Week 3: Identifying Growth Channels

For this week of the CXL growth marketing mini-degree, I was able to go through the ‘Identifying and amplifying growth channels.

To be completely transparent, this section was mostly information that I already knew. However, there was some new information that I came across and thought it was helpful.

I’ve decided to share my notes and ideas that I gathered from this section to help readers go through the information in a quick and digestible article. 

Lesson 4.1: Major growth channels

• Five digital marketing channels for growth:
  • SEM/PPC
    • Google owns 60% of PPC market share
    • Requires constant optimization to look at keyword traffic, search trends, and fluctuation on PPC cost.
  • SEO
    • SEO is the main driver for traffic and most qualified traffic
  • Social/Display Ads
    • Social gives you demographic data to hone on the target audience
  • Email Marketing
    • One of the best channels for growth
  • Content channel

Lesson 4.2 Identifying, testing, and measuring growth channels

• It’s rare for an early stage or late stage or enterprise company to be great at all channels
• The most important aspect is understanding who your customers are and where they are at
• How do you pick a channel to experiment with?
  • You would need to take a look at all the channels and see if the audience is active? Are they engaging on these channels?
  • First decide if your audience is even using the channel.
  • Avoid channels that are misaligned or the most competitive
  • SEO is often a safe channel to start with first
• How do we measure the results of the channels?
  • Good channels have the ability to give High ROI and High ability to scale
  • Bad channels can have High ROI but low ability to scale
• How do you know when your channel is failing
  • Look at YOUR own data
  • If the channel isn’t producing revenue or ROI is not good enough.
  • If the ROI is low then it probably has a low ability to scale
• Identifying successful channels
  • If it’s performing well, give it time to succeed. It can sometimes take up to six months to a year.
  • Look at the data to find which channels are giving you positive results

Lesson 4.3 Emerging channels

• Early-stage startups and smaller companies have the advantage of making changes quickly and identify new channels and experiment, test
• When reviewing competitors, take a look at what they’re doing, take a look at their keywords, the articles they’re writing, the blog posts, etc.
• Example of emerging channels are augmented reality and VR tech

Lesson 4.4 Myths about Social Media Marketing

• Myth 1: ROI is not quantifiable
  • Analytics nowadays are able to see the data
  • Important to have UTMs and pixels on your website
• Myth 2: SMM is just branding
  • Allows you to build, create, and develop deeper positions with customers
• SMM fits into the demand generation and drives leads
• It’s less about building impressions and likes
• Vanity metrics
  • follower count
  • likes
• Good SMM metrics to track will reflect your business objective
  • You can A/B test social media posts to see which post leads to customers
  • Test messaging, copy, and creative

Lesson 4.5 Developing a Coherent Message Strategy on Social Media

• As a brand, how do you speak to your customers across channels
• Good examples of social media marketing are GoPro
• Another good example was from Oreo when there was a blackout at the Superbowl, Oreo put out an ad with an Oreo in the dark with light shining on it saying ‘you can still dunk in the dark’
  • They used the hashtag to achieve virality
• Using your brand to get your mission out there and associate how people want to feel with your brand
• Responding to people on social is the best.
• Bad social media marketing is responding too quickly without a strategy and responding reactively
• Another bad example is not taking advantage of the time that you’re given to create the hype or the virality that’s available to you
• Bad example was from Red Lobster when Beyonce mentioned them in a new song. They took days to respond and missed their moment
• Trending topics and hashtags are a great way for companies to leverage hype and build up the conversation that’s going on.
• Testing messaging strategies on social media
  • The best to test is the time to message your audience
  • Test the content: The photos, video, text, etc
  • Test the CTA
  • Test the length of the URL
  • Test your offer: Is it a download or whitepaper

Lesson 4.7 Keyword Research & Content Gap

• Think about what content your users are going to want to see so they can share and help you reach virality

Lesson 4.11 Intro to PPC

• PPC can get expensive, you just need to find the right channels
• You also need to make sure your page converts better than your competitors and that would help lower your costs
• You should speak directly to your customer’s pain points
• Some goals for PPC is to ensure you have a high click-through rate and lower cost per click, CPC, and cost per lead CPL, and a higher conversion
• One strategy is to make sure your keyword and messaging is in line with your landing page

Lesson 4.12 Types of PPC campaigns

• Types of PPC campaigns
  • Awareness campaigns – generate brand awareness and attention
  • Lead Generation campaigns
• Subareas of PPC Campaigns
  • Pre-awareness
  • Awareness & trigger
  • Consideration
  • Engagement
  • Pre-sales
• PPC Channels
  • Adwords
  • Bing
  • Display
  • Facebook
  • Remarketing
• Variables to Test
  • Content
  • Image
  • Copy
  • Offer
  • CTA

Lessons 4.13 How to build PPC funnels that convert

• For TOFU – you can use you less scary items like checklist, ebooks, download content to get their data and help push them down the funnel
• You need to tie in your ads to your landing page
• Create a holistic ad experience

Lesson 4.14 Content marketing

• 70% of customers would rather get to know a brand through articles than an ad
• Companies that blog get 5x more traffic compared to competitors
• Content marketing is about building a relationship with your audience, understanding their needs, and offering a solution in your products or services
• You need to talk to your customer in an  understanding in a way that you understand their pain and you have a benefit to solving for that pain