Round 1; Fight! Traditional Marketing vs. Growth Marketing
The Quakers Wafers plc is a blossoming startup that just began three years ago with 13 people and four departments; Customer Service, Accounts, Sales & Marketing, and Productions. The workflow was perfectly seamless, the Customer Service department ready to receive complaints and aid the customers, Accounts in charge of cash flow and disbursement, Sales & Marketing doing what they do best; Drawing in new customers and retaining old customers while the Productions department spinning the wafers magic that will tingle the customers’ taste buds. 2 years down the line, the CEO notices a disconnect in the workflow. Too many complaints from customers with little or nothing to quell their requests. He calls for a meeting, and everyone’s racking their brains to come up with a solution. Jane, the head of Sales & Marketing, then says, “We need every team involved in marketing” Her statement was met with looks of horror and protests until she explained.
Now, why do you think Jane said what she said?
Marketing Team being overworked?
Low workforce in the Sales & Marketing team?
If these were your answers, then you’re correct, but not wholly.
The Marketing team would be said to be overworked because the brunt of advertising and retaining fell solely on them; thus, the workforce was relatively low.
However, to fully understand what Jane said, we have to know why there was a disconnect in the first place.
This disconnect can be traced to be the method of marketing employed in the office, which is the traditional method, and the solution proposed by Jane is Growth Marketing
Quakers Wafers practice traditional marketing, where the bulk work of advertising, converting, retention, and more were pushed to Jane’s table. However, as time passed, this popular method of marketing began to fizzle out, hence resulting in a disconnect.
So why this shift?
Companies and firms embraced the traditional means of marketing (not necessarily the media form of marketing) a long time ago. Still, over the years, there have been loopholes in this marketing type, which led to the need for a more centralized means of passing their brand message across.
For one, traditional marketing was more concerned with the awareness and conversion of customers. Still, with the rising interest in brand policies and the need for customer inclusion, firms and companies have had to resort to growth marketing where there is more interest in the other levels of the marketing funnel.
Over time, it has become more glaring how limiting traditional marketing is; when compared with growth marketing. We can say this confidently because a company with growth marketing as its sales strategy has every team on the marketing team, thus, creating a synergy between these areas.
Growth marketing also allows every team to have one voice, from the customer-facing team down to the backend workers, all aimed at creating value for the customers with the marketing goals as a guide for all the teams.
With this in mind, there is a need to embrace growth marketing, no matter the niche or kind of service you provide.
So, Jane’s idea, albeit weird at that point, became the running strategy for Quakers Wafers, and a year later, there’s evident growth, customer — firm, and team — team connection.
Traditional Marketing 0–1 Growth Marketing
