Growth marketing is the driving force behind businesses that want to achieve rapid growth, and many of the actions behind growth marketing are automated using valuable tools.

Choosing the right Martech tools can help you optimize your marketing budget, focus your marketing activities, and increase your return on investment (ROI) for marketing initiatives. We’ll cover the best Martech tools to support your marketing efforts and drive sustainable growth at every stage of the funnel.

The Five Key Stages of Growth Marketing Where Martech Can Help

1. Data Analysis

The process of examining data in multiple formats is known as data analysis. Data is abundant nowadays, it’s available in various formats and sources, and it’s the foundation of growth marketing. Data analysis involves synthesizing diverse data sources, then cleaning and transforming all the data into a consistent form that can be explored and translated efficiently.

Before building your strategy, your first step is to dig into your data to see where your business stands before deciding where you want it to go. As a result, it’s easy to see why data analytics tools are essential in this step.

Research is about observing patterns and trends, formulating and demonstrating hypotheses, and making decisions. Therefore, finding the best Martech data analytics tools will provide essential information for your organization.

Tools like Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) and Amplitude offer unparalleled real-time data exploration and visualization capabilities.

Why Use Them?

These tools go beyond dashboards. They enable advanced segmentation, predictive modeling, and cross-channel attribution. They allow marketers to see a clear path from raw data to actionable insights, informing every aspect of the growth funnel.

2. Performance Analysis

Analyzing marketing performance metrics, or key performance indicators (KPIs), is a simple and effective process for identifying aspects of a product or service that need improvement or could be cut without compromising overall quality. These metrics benefit both marketing and non-marketing executives.

Growth marketers evaluate marketing effectiveness for several reasons: to identify which elements of the marketing mix require adjustments and to assess whether a brand’s products, services, or messaging align with customer and stakeholder needs. This involves analyzing performance rankings and identifying customer preferences, which can become even simpler with Martech tools and their actionable insights.

Performance analysis tools have evolved to provide holistic, AI-driven recommendations. Triple Whale, for instance, is transforming e-commerce marketing with its aggregated view of ad spend, revenue, and LTV. These platforms empower marketers to test, learn, and iterate faster than ever.

Key Benefits of Performance Analysis Tools

• AI Recommendations for Budget Allocation: Helps marketers optimize spending across channels for maximum ROI.
• Cross-Channel Performance Insights: Real-time, aggregated data for marketing effectiveness across multiple platforms.
• Integration with Major Platforms: Seamless connections with e-commerce and advertising platforms like Shopify and Meta for streamlined data tracking.
• Customizable Dashboards: Visualize key metrics tailored to specific business needs and goals.
• Enhanced Attribution Models: Measure the impact of various touchpoints on conversions, providing a clearer understanding of the customer journey.
• Scalable Reporting: Easily track and report performance at different levels, from granular campaign details to overall trends.
• Automated Alerts: Receive notifications for key changes in performance, enabling timely adjustments.

3. Social Listening 

If you don’t have a social listening tool, you’re missing out on some of the most valuable data available to help grow your business.

Social media listening technologies evaluate what consumers and potential customers say on social media, giving you thorough community feedback about your brand and your competition in real-time.

Social listening has matured into an indispensable component of brand strategy. Tools like Brandwatch and Sprinklr now offer advanced sentiment analysis powered by generative AI, identifying opportunities for engagement and competitive differentiation.

Why It Matters

With features like real-time alerts and predictive trend modeling, these tools enable brands to capitalize on viral moments, manage crises, and refine messaging with precision.

4. Understand Your Audience

Every company’s lifeblood is its customers. Both enormous corporations and small startups want to increase their consumer base. To do so, though, you must first understand who they are. That’s why it’s critical to identify your target market.

Your products and services, price, marketing keywords, advertising choices, and design are all influenced by your target audience data.

As personalization becomes the norm, tools for understanding your audience have adapted to offer more granular insights. Platforms like Mutiny allow marketers to create dynamic, personalized web experiences without writing code, tailoring messaging based on user behavior and firmographics.

Key Benefits of Understanding Your Audience

• Improved Targeting: Tailor messages and campaigns to specific audience segments for higher engagement and conversions.
• Better Product Fit: Create products and services that address audience needs and preferences.
• Efficient Spend: Focus marketing efforts on the most effective channels, saving time and resources.
• Enhanced Customer Experience: Personalize experiences to increase satisfaction and loyalty.
• Data-Driven Decisions: Use audience insights to refine strategies and optimize marketing efforts.
• Competitive Edge: Gain an advantage by understanding your audience better than competitors.

5. CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools help your company manage existing and potential customers, business contacts, and various customer interactions. These platforms enable businesses to stay in touch with customers, streamline procedures, and increase profits in a scalable manner.

CRM systems are evolving into comprehensive customer experience platforms. HubSpot CRM and Salesforce now include robust AI modules to predict churn, recommend upsells, and automate interactions across the customer lifecycle.

What’s New?

These CRMs not only track customer interactions but give you the tools to actively enhance them through predictive analytics, allowing businesses to consistently exceed customer expectations.

8 Martech Tools to Add to Your Tech Stack

1. Looker Studio

Looker Studio has rapidly become a go-to tool for marketers who want to harness the power of data without needing deep technical expertise. By seamlessly integrating with databases like BigQuery and other emerging platforms like Snowflake, Looker Studio enables marketers to visualize and analyze data in a way that directly impacts campaign strategies.

Key Features:

• Customizable Dashboards: Tailor every reporting aspect to suit your unique needs. Looker’s visual flexibility allows for comprehensive data presentation, whether you want to see real-time data or aggregated historical trends.
• AI-Assisted Recommendations: Looker uses machine learning to suggest optimizations, helping marketers tweak strategies based on data insights.
• Integration with Snowflake: Looker’s smooth integration with Snowflake, a leading data cloud platform, enhances your data storage and retrieval processes.

2. Amplitude

Amplitude specializes in providing deep behavioral analytics that allow marketers to track user interactions throughout the entire customer journey, from the first click to conversion. It helps marketers make data-driven decisions by focusing on engagement metrics, improving user retention, and optimizing the customer experience.

Key Features:

• AI-Driven Cohort Analysis: Leverage machine learning to analyze different groups of users based on behavior, helping you tailor marketing efforts to specific segments.
• Product Analytics for Holistic Insights: Combine product data with user behavior to understand what drives conversions and where to optimize.
• Predictive Features: Amplitude predicts user behavior, helping marketers anticipate needs and plan strategies proactively.

3. Mutiny

Mutiny is a leader in web personalization, offering marketers a no-code platform to create dynamic, personalized web experiences at scale. Its real-time content personalization empowers teams to deliver relevant messages to visitors, increasing engagement and conversions.

Key Features:

• Real-Time Content Personalization: Automatically deliver personalized content to site visitors based on browsing history and interactions.
• Detailed Campaign Analytics: Get detailed insights into how personalized campaigns perform, and you can A/B test different content strategies.
• Easy Integration: Mutiny integrates with your existing Martech stack, allowing for a streamlined workflow across different tools.

4. Brandwatch

Brandwatch is one of the most advanced tools for social listening. Its generative AI enhances its ability to predict trends, monitor brand sentiment, and analyze social media performance. This makes it perfect for marketers looking to stay ahead of competitors by understanding what audiences say in real time.

Key Features:

• Predictive Trend Analysis: Brandwatch uses AI to predict emerging trends, helping marketers stay proactive rather than reactive.
• Sentiment-Based Audience Segmentation: Understand how your audience feels about your brand, products, or campaigns through sentiment analysis, allowing for tailored messaging.
• Actionable Content Strategy Recommendations: Based on real-time feedback, Brandwatch provides actionable recommendations to optimize content strategy for better engagement.

