Growth Marketing is none other than a series of low-cost highly effective marketing experimentations done repeatedly until you find the strategies that work.
Here is a list of 6 growth marketing strategies that have worked for me that I invite you test out in 2023.
Growth Marketing Strategy #1 - YouTube Content Marketing
As per Oberlo, YouTube is the world's second biggest search engine, right after Google.
Most startups are generally intimidated when it comes to creating YouTube Content, primarily because they think they'll have to compete with creators along the lines of Mr. Beast.
But that's not the case.
As of now, the YouTube content delivery system consists of 3 algorithms:
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The Home Feed.
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The Shorts Feed.
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The Search Feed.
One of the lowest-hanging fruits out there is getting your content to rank on both high & low intent keywords of the so-called search feed.
Here's how I did it:
I run a Growth Hacking Course (Growth Hacking Bootcamp) and a Lead Generation Agency.
Throughout the past couple of years, since November 2017, YouTube has been an essential part of my client acquisition strategy.
To this day, videos that I created years ago, still bring me an influx of leads, clients & community members.
The only investment required from my side was some keyword research, and a few hours to record & edit the content.
The strategy is simple:
Identify high volume - low competition keywords using tools like VidIQ & Google Trends to understand what content is worth ranking for.
Create videos around those keywords.
Edit the videos.
Create some appealing thumbnails using tools like Canva or Adobe Photoshop.
Post your videos onto YouTube.
Rinse & Repeat.
Do this process enough times, and after several weeks to months, enjoy the benefit of YouTube traffic converting on your website.
What's great about this, when compared to ad spend, is that YouTube traffic is continuous.
Post something on LinkedIn & Twitter and it's off the feed within 48 hours.
Positioning something on Youtube, however, lets you take advantage of what's called evergreen content - content that's positioned to never die out.
Growth Marketing Strategy #2 - TikTok Content Marketing
TikTok is among the most generous platforms out there when it comes to giving new creators a worthwhile number of views & overall engagement.
Just about anyone can roll up on TikTok with a fresh account and become the next influencer if they dedicate the right amount of time & consistency necessary.
But there's a catch.
They need to understand & adhere to some best practices.
This applies EVEN MORE to companies looking to generate both revenue & targeted traffic from TikTok.
The issue with most companies & entrepreneurs getting on TikTok today is that THEY THINK they can just post content on anything and have it pop off.
But that's not the case.
Here's how you can do it right:
Successful "TikTok-ers" follow several best practices when it comes to creating content that's positioned for at least some form of virality.
Firstly, they understand the limitations of the TikTok algorithm.
They know it's good, but they also know that it'll be unable to connect SUPER SPECIFIC content with a large audience.
An example of content that TikTok can easily connect to an audience is content like:
- How to make money as a teenager.
- How to file your taxes.
- How to cook risotto.
- How to find a partner.
The issue is though that most people attempting to become TikTok Content Marketers create content that's way too niched, giving the algorithm a very hard time when it comes down to pairing your content with an audience that may be interested in what you have to show.
An example of hyper-niched content:
- How to generate leads for the accounting industry
In this example, TikTok must not only find individuals that are interested in lead generation, but also people interested in generating them in the accounting industry.
In addition to the above, most people also give up after pumping a few hyper-specific videos that:
- Are not subtitled.
- Have no hook within the first 3 seconds of the video to capture the attention of the viewer.
- Have no overlay content on top of the core video to make the video more appealing.
- Have no background music.
- Do not educate, amuse, or intrigue the audience.
So the real question is, why should TikTok give you views, engagement & traffic when you can't even get the basics right?
It shouldn't.
It should instead prioritize the content creators that understand & follow the best practices of the platform.
Growth Marketing Strategy #3 - Community Building
Communities are some of the biggest Growth Marketing hacks any company can employ regardless of the year they're in.
Communities can be built around entertainment or information and can be hosted on a variety of platforms.
The thing with online communities though is that they require time & manpower.
But once you get it right, you have a huge asset in your growth marketing arsenal.
Here's how I did it:
I built my own communities using both WhatsApp & Facebook Groups as hosting platforms.
