This is a story about how marketing ended up being all about growth.

There are so many things going on lately around Growth hacking. How it is not related to marketing directly- or at all. How people conceiving it just created another hype related to red buttons and tricks that will catch the eye of any prospective lead- for the false reasons.

During the years marketing ended up from being a necessary evil to a key ingredient that drives sales revenue.

No, I am not trying to underestimate the power and the skills of any successful sales team here. I am just stating the obvious.

There is not anything anyone can’t buy today via the internet.

This fact by default implies that any business that is not into marketing most probably has already declared its divorce from prosperity.

But let’s take a step back.

Traditional Marketing- where the story begins

Since its inception, traditional marketing would try and satisfy consumer needs.

The marketing era or as we marketers know it the baby boomers era caused a sudden increase in consumer spending and thus demand for products and services.

Even then, businesses focused on determining what consumers need were. How they would make them happy and how their products would achieve the desired level of satisfaction.

But then again marketing was a pretty much abstract idea back in the day. It had no relation whatsoever to how it is being practised today.

Businesses knew that there were some specifics needs to fulfil. They had no clue however on up to what degree their audience was actually craving for their products. So, most times they would go ahead to try and create these needs.

How? By selling an expensive perfume to a lady. By introducing a new line of clothes that presumably would apply to the needs of the consumer.

For example, if a commercial would show a child playing with a specific toy most probably the audience would automatically want that toy in question.

Typical Carnation ad running during Baby Boomers era

Have I not convinced you yet? Let me put it in another way. Consider yourself promoting a service 10 years ago. Let’s say that you wanted to promote connectivity services.

How would you reach your leads? How would decide what kind of service would it be? Would it be a B2B or B2C service? Or perhaps both? What would be the metrics you would focus on in order to create your product’s flavours?

Most importantly how would you promote it? Besides running a TV campaign I mean. That would last approximately for a year (?!?!) to create awareness.

And then? Oh well, that would be it actually. You would get some leads that would turn into customers and then some more…and the story would go on like this. Until a new campaign would be up and running.

Noticed something missing? Oh, yes KPI’s, reporting, metrics any kind of a funnel at all really.

Anything actually that would suggest how the consumer, the user or anyone pretty much that would be considered your audience, behaves!

Digital marketing….another hype!

The rise of the internet during the 90’s moved things along. The launch of search engine machines like Yahoo! (1994), Google (1997), e-commerce sites like Amazon (1994) and eBay (1995) drastically changed the global consumer landscape.

It wasn’t long until social media made their entrance. Another “hype” as some more conservative people- and by people I mean both business people and marketers- would call it.

At first, social media were just a mean to a cause. People connecting with each other and sharing opinions and experiences.

It didn’t take long until their king- Facebook- introduced the first kind of social ads. Somewhere in between Google AdWords made their appearance -and as of 2011 they represented 96% of Google’s revenue.

Long story short, this is pretty much how digital marketing was born.

It didn’t take long after its birth to introduce a number of changes and innovations. Both to as how the consumers think or act and of course to how we as marketers plan and execute any marketing plan.

At first, those changes were inconceivable. Metrics were everywhere. Segmentation made its appearance out of nowhere also. The constant evolvement of all mediums created everyday new parameters to take into consideration when structuring a marketing plan.

Brands could understand their users better now. Where they would hang. What they would despise. With what they would fall in love with!

Traditional marketers would reject those methods. It makes sense now. It’s like nurturing a baby with milk and then change that and try to nurture it with cocoa. It will miss the taste, something from its everyday routine will not make sense anymore and by default, it will ask for milk again. Even though cocoa has by far a better taste and feel.

Since 1990- approximately- digital marketing walked a number of steps.

Digital Marketing milestones at a glance.

A number of social mediums were introduced with each one of them adding another brick on the wall of the digital marketing era.

Fancy visuals, clever copies, a lot of keywords and infinite blogging — for those that knew better- characterized until recently in high level the basic marketing synergies that a brand would follow to advertise.

Perfect right? If you are a brand you couldn’t ask for more.

You have metrics- all the usual vanity metrics backed up by data points that make us feel good if they go up , a number of handy marketing tools and a lot of traffic- especially if you have a respectable monthly budget and you practise SEO tactics as you should.

Please mark my answer here: WRONG, WRONG and WRONG.

As long as digital marketing does not take into consideration all the stages of the funnel it doesn’t offer the results that it should.

Not by a long shot.

Growth is the new word for Marketing

According to Unbounce.com Growth Hacking term is: The “lean startup” term for using conversion marketing tactics like content marketing, A/B testing and analytics to grow a company quickly and efficiently. Coined by Sean Ellis, who defines growth hackers as people whose “true north is growth.”

Growth Hacking is the evolution of digital marketing and as Mayur Gupta claims in its latest article “Marketing Needs Growth Planning Not Media Planning” “It is not just impact top of the funnel brand awareness but the lower half as well driving performance — conversion, retention and GROWTH.”

Simply put, a Growth plan will not be successful if it doesn’t analyze and optimize every part of the funnel. Digital marketing so far was mostly concerned with bringing traffic.

Marketing Funnel vs Growth Funnel

Don’t get me wrong. As a marketer I love traffic. The thrill I get out of it is amazing. But if it doesn’t convert and ends up with nothing more than a spike on the analytics’ charts it doesn’t excite me. Like at all.

The only thing traffic is supposed to be equal with is an increase in your net sales. Even if it isn’t as much traffic as you did expect- at first at least. If it converts, your job has been done correctly here. Less is more does apply in that case.

Growth hacking does exactly that. It leverages the use of data to bring quality traffic. It is not coincidental that even non-techy brands like Unilever and Kraft give emphasis to quantitative data and customer experience and start developing data-science teams to work alongside their marketing ones.

You will be able to get loads of quality traffic if you put a tick next to these factors below:

Deep understanding of your user’s expectations- use of personas, via interviewing your existing customers and via competition monitoring.

Crafted, personalized messages that would concern each segment of your audience- no first name personalization by itself won’t bring the expected conversions. Sending a message targeted on your user’s needs and emphasizing on its pain has much better odds.

Successful onboarding- or how to guide your user on every step of the way.

The scope here is to convert users that will have higher lifetime value through the funnel — aka to maximise your retention rate.

If on the other side you still want metrics. Oh trust me you will find lots applying to growth hacking practices too. As long as you are looking at the right direction that is.

If you start now you definitely should take a look at Neil Patel guide The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking- a must-read for any marketer interested in focusing on growth.

Do you wanna take it a step further? Then start trusting and exploring alternative sources and mediums like Quora which will answer all your questions including those that are analytics focused. Take this post for example Viral Growth and Analytics

You can grab a full list of them by Kissmetrics blog that includes 22 resources to help you master growth hacking analytics here.

Conclusion

Marketing will be evolved a lot in the days to come. It doesn’t really matter how you call it. What it matters is to follow its evolvement. To embrace what technology has to bring along and follow the changes it will bring to the end user’s experience.

At the end of the day everyone- and by everyone I mean any member of an organisation’s chain, no matter the business title that accompanies it- are just trying to satisfy this sole user which can either become unfaithful or married to your brand forever.