5. Salesforce with Einstein AI

Salesforce’s Einstein AI module takes CRM to the next level by integrating machine learning to provide smarter decision-making, predictive analytics, and automation capabilities. It’s a game-changer for marketers aiming to improve customer retention and streamline follow-up processes.

Key Features:

• Predictive Analytics for Customer Retention: Einstein AI predicts which customers are a churn risk and suggests actions to retain them.
• Automated Follow-Ups Based on Customer Behavior: Automate follow-up emails and campaigns tailored to user behavior, ensuring the right message is delivered at the right time.
• Deep Integrations Across Teams: With Einstein AI, marketing, sales, and service teams can work together, creating a unified approach to customer interactions.

6. Triple Whale

Triple Whale transforms e-commerce marketing by aggregating essential metrics like ad spend, revenue, and customer lifetime value (LTV) into a single, actionable dashboard. This AI-driven platform empowers marketers to make data-informed decisions, optimize campaigns, and drive profitability faster.

Key Features:

• Centralized Performance Metrics: Combine ad spend, revenue, and LTV data for a clear, unified view of your e-commerce performance.
• AI-Driven Insights for Optimization: Receive actionable recommendations for budget allocations powered by AI to refine campaigns and maximize return on ad spend (ROAS).
• Rapid Testing and Iteration: Accelerate decision-making with insights into cross-channel performance metrics to enable faster campaign testing, learning, and iteration, keeping your strategy agile and effective.
• Integration with major platforms like Shopify and Meta.

7. Sprinklr

Sprinklr is a leading platform designed to streamline and optimize social media management, offering powerful tools for performance analysis across multiple channels. It integrates social media listening, engagement, content creation, and analytics into a unified system, enabling teams to deliver consistent, data-driven marketing strategies.

Enterprises widely use Sprinklr to manage social media at scale, providing valuable insights into customer sentiment, brand health, and competitive positioning. The platform’s ability to analyze data across paid, owned, and earned media makes it an essential tool for modern marketing teams seeking to understand and enhance their social media performance.

Key Features:

• Unified Social Media Management: Manage all channels from a single platform, improving efficiency and coordination.
• Cross-Platform Insights: Access to detailed analytics across paid, owned, and earned media, enabling comprehensive campaign evaluation.
• Advanced Social Listening: Monitor brand sentiment, customer feedback, and competitor activities in real-time across various social channels.
• Comprehensive Reporting: Customizable reports with KPIs, social metrics, and engagement insights to track campaign success and optimize strategies.
• AI-Powered Insights: Sprinklr’s AI capabilities detect trends and opportunities, helping marketers optimize strategies with data-backed recommendations.
• Collaboration Tools: Facilitate team collaboration with shared workflows and communication features to ensure alignment across marketing, customer service, and sales departments.

8. HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is a widely used platform that helps businesses manage and nurture customer relationships, track sales pipelines, and improve marketing efforts. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools to automate tasks, personalize communications, and gain insights into customer behavior—all in one platform. HubSpot’s user-friendly interface and robust features make it a popular choice for businesses of all sizes looking to improve customer engagement and streamline operations.

Key Features:

• Easy-to-Use Interface: HubSpot’s intuitive design makes it easy for teams to use the platform without a steep learning curve.
• Customizable Dashboards: Users can create tailored dashboards to track key metrics and performance indicators that matter most to their business.
• Automated Marketing & Sales: Automate emails and workflows and lead nurturing campaigns to save time and improve efficiency.
• Comprehensive Contact Management: Manage contacts, track interactions, and segment customers based on behavior and demographics for better targeting.
• Powerful Integrations: HubSpot integrates with various third-party apps, including email, social media, and marketing platforms like Salesforce, Shopify, and WordPress.
• Robust Reporting Tools: Gain actionable insights through detailed reporting and analytics, helping you measure the effectiveness of campaigns and sales strategies.

The Future of Growth Marketing

Growth marketing will continue to be defined by adaptability, precision, and the ability to leverage technology for exponential results. Martech tools will no longer be a luxury but a necessity, offering the insights and automation needed to thrive in a competitive digital world.

By integrating these tools into your growth marketing strategy, you position your business to compete and lead. Remember: the right Martech stack isn’t just about the tools you choose — it’s about how you use them to build meaningful, data-driven connections with your audience.

The post 8 Martech Tools & Strategies to Power Growth Marketing in 2025 appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Why is Brand Loyalty Important?

If your audience doesn’t come to mind when thinking about brand loyalty, then you’re not taking advantage of its true meaning. Brand loyalty depends on the relationship you have with your audience and what you mean to them as a brand – those are the things that make them want to buy from again and again. 

With a proper relationship with your audience, your brand will thrive against your competitors that are fighting for your target audience’s attention. Here are 5 ways brand loyalty will make you stand out from the crowd.

1. Word of Mouth

Being a brand that’s talked about is one thing, but having your brand spread like wildfire amongst the mouths of your loyal customers is another. Your loyal customers become organic brand ambassadors for your brand. As they share their positive experiences with your brand, those they tell will head straight to you, which will drive organic growth. Bonus points if they’re willing to talk about you online. This not only makes what you do as a brand postable but it’ll also drive engagement to your platforms and boost visibility.

2. Competitive Advantage Against Others

Doing brand loyalty the right way means within your specific niche, your customers are going to stick with you. Competitors may try to target your customers, but if you’ve cultivated the right sort of relationship, it’ll be difficult to sway your customers away from your brand. Even if they’re offered discount prices, your customers are more likely to stick to what they know works for them.

3. Customer Lifetime Value

Over time, your loyal customers will spend the most on the products/services they love from you. From this, not only will your customer lifetime value increase but your brand will also remain steady during economic challenges because you can rely on your loyal customers to continue purchasing from your brand. Your customers hold great value in supporting your brand through different stages of growth.

4. Feedback = Improvement

Having a strong and loyal customer base doesn’t only contribute to how well your business does. As your customers care and shop from your brand, they’re more likely to take time out of their day to provide feedback on products/services that work or don’t work for them.

Providing feedback means they want to see improvement from a brand they enjoy and want to continue having a reason to shop with you. Customer feedback is important to consider when moving forward with new products/services. When a customer feels heard or recognizes something they had an issue with was fixed, it gives them more of a reason to trust your brand and stay.

How to Achieve Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty isn’t easily achievable. Unless your brand is willing to take risks and be open minded, your current and potential customers won’t do the same with you. Here are 5 tips to gain trust from your audience.

1. Create Unique Experiences

Regardless of whether your brand is sold online or in stores, there are so many ways to bring your experience to life with your customers. For example: pop-ups. Brands like Rhode and REFY have perfected their strategy of bringing their brand to their customers for them to try in person.

Rhode isn’t sold anywhere in store, so by using pop-ups, they bring customer’s purchasing power to life with a fun and interactive experience. During a few of the Rhode pop-ups, they’ve brought out a food truck for people in line to try Hailey Bieber’s Strawberry Glaze ice cream. Hailey Bieber herself even showed up.

We’ve started to see many brands doing pop-ups, but the ones that are successful are actively thinking about their customers, giving them a time that they were happy they didn’t miss. Whether it’s sales, freebies, limited time products, or the space itself, it gives your audience something to post and look forward to.

2. Utilize Cultural Influence

Relevancy is key when trying to talk to your audience. Relating your brand to big cultural moments shows that you’re on the radar of what your customers know and are currently talking about. Not only will they trust your brand more, but this also gives them the opportunity to talk about you for the things you’ve done.

If we look at the brand Calm, a mental fitness app that creates meditation products, they bought 30 seconds of ad time during the election to give 30 seconds of silence. This reflected who they were as a brand and what their intentions were – to show up for the people. 

