These are the 3 marketing pillars that power growth

There’s much that can be said about the groundwork that needs to be laid in order for growth and marketing teams to succeed. However, the fact that you’re even reading this post pretty much tells me that you and your team already have that “growth hacker” mindset. Quick results are great, but you also want consistent results that translate to greater profitability in the long-term. It’s the only way to survive and thrive amid all the curveballs that have been thrown our way in the post-pandemic digital landscape.

Of course, there is always room for improvement with your marketing strategy. Imagine achieving exponential growth, just by making a few light adjustments, and letting technology take over the busy-work. Many top brands are taking the time to explore new ways to amplify their growth campaigns, as seen in the case of BoxyCharm, to be met with favorable results.

So here’s the big question: What are the specific marketing components that your team can easily implement to put your brand’s growth on hyperdrive, regardless of changing times, customer preferences, and the limitations imposed by ad networks?

Great question, thought you would never ask. It all starts with the understanding of the three main pillars of marketing, and their unique roles.

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The unique roles of the three main marketing pillars

There are three main marketing pillars that work wonders towards growth when fused together, but nonetheless play key roles separately: Brand Marketing; Product Marketing; and Growth Marketing.

The fundamentals of brand marketing, as the great Simon Sinek advises, is all about starting with “why.” It demonstrates why you exist, and it’s typically done from an emotional angle. Red Bull is a great example of this. They don’t talk about being an energy drink. Instead, they talk about racing, surfing, snowboarding, etc. Their narrative positioning does a great job in attracting new customers, and keeping them interested and wanting more.

Product marketing shines light on the value of the product, what makes it different, and its positive impact. D2C brands such as TOMS shoes and Warby Parker serve as leading examples of these sentiments, which is demonstrated in the manner in which they “give back” as part of their corporate social responsibility.

Then there’s our favorite 😇, growth marketing. This can be considered one of the more tactical branches, as it revolves around the usage of messaging, personalization, channels, triggers, tools, and more to acquire new customers and retain them. It also includes the creation of growth and retention loops, to ensure that customers realize the value of the product offering and avoid churn. BoxyCharm was able to increase their ROAS by 30 percent, simply by using predictive marketing.

The alignment of the marketing pillars

The three marketing needs to be in alignment to achieve optimal results. For instance, growth marketing efforts may successfully bring in new customers, but if the value that is promised isn’t delivered, those people will churn. And let’s be honest—it’s a royal waste of time, money, and resources when newly acquired customers don’t retain, leading to the diminishment of positive growth impact.

This is why marketing teams mustn’t be siloed. The best growth strategies come out of teams that are successfully integrated. They need to be able to proactively look ahead to drive sustainable growth. The most effective way to do this is by sharing data, which can be combined to create a robust data structure that will support advanced uses of data, such as data modeling and predictive modeling. 

In one of our previous blog posts, we went over how data can be used as a lever for growth. It also discusses how external tools are excellent to fill data-related gaps, especially if they are plug-and-play, as that saves companies time and resources from building solutions in house. While all data is good data, you’ll find that your brand’s zero-party data will outshine the rest, as you can use it to determine what your customers intend to do or buy in the future, and power personalized marketing (based on their preferences) across all stages of the customer lifecycle. 

Best of all—zero-party data will help your brand get a better understanding of the LTV of your most valuable customers, thereby helping you make strides in acquiring additional customers that demonstrate similar LTV. This is especially when using a LTV predictive model to optimize growth campaigns. 

We like to say that zero-party data that is focused on your high LTV users can be considered a gift that keeps on giving. This is largely because the insights can be used beyond campaigns surrounding user acquisition. In fact, it can be used to supercharge every facet that branches out of your brand’s marketing pillars. As far as brand marketing is concerned, the insights will help your team gain more context over why your most loyal customers are making their purchases. In turn, this will help the product marketing team understand exactly what the most profitable customers need. Collectively, this will help create a more holistic marketing strategy.

The power of LTV-based optimization

Now let me explain how all this ties into growth marketing. 

LTV-based optimization is what makes acquiring valuable users at scale feasible. We published a handy-dandy guide, which dives into how LTV data can be used for marketing optimization. In a nutshell, you can use LTV data to target your best users based on historical data, and optimize search campaigns based on that data. You can also use these insights to double down on high-potential campaigns, optimize retention campaigns, and activate high-value lookalike campaigns. LTV-based optimization is especially important if you are thinking about optimizing your campaigns for profitability. 

By now, I’m sure you can see how, and why the marketing pillars of your organization must join forces in an effort to seamlessly power growth stemming from LTV data. And if this is all a bit much for your team to take on at the moment, you can always turn to predictive marketing to optimize your campaigns for LTV, so you can achieve exponentially higher ROI by focusing on smaller and more targeted groups.