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Category: Sales Funnel

Every business, no matter how successful, can hit a growth plateau.

This can be incredibly frustrating, especially for established companies that have enjoyed steady growth in the past.

However, hitting a plateau doesn’t mean the end of growth – it’s an opportunity to reassess, innovate, and reinvigorate your marketing strategy.

At Engage, we believe in the power of a structured approach to break through these barriers, which is why our Growth Marketing Canvas is designed to address key areas of your business.

By focusing on refining your value proposition, optimising your sales funnel, leveraging automation, and more, you can reignite your growth engine.

Introducing our Growth Marketing Canvas

Our Growth Marketing Canvas is a strategic tool designed to help businesses identify and address key areas of their marketing strategy to drive growth. It covers three main areas:

  1. Growth Pillars: Target & Strengthen
  2. Marketing Funnel: Engage & Convert
  3. Tech Stack: Report & Optimise

By using this canvas, we can systematically analyse your current marketing efforts, pinpoint areas for improvement, and implement targeted strategies to achieve measurable growth. The Growth Marketing Canvas ensures that every aspect of your marketing strategy is aligned with your business goals and continuously optimised for better performance.

With the Growth Marketing Canvas, we help you build a strong foundation, optimise your sales processes, and leverage technology to drive efficiency and insights.

Now, let’s dive into ten growth marketing hacks that, when applied within the framework of our Growth Marketing Canvas, can help you break through your growth plateau and achieve significant business growth.

1. Refine Your Value Proposition

Your value proposition is the cornerstone of your marketing efforts. I

f your growth has stalled, it might be time to revisit and refine what makes your business unique. Understanding your target audience’s pain points and desires deeply is crucial. This allows you to craft a value proposition that speaks directly to them, setting you apart from the competition.

Growth Marketing Canvas Element: Growth Pillars: Target & Strengthen

How to Refine Your Value Proposition:

Start by conducting customer interviews and surveys to gain deep insights into what your customers value most about your products or services. Look for patterns in their feedback to understand their primary pain points and desires. Use this information to tweak your value proposition, ensuring it clearly communicates the unique benefits and solutions your business offers.

Example: Suppose you run a software company that provides project management tools. Through customer feedback, you discover that users value time-saving features and seamless team collaboration the most. Your refined value proposition might highlight how your tool saves time and enhances team collaboration, making it indispensable for businesses looking to improve efficiency.

Benefit: Aligning your offerings more closely with customer needs enhances your appeal and relevance, making it easier to attract and retain customers.

2. Optimise Your Sales Funnel

A well-optimised sales funnel can significantly improve conversion rates, which is essential for breaking through a growth plateau.

The key is to identify bottlenecks in your current funnel and implement strategies to streamline the customer journey. This ensures potential customers move smoothly from awareness to decision, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Growth Marketing Canvas Element: Marketing Funnel: Engage & Convert

Steps to Optimise Your Sales Funnel:

Begin by using analytics tools to track user behaviour and identify drop-off points within your sales funnel. Are there specific pages where visitors frequently exit? Are there steps in your checkout process that seem to deter potential buyers?

Once you’ve identified these bottlenecks, you can take targeted actions to address them.

For example, if users are dropping off at the pricing page, consider whether your pricing information is clear and compelling. Perhaps you need to highlight the value and benefits more effectively, or maybe you need to simplify the pricing options. If the checkout process is causing abandonment, ensure it’s as streamlined and user-friendly as possible.

Example: An ecommerce company might find that a high percentage of visitors abandon their shopping carts. By analysing the funnel, they discover that a complicated checkout process is the culprit. Simplifying the checkout process and offering multiple payment options can reduce cart abandonment and increase conversions.

Benefit: Reducing friction in the sales process leads to higher conversion rates, turning more visitors into paying customers and driving revenue growth.

3. Leverage Marketing Automation

Automation can free up valuable time and ensure that no lead is left unattended. From email sequences to social media scheduling, marketing automation tools can keep your audience engaged without constant manual effort. The right automation strategy can streamline your marketing processes, allowing you to focus on high-level strategy and creative work.

Growth Marketing Canvas Element: Tech Stack: Report & Optimise

How to Leverage Marketing Automation:

Start by identifying repetitive marketing tasks that can be automated. This might include email marketing, social media posting, and lead nurturing sequences. Tools like ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, and SocialPilot offer robust automation features that can help manage these tasks efficiently.