The process was simple.
I identified where my target market lies and launched numerous outreaches across both LinkedIn & Reddit inviting fellow marketers & growth hackers into our growth hacking communities.
The invitation was very simple, I simply invited them to a free community where they can network & learn FOR FREE from marketers & entrepreneurs from a wide array of industries.
Many joined, and many didn't.
Once I hit a good number of initial people in the community, I not only started engaging with them daily, but I also started creating relevant content for them related to the topic of the community (in this case Growth Hacking).
This helped develop somewhat of a business flywheel, where I:
Created a community.
Created content for the community to help keep it engaged & lively.
Added a join our community call to action on all the content I produced for the community.
Had more people join the community from platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn & TikTok.
More content.
More community.
And so on.
Having your own community means that you have your own target market within our own distribution channel which you can market to at any time whatsoever without having to spend any additional ad spend whatsoever.
Additionally, it also gives your prospects the ability to go through a successful buyer journey and engage with your brand/offer FREELY until they're ready to buy or commit to you.
What I mean by this is that not everybody is ready to buy from you today.
Some people are just interested in learning about what you're offering.
If you have a community, they can join it, spend a few days interacting both with your brand and other community members, increase their level of trust to you/your brand.
If they successfully go through this buyer journey whilst being in your community there's no doubt whatsoever that you'll be in their top 1% of preferred vendors as they ALREADY trust you and know you.
BUILD A COMMUNITY.
Or at least try to.
Growth Marketing Strategy #4 - TikTok Ads
TikTok has been growing at an alarming rate over the past couple of years. As a matter of fact, it's been growing so alarmingly fast that majors companies like Instagram and Youtube felt threatened to the extent that they even had to launch their own variation of a short-form content feed.
This led to Instagram & Facebook launching Reels, and Youtube launching what's known as Youtube Shorts.
Direct copycat variations of TikTok.
Everybody knows this, but what most companies seem to be forgetting is the TikTok Ad Platform.
Here's how I took advantage of it:
One of the latest tests that I'd run for both the agency & the Growth Hacking Bootcamp is to test whether I'd be able to generate leads at a cost-effective rate within the Solar Installation industry at a cost-effective rate.
TikTok was one of the platforms that I wanted to test running ads for quite a while, so I thought why not test out this offer on the TikTok audience?
And so I did.
I created a quick script for the TikTok Ad itself.
I made sure that my script included a hook & a pitch to follow it.
I went on Fiverr to hire a paid spokesperson specifically for TikTok Ads.
I sent them the script.
They sent me over the raw video of them saying exactly what I want them to say.
I opened up the raw video in Premiere Pro, subtitled it, and added some relevant b-roll content and some dynamic background music from Artlist.’
And voila, that was my TikTok Ad.
I then opened up the TikTok Ad Manager, uploaded my ad, connected LeadsBridge to my ad account (the software that would push the leads from TikTok to a Google Sheet via API), and set the ad to run on a budget of €30 a day for a few days targeting men & women within the UK aged between 35 to 55.
The result?
7 leads of people interested in installing solar within their households for a total spend of 250.
Total CPL of €35.
TikTok is definitely an ad platform worth checking out.
Growth Marketing Strategy #5 - Cold Email Automated Outreaches
Automated Cold Email is one of the most cost-effective B2B & B2C marketing strategies out there.
And yes, it's applicable to the B2C sector too when you're aim is to onboard influencers & celebrities that are going to promote your product to their audience.
The issue though with most attempted automated cold email outreaches is that the setup is all wrong.
This results in most emails being TOTALLY ignored as they just hit the spam box.
Resulting in a waste of money, time & domain deliverability.
What the experts consider:
Cold Email is an art.
And every art has its way.
A successful cold email strategy is much more than just connecting your primary inbox to some automation tool and hoping for the best.
Instead, a successful automated cold email outreach also takes the following elements into account:
- Satellite Domains
- Records
- Provider
- Automation Tool
- Warming Tool
- Rotation Cycle
- List Copy
Satellite domains: are essentially the domains you're going to be emailing from. And no, you never do cold email outreaches from your main domain as this will result in you eventually hitting spam, being blacklisted, and possibly even having your website delisted.
