The only thing that is certain is change. And that the rate of change will happen faster and faster. Every change is an opportunity to be one step ahead of the competition and to discover new ways to create value and delight customers.
In the following sections, we will learn how to build a marketing organization and marketing teams that can dynamically respond to any change and even thrive in such an environment.
Technological innovations are changing our behavior. How we shop, how we communicate, how we learn, how we interact, what we eat, how we work, how we exercise. All these behaviors and many more have changed significantly in the last 20 years. These changes will not stop but will continue to accelerate. How we deal with these changes will determine whether we grow and thrive from them or retreat overwhelmed.
So, how can we and our employees adopt the right mindset to deal with this situation?
Growth Mindset
To me, a growth mindset means welcoming changes, continually questioning old habits and behaviors, and fearlessly, without melancholy, replacing them with new ones when the truth (revealed through experiments and statistical analysis) shows us a better way.
Finding truths in marketing is simple. On average, only 5 experiments are necessary until we find an effect with statistical significance (at least 95% confidence) that improves the performance of our marketing long-term.
Corporate Culture of Change
Companies with a culture that promotes rapid experimentation can benefit from constant growth through optimizations. It is important to celebrate not only successful experiments but also failed ones. If an experiment does not find optimizations, this is also a gain in knowledge that moves the company forward. All experiments must be properly documented to prevent them from being repeated. Knowledge management is a central component of Growth Hacking.
To constantly challenge the status quo and drive changes, a culture of change must be actively communicated by the management team and encouraged through goal setting in the form of incentives.
It makes sense to link employee reward systems not only to the level of optimizations accumulated through experiments but also to the total number of experiments conducted.
Employees are thus incentivized to generate and test ideas, try out new tools, and inform themselves about new developments in their field. The accumulation of small optimizations will quickly culminate in a steeply rising growth curve.
A factor in corporate success that should not be underestimated is employee motivation. The correct introduction of Growth Hacking will lead to many small successes. These tangible changes create a sense of collective progress. Together, something is being moved, and tangible successes are achieved through joint efforts.
To share this spirit of optimism throughout the company, it is important to regularly communicate the number of experiments conducted per relevant business unit as well as the successes to a wider circle within the company.
Growth Hacking – Structured Continuous Experimentation
Fundamentally, Growth Hacking is a framework designed to systematically conduct a continuous stream of experiments. This framework was developed by Sean Ellis. It leads to stunning results in marketing, digital product development and UX/UI design. Depending on the business model and industry, this framework can also be applied in other business units (e.g. Sales and Customer Support).
Areas where Growth Hacking invariably leads to significant optimizations upon implementation include:
-
- Communications over Owned Channels
-
- Optimization of UX/UI for websites and apps
-
- Organic Channel Growth (Social Media, Podcasts, SEO)
-
- Performance Marketing
-
- Product Development
- Customer Service Experience
Building a Growth Team
To start a Growth Hacking process, a certain set of skills is needed. It requires someone who can perform statistical analysis to ensure that the results can be trusted and thus learnings from the experiments can be achieved. Additionally, the skills for implementing the experiments are necessary.
Depending on where the experiments are conducted, roles with different skills are required. If experiments are to be carried out on the website, someone with web development skills must be involved in the experiment. If the experiment is conducted in email communication, a marketing manager is needed. If a new creative has to be created, someone who can create this new creative is required.
In general, the following roles have proven to be optimal for a Growth Hacking team:
- Growth Lead
Responsible for the continuous flow of the Growth process. She trains the other team members in the methodology used. She collects new ideas from a broad range of stakeholders, prioritizes these ideas and fills the test pipeline.
- Data Scientist
Plans the experiments, calculates sample sizes, ensures the correct sampling procedure, and analyzes the results through statistical analysis.
- Marketing Manager
Involved in all experiments conducted in marketing. The Marketing Manager implements all experiments that are incorporated into marketing communications (e.g. emails, SMS, in-app, on-site, social media, performance marketing channels).
- Front-end Developer
Implements all experiments in the front-end (website and app).
- Back-end Developer
Ensures the allocation logic of users to different test variants and the tracking in the back end.
- Graphic Designer
Provides all creatives for experiments.
- Copywriter
Writes texts for the experiments.
Employee Training
It is optimal to set up a dedicated full-time growth team with management backup to get the Growth Hacking process started.
In companies where this is not possible due to resource constraints, employees from the functions described above can also be assigned to the growth team on a part-time basis. A dedicated Data Scientist can be replaced by an employee skilled in statistical analysis. The analyses to be conducted must be done correctly, but basic knowledge of statistics is sufficient for this purpose. Interested employees can be trained in this area. The Marketing Manager is a suitable candidate for further training, as she already works with data.
