SAVD by ‘A New Age of Growth Marketing’

Part of the “SAVD by the Series”

By Dipak Kamdar, Partner & CRO at SAVD

The goal of growth marketing has not changed. The path is always moving, but the goal remains: Grow the Business. 

The path from marketing dollars to business growth feels more winding than before. Change always makes it feel that way. But capabilities now exist that actually make the path from marketing to business growth more direct than we could ever previously imagine. 

A lot has been written on what AI changes about the growth marketing landscape. In this environment it’s tough to know what to adopt and what not to adopt. But it’s important to keep your eyes on the goal as you make your decisions. 

The goal of business growth has not changed and neither have the three contributing factors of growth marketing:

• Cost. Optimizing your media to spend the right amount to maximize your return. 
• Customers. Optimizing to improve the rate at which your media turns into a customer. 
• Customer value. Optimizing to improve the value you bring to those customers and the value those customers bring to your business. 

All Marketing is Performance Marketing Now

With each of the three pillars there are two questions: how do you define and how do you improve?

How Do You Define?

Performance marketers have always loved the formula:

Growth Marketing Result = [Customers * Customer Value] / Cost. 

And brand marketers have always rolled their eyes at the formula. A battle for the ages. The formula is unarguably the right way to view marketing results. But, what is (and has always been) arguable are the definitions within the formula:

• How do we credit our media with getting a customer? 
• How do we define an official customer? 
• How do we value that customer at the point we label them a customer? 

Coordination within your organization and data alignment unlock these answers. ‘SAVD by AI’ sets the stage to get these definitions right. 

How Do You Improve?

Ad optimization. Spend optimization. User experience optimization. These have always been ways marketers have improved their growth marketing performance. These ways still exist, and AI resources are here to help with these ways of improving performance. 

But cross functional decisions are the key in differentiating YOUR ways of optimizing. And that’s where ‘SAVD by AI” is here to help. 

Growth marketing now involves everyone in the business, and this can feel overwhelming, making the path to growth feel more “winding” and less direct. Growth marketing now involves questions like:

• At what point in the process do we charge customers for the first time? 
• What does our pricing structure look like and why? 
• How do we properly value a customer?
• What is the biggest lever to drive customer value?
• What offerings would match our potential customer base that we don’t currently offer?
• Do we need to change the user experience?
• Do we need to change how we route a potential customer?

A lot of the decisions to these questions have not historically sat with the marketing team, nor should they sit solely with the marketing team today. Optimization isn’t a siloed decision – it’s a moving flywheel that often involves collaborative decisions within the business.

Growth marketing approaches can open the door for new structures within the business. Everyone needs to be in communication. Silos can no longer exist. ‘SAVD by AI’ sets the stage for these cross functional “How Do You Improve?” conversations.

The three pillars (cost, customers and customer value) are intertwined. Your organization should be too. 

SAVD by the Series

‘SAVD by AI’ wants to help YOU get this right too! In the coming weeks we’ll be posting a series. One topic for each pillar, though we could roll out a list on each topic. 

Keep an eye out as we bring you content on:

• SAVD by Brandformance: Avoiding what we call “The Doom Loop” of performance marketing. 
• SAVD by Routing Intelligence: The best ways to get your audience to the right place at the right time. Specifically in this new “less clicks” world we’re living in. 
• SAVD by Customer Evaluation. The ‘importance of getting’ and ‘how to get’ the right methodology in place for your business in valuing customers.