Example: Consider an ecommerce business that regularly sends out promotional emails. By using email automation, they can set up a series of emails to be sent based on customer behaviour, such as browsing history or past purchases. This not only ensures timely and relevant communication but also frees up time for the marketing team to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Benefit: Maintains consistent communication with leads and customers, enhancing engagement and conversion while freeing up time for your team to focus on more strategic tasks.

4. Double Down on Content Marketing

Content is king, but quality content is the emperor.

Producing high-value content that addresses your audience’s pain points and positions your brand as an industry leader is crucial for breaking through growth plateaus. This not only helps in attracting new visitors but also in retaining existing customers by continuously providing them with value.

Growth Marketing Canvas Element: Growth Pillars: Target & Strengthen

How to Double Down on Content Marketing:

Develop a content calendar that outlines the topics you will cover over the next few months. Ensure these topics are relevant to your target audience and address their pain points. Incorporate a mix of blog posts, videos, infographics, and case studies to keep the content engaging.

Example: A B2B company might produce a series of blog posts and whitepapers that address common industry challenges and provide actionable solutions. By doing so, they establish themselves as a thought leader and resource for potential clients.

Benefit: Builds trust and authority, driving organic traffic and engagement. Quality content can significantly improve your search engine rankings, making it easier for potential customers to find you.

5. Enhance Your SEO Strategy

SEO is a long-term game, but the rewards are substantial. Ensuring your website and content are optimised for search engines can attract a steady stream of organic traffic. Given that organic search can be one of the most significant sources of traffic and leads, it’s critical to have a robust SEO strategy.

Growth Marketing Canvas Element: Marketing Funnel: Engage & Convert

Steps to Enhance Your SEO Strategy:

Conduct a comprehensive SEO audit to identify areas for improvement. Focus on both on-page SEO (such as keyword optimisation, meta descriptions, and internal linking) and off-page SEO (like backlink building and social signals). Tools like Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and SEMrush can provide valuable insights and data to guide your SEO efforts.

Example: A technology company might discover through an SEO audit that their blog posts are not optimised for relevant keywords. By updating these posts with targeted keywords and improving their readability, they can boost their search rankings and attract more organic traffic.

Benefit: Increases organic search visibility, driving consistent and high-quality traffic to your site. This can lead to more leads and sales without the need for constant advertising spend.

6. Implement Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) focuses on targeting specific high-value accounts with personalised marketing efforts. This strategy can be particularly effective for B2B companies looking to land big clients. ABM aligns marketing and sales efforts to deliver a coordinated approach tailored to the needs of individual accounts.

Growth Marketing Canvas Element: Marketing Funnel: Engage & Convert

How to Implement ABM:

Identify your key accounts that represent the highest value for your business. Develop personalised content and campaigns targeted specifically at these accounts. Coordinate with your sales team to ensure a seamless approach from initial contact through to closing the deal.

Example: A software company might identify a few large enterprises that would benefit significantly from their solutions. They could create personalised content, such as whitepapers and case studies, tailored to the specific challenges faced by these enterprises, and use targeted ads and direct mail to reach decision-makers within these companies.

Benefit: Enhances relevance and effectiveness of marketing efforts, leading to higher conversion rates and more significant deals.

7. Utilise Social Proof

Social proof, such as testimonials and case studies, can significantly influence potential customers. Showcase the success stories of your existing clients to build trust and credibility. Potential customers are more likely to trust your business if they see others have had positive experiences.

Growth Marketing Canvas Element: Growth Pillars: Target & Strengthen

How to Utilise Social Proof:

Collect and display customer testimonials and case studies prominently on your website and marketing materials. Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on relevant platforms and share their success stories.

Example: A consulting firm could create a dedicated section on their website featuring detailed case studies that highlight how their services have helped clients achieve specific results. This not only builds credibility but also provides potential clients with concrete examples of the firm’s capabilities.

Benefit: Increases trust and encourages prospects to take action. Social proof can be a powerful motivator for potential customers who are on the fence about making a purchase or engaging with your services.

8. Invest in Video Marketing

Video content is incredibly engaging and can help convey your message more effectively. Use videos to showcase your products, share customer testimonials, or provide valuable information. Video marketing can capture attention quickly and is often more memorable than text-based content.

Growth Marketing Canvas Element: Marketing Funnel: Engage & Convert

How to Invest in Video Marketing:

Create high-quality videos that address customer pain points and showcase your solutions. Use videos on your website, social media channels, and in email marketing campaigns. Consider different types of video content, such as explainer videos, product demonstrations, and customer testimonials.

Example: A fitness equipment company could create a series of workout videos demonstrating how to use their products effectively. These videos can be shared on social media and embedded on product pages, providing valuable content that engages potential customers.

