The digital landscape is moving at a whirlwind pace these days. As a result, businesses can often struggle to catch up – or find the next opportunity for growth. This is what growth marketing is all about. It is a data-driven approach focused on finding and retaining customers. As such, it’s the base for your business’ success.
Unlike other traditional marketing methods, which focus on brand awareness, growth marketing strategies are all about analytics, customer feedback and experimentation. The result? Scalable, rapid growth.
Now, if you have a business school working to shape the next generation of leaders in the industry, growth marketing strategies definitely belong in your curriculum. With that in mind, here are some key growth marketing strategies you should be teaching students.
1. Data-Driven Decision Making
In order to grow a business or succeed in life, even, you need to use data to make informed decisions. Students need to learn this as soon as possible, since it is also a vital skill to possess for academic success.
College students are increasingly engaged with such decision-making. They are developing skills in collecting and analyzing data, and applying it to make decisions about their academic papers, coursework, study schedule, and more. This is very important when they have a limited time to read books, learn the material, study for exams, and write an endless list of assignments. Surely, they can always go to Edubirdie and say do my paper to delegate some of their tasks. Now, that would be another example of data-driven decision making – you make time in your schedule to study for your exams.
But, how is this applicable in the business world?
Businesses these days don’t solely rely on intuition or research of the market. While this is still important, their biggest focus is placed on real-time data. They use metrics like customer acquisition cost, churn rates, lifetime value, and more – all to optimize their marketing strategies.
This is what you school needs to consider teaching – how to track such metrics and translate them into actionable insights.
2. A/B Testing and Experimentation
Growth marketing is very focused on testing and experimentation. This is where A/B testing comes into the picture. It allows marketers to compare two different products or versions of a product. For instance, they can compare two versions of a website, email, or ad – all to see which one performs better. Simply put, this marketing method operates on actual performance, not guesses.
In a business school, students should be encouraged to adopt a mindset for experimenting. They need to learn how to set hypotheses, design controlled experiments, and most importantly, measure the results.
3. Personalization
These days, personalization is everything. The competition is huge, which is why customers expect personalized experiences. According to an Epsilon study, 80% of consumers are more likely to buy when a brand offers them a more personalized experience.
Growth marketing is strongly aimed toward offering more personalized content, products, service, and offers to the customer. It leverages this, personalization, to create tailored messages that grab the attention and convert the targeted audience. Whether it is through email marketing, personalized content on a website, or retargeting ads, a business school must teach its students about this growth marketing strategy.
In this sense, business schools should also teach the importance of segmentation. This means that they will divide the audience based on their demographics, behaviors, purchase history, and more.
4. Growth Hacking
This next point refers to using cost-effective, creative strategies to scale more quickly and acquire more customers. It is a mixture of marketing, product management, and engineering – and is considered a rather unconventional solution for growth. Take for instance, Dropbox’s referral program or Airbnb’s integration with Craigslist. Someone dared to step out of the traditional marketing methods – and the results for them have been amazing.
As a business school, teaching growth hacking methods to students is essential for their future success. Students need to learn how to find opportunities within their business model and use them to drive growth. Your job is to teach them how to use tactics like product-led growth, viral marketing, as well as how to leverage the power of social media and influencers.
Wrapping Up
Growth marketing is a data-driven, dynamic approach that is focused on sustainable and long-term growth. It’s not something to use if you are looking to reap short-term gains. Since business schools teach their students to do the first and not the latter, this is definitely something that should be included in each of the business schools’ curriculums.
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