The result: everyone was a fan. Calm took a risk in making an ad during the presidential election, a risky subject, and made it as neutral as possible while making it about them. All in all, Calm was the perfect example of taking moments and making it yours while still thinking about who their audience is.

3. Practice Social Listening

Going back to the topic of customer feedback, brands can’t effectively take criticism and apply it to themselves without social listening. Giving their audience a chance to voice their concerns or praises means actively listening to what they have to say.

Whether it’s reading the comments section of your content across platforms, catching up on customer support emails, or watching content people make about your brand, these are ways to understand how people perceive your brand. Plus, it gives your brand a chance to fix what’s wrong to appeal to even more potential customers.

Cancel culture is a strong movement people online choose to participate in when there’s a lot of negative talk about a brand. The Korean beauty brand Tir Tir was on the verge of being canceled when they sent PR packages to influencers to try their foundations that came with an extended shade range. The problem was, their extended shade range did not match the skin tone of many of the black beauty creators they sent their products to. Many customers of Tir Tir were outraged with the lack of range and their false promises.

Digesting many pieces of feedback, Tir Tir went back to the lab and produced an updated range with more shades only a few weeks later to show that they care about making inclusive products for everyone. Tir Tir is a prime example of doing right by their customers, giving them what they want once they ask for it and, as a result, their customers continue to stay loyal.

4. Community Creation

Building a community with the people who love your brand strengthens your brand loyalty, trust, and recognition. It not only makes your audience feel heard but it also lets them feel like they’re a part of the brand. A brand’s identity is what strengthens the core of that community, and everyone takes part in loving and appreciating who they are. 

Looking at REFY, Co-founder Jess Hunt is all about wanting her audience to be a part of what her brand has to offer. In other words, influencer trips are out, community trips are in. Through REFY’s Instagram group chat, Jess Hunt invited some of the closest community members of REFY to an exclusive retreat, a testimony to their commitment of connection and authenticity. This retreat was nothing but a real life experience of what the brand exemplifies from their aspirational values to branded style.

Jess Hunt acknowledges that her community members are her influencers, because they’re the ones who show up for the brand and tell others about them. This also ties back to a pop-up they had where they let their customers test out their new concealer product before it was released to the public.

As someone who went to this pop-up, I can speak to how this event was meant for community members to personally have people from the brand find their shade and take professional headshots with the concealer on. The purpose this served was to feature them as models for each concealer shade on their website. REFY makes their community feel almost like family.

5. Storytelling > Selling

If you didn’t know, people nowadays love storytelling. When promoting new products or services, it’s not just about selling anymore. People want to see true connections from the brand employees to the product itself. Yes, it’s important to know who the product serves and what problem it solves. However, it’s the motive and message behind it that sells the product.

EGC or employee-generated content is on the rise and now is the best time to utilize this strategy. Why hire models and spokespeople to be in a campaign when you can use your employees, the people who are the brains behind your brand, to advocate for who you really are? 

Employees of your brand are the most genuine when it comes to showing up because they know basically everything about what you have to offer. Making testimonials, participating in trends, or shooting behind the scenes content means more to your audience than you think.

Storytelling also means making connections to the problem you’re trying to solve through your product versus acknowledging it and making claims your product can fix it. Lili Reinhart’s new skin care line Personal Day is doing what other celebrity skincare brands aren’t doing. She acknowledges the impacts acne has on mental health and uses her relationship with acne to sell the product instead of her celebrity status. Not only can her brand feel trusted, but her community can feel safe and heard with her brand knowing she advocates for those who’ve struggled like her.

Key Takeaways

• Be as memorable as possible. Compared to your competitors, what are you doing for your customers that has them talking about you to family and friends?
• Taking risks and being open-minded helps customers realize how far you’re willing to go for yourself and for them.
• Hearing is not the same as listening. Taking accountability when needed is the only way to go up.
• Influencers are out, communities are in. The best brand ambassadors you can get are from the people who shop with you the most.
• Telling a story versus selling a story are two different things. Sure, you can solve a common problem but what does that problem really mean to you?

The post Why Brand Loyalty is Foundational to Growth + 5 Tips to Achieve It appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Picture this: towering billboards, vibrant transit ads, street furniture, and wallscapes that command attention amidst the urban landscape. Out-of-home marketing is the oldest and most resilient form of communicating with commercial interests. Dating as far back as 3000 BC in Thebes, Egypt, the use of papyrus business posters was discovered with ad copy still intact. One fabric factory boasted they’re “…where the best cloth is woven to your desires.”

Or in China’s Song dynasty, around 1,000 AD, a needle poster read “We buy high-quality steel rods and make fine quality needles that are ready for use at home in no time.” Isn’t it kind of eerie how, even when translated, this copy holds up to today’s standards?

Vendors in Italy, Rome, and Greece would carve or paint ads onto boulders and buildings in areas with high foot traffic. Here’s one of a gladiator giving a thumbs up in the direction of a path that leads to an amphitheater used for combat.

So… How do you master OOH marketing? Where do you start? Let’s start with the needed context.

1. What is OOH marketing?
2. What are examples of OOH marketing?
3. What is an example of OOH branding?
4. What’s an example of digital OOH?
5. What are some best practices for OOH marketing in 2024?
6. How do you measure OOH marketing?

What is OOH Marketing?

OOH, or Out-of-Home marketing, is the art of capturing consumer attention when they’re on the move. Think of it as branded graffiti decorating the city walls of consumer consciousness, always there, always making a statement. If you’re out and about, and you see an advertisement that isn’t on a personal device, that’s most likely out-of-home advertising.

The streets reward vigor. A one-person team with cardboard signs, a staple gun, and telephone poles mapped out in their head is no less a pristine example of OOH advertising than a team of 10 with a $1M budget.

In terms of revenues, the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) estimated that US streets, subways, and more generated $1.96B in 2023 — just over a 1% increase year over year. There are around 2,100 out-of-home marketing operators in the US, with an average of $9.3M in annual revenues.

Much of that advertising is being done in the form of billboards, of which there are more than 350,000 in the USA. Billboards aren’t the only form of out-of-home marketing, though.

What Are Examples of OOH Marketing?

Out-of-home advertising examples are extremely diverse and can include:

What Is an Example of OOH Branding?

Take a moment. Think of a billboard campaign you remember from a long time ago.

For many readers, one of those billboard campaigns is from Chick-Fil-A.

Chances are, Chick-Fil-A’s billboard ads were seen as a huge risk by some of the team members that created that lasting memory for some of us. Back in 1995, getting the cows up there and anchoring them might very well have cost more than the billboard itself, but we know it was the right decision because those cows have lived well into 2024 encouraging us to do things like “eat mor chicken.”

Even at a great distance, all you really need is to see a bovinated rectangle to know Chick-Fil-A isn’t too far. The consistency and duration of Chick-Fil-A’s billboard campaign is their biggest testament to success at OOH branding. That they’ve achieved brand awareness and sales with cow-themed visuals is also something not to be ignored.

What’s an Example of Digital OOH?

Times Square is one of the most iconic landscapes known for its digital out-of-home advertisements. Their cost? About double – compared to their static counterparts. Digital billboards in Times Square cost between $10,000 – $22,000 per month vs. regular billboards, which hover around $3,000 – $15,000. Digital OOH advertisements are more expensive in general because of a good handful of benefits.

Digital OOH benefits:

• Digital out-of-home ads are easier to buy because ad sales can be automated. This method of buying digital OOH ads is referred to as Programmatic DOOH and saves advertisers lots of time because of how efficient it is compared to manual buying.
• DOOH ads have digital screens with vibrant backlighting that’s more prominent than traditional lamps on printed canvas.
• Animations and dynamic content capture more attention than static images.
• Privacy concerns that plague traditional digital marketing channels vanish because no personal devices are required.
• Real-time data can be plugged directly into the creative, like when Benadryl shared local pollen counts to drive antihistamine sales in the UK.