Benefit: Boosts engagement and helps communicate complex information more easily. Video content can improve your website’s SEO and increase the time visitors spend on your site, which can lead to higher conversion rates.

9. Conduct A/B Testing

A/B testing allows you to experiment with different elements of your marketing campaigns to see what works best. This data-driven approach can lead to significant improvements in performance. By continuously testing and refining your strategies, you can optimise your marketing efforts for better results.

Growth Marketing Canvas Element: Tech Stack: Report & Optimise

How to Conduct A/B Testing:

Identify key elements of your marketing campaigns that could be improved, such as email subject lines, landing page designs, and call-to-action buttons. Create variations of these elements and test them with different segments of your audience. Analyse the results to determine which version performs better.

Example: An online retailer might test two different email subject lines to see which one generates more opens and clicks. By continuously testing and refining their email campaigns, they can improve engagement and drive more sales.

Benefit: Optimises marketing efforts based on actual performance data, improving overall effectiveness. A/B testing helps you make informed decisions and ensures that your marketing strategies are always evolving and improving.

10. Sales Promotion – Offers and Incentives

Don’t underestimate the power of traditional sales promotions. Limited-time offers, discounts, and contests can drive immediate engagement and sales. While digital marketing strategies are crucial, traditional sales promotions can still play a significant role in your overall marketing plan.

Growth Marketing Canvas Element: Marketing Funnel: Engage & Convert

How to Implement Sales Promotions:

Plan and execute sales promotions such as discounts, special offers, or contests. Use your website, email marketing, and social media channels to promote these offers. Ensure that the promotions are time-limited to create a sense of urgency and encourage immediate action.

Example: A fashion retailer might run a seasonal sale offering 20% off all items for a limited time. By promoting this offer through email marketing and social media, they can drive traffic to their website and increase sales during the promotion period.

Benefit: Generates excitement and urgency, driving quick sales and boosting engagement. Sales promotions can attract new customers and re-engage existing ones, providing a valuable boost to your revenue.

Conclusion

Breaking through a growth plateau requires a strategic approach and the right tools. By leveraging these growth marketing hacks and aligning them with Engage Digital’s Growth Marketing Canvas, you can revitalise your marketing efforts and drive significant growth.

By applying these strategies, your business will:

  • Increase Online Visibility: Enhanced SEO and content marketing strategies will make your business more discoverable online.
  • Generate High-Quality Leads: Targeted campaigns and a refined sales funnel will attract leads more likely to convert.
  • Improve Conversion Rates: Optimising your sales funnel and conducting A/B testing will turn more visitors into customers.
  • Boost Engagement: Marketing automation and high-quality content will keep your audience engaged and loyal.
  • Drive Sales: Sales promotions and personalised marketing efforts will directly contribute to increased sales.

If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, Engage Digital is here to help. Let’s unlock your growth potential together.

Marketing can be a complicated business.

What elements will give us the best results. Should we be posting to social media more regularly? How much should we spend on Google Ads? Is our website good enough?

As a growth marketing agency, we’ve tested them all and surprise, surprise, there is no one magic bullet. Even businesses within the same industry are faced with completely different products, opportunities and challenges.

That being said, over time we’ve narrowed our digital marketing approach down to a proven growth marketing formula, that we represent in our proprietary canvas. And from this model, we use comprehensive planning templates to analyse and deliver personalised tactics for our clients’ businesses.

There are many parts to our Growth Marketing Canvas and it’s defined over 3 discipline segments:

  • We’re continuously strengthening the Growth Pillars; improving the product offering, continuously tweaking a compelling Value Proposition.
  • It’s a step-by-step application of prioritised marketing tactics and campaigns across a Customer Conversion System (a sales funnel).
  • And it deploys a Technology Stack to build efficiencies, reduce costs and report on progress.
The Engage Growth Marketing Canvas

With all this potential marketing complexity though, I’m often asked where an organisation should start! What growth marketing parts should get the most attention? It’s like applying the Pareto Rule – what 20% of action will give me 80% of the overall results.

What if the key to future business growth and success lies in focusing on just the core marketing components and doing them well.

So, we’ve distilled our comprehensive Growth Marketing Formula down to just the 5 core ingredients needed to grow your business – execute these well and you’ll set your marketing up for success…

1. Understand your Customer

Ensuring you are targeting a willing, hungry and profitable audience is, without a doubt, the most important step of any marketing campaign.

Analyse your customer base and find out everything you need to know; What social media platform are they on? What their values are in life, what they watch, what they read, what issues do they face related to your industry and product.

