Growth Marketing Mythbusters: Stop Making These 3 Mistakes

As software continues to eat the world and the amount of free content available continues to explode, you have more tools and resources than ever to help you make better decisions that grow your business.

The bad news? It also means the sheet amount of information becomes overwhelming and conflicting.

Too much advice is based on misconceptions and conjecture. When you hear something enough times (even if not true, or not always true) your marketing runs the risk of becoming dogmatic.

Let’s break down some of the most prevalent misconceptions that can be detrimental to your growth. We’ve rounded up some of the most common growth marketing myths that you’ll see floating around the internet and marketing “guides.”

After reading, you’ll be better prepared to challenge your own growth solutions beyond conventional wisdom and implement strategies more likely to improve your marketing in the real world.

1. The More Money I Spend On Marketing, the Faster I’ll Grow

Will your business grow faster if you spend more money on marketing? If only it were that easy! Unfortunately, this isn’t always how marketing works. There will always be unavoidable diminishing returns in the real world as you scale and spend more money. What you need to do is integrate efficiency-improving strategies so that the more money you spend at the top of your funnel, the faster you will grow. 

As you start to focus your energy on marketing strategies, you have to be aware of the importance of retention metrics in the funnel. Growing isn’t going to help if you can’t retain the people that you get. One way to do this is by making partnerships within your industry. A good example of this is Breezy. They use partnerships as a growth channel to help add scale in an efficient way. Take note that while partnerships won’t cost media spend, it does cost tons of resources and time to truly be effective.

2. Successful Testing is All I Need to Grow My Business

Testing should always be your focus, but it needs to be paired with the right budget strategy. Focusing solely on testing without keeping your budget in mind can tank your short-term account performance. Successful campaigns take planning, research, and time to develop. If you go broke first or destroy your business margins, you won’t reach the long-run.

Even though testing is a vital part of your marketing strategy, be sure you’re focusing your budget on optimization. I recommend doing 80% of your budget to optimization activities (things you’re already seeing a return on) and 20% to testing.

3. Precise Audience Targeting Drives Good Performance

Conventional wisdom tells us that the more granular target your specific audience, the more likely you are to reach the right people. Technically, it’s true that you need to reach the right people within your user segments…but the best, modern way to do that is different than you think.

While traditional audience targeting can produce good results, limiting yourself to narrow audiences is more likely to be counterproductive to your goals. 

The modern solution? Targeting through your creative and using broad audiences that build more liquidity within ad platforms. The result is reaching more people within your desired user segments, training algorithms to act as the ultimate matchmaker. This is especially important as you scale: this targeting strategy might be the #1 way to fight fluctuations in performance and diminishing returns. 

Conclusion

Growth marketing is constantly evolving. Truths can become myths faster than we all care to admit. Staying humble, staying transparent, and staying curious is the best scalable path to staying on the cutting-edge.