What Are Some Best Practices for OOH Marketing in 2024?

1. Speak With Brevity

You don’t have a lot of time to communicate with your target audience. When someone’s looking at an OOH advertisement, they’re very often moving. Don’t give them something that requires them to slow down.

2. Leverage Past Learnings

Typically, organizations that have a budget for billboards also have digital ad budgets. Ad platforms like Meta offer a wonderful testing ground for different creatives and messaging. Users on Meta and other social platforms will go so far as to actually tell you what they think of your ads, even if you don’t ask them.

By testing different creatives and messaging before rolling out an OOH campaign, you can use assets already known to have a proven built-in audience. You don’t want to roll the dice when you put OOH ad units up, and it’s great when you can prove you aren’t rolling the dice with something tangible, like metrics from previous ads.

3. Be Persuasive and Bold

You need your most effective comms here. Turn the volume up as loud as you possibly can without jeopardizing branding or trust. This isn’t the place to say, “Sign up today.” Many people have seen this phrase more than 5,000 times in their lifetime. Hit them with verbiage that forces them to read the end of the phrase or sentence.

4. Factor Audience Distance in Your Creative

The distance you are from your screen right now is much closer than the average distance between your future OOH audience and your copy. I know what you might be thinking; “But billboards are 48 feet wide … so it’s okay if they’re far. It should all still translate, right?” No, fellow marketer! Make your OOH text a little bigger than your typical (digital) creative assets.

5. Physically Visit Your OOH Ad Locations and Research Them Before Purchasing the Ad Unit

Playing on the environment and adding something innovative to the ad that ties into the surrounding area isn’t the only benefit. There are also (rarely) viewability issues with locations that you just can’t know until you get there.

Some examples of viewability blockers include:

• Rain: It’s best not to purchase OOH advertising units that rely on foot traffic during the rainiest month in any particular city.
• Foliage: Your OOH ad unit could be partially blocked by foliage that you can’t see in pictures that are used to sell the ad.
• Graffiti: Enough spray paint can invalidate an ad unit. If you’re purchasing wall posters in LA (not to name anyone in particular), walk down the street and do a quick spray paint check on what’s already live.
• Broken Pixels: It happens. Giant vertical or horizontal lines and squares of off-color (or even totally dark) pixels can splotch your DOOH ads. Sometimes, it’s only one or two pixels, but you can also have 15% of the board out of service while clients unknowingly continue to pay full price.

6. Being Clever Can Work

Cleverness is a common theme among those who populate first for “best outdoor ads of all time.” Providing something clever speaks to the soul and can be a true breath of fresh air for someone rightfully numbed by your typical “ACCIDENT? CALL NOW!” injury attorney billboard. It should be no surprise these billboards are strategically placed in high-traffic areas where accidents can occur.

What is surprising, though, is the frequency at which injury attorneys are featured smiling. Now, I get it. You gotta smile. I wouldn’t advise an injury attorney not to smile for their billboard. I mean, just look at Mr. Pritchard here. His smile is damned fantastic.

At the same time, 42,939 US drivers die annually behind the wheel. So, why do we expect injury attorneys to smile in their out-of-home marketing? It could be because, at this moment, our happy congregation and opportunity with the Pritchard injury firm supersedes anything that has happened in the past.

It’s this juxtaposition of smiling and the subject matter of escaping death that can feel so novel when you look at it through the lens of whether or not real-life examples of dystopia could exist in OOH marketing, but I digress. Let’s talk about measurement.

How Do You Measure OOH Marketing?

If you’ve been spoiled by the dashboards of digital platforms that tell you every iota of information you could ask for, prepare to take a small hit to attribution. The reporting aspect of OOH marketing is not as great as that of its digital counterparts.

• Unique Identifiers: QR Codes, Email Addresses, Hashtags, Phone numbers, Promo codes, and URLs specific to your out-of-home campaign can be tied directly back to your efforts. These are your best bets for attribution.
• Foot/Car Traffic: Estimates of foot traffic specific to your target area can be used to derive how many people could have seen your ads.
• Web Traffic / Social Mentions: A spike in website traffic that corresponds to the time and geo-location of the OOH campaign can be an acceptable indicator of impact.
• Surveys: A geo-specific before and after survey to measure lift in awareness is one way to test the effectiveness of an OOH campaign. Surveys can be done via Google, various third parties, targeted social media polls, or in person at places like malls.

There’s a near-infinite number of approaches one could take to the streets for their out-of-home ads. Nature rewards successful outcomes for those marketing efforts no differently than it does a primal animal marking its territory to claim the resources that come with it. 

The post Things that make you go “OOH:” The Ultimate Guide to Mastering OOH Marketing in 2024 appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

Here’s what we’ll be covering:

1. The transformative power of Gen AI
2. The rise of AEO
3. Search Generative Experience
4. Creators and platforms: Embracing human content and storytelling
5. Platforms vs. privacy and regulations: the new era of first-party data
6. The rise of CPAs vs. the need to find efficiency
7. Go big on brand experiences and mega partnerships
8. Digital ad growth is slowing down
9. Steady rise of AR/VR
10. The bumpy road ahead: challenging macro-economics, geopolitics, & regulations
11. The rise of the Fractional CMO model

1. The transformative power of Gen AI

One of the most transformative factors to reshape the marketing world in 2024 is the rise of what is commonly called “Gen AI” – the next generation of artificial intelligence. Gen AI represents a significant leap forward in AI technology, promising to revolutionize how marketing teams operate and engage with their target audiences.

Efficiency in content production

The first and most impactful aspect of Gen AI in marketing is its ability to enhance efficiency in content production across various communication modalities, including text, images, and video. Thanks to AI-generated content, marketing teams are poised to do more with less. This means faster content creation, reduced production costs, and the ability to allocate resources strategically.

As AI becomes increasingly embedded into copywriting and content production processes, it becomes increasingly important for marketers and writers to understand how and when to use AI to produce content.

Embedded Gen AI in core platforms

Another game-changing trend is the integration of Gen AI into core marketing platforms and channels. Gen AI is becoming an integral part of the marketing toolbox, from search engines and social media to customer relationship management (CRM) systems and analytics tools. Think of Google Ads, Facebook Ads, HubSpot, and more, incorporating AI to streamline decision-making, optimize ad targeting, and personalize user experiences.

Hyper-personalization

As Gen AI becomes deeply embedded in marketing workflows, hyper-personalization is taking center stage. With advanced algorithms and machine learning, brands can tailor their interactions with consumers on an unprecedented level. This results in more relevant, engaging, and context-aware marketing campaigns that resonate with individual preferences and needs.

For example, Gen AI can suggest products, content, and services that match an individual’s preferences, resulting in heightened user satisfaction and enhanced engagement.

Influx of AI content production

The influx of AI-generated content across various modalities also creates a heightened appreciation for high-quality, human-produced content. While AI can churn out content efficiently, it often lacks the unique point of view and emotional connection that human creators bring to the table. Therefore, marketing strategies are evolving to strike a balance between AI-generated content and content crafted by relatable, human creators.

In summary, the Gen AI factor is poised to revolutionize marketing in 2024. It offers a way for marketing teams to operate with greater efficiency, personalization, and creativity, all while leveraging the power of advanced artificial intelligence. The marketing landscape is evolving rapidly, and those who harness the capabilities of Gen AI will be at the forefront of industry innovation.

2. The rise of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

One of the emerging trends poised to reshape the marketing landscape in 2024 is the ascendancy of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). While Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has long been a cornerstone of online marketing strategies, the paradigm is shifting towards a new focus – optimizing for answer engines.

