Growth Marketing Plan: see how the method that is revolutionizing the Digital Marketing Plan for startups works.

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If you have already validated your startup idea and are thinking about creating a digital marketing plan for startups , congratulations! You are on the right path to growing your company.

The concept of growth here is basically to define objectives and actions that can pivot, just like your startup, and meet scalable and automated growth through inbound and outbound marketing for your company.

Want to get a head start? Download my GROWTH HACKER KIT and start your growth plan now!

Why digital?

digital marketing plan for startups

Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot, once said:

“10 years ago, the effectiveness of your marketing was dependent student database on the size of your wallet. Today, the effectiveness of your marketing is dependent on the size of your brain.”

Much of this is due to digital marketing, which opens doors to experimentation, scalability and sustainable growth for small and medium-sized businesses, just like a startup.

A digital marketing plan in a startup is very important, as it will be the guide for everything your company must and will do to achieve the success metrics established by the entrepreneur.

On the other hand, the culture of annual digital marketing planning does not fit here (not even the 6-month ones lol).

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Most marketing plans created this way lose their validity as soon as they start to be implemented.

And if on the one hand startups don't have much time, on the other hand they have much less money to invest in something that won't be worth it, right?

Therefore, the Growth Marketing Plan , which is revolutionizing the way of doing digital marketing in SMEs, Startups and freelance professionals, is focused on delivering results at all costs.

The concept of Growth Marketing Plan is based on agile methodologies , and one of the pillars of this agile manifesto is “Responding to change rather than following a plan”.

In other words, the existence of a digital marketing plan for startups is essential , but that does not mean that everything will go exactly as planned.

And keeping this in mind is richer than any well-planned strategy.

digital marketing plan for startups

What is a Growth Marketing Plan:
A Growth Plan, without marketing, is a strategy that plans and moves resources to achieve, through a value proposition, a recurring growth recipe for companies.

When we add the term Marketing to the expression, the concept doesn't change much:

A Growth Marketing Plan is a strategic plan , usually with few financial resources, which aims to find a scalable way to generate recurring growth revenue for companies through marketing actions.

In other words, a Growth Marketing Plan also works for Small and Medium Businesses and Self-Employed Professionals .

digital marketing plan for startups
Your business using a Growth Marketing Plan
What is not a Growth Marketing Plan:
Growth Marketing, although it is a digital marketing plan that seeks results “at all costs”, follows good practices that avoid SPAM, does not adopt illegal market practices and also does not go against the recommendations of major search engines and social networks (incidentally, Black Hat SEO).

The benefits of a Growth Marketing Plan are:
You focus on results, regardless of the means;
Having a scalable growth plan designed for the long term, all actions, no matter how much they pivot, are aimed at creating a true automatic customer acquisition machine;
Your marketing is completely focused on metrics , just like your business, and only takes actions in this way, avoiding guesswork and ideas that make no sense for the business;
Your investment is very flexible, since most practices are based on Growth Hacking , looking for ways to grow a lot with few resources.
During the process you change direction a few times, this usually comes with a lot of learning and, consequently, new ideas.
Disadvantages of Growth Marketing Plan:
It is a more difficult strategy to think about, requiring a lot of knowledge of the business and alternative marketing and sales methods , as it does not have a lot of funds;
It is not very easy to implement this digital marketing planning model for large companies, which have a lot of bureaucracy and hierarchies in decision-making, which can slow down growth.
Now that we have in mind what it is, what it is not, what the advantages and disadvantages are, let's talk about the 7 key factors for a startup's Growth Marketing Plan :
key factors of digital marketing plan for startups

Establish your value proposition:
For your startup to grow in the short term and sustain itself in the long term, it is very important to be clear about what sets it apart from the competition .

Ask yourself these three questions before making a Growth Marketing Plan :

Are people aware that there is a problem I am trying to solve?
Would people buy a solution to this problem if it existed?
Why would people buy from me?
After that, just write your value proposition in a simple sentence that conveys what your business is and why it can change someone's routine.

Read also: CRO Consulting: Uncovering the Importance, Functionalities and Investment
Identify your ideal buyer (buyer persona ):
You need to identify why your customers come to you, what problems they face, what their goals are, what they are looking to achieve with your product, what their purchasing journey is, and so on.

To help you, you can download this Persona and Shopping Journey spreadsheet here on the Blog.

Remember to focus on your ideal customer : who is the perfect customer, how do they reach you, etc. This way, it will be much clearer what type of person you want to educate through your inbound marketing, reach with your outbound marketing and sell with your sales strategy, all within the Growth Marketing Plan.

Define your key indicators (One Metric That Matters):
“What gets not measured gets not managed.” William E. Deming

This sentence says a lot about Digital Marketing Planning for Startups.

You cannot invent an idea, make a decision or take any action without a data basis.

If you are a startup, you probably have little time and money . So, making a mistake that costs you dearly, especially without having a metric to give you a lesson learned from the mistake, is totally fatal.

Developing a key indicator means looking at your goals and translating them into important metrics for the business, such as: reducing Churn, acquiring new leads, building relationships to advance in the sales funnel, health of the email base, and so on.

Extra tip: whenever you define the key indicator in your startup's digital marketing plan , break it down into smaller indicators. Facebook, for example, initially focused on reducing churn and broke this metric down to “If a new user adds 7 friends in 10 days, they won't abandon the platform”, and thus managed to work towards this goal.

Update:

To define your most important metric you need to create an efficient Growth Hacking process .

Be clear about your source of income:
If you are a startup that has already validated your idea, you certainly already have a defined source of revenue. Whether it is a subscription program, an affiliate program, etc.

Defining this source is also part of the digital marketing planning for your startup , as it can avoid a lot of meaningless work and direction.

I'll give you an example:

Let's suppose you are an accounting software that is starting an inbound marketing project to capture new leads and consequently generate sales;
Okay, that's not a bad idea. But, it might take a few months to come to fruition;
Have you ever stopped to think that an affiliate program with delegates in cities in the interior can generate revenue much faster? So…
Keep an eye on your competitors:
This is one of the most important points in digital marketing planning for startups.

No matter your industry, there will always be competitors who are excellent at some things that your company is not.

Keep an eye on them, look for best practices and try not to waste effort competing where you can't.