Find out what your customers want and what moves them, before you go spend a lot of money marketing. Draw up personas for your top 2-3 customer groups – rank their importance and the share of marketing they should receive from you.

2. Define your Value Proposition

A value proposition is a clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using your products or services. It’s outcome-focused and stresses the value of your offering to the customer.

For [target customer] who [statement of the need or opportunity], our [product/service name] is [product category] that [statement of benefit]. 

What are our customers’ pain points and desired gains?
What key customer problem do we provide a unique solution for?

Hit people over the head with what makes you different. 

3. Set a North Star Metric

Your North Star Metric is the metric that your company uses as a focus for growth.

This measure should be an indicator of the performance of our growth marketing tactics, not necessarily a KPI of the overall business.  e.g. Spotify: Time spent listening. Uber: Rides per week.

To qualify as a North Star, a metric must do three things: lead to revenue, reflect customer value, and measure progress.

4. Attraction Marketing

It starts here – if you’re not drawing in a market then the rest of your sales funnel is starved.

Attraction is a critical part of a systematic, scalable sales system. You need tactics in place that are attracting quality leads to your content, website or location.

Fundamentals here include SEO and Google Ads but may also involve display ads and retargeting, emails to targeted lists, cold call outreach, social media, content marketing and PR.

5. Testing and Optimising

Rapidly iterate through experiments to optimise marketing throughout the funnel.

Use A/B testing to improve landing page conversions.

Apply incremental changes to Google Ad campaigns for continual improvement to Cost-per-acquisition over time.

Experiment with cold call outreach and compare performance to other channels.

Test at a low cost and scale the tactics that show promise against your North Star Metric and other KPIs.

While there is always room for fundamental leaps, much of the gains from growth marketing are marginal and incremental.

Run experiments, prepare to fail, pivot quickly, amplify successes.

Takeaways

Our 5-ingredient extract is a distillation of our wider Growth Marketing Formula. Its where 20% of effort will get you 80% of all possible gains. So, if time and money are limited then make sure your focus is on these 5 essential components of your marketing plan:

  1. Understand Your Customer – target willing, hungry and profitable audiences.
  2. Define your Value Proposition – define what’s in it for your customer, why should they buy from you?
  3. Set a North Star Metric – the one measure that will define success – if it increases, your business grows.
  4. Attraction Marketing – just one part but responsible for fuelling your whole sales funnel – no traffic, no conversions.
  5. Test and Optimise – run experiments, prepare to fail, pivot quickly, amplify successes.

49% of companies report that customer acquisition is their primary marketing objective. 58% of business leaders indicate that lead generation is one of their most toughest challenges.

Business growth is always challenging – few businesses build their sales revenue on luck – it takes dedicated effort and the right tactics to grow and retain your customer base.

If you’re like most business owners, you’ve tried almost every conceivable way to grow our business. Some of it works – most of it doesn’t.

But let’s start at the beginning – the key to accomplishing your ambitious sales goal, starts with attracting more of the right sales leads.

A sales lead is a person or a business that has the potential to purchase your company’s product or service.

A lead only becomes a prospect once you have identified their fit as a potential customer or they have shown a level of direct interest in what your company has to offer.

Without well-targeted leads we won’t have the chance to close deals. Our clever engagement tactics, sales offers, landing pages, proposals and closing scripts won’t see the light-of-day unless we feed the sales funnel with leads.

Calculate the sales leads required to reach your revenue target

Tune in to your buyers’ needs

Fundamental to engaging with leads is appreciating their situation – understanding the process a customer goes through to become aware of, consider alternatives and decide to purchase from you.

Our outreach communication or inbound content needs to resonate with them:

  • What problem do we solve for them?
  • What’s our ideal customers biggest frustration?
  • What motivates them to take action?
  • What’s the best way to communicate to them?
  • Why should they care about what we provide?

Once you have identified your most important personas, then you need to optimise your website for conversions. Your website will be your most important tool you have for tuning into your audiences needs and turning leads in to customers.

Implement an omni-channel approach

You can dramatically increase your chances of turning leads in to customers by increasing the number of times your leads see you or engage with you.

The adage that it takes 7 touchpoints or interactions to generate a prospect is so very true – indeed, depending on the commitment (dollar value, consideration of alternatives, trust) required to make a purchase decision, many industries report it takes 2 or 3 times this many interactions before a decision is made.

We need to use every channel to connect with leads – traditional, social media, website content, direct calls, live chat, email, SMS, retargeting and more.

The messages need to be tuned to the stage in their journey with you – discovering their problem, not aware of your solution, weighing up alternatives, developing trust in your promise, motivated by your offer.