From search engine to answer engine

Traditionally, search engines like Google served as gatekeepers to information, delivering a list of relevant web pages in response to user queries. However, the advent of answer engines marks a fundamental shift. Rather than merely providing links to websites, these engines aim to answer user questions with concise, accurate information directly.

The rise of AEO

AEO involves tailoring your online content to provide clear, structured answers to user queries. It goes beyond the traditional keyword-centric approach of SEO. It focuses on creating content that is easily extracted and presented in answer boxes, featured snippets, and voice assistant responses.

The decline in search traffic

As AEO gains prominence, it is anticipated to lead to a significant decline in traditional search traffic. Websites that rely on educational and informational content may experience a decrease in the volume of organic search traffic as users increasingly obtain answers directly from answer engine results, bypassing the need to visit individual websites.

Want to stay ahead of the curve?

Explore the complete 2024 Marketing Trends Guide for a thorough examination of the dynamic marketing landscape. Download now to access 11 key insights, strategic approaches, and a comprehensive overview of the trends shaping the future of marketing.

The post 2024 Marketing Trends: Predictions, Strategies, & A Glimpse at What’s Next appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

While true that all strategies will have components of each of the 3 elements present in them by nature of modern best practices requiring a content strategy, a community, and ideally a product, in order to operate and grow a brand, it’s also true that one of the 3 tends to take priority over the others. This isn’t to say that a brand focusing on community has an insignificant product; quite the opposite, it’s likely that any robust community is forming around a robust product — though the community, in this case, is a lever to support the growth of the product.

Confused? It’s less complicated than it may sound. We’ve gone ahead and broken down a quick growth stack for each sequencing of product, community, and content in order to illustrate the interconnectivity of these growth levers. In doing so, we are able to offer simple infrastructures for businesses of any type to be able to refer to and apply to their own marketing stacks as they determine their pathways to growth. 

But first, let’s get a quick crash course in each of the individual approaches to better understand them individually before we look at how they play together. 

Community-led growth

Advocacy and social validation are at the core of growth in the modern marketplace of accountability and trust. For businesses looking to leverage these things to boost their business, there’s a certain level of grassroots effort that’s necessary. In the same way that politicians go around shaking hands and kissing proverbial babies, for community-led growth businesses have to be out on the streets of the internet, chatting with folks, interacting with other brands, and building relationships.

These relationships become the backbone of the growth of the business as the relationships are the foundation of advocacy – and by extension conversions. By engaging with communities, brands have direct insights into the pain points and motivations of their audience, which they can then apply to their business, which then encourages them to invite others to the community. The loop expands with the addition of new community members, who then provide new insights, and so the growth cycle continues – potentially exponentially, depending on the product or brand offering.

Product-led growth

Building growth as a mechanism of your product can be tricky, particularly in the early stages of development since you need users to build users – we’ll get to that in a bit. Ultimately, the goal for a growth strategy driven by your product is to lessen the friction between users trying your product and then immediately proving your value. 

While this is typically seen in the wild with promo codes and referral programs, newer models have become significantly savvier by focusing on giving product away, sometimes permanently, and building features behind paywalls. 

Content-led growth

Content is queen and organic discovery is, while competitive, a supreme approach to not only growth but advocacy. By understanding users, their interests, needs, and knowledge gaps, content strategies can be custom-built to serve users who are actively seeking out information about your brand offering, or even the brand itself, allowing first touch points to be made further down the funnel.

In our trust-based economy, building authority for the subject matter as it directly relates to your industry or product is paramount to success. By building your content strategy around those topics brands are able to position themselves in a way that quickly builds trust by becoming the voice of authority for their industry or vertical. 

The breakdowns

Now that we’ve covered the foundations of the three main growth strategies, we can help to frame them better as they stack with each other. While one of the three will act as the foundation of the overall strategy, the other two act as support mechanisms for purposes of lead generation, or otherwise moving users down the funnel.

Ultimately, the three in tandem work as the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel with the main component of the strategy acting as lead generation, the middle as a way to warm the lead, and then finally the bottom as the conversion mechanism. Thinking of these components in these terms allows a simple framework to not only build a strategy off of but to keep top of mind as the strategy is executed to ensure each part of the process is being leveraged properly.

Since we’ve already discussed the top-of-funnel mechanisms of each of these strategies, we’ll focus primarily on the middle and bottom-funnel. 

Community – content – product

Content – Middle-funnel

Content as a main support for building community is possibly the most common strategy in the modern marketing landscape. This isn’t surprising considering the two go hand-in-hand so organically and help to drive users to engage with brands, each other, and inevitably the product.

If we were to look at the funnel through the lens of the user journey, we can establish already that they’ve engaged in the community in some way, whether through social channels, dark-social channels, or brand advocates. Through these community interactions, they’ve grown to understand the brand, become familiar with the offering to a degree, and are otherwise primed for the next step in their journey. 

Through community engagement, if the next step of the journey is to drive users to your website or social channels, then content then becomes the supporting mechanism for those users to continue to nurture their progress through to conversion.

As opposed to the stacks where content is the lead mechanism for discovery, as a supporting mechanism the focus of the content for this model should focus primarily on answering questions, informing users of the benefits of the brand, and otherwise building upon the work that the community has already begun nurturing. 

The beauty of having content in a direct supporting role to the community is that not only can you leverage content directly from advocates in the form of UGC to use in your content strategy, immediately bridging the gap between the two, but also use the insights from the community itself to form your content strategy. By engaging with users, building relationships with creators, and supporting the community aspect of your initial strategy, you can make absolutely sure that the answers users are looking for, pain points they’re experiencing, and other forms of concerns and preferences are accounted for in your content to help drive them on through to…

Product – Bottom-Funnel

In the same way that we leveraged community to inform content, we’ll be doing the same with both content and community to help refine product and build conversion opportunities once users have reached the product stage of your growth strategy.

By prioritizing community and content, the same feedback, interactions, and insights can help to shape our conversion strategies at the product level. If our insights and social listening have told us that users find competitor products or services too expensive, or that they find it hard to commit to a new product without first testing it, then we can shape our product offering directly to this feedback in order to ensure that once users reach the product, our conversion journey is catered directly to them.

Similarly, we can close the loop on the process by using the same feedback and insights to optimize the product itself. While many see conversion as the end of the funnel, the reality is that the funnel will ideally continue with advocacy from users that we’ve converted. By taking user feedback, and directly implementing it into our product offering, we are likely to not only retain users but convert them into advocates, which feeds directly back to the community at the top of this particular funnel. 

Community – product – content

Product – Middle-funnel

Once again, we’re beginning with a community in place and using product to move users down-funnel to content as a mechanism for conversion. While this may seem like it’s a bit backward since, well, we already have users using the product — isn’t that enough? Not necessarily. 

As we witnessed with product closing the loop in the previous iteration of our strategy, the same will be true for this and all subsequent iterations. Product, in this case, is still being used to convert users, but also to help move them through to content to then feedback through to the community to start the cycle and nurture growth. 

For this particular orientation, we have a robust community in place that is sharing in the process of educating the users about our product and advocating for others to use it themselves. Naturally, this is an incredibly fertile ecosystem for reward systems to help not only encourage users from the community to advocate and drive new users to sign up, join, or buy, but also to say thank you for helping to build this wonderful thing we’re developing together.

Brands ranging from Lyft to Airbnb have leveraged this stack in order to achieve remarkable growth. While it does require a bit of up-front capital to execute since, well, you’ll be giving credit or cash to both the referrer and the referee, if being leveraged with a truly dedicated community the return can be fantastic.

Despite being a few years late to the party that Uber had started with quite the bang, Lyft arrived on the scene and was giving away free rides to not only users but their friends that they got to sign up. Not surprisingly, users were eager to see what the competition had to offer and was happy to share with their communities after seeing that the service was comparable, if not identical to Uber. 

