A few weeks back I was in San Francisco at 500startups “Weapons of Mass Distribution” conference. It was a great conference with a combination of strategy and tangible takeaways companies can implement right away. As an 18-year veteran of digital marketing it was great to see the things we’ve put in place at GoKart Labs be reiterated at a conference that is all about growth. It also continued to reinforce our view that digital marketing in established companies is changing so fast companies need to adapt and act more like startups. While I don’t think the shift is a revolution it definitely is an evolution in both mindset and skill-set within marketing organizations. Here are my recommendations for how companies can organize themselves differently for growth.
- Organize More Teams Around Growth Metrics. Many organizations have the responsibility of growth in marketing and/or sales. This isn’t wrong but it has limitations around tactics identified as direct response, acquisition or sales team. The reality is growth needs to be thought of beyond driving paid vs. organic growth. More parts of the company should be held accountable to metrics connected to growth. Whether it’s a brand manager, a paid search specialist or a product developer adding new features, they have to be accountable for some metric that they know contributes to growth in your organization. Moving to a cross functional growth team can help bring this strategic alignment and apply actual growth goals across different areas of the business.
- Give Teams the Autonomy Needed to Drive True Growth. Organizations need autonomous teams that can be empowered to impact key metrics across the entire customer funnel: Awareness, Activation, Retention, Revenue and Referral. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard great ideas get shot down because they weren’t part of a new customer acquisition plan…even though they would have contributed to way more growth than other tactics could ever have.
- We are living in a small team, T-Shaped world — Silos not wanted. Marketing organizations can no longer have silos who have no context for what or how other growth driving functions work. I was speaking to Mathew Johnson from 500 Distro and he reinforced something I’ve believed for a long time (and I may be paraphrasing a bit so I apologize Matt) “Our model is to bring in T-Shaped people who have the skills to build, design, analyze and execute anything we want. It may not be perfect but we don’t have the siloed agency model”.
- Per econsultancy’s skills of a modern marketer report. “There is no question that we are seeing the rise of the marketing technologist and that we are facing a skills gap in data and analytics. But the focus should be on hiring people with the right mix of skills, so-called t-shaped or pi-shaped marketers.” Marketers need teams who can GSD (get shit done) and drive results. Also, for those of you who say “well this just works with startups it’s different with larger organizations that are scaling”. I say “bullshit”. Most organizations skip all the really important work of building a growth machine because they’ve been told they need a team to manage a certain tactic first….which gets me to….
- It’s not about the tactic! It’s not about the tactic! The rate of change in digital marketing is absolutely staggering. Whether it’s technology, targeting, creative, paid vs. non-paid the rules or channels are constantly changing. Check out the lumascapes or the gartner transit map for proof. We’ve seen companies who were so reliant on the platforms they were decimated due to a Google Panda update or a Facebook algorithm change. These organizations were so beholden to the tactics they had no backlog of ideas and no people who could help them pivot fast. One of the reasons why we have four practice areas (invention/strategy, ux/design, web/mobile dev and digital marketing + analytics) is because many companies struggle to connect great strategy to great execution. Growth teams can do this by always thinking about ways to grow. If they don’t know it they’ll learn it! If someone else can be more efficient, they’ll bring them in and guide them! If they have a fail fast mentality they succeed even faster. This doesn’t mean the role of experts who can scale is not essential, it just means organizations need growth mindset and skill-set in place to continue to drive ideas and eliminate these potential risks.
- Get something to work first and worry about scaling it later…regardless of channel. Don’t let your limitations limit you from trying things. Technology has given us the ability to think more about “How Might We” vs. why we can’t. Having a growth team in place that has autonomy to try new things but feed what works to the organizations operational engine is extremely important.
- Have an experimentation model. Don’t just test, test with purpose and clear priorities. Having a prioritized experimentation model will hold the growth team accountable vs. just trying the new shiny object. One way GoKart helps our clients prioritize is through “Playing Field” and other prioritization methods. You can also find some great approaches via Sean Ellis, Founder of Qualaroo and Growthhackers.com.
- Data is your friend but you need people to make sense of it. If your organization doesn’t have people in marketing or growth teams who can help understand and translate what’s working and what isn’t, hire or find a partner right now.
- Growth and distribution can’t be an afterthought. Many startups and even established organizations believe if you build it, they will come. This just isn’t true so save yourself a lot of product development time and money by investing earlier in growth teams and strategies. Many times this means an investment in a smart paid advertising strategy. Having a growth team will make your paid strategy an unfair advantage and allow you to grow faster. In the end, building a machine for learning will allow your organization to focus on the most important drivers of true growth. Otherwise, you will find yourself with a lot of activity and busy people but very little growth.
GoKart not only invents business, we also grow them. So if you are a startup looking to find growth or an established business that needs to find a new growth curve call us.
I’m a digital marketing + analytics leader, who works really hard to uncover growth for GoKart Labs inventions and our clients businesses.