Try outbound responses to inbound leads

If you’ve attracted an inbound lead through your promotion, advertising, or content, great.

Sure, you can nurture those leads with a series of automated emails and social and PPC retargeting efforts.

But why not take more direct charge of turning those respondents in to prospects and customers through outbound.

Send more personalised emails, live chat, and direct SMS messages to them and where relevant, call them.

Make your outbound as personalised and as tailored as possible.

If you can’t get to all of them, lead scoring can identify the most engaged leads or those most ready to make a purchase decision.

A direct call has been found to increase the chances of a close by 2-3 times.

Respond lightning fast to leads

According to HubSpot, the odds of a lead becoming qualified are 21 times greater when contacted within five minutes versus 30 minutes.

Just imagine how our odds drop, when we take a day or two to respond to a lead!

Get to your lead while they are in the moment.

A robust lead-to-close system addresses this by triggering a task and alerting an internal sales agent to respond within 5 minutes of acquiring a new inbound lead.

Revisit closed and lost opportunities

Often, “no” means “not right now”.

Revisit with your closed or lost opportunities. There is every chance that while you weren’t selected 6 months ago, you left a favourable impression that you might be reconsidered now that the time is right or other alternatives proved not so positive.

Companies that did not buy from you before are already qualified sales leads. Invest time and resources into marketing to these prospects. Stay in touch through email campaigns, local events, blog posts, and phone calls.

Today might be the very day that old lead asks “what was the name of that company that provided that amazing presentation 6 months ago?”

Find sales leads on social media networks

About 42% of us use some kind of social media.

Facebook and Instagram offer an abundant source of leads for B2C leads but that’s not to say they aren’t a viable source for B2B business either.

LinkedIn offers a more targeted source of business customers, with members more in the zone of finding business related information.

Use social media to get recommendations from your clients, post special offers, and tell more about your company. Any social media can be a fruitful channel to reach your audience and generate sales leads online.

Plus, once you have leads in the system, you can use social media to talk to them and find out more about what they need and want.

Get referrals from current customers

Your leads aren’t as likely to accept you singing about how great you are, as they will hearing from your current clients and customers.

Ratings, reviews and testimonials are powerful forms of endorsement.

Your leads are far more likely to trust you and hopefully purchase from you if they see that that they are working in good company or read positive messages from satisfied customers.

Get those messages front and centre on your website. Use those referrals in your pitch videos. Display your google ratings and reviews everywhere.

Don’t be afraid to ask your customers to refer friends and colleagues to you.

Run specific friend-get-friend promotions to encourage referral lead generation.

Create a better sales funnel

Once you have identified your ideal lead targets and what channels to use to reach them you should have a plan to collect contact information.

Usually, the first stage of an optimised sales funnel process is funnelling leads toa lead capture page or landing page that encourages visitors to share their contact information, usually in exchange for something of value to them; a coupon code, a free gift, a demo or valuable piece of content like an how-to ebook.

At this point, it’s vital that you have CRM or Marketing Automation software in place to keep track of sales leads and to further engage them through email, SMS and retargeting messages on social and websites platforms.

Marketing automation apps like Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign can be set to do all the hard-lifting of sending personalised messages and identifying just the right time to offer online sales incentives or prompt a sales representative to make a closing call.

Attract organic traffic from SEO

While paid online advertising can offer a short term fix for targeting leads, search engine optimisation can generate organic traffic to your website on an ongoing basis, literally for free.

By focusing on keyword researched quality content, posted to informative and engaging landing pages and blogs, you can rank high with search engines like Google and offset the massive investment of ad campaigns.

It’s unlikely that a business in a competitive industry can give up on paid placement, but ranking well with Google will ensure that this organic channel serves you well for a strong flow of leads at a lower cost of conversion.  

Takeaways

  • A healthy and productive sales funnel must start with a strong flow of leads.
  • Without leads your sales pipeline is dead in the water.  
  • Start by assessing your buyer personas and appeal to their pain points and frustrations with a strong value proposition.
  • Communicate your value proposition through an omnichannel lead generation approach that may include conventional media, PPC, social media, email, SMS, or cold calling.
  • Continue to experiment and optimise the sources for your sales leads – measuring not just quantity but conversion, costs and sales value of each lead source.
  • It’s vital that you use CRM and Marketing Automation to gather contact information of your hard-fought sales leads to engage and nurture them through your sales pipeline.
  • Assess if your current process responds to new leads quickly and provides them the personalised information that will make your business stand out from the competitors those leads are also considering.

Want more sales? We’ll help you find more traffic, generate 
more leads and get more business for your business.

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