Beyond just free product giveaways, gamification can be introduced to the process to then encourage…

Content – Bottom-funnel

You’ve built a robust community and have them converting and advocating for you through the robust reward program that you’ve built into your product. But how do you then get new users who may not be positioned to utilize your rewards program to partake in the community through content? 

While brands like Figma & Notion have the distinct advantage of having products that are specifically for creating things that can easily be shared as content, not every brand is so lucky. Thankfully, gamification is a technique that most brands can leverage in this type of growth stack in order to get users involved, and most importantly, create content. 

This serves two purposes. The first naturally is conversions. As we follow users on their journey from community, where they are educated on the product and given the referral code to bring them on through to product, gamifying the process makes the process sticky and converts users from freemium-bouncers to paid subscribers. Secondly, by sharing UGC with their own communities in order to flex their achievements through the gamification system, they then begin a new loop to help keep the growth cycle going — this time without referral bonuses. 

Content – community – product

Community – Middle-funnel

Content and community tend to form something of a chicken or the egg relationship in many instances for brands. This is particularly true in the age of content creators and their impact on community development as brands must not align themselves with niche communities in order to build trust. While this initially took the form of collaborating with external content creators in order to reach their immediate communities, brands are beginning to adopt and align themselves with internal creators to represent the brands themselves.

In the case of community as a direct support mechanism to a content-led strategy, the creators act as the discovery lever through any number of ways — organic search, social media discovery, etc. Upon discovery, the user will find themselves among a robust and supportive community of people who are not only welcoming but actively advocating for the brand as they’ve likely cycled through the loop themselves already. 

This user journey shines a light on the importance of engagement in regard to content with community as an extension — and why the two work so closely together in many cases. The community aspect of having comments, shares, and engagement for content acts directly as a tool for social validation and an opportunity for users discovering content to also move more quickly down-funnel by feeling as though they’re a part of something. 

If we were to look at two user journeys we’ll see how the same experience can have drastically different outcomes:

As we can witness in journey 2, community engagement as an extension of content can, and often is, a deciding factor in a user journey and moving beyond discovery. By socially validating a user’s journey towards conversion, the user themselves feels validated and is quickly moved on to the product leg of the journey. 

Product – Bottom-funnel

Product as a bottom-funnel conversion method for a community-led strategy can often take a bit of a different shape than the traditional referral code or affiliate-driven strategies we’ve previously discussed — though there are admittedly a number of similarities.

Ultimately, the goal for product-led conversions is to get users to, well, convert. But in this particular instance, we have a robust community that is working in tandem with our content-focused strategy; something we can use to our advantage.

While gatekeeping can often be a fairly discouraging emotion in marketing, in this instance it can be incredibly compelling. It may seem counterintuitive to not allow people to use your product or service or to limit those who have access to it when typically the goal for any new venture is to drive as many conversions as possible, but as the pies de resistance of this particular stack, it can be incredibly effective.

By locking the offering behind the community itself, particularly in an instance where the community is the secondary driver supporting the content discovery system, it creates an allure that is irresistible to users once they’ve been driven down the funnel. Allowing users to make the decision as to who gets in, and who doesn’t, not only creates a sense of ownership and empowerment within the community, but pride for the product offering or brand, and responsibility as an extension of advocacy. 

This was put beautifully displayed recently when Pinterest launched their new Shuffles feature which was, you guessed it, invite-only. Almost as immediately as it had been announced, communities across Pinterest, Reddit, Instagram, and all forms of other social media were buzzing with people clamoring over invite codes. And, just like in the early days of Gmail, as soon as someone got their hands on an invite they were just as eager to use it as they were to brag to their friends and toss a pittance to their friends. 

Closing the loop once again, by turning new users into advocates, there creates a sense of duty for those who finally get that highly sought-after invite to return to the top-of-funnel to the content that brought them into the loop to begin with and contribute themselves by engaging.

Content – product – community

Product – Middle-funnel

Product as a support for content can be tricky, as it faces the difficulties of not having the previously mentioned benefit of having the social validation support that the community lends to the process. That’s not to say that it’s an impossibility, or that there aren’t instances where it’s the best stack to go with — it’s just different.

The instances where this particular stack does tend to thrive is when the content being offered takes the form of a free asset or add-on or something that compliments the product itself. This is because the offering to convert coming earlier in the stack acts as the social validation itself.

If, for instance, our content were a tutorial about how to perform a particular task, but the ask is that the user tries the tool or product we’re looking to convert on. The content then has an offer of a free download or trial of a paired down or limited version of the product we’re looking to convert on — giving the user enough to understand the product, but not enough to fully experience the full functionality or benefit.

This product offering is likely enough to warm users enough to get them to sign on for the partial commitment, but also not likely enough to lead them to a full conversion.

That is, not without the support of the community.

Community – Bottom-funnel

For this stack, social validation comes two-fold — once with the product offering in the previous step, and then again further down the funnel from the community.

As mentioned, the product offering gives users a taste of what it is that the brand offers after being educated by the content and warmed a bit in the process. However, there still needs to be that solid push to conversion to ensure that warm leads don’t cool too quickly and conversions don’t get lost in the process.

Community, in this case, acts as the supporting mechanism to help drive users from the initial taste that they were given, and on through to the full commitment.

On this journey, once the users have had a taste they are likely to seek out to see whether or not they should take the plunge for the full product – and what better way for that to happen than through the support of the community? Users seeking validation will likely set out on their own to find accounts and experiences from others who, similar to them, were at one point faced with the decision of whether or not to convert. 

When seeking these answers, ideally these users will be faced with accounts of those who did, in fact, convert and are singing the praises and sharing their positive experiences.

These accounts and experiences become the lynchpin to converting users into new members of the community as they throw their full support behind the product. And, similar to the other iterations of these stacks, they are likely to once again close the loop by sharing their own experiences for future users to use as their validation as they follow the same paths. 

This is likely best reflected by the free-to-play model that has been prevalent in online gaming in recent years, particularly with mammoth games like Fortnite, Fall Guys, Rocket League, and other live service games. While these games may span various genres, the thing they have in common is that they’re all free(ish) and all have incredibly robust communities behind them. 

Initially, users are enticed to download the game to try it for free, often with features or game modes locked behind a paywall. Upon discovering that they enjoy the game, they seek out the community to validate their desire to purchase. Upon discovery of the community, they are driven through to purchase — often with new seasons requiring repeat purchases periodically throughout the year. 

Product-led growth

Product as the lead mechanism for growth can be incredibly challenging as there is often an immediate ask for what would otherwise be a cold lead for the brand. This is, in particular, a major factor in why product-led growth strategies often rely so heavily on an offer to warm users and get them on their platform. 

We’ve since this become particularly true as brands and marketers prepare for the shift to what may eventually become a cookieless future and become more and more reliant upon zero-party data. 

With the inundation that many users experience with offers, distrust of giving away their data, and rising skepticism over ads and otherwise unproven brands, there needs to be an exchange of value for users to be willing to try a product – even for free.

Content-community – Middle-bottom funnel

To avoid redundancies and to illustrate the unique positioning that product-led growth offers, and an arguable efficiency with this sequencing of our marketing stack, we’ve combined content & community as the middle-bottom funnel mechanisms for product.

While we’ve discussed extensively that they tend to work in tandem in many instances of these marketing tacks, for product-led growth, they truly do serve simultaneously as a mechanism for growth, with the growth loop cycling between the two as the community supports the content and vice-versa.

This is particularly true with the advent of not just the creator economy, but also the rise of dark-social and non-indexed communities where the content and the community become one in the same entity. 

Take, for example, a brand that is launching a digital product with a proposed exchange of a discounted membership for the creation of the users’ account. Upon creating the account the user is driven to not only use the product but prompted to join the brand Discord server. 