Examples of satellite domains include the following:
Say you own magicagency(.)com and that's your main domain.
A collection of relevant satellite domains would include:
magicagency(.)co
magicagency(.)biz
magicagencyteam(.)com
etc.
The point is that you want to set up relevant domains that will take the heat for your cold email outreach.
You'll warm the up, and those will be the key domains that you end up sending emails from, whilst savouring your main domain's deliverability for warm email marketing targeting users that have actually opted into your communications.
Records: Once you purchase your satellite domains, you'll want to set up the necessary DKIM, SPF & DMARC records necessary for utmost deliverability.
These records let ISPs know that your domains are set up correctly and are immune to malicious practices like spoofing and other forms of spamming.
Provider: Who will host your inboxes & how will this decision affect your cold email outreach?
Will you let Gsuite host the entire campaign and suffer poor deliverability when it comes to sending to Outlook inboxes?
Will you host on Outlook and suffer poor deliverability when it comes down to sending to Gmails & other Gsuite domains?
It's a serious decision that needs to be made.
Automation Tool: Once you've decided on the above elements, you've also got to make a decision on which automation tool you'll be using for the cold email outreach.
Will you be using Instantly?
Lemlist?
Snov.io?
This decision will have an effect on your cost per email sent & your overall deliverability as no two tools are made the same.
Warming Tool: Deliverability is key when it comes down to Cold Email Outreaches.
And it's a pretty simple concept - it's your email's overall ability to land in your prospect's inbox.
The question is, how do you improve deliverability?
The answer is simple.
Warming Tools.
Warming tools essentially fake positive email interactions over a given period of time with a wide array of inboxes from numerous providers.
This tricks the system into thinking that you should be granted a much higher deliverability than you already are allowed.
Rotation Cycle: It's a fact that when you expose any domain to any cold email outreach you'll see its deliverability drop over time.
So what do you do once a domain starts hitting spam consistently?
Do you forget about it?
No, you plug back it back into warming.
Hence, a rotation cycle.
A pre-planned inter-changeable cycle that says that an X Group of domains will be outreaching for a specified number of days whilst a Y Group of domains will be in warming for a specified number of days.
These are some of the key elements experts take into account when launching successful automated mass cold email outreach domains.
For more on it make sure to check out our updated Cold Email module in our Growth Hacking Course, the Growth Hacking Bootcamp.
Growth Marketing Strategy #6 - Reddit Content Marketing
Reddit is the internet's biggest collection of online forums for EVERYTHING!
They've got subreddits for just about ANY interest out there.
Reddit has r/accounting for accountants looking to discuss anything accounting related.
They've got r/vegan for vegans & aspiring vegans to discuss anything related to the topic of veganism.
And much more!
So the question is, why not use this to your benefit?
Here's how I did it:
As part of the community-building campaign of our Growth Hackers Inc. groups on WhatsApp, Telegram & WhatsApp, I first had to identify all relevant subreddits related to what we're offering.
After some research I realized that my most relevant subreddits were the following:
r/marketing r/growthhacking r/digitalmarketing r/entrepreneurialridealong
Next up, I had to find out what type of content the aforementioned subreddits liked.
To do this, I simply researched the content that received the most upvotes within the past year.
Once I realized what clicked within my targeted subreddits, my mission became very simple.
I had to create content alike to the content I'd researched previously and make sure I adhere to the best practises of every individual subreddit.
And so I did.
Here are some results:
One post with 196 upvotes, 36 comments & a Reddit award.
Another with 53 upvotes, tons of reach & another award.
And so on.
Lastly, here's an extra Growth Marketing Strategy you should never forget…
Never stop testing!
Constant testing is the backbone of any successful growth marketing strategy.
Just make sure that your analytics are set up right so that you can analyze both your successes & failures equally and it won't be long till you discover a strategy with hockey stick growth potential that's worth doubling down on.
Hope you enjoyed this article.