GROWTH MARKETING MINIDEGREE / CXL — REVIEW 2

In the last blog post, I talked about growth vs traditional marketing, building a growth process and user centric marketing. In this blog post, we will explore growth channels in detail with the second part of CXL Growth Marketing Minidegree.

You can go to the CXL website from here.

Identifying and amplifying growth channels

At this point in our growth journey, we need to know the primary growth channels that can amplify business growth. We have 5 main channels: SEO, SEM (We can also call it PPC), Email marketing, Social and Display Ads, and finally, Content Marketing.

Now, the question comes, how to pick the first channel for the organization. First, take a look at all channels and observe which platform your audience is spending time on and what they are doing.

Identify the channels that are a mismatch for the company. Avoid being too competitive because it will not help the small organizations. The safe bet starts with SEO & if the company has a budget, then do social media marketing and test platforms(like Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and find which one is working for them.

To measure the results, choose channels with high ROI & high Ability to Scale, not with high ROI but Low ability to scale. For example, LinkedIn can give high ROI and have a great capacity to Scale. It is excellent for B2B companies. It is also necessary to find out failing channels by observing data. If the ROI is low, then don’t advertise just because everyone is doing it. Just trim the platform that is not meeting companies’ standards. For optimization, channels must be given enough chance or time to scale before deciding whether they are successful or not.

If a company is small, then observe what giants are doing. Finding the platform on which giants are not promoting this will help the small companies to leverage their work and grow faster. The conclusion of the above paragraphs is to study the audience, then choose the channels according to that & test those channels and finally measure the result.

• Keyword research and content gap analysis are 2 critical components of SEO. When used correctly, you can create a roadmap for both the design and execution of building your website and developing content. It’s always good to focus on long-tail keywords, which will most probably have lower search volume, so you can create more focused content that is engaging, educational, and evergreen.
• PPC and Social Ads can also be a good source for growth and an opportunity for quick wins sometimes. But this won’t happen unless you know exactly what your audience is looking for and your website is prepared and optimized for their visit.
• Email Marketing is also an excellent channel for us when it comes to engagement and retention.

Facebook Ads (the BELT method)

One of the very important advertising channels is Facebook Ads, and when you learn Facebook ads in any course, you’ll learn about Facebook Ads Manager, how to set up your first campaign, targeting options…etc. I wanted to dig deeper and get some philosophical ideas based on case-studies.

In his course, Curt Maly explained funnels and how to differentiate between the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel.

Facebook tells us to adopt a full-funnel strategy by using different campaign objectives and formats to preferably reach other personality profiles within an audience.

B.E.L.T. = Believe. Engage. Lead. Transact.

1. Believe: At this step, we’ll work on building brand awareness and authority. We want to help our audience discover and believe they have a need, then realize that our business can potentially fulfill that need for them.
2. Engage: This phase indoctrinates our audience to the problem, product, solutions, and services. Our aim here is to help them realize why our offer is best positioned to give them the solution they need for their pain point. We do this by edutainment (educating and entertaining them).
3. Lead: Okay, they admit it now, great! This phase will provide the audience with clear next steps to move forward. We are leading them to our solution by offering something of value in exchange for this information.
4. Transaction: Here is the stage where we get our audience to buy our product or service to satisfy their needs, relieve their pain points, and make them happy.

Believe

At this stage of the customer journey, our audience may or may not know that they have a problem. They may or may not know that we have a solution for that problem or that our product or service could even solve it. Here comes our job to help them begin to realize that there is a problem and it can be solved and their life can be better.

Example: I have a cooking studio, where you can master the basics of several national cuisines in a fun and interactive atmosphere. In this phase, I’d run a 2-minute video about tapas, targeting people interested in cooking, gastro, vegan lifestyle, etc.

Now, someone can click on our website, maybe spend 15 seconds, maybe 30 seconds, but have someone spend two minutes with our personality and brand for two cents, that’s great. So, if I have a dollar, I can get many people to watch my videos.

Engage

Our audience identified themselves as potential customers by engaging with our “Belief” ad campaign. Now the purpose of our engagement campaign is to nurture the relationship with the prospects. They’ve come to this stage of the customer journey to continue educating them on the problem and our solution, with the ultimate goal of establishing trust. We’re going to show them the right — not sales but engaging! — content at the right time to help them further in the decision-making process.

Example: Now that they’ve watched the video on Spanish tapas, I want them to see other content. E.g., healthy breakfast ideas, Greek salad recipes, Hungarian goulash, etc., in the form of videos, photos, or blog posts. Mid-funnel, they’re starting to see all these other campaigns. They’ve watched the top of the funnel for a penny; they’ve watched a second video mid-funnel for engagement for, let’s say, six cents. They could watch three or four other videos mid-funnel for another five or six cents. We’re not even up to 25 cents yet, and people have started to spend minutes with our brand.

Lead

Lead content should be product service-focused and help users engage with our brand to enter our sales funnel and buy from us. So in my example, my goal is to bring leads to our cooking studio.

Example: So, people have seen our top of funnel content, they’ve seen our engaging content, now what I’m doing is showing them images of the videos of the posts they’ve seen before. ‘Hey, if you want to find out more about one of the Mexican’s favorite dishes, click here.’ I can even use 5-star ratings previously given to my course, so I give my potential users social proof. As soon as they click on the sales page, an ad comes up and says, ‘Bring your cooking experience to the next level. Learn the secrets of salsa verde, guacamole, and enchilada, and even perfect the art of the michelada, Mexico’s famous beer cocktail.’ And, now we’re going to do it because they hit the sales page, they’re going to see testimonials and photos from previous sessions. We brought them to the consideration stage.

Transact

This stage serves up strong calls to action, specific offers. Our goal here is to ultimately get the audience to invest in our business. Make sure that retargeting is set up, so now we can run conversion ads, product catalog ads, DPA ads, and store visits if we have a location. Use different objectives, such as video view ads, image ads, story ads, website clicks, and website conversions. What kind of calls-to-action can we make to get our audience to pull the trigger for the different offers we’re running mid-funnel? They’re going to click on an ad that they’re ready to transact. For example, they are going to sign up and visit our Mexican cooking class to prepare a winning dinner for Cinco de Mayo.

See you next week with a new blog post containing details from the CXL growth marketing mini degree program.

Thanks,

Mert Kolay