Why B2B marketers must adopt a growth marketing mindset

The contract manufacturing market has changed, bringing new challenges for B2B marketers in the industry. But as Albert Einstein once said, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

The companies that will thrive today and in the future are those with a growth marketing mindset; who are willing to bend, flex and try new things.

Adopting a growth marketing mindset is the key to driving sustainable business growth and staying ahead in today's competitive landscape.

What is growth marketing?

Growth marketing is a strategic approach focusing on driving sustainable business growth. It goes beyond traditional marketing tactics and encompasses a broader set of principles and methodologies. 

The goal of growth marketing is to attract and retain customers, increase revenue, and expand the business by continuously optimising marketing efforts based on data-driven insights.

In traditional marketing, you create a long-term strategy using proven marketing tactics and tools. You collect data but don’t really dig into that data beyond checking on traffic and leads. Because you’ve got a plan, right?

But adopting a growth marketing mindset means continuously looking for new opportunities that will help build and engage your audience.

Growth marketers are in a perpetual state of flux. They constantly experiment with new approaches to see what works best, using data as the driving force behind all decision-making.

Because it’s impossible to know what truly works for your brand without an element of trial and error.

Key characteristics of growth marketing 

Growth marketing encompasses several key characteristics that drive success:

Data-driven decision making

Growth marketing relies heavily on data and analytics to inform decision-making. It involves collecting and analysing customer data, campaign performance metrics, and market trends to gain insights and drive marketing strategies.

But there's data… everywhere. Just consider what data your contract manufacturing business is sitting on - ERP data like contacts and buying behaviour, website data like visits and dwell times, and social media data like impressions and shares.

Without a way to bring this all together, these insights might just be out of reach, stopping you from progressing and closing more sales successfully.

Marketing tools like HubSpot and Google Analytics can help you to collect and analyse your marketing data so you can turn it into meaningful and actionable insights. These insights should become the cornerstone of your marketing.

Experimentation and testing

Growth marketing is all about embracing experimentation and trying new things to drive business growth. It involves testing different strategies, channels, messaging and creative ideas to see what clicks with your target audience.

Customer-centric approach

Growth marketing puts the customer first - so they are at the centre of all marketing efforts. It involves deeply understanding customer needs, preferences, and pain points to deliver personalised experiences and build stronger customer relationships. 

Continuous optimisation

A key aspect of growth marketing is the commitment to continuous improvement. It involves analysing data, monitoring performance metrics and closely examining customer feedback to identify areas that can be improved. It's about constantly fine-tuning your strategies, campaigns, and channels, tweaking messaging to resonate better with your audience and adjusting call-to-action (CTA) placements to reach the right people at the right time. A growth marketing mindset means standing still is not an option.

How to develop a growth marketing mindset

1. Look at the whole sales funnel

Traditional marketing tends to focus on the top of the sales funnel - raising brand awareness. But a growth marketing mindset means looking at every stage of the funnel:

• Top of the funnel (Visitors, Leads)
• Middle of the funnel (MQLs, SQLs)
• Bottom of the funnel (Customers)

If you only focus on one stage, you either won’t be doing enough to generate leads in the first place or not doing enough to turn those leads into customers.

2. Identify key metrics

Once you get to grips with your sales funnel, you can start identifying the metrics that are going to matter at each stage:

• Top of the funnel - e.g. website traffic, social engagement
• Middle of the funnel - e.g. leads, email open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates per channel
• Bottom of the funnel - e.g. opportunities by channel, cost-per-acquisition (CPA), revenue by keyword

Be sure to track metrics that are going to be useful and that you can interpret the data from in a meaningful way.

3. Get to know your strengths and weaknesses

Now you need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your funnel. If you lack traffic, that’s the most significant issue to focus on. Perhaps you need to re-look at your keywords to make sure you’re targeting the right ones to draw in the relevant audience.

Or maybe you are getting lots of traffic to your website but failing to convert visitors into leads. Are you clearly communicating your value proposition? Are your CTAs clearly visible, or is your website so crowded that people don’t know where to look?

At the same time, you need to leverage your strengths. What does your company have to offer that your competitors don’t? Are you communicating this clearly enough? What are your top products or services for bringing in revenue? Are you clearly signposting people to information about these solutions on your website?

4. Prioritise

In a HubSpot webinar on developing a growth marketing strategy, Sujan Patel, co-founder of Mailshake & Web Profits, suggests using the Bullseye Framework to help you prioritise what to test.

The framework is broken down into three rings:

• The outer ring contains what’s possible - all your prospective opportunities from new or existing marketing channels, e.g. email, social media, blogging, podcasts etc.
• The middle ring focuses on what’s probable - the marketing channels with potential to gain traction that you haven’t fully focused on growing yet
• The inner ring outlines what’s working - the top three channels with the highest potential for gaining traction for your business

As Sujan explains, “If your main focuses (in the middle of the ring) don't align with the channels that are working for you once you've analyzed the data, it's time for a rethink. Focusing on proven top tactics is vital.”

5. Inspire a growth mindset from the rest of the organisation

The final part of developing a growth marketing mindset is getting the rest of your organisation on board. You need your Sales and Customer Service teams, particularly, to be excited about getting creative and experimenting. Both of these teams will be talking to customers all the time, and the feedback they’re getting could lead to new, great ideas. In fact, 87% of sales and marketing leaders say collaboration between the two teams enables critical business growth. 

Tips for success

Be bold

Being bold and creative is what will set you apart from your competitors. Neil Downling, vice-president of global integrated marketing at professional services firm Genpact, says B2B companies need to think with a challenger mindset to maximise their impact. At Genpact, disruption has become part of the marketing team’s psyche and people and are prepared to take bold and brave decisions.

Embrace failure

If you’re going to take bold and brave decisions, you need to embrace failure too. As not every experiment is going to end in success. The trick is to figure out fast when something isn’t working so you can learn from it and change tact. The best growth marketers think on their feet and flex and adapt their approach when needed.

Measure everything

Growth marketing is about looking at data and driving insights from that data back into the business. To get that critical data, be sure to measure everything you are doing.

Be agile

Instead of building long-term project plans, adopt an agile methodology and break down your marketing activity into shorter monthly and quarterly ‘sprints’ with goals. This will help keep you on track to make decisions based on data rather than hunches.

Conclusion

B2B marketing isn’t easy at the best of times. In contract manufacturing, the customer journey is often long and complex, with multiple decision-makers involved. Most of the people who visit your website won’t yet be ready to buy. And marketing technology is evolving quickly.

Now more than ever, contract manufacturers must challenge the status quo and look for new opportunities to engage and build their audience for sustainable growth. By adopting a growth marketing mindset, with each experiment and iteration, contract manufacturers can refine their marketing strategy and achieve their goals at every stage of the sales funnel.