By definition, a lever is an object that mobilizes large loads with minimal effort;
In other words, a lever is a tool that allows us to achieve great results
without having to make a large investment of time or money. Growth driver, or growth lever, works in te same way.
Drivers are the essence of Growth Hacking and Agile Growth Marketing, since these
disciplines are dedicated to continuously optimizing the process of marketing and growth of the
business making every action as efficient as possible.
In the same way, drivers are the most valuable thing we have in a business since they represent
great growth opportunities. That is why it is really important to be able to recognize them and
know how to put them to good use. Below we explain how to incorporate and apply growth drivers for
your business:
Identification
The growth drivers can be media, channels, strategies, messages, posts on social networks,
campaigns ... They can take infinite forms and each company will have different levers in
based on your business model, your target, the sector you belong to, your value proposition ... etc.
Therefore, the first thing is to know how to recognize the main drivers of your business and, therefore, analyse which are
the best hypothesis for you to test as a driver. Ultimately, you will have to try as many marketing strategies as you can think of and segment
them correctly for different drivers.
The levers will be those strategies through which you obtain better results; perhaps
be it email marketing, maybe they are direct messages from whatsapp, they can be personalised calls
or videos, landing pages, content marketing, content in networks, viralization strategies,
brand reputation ... etc. Whatever works for your business may potentially turn into growth driver.
Application
Once you have identified the levers of your business, they should form the pillars of your
marketing strategy. First, you test the drivers to see whether it makes sense to turn them into your growth strategy,
once you validated your drivers, you apply them and they become the strategy.
The marketing and growth actions you take - either individually or in a
marketing department - should turn as much as possible around the levers of the business. Why? Because the drivers
are validated ways to scale it up. You tested them before, you know they work.
This does not mean that resources should not be devoted to other actions; quite the opposite: it is always
good to keep experimenting with new tools that open the doors to new and potentially even
better opportunities; however, it is important to dedicate a considerable percentage of resources
to the levers that we know already work to ensure we can
stay afloat and therefore keep trying new levers with the resources we get from those that already bring us results.
Optimization
Driver optimization and marketing strategy are the technique behind the results scale up.
When we know what the levers of our business are, we must be
continually optimizing and polishing them as much as possible to get the most out of their
performance. Sometimes the optimisation strategies are called lubricants - as in the race car framework, since they lubricate the growth
engines.
If, for example, we know that one of the main levers of our business is content
marketing, it's worth dedicating resources to this channel and figuring out how to get the most out of it post-validation.
Are we giving our audience everything they are really looking for? Do we give the possibility of
subscribe to a newsletter from other content pieces? Is there any type of content we could add? Could we
interact in any way with our audience so that they feel even more involved?
Open to change
To be able to find successful drivers of our business and to make them work in a
optimal way is already an achievement. However, we must always be open to change as the market is constantly
moving and each an every technique or marketing tactics has its lifecycle.
Technologies advance rapidly, new competitors emerge every day,
marketing strategies evolve rapidly and the tastes and needs of our
consumers change. Therefore, we must have an agile mentality that predisposes us to
always try new things and implement those changes that are necessary, especially when the techniques that worked before
start to drop.
Nothing tells us that the tools that are now current levers will be working
forever; That is why it is so important to allocate a part of our resources to continuous
experimentation, since the more we experiment the more we will be opening ourselves to new
growth opportunities.