While product marketing is the type of marketing that believes in promoting and consequently selling a product to a customer, growth marketing, also known as growth hacking, is somewhat a newer area in the field of marketing that focuses on growth primarily. The former can also be defined as the intermediary function in-between the two processes of product development and increasing its brand awareness. On the other hand, the latter originated with respect to early-stage start-up companies functioning on smaller budgets and desperately needing massive growth. But ever since it began, it has moved in to influence bigger corporate companies.
Following are the most commonly used strategies by businesses to promote growth in marketing:
- Market penetration
- Market development or expansion
- Product expansion
- Growth through diversification
- Acquisition of other companies
Relation between Product and Growth Marketing
Both product and growth marketing form connections between R&D (Research and Development) and commercial teams in companies, which enable both to drive greater value to the market and make provision for more revenue generation. However, one thing that separates the two is that while Product Marketing focuses primarily on pre-sales value creation, Growth Marketing does the same post sales. The following are the best tools used for various activities in Product Marketing:
Email Marketing: It is the process of sending out a commercial message using email, generally to a group of people.This message might include advertisements, solicit sales or donations, or even business requests sent out to any present or potential customer. The following email marketing tools are the best known in the industry-
- Mailchimp: This tool can be used to send out automated emails based on conversions or clicks. Click here to go to Mailchimp’s official site.
- Autopilot: The tool can be used for converting visitors into customers with the help of emails, just like Mailchimp, and for setting up email campaigns and journeys. Check their website here.
- Sendinblue: A SAAS solution, not just for relationship marketing, but also email marketing, sendinblue is one of the best in its field. Follow the link to check the website.
Learning about competitors: The more businesses grow, the more it becomes important to learn about your competitors and what they are offering customers, so that you can improve your own services. The following are the most important in the business cycle-
- Pi Datametrics: Pi Datametrics offers tools for analyzing the performance of your entire brand as well as individual products against competitors. Click here to learn more.
- Kompyte: This is a more traditional choice for tracking competitors and looking across their sites, campaigns, products and services. Visit the website for more information.
- SpyFu: This service tool can be used for obtaining detailed marketing analysis reports, which includes information about competitors’ ads, campaign expenditure for PPC, tracking across keyword, SEO ranking and backlink research. Click here for more information.
Customised landing pages: A custom landing page is the page that appears right after a customer clicks on the ‘Pay Per Click’ ad option in the search engine. It is the page where a potential buyer ‘lands’ on your website. It is important to have tools that can create good interfaces and reduce dependency on the tech teams.
- ChatGen: This tool can be used to generate a greater number of leads via Conversation Landing Pages, mostly because of its hybrid, easy-to-integrate, user-friendly and interactive nature. Visit the site here.
- Canva: This intuitive tool can be used for creating visual content with the help of its comprehensive library of pre-designed stock images and templates. Learn more about Canva here.
- Instapage: This tool is super easy to use and is an effective option for creating landing pages, combined with good customer support. Moreover, it is light on budget and has a variety of integrations for setting campaigns, mail journeys and connecting to CRM. Adding scripts can also be done easily if you need customised tracking or want some specific features on the page. Want to know more? Click here!
- Unbounce: It is pretty similar to Instapage, except with greater options for integration. Learn more here.
Personalised Chat: This is the best way to engage customers and keep them hooked on to your platform. Personalised chats feel less robotic and more human, and have the potential to convert more visitors into buyers. Some well-known tools in this regard are-
- Chatgen: This hybrid chat platform not only talks to customers in innovative and interactive ways, but also helps sales and support teams in automating time-consuming manual processes for better generation of leads and better customer experience. It can be integrated with various platforms like Google Analytics, Slack, Facebook, Google Calendar and so many more! Click here to check their site.
- Drift: Drift, too, is a chat platform that can interact with website visitors and turn them into potential customers. Visit the site for more information.
- Intercom: This platform, like ChatGen, can be used for both chat and support purposes. Its further uses include email marketing and CRM as well. Visit the website for more details.
Analytics: Product changes are validated and taken into consideration based on massive amounts of data. So it is only desirable to have these data organized into good formats for ready reference and use. Mentioned below are some of the tools that help in obtaining the right data in the right format-
- Google Analytics: Google Analytics deals with user data and is the most popular tool among marketers for data analysis. GA can be used to understand the type of campaigns that are working, to set up goals, traffic allocation and for reporting. It can be integrated with AdWords and the majority of other tools for covering the entire funnel of user journey. Check out GA here.
- Segment: Mainly used for user and sales data analysis, Segment provides services in terms of ensuring correct customer identification, seeking common traits in customers and locating the elements in campaigns that work for activation. It offers an API for in-app and on-site experience management and tracking. Check out more information here.
- Ahrefs: This tool is primarily used for keyword analysis, which helps product marketers to identify new questions and trends in the industry landscape for improving angle copy, SEO strategy and campaign direcion. Keyword research and backlink analysis platform of Ahrefs gives a whole image of product demand, features and competitors, which then helps in formulation of better tactics for replication of methods for staying ahead. Click here for more.
Webinars/online sessions: One of the better-known methods of generating leads is a webinar or an online session. Most SAAS companies do it for eventual conversion of visitors into buyers.
- Google Hangouts: This is probably the most popular method of conducting a webinar. It can adjust video quality depending on internet bandwidth and is absolutely free! But its main drawback lies in the fact that it cannot record or store data of the participants, which eventually shapes sales bandwidth. Check out Hangouts here.
- Go To Meeting: This can record exact information of webinar attendees and duration of a session. Other advantages include the provision for sending automated reminders both before and after a session. Probably the only disadvantage is that a lot of internet bandwidth is consumed during a Go To Meeting session. Check here for more.
- Webex: Being an enterprise tool, Webex is largely used by bigger companies and organizations. It has multiple meeting centres and a good customer support team. Visit site for more details.
Agile Development: This service helps in tracking shipping speed and team velocities. It’s mainly used by development teams in forms of weekly or monthly sprints.The process of Agile Development consists of breaking down bigger tasks into smaller user stories, which can then form MVP (Minimum Viable Product), with options for adding extra features in following iterations. Some tools used for the same are-
- Trello: It is one of the most flexible product management tools today! It eases and simplifies planning and execution of launches, sprints and experiments. Even complex projects can be visualized easily and comprehended at one glance. With cards, lists and boards, one can collaborate over activities and simply indicate the status and ownership of the card. Further features like due dates and filters help in organizing work in more simplified ways than ever. Check out Trello here.
- Mingle: This tool, specifically designed by ThoughtWorks for Agile Development, is mainly used by big organizations because of its complex flows that require proper training. Check out Minge here.
- Pivotal Tracker: Similar to Mingle, but cheaper and easier on the pocket, this tool is a good alternative to its contemporaries for managing Agile Development. If you want more information, visit here.
CRM: Customer Relationship Management is what companies use for managing and analyzing customer interactions during their entire life-cycles, with the intent of improving customer relations. The most commonly used product marketing tools for CRM are as follows-
- Salesforce: THE most widely used CRM tool globally, Salesforce provides complete end-to-end solutions, in addition to sending out mails and keeping track of all the activities of the users. Check the Salesforce website here.
- Hubspot: Not just CRM, but Hubspot can also be used for marketing automation. Know more about Hubspot here.
- Freshsales: Juggling multiple sales tools is a harder task than selling products/services. This is where Freshsales CRM steps in; one can call, send emails, prioritize leads, create reports, automate repetitive actions and visualize pipelines- all from one spot! Check out Freshsales site here.
