BUSINESS OPTIMIZATION

An effective long-term marketing strategy should be built on a foundation that supports sustainable growth. While there are many growth hacking tactics that can be used to jump start growth, many do not provide growth for the long-term.


Four primary ways to drive sustainable growth:

  • Word of mouth: A natural occurrence that happens as the result of the enthusiasm of satisfied customers.
  • Side effect of usage: The desire to use a product or service, sparked by seeing others successfully using it first.
  • Funded marketing & advertising: Marketing & advertising that is funded by revenue generated from service or product sales. Not outside sources such as investment capital.
  • Repeat purchase or use: Products or services that are designed to be purchased repeatedly.

    • Ten Optimization Techniques for Sustainable Growth

  • Strategy Before Tactics: Lead first with your philosophy, your goals and then with a well-thought-out strategy to achieve them. Even if you're a start-up, you'll want to have a solid framework before setting out to grow your business.
  • Prioritize AnD Eat That Frog: With your goals in place, you'll need to create a list of action items that will need to be completed to help you reach your goals. In many cases, you'll have quite a few action items that will need attention, so prioritizing them by level of importance is key.
  • Create A "Stop DoinG" list: Remember the old phrase "Less is More." I believe there is a ton of truth to that statement. As business owner or team leader tasked with building sustainable growth, it's easy to get caught up in the daily tasks of "working in your business" instead of "working on your business." The goal should be to figure out how to do more with less, optimize your time and always make time to work on improving your business.
  • Build A Repeatable And Scalable Process: Providing a "custom solution" can be a great way to build your business. However, it's best to figure out a way to make your custom solutions tailored to a specific market to make them repeatable and scalable.
  • FOCUS ON HELPING RATHER THAN SELLING - ZMOT: Consumers are no longer at the mercy of being sold to. Instead, internet technology has empowered consumers to do their own research and make their own purchasing decisions. They will most likely choose the company that is the best at showing how they provide the most value for the time and money. This is also known as the Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT). This shift in consumer behavior has fundamentally changed the way companies should handle their sales process. The focus should now be on helping consumers by being great listeners, communicators and teachers.
  • Build & Own Marketing Assets: Unlike traditional advertising methods such as radio, TV, print and billboard advertising, where you rent space for a period of time, your website, blog and content offers can be tremendous at providing sustainable growth. The best part about creating this type of content is that once you build it, it never goes away. Instead, it becomes an asset to your company that can be used to generate growth consistently throughout time.

    This is a great optimization technique that works well for the "Funded marketing and advertising" method of sustainable growth. While it may still be a profitable investment to do paid advertising, in many cases you can generate more qualified leads by building marketing assets first.

  • Re-Invest In Your products, Services And Customers: Another great optimization technique for consistent growth is to re-invest back into your products, services and customers. Re-investing in these areas helps support the "word of mouth" and "funded marketing and advertising" models of sustained growth. Focusing on delighting your customers is the the best way to get them creating "buzz" about your brand.

    The internet has also empowered marketers to have the ability to listen to conversations happening on social networks and respond to them in real-time. Being responsive is a great way to re-invest back in your customer service. The more you're able to learn about your customers, the easier it is to delight them. Sometimes, it's as simple as just reaching out to them to make sure they are completely satisfied.

  • Deliver The Optimal User Experience: Odds are, you may be thinking about figuring out new ways to generate more traffic to your website. You may feel that if more people just saw what you have to offer, they'd buy your products or services. This is most often a false feeling. The reality is, you must get people to your website that are actually interested in what it is that you have to offer. While I'm not discounting the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it's better to optimize for the overall user experience first.

    This process really starts offline first. Make sure your optimizing the customer experience to the best of your ability. Then conduct research to find out what's really important to your buyers. Then, develop your website to deliver the best user experience first, meaning that you're making it easy for your prospect to find the information they are looking for. If you've done well at optimizing the user experience and have followed the best practices of on-page SEO techniques, it's likely you'll perform well in search.

  • Eliminate Uncertainty: When you're faced with challenges or something fails, it's best to eliminate uncertainty as to why it happened. Eric Reis, in "The Lean Startup," explains his brilliant process of the "5 Whys" technique, which provides a process to find the root cause of the problem. While following this process is a great to way to improve your business in general, it can greatly impact the "word of mouth" and "side effect of usage" methods of sustainable growth.
  • Build, Measure and Learn: To consistently improve your sustainable growth models, focus on discovering new ways to improve your products, services and on delighting your customers.