Once the user has landed, they are faced with both prongs of this mechanism. There’s the content, being shared regularly on the Discord server with users sharing their experiences & insights into the product, and simultaneously the community of those who are sharing their experiences, those engaging with the experiences, and those advocating.

Stacking up

Every marketing stack is a bit different, as each brand or product has a specific use case, a specific audience, and a difference in how that audience needs and wants to be presented with the solution that the brand is offering. 

While traditionally marketers have pushed a single-pronged approach to most marketing practices, the reality is that these practices are all necessary in the modern marketing landscape — stacking neatly with one another in order to provide a comprehensive strategy.

These breakdowns should be all you need to start building your strategic stack as you prepare your brand for launch. Though, if you ever feel lost or that the stack is too lofty, we’re always here to assist.

The post Product-led Growth vs. Community-led Growth vs. Content-led Growth: Choosing the Best Path for Growth appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.

What is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing is a strategic, data-driven approach to growing a brand by building long-term customer relationships throughout its journey—from awareness to advocacy. Growth marketers use a holistic toolkit to attract, engage, retain, and convert audiences into loyal advocates. This approach goes beyond conventional marketing, optimizing the entire funnel to maximize customer acquisition and retention.

How do Growth Marketers Work?

Growth marketers constantly test and refine strategies across all touchpoints in the customer journey. Analyzing data at each stage, they adapt and implement strategies that remove bottlenecks and drive sustained growth. This cross-functional approach enables a shift from simply acquiring customers to building enduring customer relationships, optimizing down-funnel experiences based on insights from campaign data.
For example, a growth marketer might launch an SEO-driven content campaign to build awareness, guide users to a quiz for personalized engagement, and incorporate UGC for social proof. This would be followed by a post-purchase email flow to foster advocacy. The marketer would monitor each stage, adjust as needed, and continually optimize for the best results.

 Quick Quiz: What Would a Growth Marketer Do?

If a marketer finds high conversions from blog traffic but low post-purchase feedback, which tactics might they consider?

• Optimize the blog for SEO
• Enhance the quiz for deeper insights
• Strengthen the UGC strategy
• Improve the email flow for feedback

Answer: All of the above. Growth marketers use data and optimization at every stage.

If you answered all of the above, you’re correct! While a growth marketer would implement strategies like A/B testing CTAs in the email flow, changing button colors, or trying new preview text to find better outcomes for their email flow, they would simultaneously be optimizing for the rest of the customer journey to continue to drive results once they cleared the bottleneck within their email flow.

This is the essence of growth marketing, and these are the tools that are used:

• A/B testing
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• SEO/SEM/PPC
• Social Ads
• CRO
• SEO
• Performance Branding
• Video Marketing
• SMS Marketing

Traditional Marketing vs. Growth Marketing

Growth marketing departs from traditional marketing by emphasizing continuous testing, data-driven decisions, and personalized customer interactions. Here’s how it breaks down:

Growth loops are a core aspect of growth marketing. They create sustainable value by continuously attracting new users, engaging existing ones, and nurturing them to become advocates. Unlike a one-way sales funnel, growth loops harness current customers to drive additional growth.

As a growth marketing professional, your mission goes beyond simply converting leads into customers; it’s about guiding your audience through every stage of the growth loop and turning them into brand advocates. Growth loops add value in multiple dimensions — from attracting new users and retaining existing ones to building more profound engagement, enhancing brand awareness, and fostering advocacy. Retaining a current customer offers a 60–70% chance of conversion, far surpassing the 5–20% chance of new customer acquisitions. Notably, new customers can be up to seven times more costly to acquire than retaining existing ones, highlighting the importance of focusing on customer retention to maximize lifetime value (LTV).

But what does a customer-centric focus indeed mean? More than ever, businesses of all sizes are re-evaluating their marketing strategies to meet the demand for authenticity, transparency, and quality. Putting customers first requires aligning with their pace, and growth marketing empowers brands to gain critical insights through testing. These insights reveal your target audience’s trends, preferences, and values, enabling you to build lasting relationships through campaigns that are laser-focused on the individual.

In growth marketing, every campaign centers around a “north star” goal, carefully chosen to test, learn, and optimize. This north star doesn’t have to be revenue-based; it can be tied to crucial KPIs that reveal potential product impact and long-term business outcomes.

While growth marketing traditionally follows the scientific method — problem-solving through controlled tests, data-driven insights, and continuous improvement — the modern approach has shifted to what is often called the “racecar” framework. As the name suggests, this framework emphasizes a sustainable yet accelerated growth model achieved through a carefully designed infrastructure that enables long-term growth.

The “Racecar” framework helps to conceptualize the mechanics of growth marketing:

1. The Engine: Your growth engine consists of the core strategies that drive growth, often via growth loops. These mechanisms require regular monitoring and adjustments to keep the engine running smoothly.
2. Turbo Boost: These are short-term tactics—such as viral campaigns or influencer partnerships—that temporarily accelerate growth. While impactful, turbo boosts are supplementary to a consistent strategy.
3. Lubricants: Lubricants refer to optimization efforts—such as A/B testing and CRO—that smooth out bottlenecks across the customer journey.
4. Fuel: Fuel includes the resources that power the engine, from paid media budgets and content to community engagement. Without fuel, even the best engine can’t run.

Growth Marketing Tactics

A successful growth strategy leverages diverse tactics that span the customer journey. Here’s a breakdown:

1. PPC and SEM Marketing

Pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns are essential for customer acquisition. PPC ads target keywords that align with customer intent for conversions, lead generation, or brand awareness. PPC is all about relevance. Users search for specific products, services, and information at any time. Advertisers can present a tailored ad when that search occurs. If a user searches for “red lipstick,” an advertiser can show an ad about “red lipstick.”

2. Community-Led Growth

As brands focus more on building longstanding relationships with users, community-led growth is becoming a primary focus of many growth marketing strategies. By creating authentic connections through community engagement, brands foster loyalty and leverage creators as ambassadors. Community-led growth encourages organic brand advocacy and facilitates customer-driven content.

3. Product-Led Growth

Brands are discovering now more than ever that growth can be built directly into their products to encourage user interaction, sharing, and advocacy as an extension of the product itself. This can happen with features that promote sharing, onboarding, and referrals built into the product. By focusing on user experience, product-led growth aims to drive retention and referrals naturally.

4. Paid Social Media Advertising

What is the best way to spend money on social media ads? Although you may think the solution lies in knowing which social network has the most extensive user base, there is only one perfect answer. The truth is that it all depends on the circumstances. When choosing, consider where to find your target audience on social media, what type of campaign you want to run, and how you can best use your advertising budget. Below is a brief overview of the most common forms of social media advertising options.

In 2024, each social media platform offers unique advertising capabilities, allowing brands to tailor their strategies for optimal engagement and conversions. Here’s an updated breakdown:

1. Meta

Meta remains the largest social networking platform globally and is well-known for its reliable and sophisticated advertising options. With Meta for Business, brands can leverage advanced segmentation features, from demographic and interest-based targeting to Lookalike Audiences, which maximize reach among similar user groups. Its format flexibility across feeds, stories, and short-form video ensures brands can effectively deliver visually engaging content tailored to their audience.

2. Instagram

Instagram’s focus on high-quality visuals and short-form video content makes it a top choice for reaching younger audiences, especially Millennials and Gen Z. To maximize Instagram’s potential, look for examples of effective Instagram ads within your industry to inspire your own. Focus on optimizing the quality of photos and videos, using Instagram’s ad formats—like Stories, Reels, and Carousel ads—to align with platform trends and enhance audience engagement.

