth.

1. Know Buyer Personas . In order to identify which will work best for your business, it is important to locate your target customers and understand their profiles together with what motivates them in availing your products or services.
2. Understand the Funnel. Knowing the AARRR framework will help you distinguish your customers’ activities online and their journey from one stage to another in the funnel.
3. Establish SMART Goals. Always make sure that your concrete objectives are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.
4. Focus on Customer Retention.  Customer Retention will increase your consumers’ lifetime value and their loyalty to your brand.
5. Gamify Onboarding and Smoothen Process. Having an accessible and easy-to-understand onboarding process will motivate your customer to continue patronizing your business.
6. Develop Educational Materials. Having a detailed knowledge base, consumers can have access to obtaining the information that they need in several mediums.
7. Build Brand Community. Creating a brand community will make your customers feel more connected and interested in your brand such as a simple platform for answering questions about a product or service.
8. Utilize Behavioral Analytics. Solid Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) will help you analyze your customers’ behavioral patterns to avoid customer churn.
9. Motivate Customer Loyalty. Create habits that will make your customers feel like they belong and they can acquire something from your business that will benefit them efficiently.
10. Apply Social Proof. Informational social influence will guide your leads in deciding to make a purchase.
11. Strengthen Word of Mouth. Driving growth can be easily achieved when your brand already has testimonials and positive feedback from others since people will trust their peers’ comments so make sure they are improvable and measurable.
12. Construct Viral Loop. Starting a well-configured referral program will give your business continuous referrals from outside the firm which are important elements of a stable growth.
13. Have a Growth Team. Working with other professionals can help you generate growth marketing strategies more effectively within the funnel since they are dedicated to driving growth to your business.
14. Take Advantage of Social Media. Always make sure that your business has a social media presence where customers can easily reach it and even communicate with them so that you will expand your audience.
15. Consider Facebook Ads.  Facebook advertisements have also become a top marketing tool in targeting a specific audience for your product or services based on their demographics to reach new customers and increase revenue.

Guide to Hiring a Growth Marketing Company for your Business

Knowing when to hire and who to hire is a vital method of hiring a growth marketing agency for your business as included in the following:

1. Always assess what market validation for your product you need so that it can be easier for both parties to work on plans and various tests.
2. Identify which high-quality leads do you need in order the find the most ideal outlets with the most appropriate creative.
3. Commit to finding ways to market your product since it will take several trials and experiments before finding out the right formula of strategy that will works best for your business so make sure that you are not aiming for a short-term goal.
4. Outsource for top growth marketing companies to recognize their credentials and know which one is more deserving of your trust and loyalty through communicating effectively.
5. After researching about your prospects and deciding which one to work with, start introducing your brand to the company, convey your demands, and coordinate with the whole team in order to come up with the most effective growth plan in accordance with your objectives – be hands-on because it’s your business after all.

Growth Marketing … In Summary

In a gist, Growth Marketing is all about the customer and how we can build strong relationship and loyalty with them. All the details discussed here focuses on how we can create authentic and engaging partnership with the customer and how data can help us organically grow the customer lifetime value.

To make this possible, Growth Marketing uses data and technology efficiently, sustainably and substantially to understand the customer and how to optimize (improve) the marketing results, determined by a “north star” or a goal.

Ready to Hire a Growth Marketing Company?

If you are ready to venture on how you can use growth marketing to create a strong customer base with high lifetime value, don’t hesitate to contact our Growth Marketing Advisors.

At ESTRAT 360 we use data and tech to address your current marketing growth concerns. ESTRAT 360 will do all the heavy lifting about growth marketing, so that you can focus on growing your business.

If you are ready to invest in growing your business, CONTACT our Business Growth Advisers to know how we can help you.