How to Identify and Amplify Growth Channels: Week Four Review — CXL Institute

Learn about the main growth channels, which channels to focus on, and how content marketing ties all these channels together.

Four weeks have gone by already, and my goal to become one of the top 1% of growth marketers in the world, is gradually coming to fruition.

This week’s class at the CXL institute was handled by Sophia Eng, and she is a Digital Marketing Strategist at Invision App.

Last week, we learned why user-centric marketing is very important, understanding the top task analysis, and how to use customer mapping to understand what our target customer really wants to accomplish.

As a business owner, you need to know exactly what your potential customers are looking for online and be well equipped to deliver.

The best way to do this is through utilizing growth channels, but as growth marketers, it is our utmost job to approach these channels quantitatively and track every key performance indicator.

This means we must run tests, analyze the results and use this information to utilize particular channel-specific strategies.

My review for this week will cover these key takeaways:

1. The 5 main growth channels that can amplify your business
2. How to choose which channel to focus on
3. Content Marketing Strategies and where to focus your energy on distribution.

Let us discuss each point one by one.

1. The 5 main growth channels that can amplify your business

The ability to identify other growth channels is a very important function of growth, and this means we must choose these channels wisely.

As growth marketers, we must be able to identify which channels are performing well, and which ones are not.

The 5 digital marketing channels that are great for exploding growth for your business include the following:

1. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) also known as Pay Per Click (PPC):

The platforms we use are Google Adwords, and Microsoft Bing — it is an open secret that online marketers around the world spend more than $100 million dollars every day on Google Adwords and on Microsoft’s Bing.

Paid search requires constant optimization to look at keyword traffic, search trends, and fluctuation on PPC costs.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

According to a May 2016 study, Google now handles over 2 trillion searches every year.

SEO is the main driver of traffic for many businesses because we know that these searches — over 2 trillion per year — are coming from SEO.

SEO is defined as the process of improving your website’s ranking on the search engine results page in order to get more people to your site.

3. Social and Display Ads;

Display ads are the banner ads that you see on different websites all over the internet, and social ads are the ads you see on social media platforms.

Right now, over 15.8% of the Nigerian population is active on social media — that is why it is very important to know your audience, where they are, and what social media channels they are using.

Even though social media ads may be time-consuming, there are many online tools that you can use to help you manage your social media posts like Hootsuite and Buffer.

4. Email Marketing:

Even though it is the oldest, Email Marketing is one the best channels, and it still converts really well.

It is a very good channel to use to retain and engage existing customers when it is personalized.

For example, when reaching out to new customers, it is good to send them an email from the CEO, and even adding a phone number so that it is personalized.

5. Content Marketing.

This is done mostly through blogs, forums, videos, etc.

It is important to know your customers, where they are, what they are reading, what they are doing (offline and online), and what websites they are looking at.

2. How to choose which channel to focus on:

It is quite rare for a company to be great at all the channels, especially at an early stage.

Basically, you just have to understand where your customers are and what they are doing.

Instead of spreading yourself too thin, it is important to be able to identify between one to three channels that are working for you.

Your goal should be to find that Product market fit and make sure that it makes sense for you — instead of spending time and resources on a channel that doesn’t work for you.

This is how to choose the right channel:

1. Study your Audience:

Take a holistic look at all the channels available, on which one is your audience more active? Are they engaging on those channels? If they’re not, then you shouldn’t start with that.

2. Choose a channel:

You don’t want to pick a channel that is already too competitive.

You need to pick a safe bet to start which in most cases would be SEO — that is why it is good to have an insight for your keywords and look at what your competitors are doing.

3. Test it out:

If you have some budget, then you should test different channels and see which ones are working.

For example you can easily throw up a facebook ad test, because facebook ads are super targeted.

With a facebook ad, you can drill down and target based on the demography of your audience, and their Interest.

You can get very cheap clicks, for as little as #10 naira per click — with at least #1000 nairaevery day, you can see if facebook is the right channel for you.

4. Measure the results:

Measuring the results depends on what your metrics of success are defined as, but as growth marketers, we have to look at which channels have great Return on investment (ROI), and can scale in the long run.

When a channel isn’t producing revenue or ROI for your business, you should know when it is time to trim the resources dedicated to that channel and cut your losses.

Not every channel is right for your kind of business, so be careful so that you don’t waste resources on a channel that does give you enough return on investment, and does not have the ability to scale.

3. Content Marketing Strategies and where to focus your energy on distribution.

Content marketing is the glue that ties all of the other growth channels together (SEO, Social Ads, PPC, etc)

Without content, we won’t be able to share any information and reach our targeted audiences.

Many people believe this myth that their type of audience won’t respond well to content marketing.

But data has shown that 70% of consumers would rather get to know a brand through articles rather than through ads.

When you engage with people and give them information that is useful to them, it makes them feel as though they knew you.

One of the major advantages of content marketing is that, when done right, it turns you into an Influencer in the industry — the more content you pout out there, the more you become an influencer for your industry.

Types of Content Marketing Strategies and their corresponding distribution channels:

1. Video content — can be distributed on Youtube, Facebook Video, Instagram reels and TikTok
2. Blog Posts — can be distributed on Medium, Wordpress, Twitter, etc
3. Photos — can be distributed on Instagram, Facebook, etc
4. Voice Content/Podcast — can be distributed on Clubhouse, AnchorFm, Twitter spaces, etc

Content marketing is central to all of the other channels that we have talked about, we also understand that with great content regularly being created, you are going to be able to drive growth.

My Personal thoughts:

This week’s lesson was more like an introduction to the concept of Identifying the right growth channels.

About one thing that has been ringing through all of the course so far, is the need to always be testing.

This is something I have noticed with all the Instructors so far, and this is the mindset I am training myself to have.

As a growth marketer, I should never assume that I know everything, instead I have to be open minded, draft the right hypothesis, and always be testing.

This marks the end of the first training track — Growth Marketing Foundations.

For this new week, I will starting a new track — Running growth experiments

As usual, I promise to share my progress with you.