Imagine that growing your business is like climbing a mountain. It's not just getting to the top; It is advancing step by step, understanding each stage. You have to go through five crucial stages to climb the Everest of marketing and achieve sustainable growth.
The first stage, Validate, it's like testing the waters. Here you seek market validation for your product or service. Does your proposal fit the needs of your clients? In this phase, you don't need a big budget, but you do need creativity and determination. Marketing activities are small but effective: message testing, basic email marketing, and organic social media actions.
- The goal is to validate the product with the market and find the right fit.
- Actions: message testing, email marketing, SEO, alliances with other brands, among others.
- Key KPI: LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1, among other indicators that reflect a sustainable acquisition cost.
Once your product fits, you move on to the Speed up. This is about generating quick income and profits. The goal is to capture buyers who are already searching for your product. As? With paid ads on Google and social networks, optimizing your conversion rate and improving your sales process.
- Here, the focus is on generating immediate income and profits by depleting the domestic market.
- Activities: paid ads, conversion rate optimization, sales, and RevOps to measure performance.
- Key KPI: LTV:CAC ratio of 3:1 and other indicators that reflect conversions and sales.
But at some point, growth plateaus. He is the feared Performance stagnation. This is where many businesses get stuck, but the trick to moving forward is to expand your buyer pool. Now, you must focus on the Demand Generation: make yourself visible to those buyers who still don't know they need you. Use valuable content, strategic partnerships, and account-based marketing (ABM) to build trust and credibility.
If you do this well, you reach the stage Reach. Here, your goal is to reach more people in your total market. You are no longer capturing only the 5% that are in the market; you now target 100% of your addressable market. This is where you start to build a strong brand and generate base income, the ones that come without additional effort.
- This stage focuses on generating long-term demand and reaching out-of-market buyers to build base revenue.
- Activities: content marketing, demand generation, ABM, and employee advocacy.
- Key KPI: Pipeline growth and brand traffic, reflecting the effectiveness of demand generation efforts.
Eventually, you will also come across the Penetration stagnation. This means you have outgrown your market and need to expand your buyer pool. This is where you enter the stage Provide. It's time to think about product, price and place. How can you expand your offer to attract new segments? Maybe new products, different price levels or even expanding geographically.
- It is about expanding the market to achieve greater penetration through the development of new products, price variations, and geographical expansion.
- Activities: Product development, product marketing, and geographic expansion.
- Key KPI: Penetration rate and net revenue retention, reflecting the company's ability to expand and grow.
Finally, we reach the stage Hold. Here, the goal is to maintain sustainable growth. Not everyone makes it this far, but those who do are the true leaders of the category. Now you have a sustainable growth engine, and it's time to build your brand in a big way. Marketing activities focus on brand advertising, creative activations and mass reach.
- At this stage, the goal is to maintain long-term sustainable growth, focusing on building a strong brand.
- Activities: Brand advertising, brand activations, and reach through channels with greater coverage.
- Key KPI: Market share, pricing power, and short/long-term efficiency, reflecting brand strength.
The key to getting to the top of the mountain is understanding that growth is not a straight line. There will be peaks, valleys and occasional plateaus. But if you follow these keys and adapt to the changing needs of your business, you will be on the right track.
Are you ready to climb? 😉
