3 Common Mistakes People Make In Growth Marketing (and how to fix them!)

‍If your growth marketing strategy isn’t working out quite as you planned, you aren’t alone. Many companies struggle with their growth strategies – especially after iOS14 changes. The truth is that they are missing the mark because they’re making some common mistakes. Once you know what these mistakes are, you can fix or avoid them and implement winning growth strategies. There are many mistakes that people make in growth marketing, but here are the three common mistakes we see companies make and how you can avoid them.

Blindly following trends

Marketing is ever-changing and ever-evolving. Keeping up with industry trends should be an important part of your marketing strategy. If you stick to what you’ve been doing, even if it’s working right now, you may lose out down the road. People will only respond to the same thing for so long. Trends can help you predict what people will want next week or next month, so you can plan your future business strategies and stay ahead of consumer demands. Trying new things is a part of growth marketing. This allows you to continue learning, developing new ideas, finding new opportunities, and being innovators in the industry. 

Change is inevitable in marketing, and you must change with it. But blindly following every new trend that comes along can be a mistake. Your product or service is unique, even though others in the industry may have similar products or services. So, if you copy another company’s growth marketing strategy, it might not work for you. The key to knowing which trends to follow is to do your research. Find out why a particular strategy works for another company before diving in and trying to duplicate it. Determine if your audience will respond in the same way that theirs does. Remember that your audience is as unique as your product. The bottom line is that you should evaluate each new trend and see if it’s right for you, your business goals, and your target audience. If it isn’t, then you should look for a different growth marketing strategy that will make your product or service successful. 

However, analyzing the growth strategies of other businesses is a great way to get new ideas for growing your own business. But just taking someone else's strategy and applying it to your business, while ignoring the effect it might have on your customers, can do more harm than good. 

Constantly trying to reinvent the wheel

When you are looking for a new growth marketing strategy, you can often find it by determining what’s already working for you or your competitor and optimizing it to better reach your target audience. The mistake some companies make is that they want to come up with something brand new every time, so they spend a lot of time, money, and effort brainstorming new ideas from scratch. But a simple growth marketing strategy that you should be using is to list what works and what doesn’t. Build on what is working and cut what isn’t. This will save you all that time, money, and effort coming up with the next great idea that might not even work. Then you’re back to the drawing board again. The best, most efficient way to try new things is to test and optimize what you already have. If it doesn’t work, then you can try again from another angle without having to go back to square 1. 

The truth is that it’s very hard to create the next groundbreaking idea. With so much content out there, it’s extremely difficult to come up with something brand new. A saying you’ve probably heard is that there’s nothing new under the sum. It’s all been done before. While that may be true, it doesn’t mean that your team should shun innovation and not spend any time and effort on brainstorming new ideas. But there has to be a balance between coming up with new ideas and optimizing what you already have. So, instead of trying to constantly reinvent the wheel, look at what you or others in your industry have done successfully and tailor it to fit your product or service and your target audience. In other words, avoid this mistake by building on what you already know works. 

Expecting instant results 

Every company would love to roll out its growth marketing campaign and get instant results. If it were that easy, though, everyone would be doing it. The truth is that thinking you’re going to attain instant results is an unrealistic expectation. Regardless of how good your growth marketing strategy is, overnight growth is extremely unlikely to happen. Scaling your business is not easy and it takes time. It involves investment, patience, and continuous improvement. You can’t just flip a switch and customers will flock to you the next day. Yet a common mistake that many companies make is to put a lot of pressure on themselves to achieve a strategy that will provide an immediate increase in their ROI. And they see the strategy as a failure if it doesn’t. Expecting immediate results can lead to putting together a half-baked strategy and pushing it out before it’s ready. Not seeing the results you expect right away can be frustrating for you and your team. Yet it’s important to remember that in marketing, as in most things in life, it’s better to get things right than to do them quickly.    

Instead of falling victim to this common mistake, you should properly develop and test your growth marketing strategy with the objective of long-term, sustainable growth. Understand that it will take time for your investment to reap rewards. Use research and proven marketing strategies to create marketing campaigns that have value to your audience. Don’t worry if you don’t see an immediate ROI. Trust in your team and your marketing growth strategy and give it time.  

Not working with us here at Ladder

Bonus mistake: Not working with us! We’re the growth marketing experts that will help you take your campaign to the next level. Growth marketing is an excellent strategy for businesses looking to position themselves in the market and scale quickly. By avoiding these three common mistakes, and working with an agency like us, a growth marketing strategy can help you achieve the sustainable growth you want.