2. Twitter (X)

Twitter, now branded as “X,” enables advertisers to create campaigns tailored to specific goals, such as conversions, leads, and app installs. Integrating artificial intelligence has become a significant advantage for Twitter advertising, as AI-powered algorithms allow brands to enhance ad personalization and optimize campaigns in real time for better results. Twitter remains famous for conversational and time-sensitive content, which helps brands stay relevant and responsive.

3. TikTok

TikTok marketing encompasses several strategies, from User-Generated Content (UGC) campaigns and influencer partnerships to paid advertising. Its unique algorithm prioritizes engaging, authentic content, so ads that blend seamlessly with organic content tend to perform best. TikTok’s focus on viral, short-form video content encourages brands to develop creative, catchy ads that tap into popular trends and challenges, making it especially effective for reaching Gen Z and Millennial audiences.

4. Pinterest

Pinterest is a visually-driven platform ideal for home decor, fashion, beauty, and DIY brands. Pinterest marketing involves creating eye-catching visuals that stand out in users’ feeds and inspire action. The platform’s Visual Search and Shoppable Pins have expanded conversion opportunities. At the same time, Pinterest’s audience, increasingly Gen Z and Millennials, seeks creative ideas and product inspiration, making it a valuable part of any visually-focused social media strategy.

5. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

The goal of CRO marketing (also known as conversion rate optimization) is to increase the number of website visitors who convert. These are incentives for consumers to perform the desired activity (e.g., download a video, sign up for a subscription, place an order, etc.). Any company that wants to achieve tangible results from its marketing and sales efforts needs a plan for CRO. It not only promotes the company but also encourages people to take action. These actions help to increase the company’s popularity and revenue.

For a successful CRO strategy, the website design must first inspire confidence in visitors. It should be easy to navigate and use to ensure your efforts to capture paid or organic traffic aren’t lost once the user reaches your site. The last step is perhaps the most challenging. All those visitors are useless to your business if they are not driven to take action. Therefore, your website needs to be able to convert some of those visitors into leads, subscribers, and customers.

6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO marketing is digital marketing that involves optimizing websites and web landing pages for search engines like Google. Since search engines are the primary means of finding almost anything, various strategies have been developed to help businesses increase the visibility of their digital resources.

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to a combination of internal and external strategies. Each leading search engine has its method or “secret sauce ” for ranking pages in search results. These formulas, known in the trade as algorithms, are closely guarded techniques kept as trade secrets by the major search engines.

Through trial and error, marketing SEO specialists reverse-engineer parts of these algorithms over time to find optimal search engine marketing strategies using proven methods.

7. SEM

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a strategic paid approach that complements optimization (SEO). It enables brands to secure prominent placements in search results for targeted keywords. This method is advantageous when used alongside SEO initiatives, allowing businesses to enhance visibility. At the same time, it builds authority and works on improving organic rankings for specific terms.

In 2024, the integration of SEM with SEO strategies is more critical than ever. As brands identify high-performing keywords through their organic efforts, SEM can help amplify their reach, ensuring they capture maximum audience attention. By investing in paid search, brands can quickly gain visibility for valuable keywords, drive traffic to their content, and ultimately enhance conversion rates.

With AI and machine learning advancements, SEM platforms offer enhanced targeting options and real-time data analytics. This enables marketers to optimize their campaigns dynamically, tailoring their strategies based on performance metrics and audience behavior. By combining the strengths of both SEM and SEO, brands can achieve a comprehensive search strategy that drives sustained growth and visibility.

8. Content Marketing

Quality content drives awareness and engagement across channels. A growth marketer may create a series of blog posts, video tutorials, or case studies to build brand authority and guide users further down the funnel.

Content marketing is developing relevant, high-quality content to engage your audience and grow your community. That’s precisely what we are doing with this blog right now!

This approach can attract, engage, and add value to a brand’s audience by improving brand trust and recognition through organic relationship building.

Content marketing is no longer a fad but a strategic investment in the future of your business. Through it, a brand can achieve greater relevance and visibility on the Internet and become better known by its customers.

In other words, a company can leave a positive and lasting impression on customers through meaningful content and interactions. It’s no longer enough to be online. The question is how to stay visible and relevant to the audience in an increasingly crowded digital landscape.

9. Performance Branding

Performance branding is a cross-departmental approach that combines brand thinking in the areas where it can bring the most value. To optimize revenue potential and enhance brand lifetime value(LTV), the framework applies creative brand principles and fundamentals along a quantifiable performance funnel. In other words, you create brand equity through your digital media buys to deliver a consistent experience across all marketing touchpoints.

Working on performance and branding requires creating content and creativity with business KPIs and audience data in mind so the performance team can provide feedback after delivery.

Performance marketing in digital media aims to maximize the return on marketing investment. Personalized communications, retargeting, and direct impact measurement at the individual user level are examples of actions at the bottom of the sales funnel that can lead to conversion and purchase.

10. Email and SMS Marketing

An email marketing campaign is a collection of individual emails sent over some time with a specific goal. To achieve the campaign goal, each email must contain a well-worded subject line, targeted content, and a particular call to action.

Like most digital material, email campaigns should balance value and entertainment — enticing visitors to click without revealing too much or too little about the content.

Focused content is information relevant to the overall concept of your email marketing campaign and your general audience. Marketers can use dynamic content in multiple email messages to target different parts of their audience.

Most email marketing campaigns use a primary CTA button with the option of a secondary CTA button. Your CTA buttons should be eye-catching and prominent without being intrusive or distracting from the text.

11. Video Marketing

How valuable must a video be if a picture is worth a thousand words? That’s the foundation of video marketing, a forward-thinking marketing strategy that incorporates compelling video into campaigns.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the value of a video! This concept underpins video marketing, a progressive strategy integrating engaging video content into your marketing campaigns.

In 2024, video marketing is more essential than ever. It leverages customer leads to effectively promote your brand, services, or products. Brands can utilize various formats, such as how-to videos, customer testimonials, live stream events, and organic content, to connect directly with audiences, fostering trust and engagement.

Videos are also a powerful asset for search engine optimization (SEO). They can generate backlinks, boost social media engagement through likes and shares (which can positively influence search rankings), and drive significant traffic to your website. With Google owning YouTube, content on this platform can be meticulously optimized using keywords and key phrases to enhance visibility.

TikTok has recently overtaken Google as the preferred video search engine, indicating a shift in user behavior and content consumption. As TikTok continues to dominate, its content is also set to be indexed by Google, broadening the reach and discoverability of videos across platforms.

Additionally, YouTube has expanded its offerings with YouTube Shorts, enabling brands to create engaging short-form videos that capitalize on trending topics and capture audience attention quickly. Reels on platforms like Instagram and Facebook also emphasize the importance of bite-sized video content, allowing brands to leverage trends and engage users effectively.

Incorporating video marketing into your strategy enhances your brand’s visibility and enriches user experience, making it a critical component for success in today’s digital landscape.

Go from Marketer to Growth Marketer

When attracting new customers, aggressively pushing for immediate sales can often backfire. Instead, adopting a long-term strategy allows potential customers to familiarize themselves with your brand and make purchasing decisions on their terms. A robust growth marketing plan can position your business as a thought leader, attracting customers who buy from you and become advocates, referring your brand within their networks.

In 2024, marketers will have access to advanced tools and technologies that empower them to evolve into growth marketers. By testing and optimizing campaigns for higher engagement and an improved customer experience, you can tailor your approach to meet consumers’ highly individualized preferences.

As you explore various strategies, it’s crucial to gather data continuously. This data will enable you to design, test, and iterate your methods, ultimately leading to a more refined and satisfying customer experience. Embracing this iterative process will enhance customer relationships and drive sustainable growth for your business. If you need to refine your growth marketing strategy, our growth experts can help, feel free to reach out to us.

The post The Complete Growth Marketing Guide with Strategies & Examples for 2024 appeared first on NoGood™: Growth Marketing Agency.