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Week 3: Identifying Growth Channels

In marketing

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

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