GROWTH CHANNELS

It feels really good to have taken you on this learning journey with me for the past three weeks. The Growth Marketing mini degree course at CXL institute has been intense. The course content is solidifying my knowledge in Growth Marketing and I can’t wait to apply all of it to impact the growth of the company that will hire me.

In this article, I’m going to be talking about Growth Channels. You can catch up on the topic I shared last week (User-centric marketing) here.

At the end of this article, you will have an understanding of the various growth channels available, how you can identify them in your business, and how you can amplify your growth through those channels.

Let’s begin.

There are different growth channels available out there and it is important that you identify the one that works best for you and put effort into amplifying it.

Some of the growth channels are listed below:

• Search Engine Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media Marketing.
• Content Marketing

How do you identify a growth channel?

This begins with taking a look at all of your channels and doing the following:

• Study the channels that your target audience uses

It is important that you study and understand the channels where your target audience is most active. This helps you ensure that you are talking to them in the right tone and the message is relatable. Growing on such a channel becomes easier.

• Identify the channels that are a clear mismatch for your business.

Your business doesn’t have to be present on all channels. Identify the channels that are irrelevant to your business and cut them off. For example, a B2B business doesn’t have to be on Pinterest when you should be spending your time on LinkedIn. Knowing the channels that are a clear mismatch allows you to focus your growth efforts on other channels.

• Avoid highly competitive channels.

Some channels have grown really big and have become highly competitive over time. Rather than spending a lot of money to be seen on these channels, you are better off exploring new channels that are less competitive.

How do you identify a failing channel?

To identify a failing channel, you need to take a look at your data, once you observe over time that a channel is not producing a return on your investment, know that it is time to cut your losses and move on.

Why I said over time is because it would be wrong to judge based on a single test or experiment.

Let’s talk about some of the growth channels listed at the beginning of the article.

1. Search Engine Optimization

In simple terms, Search Engine Optimization is what allows your website to rank high on the Search Engine Result Page. You want to be on the top list of results when a potential customer searches for a product or service you offer. There are various things that determine your website ranking on the search engine. Google looks at the following things before crawling your website:

• Page & Domain Authority — This is how well you have positioned your website for success and how your website compares to others in your industry.
• Content Schedule — This is where the importance of having a blog comes in, Google checks the frequency at which you publish new content on your website.
• The popularity of your website — This is a combination of your website traffic, your click-through rates, and the amount of time that visitors spend on your website.

In the course, Sophia Eng debunked some common myths about SEO

• You shouldn’t waste time on SEO — This is far from the truth, SEO is one growth channel that gives you a long term return on your investment if you get it right.
• Wanting to rank for a certain keyword — Keywords with high search volume are more difficult to rank for. You should be looking at long-tail keywords that do not necessarily have high search volume.
• SEO is dead — This is funny because SEO is alive and well. Search engines like Google and Bing are constantly changing their algorithms in a bid to give users the best experience, this means that SEO will continue to change and force businesses to adjust and optimize.

2. Search Engine Marketing (Pay Per Click)

This involves running promotions on the search engine. It is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic to your website.

There are two major types of PPC campaign

• Awareness campaign — This is the top of the funnel campaign. Here, you are creating awareness about your business to your target audience, letting them know that you provide the solution to a specific problem that they have.
• Lead generation campaign — This is a campaign used to gather information about leads and prospects that you can then begin to nurture down the funnel.

Some PPC channels you should know are;

• Google Adwords
• Bing
• Facebook

3. Social Media Marketing

Various social media platforms exist today and every business needs to find the most suitable channel for their type of business. Carrying out audience research will give you an idea of which social media platform your audience spends most of their time on.

When you figure out where they are, you need to be there with them and develop a coherent message. Figure out how you want to speak to your audience (brand voice) on these various channels.

As a business, there are some things you can test on social media that will help you get the most out of it.

• Test posting time
• Test the content you share
• Test CTAs (Call to action) and URL length
• Test your offer

4. Content Marketing

This is the center of all other channels that I’ve talked about. Whether you are doing SEO, PPC, or social media, they all involve content in one way or another.

It is said that companies that blog get 5X more traffic than their competitors.

Content marketing usually doesn’t give an immediate return on investment. It is a long term thing that enables you to become an influencer in your industry, help your audience to find you, and make them feel connected to you.

Conclusion

Do not be afraid to test out different growth channels for your business. Develop hypotheses, run experiments, analyze your results.

It takes time to determine whether a channel is successful or not. SEO could take up to six months to one year. A channel should also be given the chance to scale before it is termed successful.

I hope you learned a thing or two that you can apply in your job as a marketer or in your business if you are a business owner. Feel free to engage in the comment section.