Unleash your creative power: Where design meets performance
Creativity in business is much more than just aesthetic appeal; it should be the driving force behind brand identity and an engaging customer experience. As your business looks to scale, the key to cultivating a unique and coherent brand voice amongst the competition lies in your ability to understand how creative strategies align with your growth opportunities.
Key Takeaways:
- Understanding Your Audience: Businesses often have an ideal customer in mind, but real-world engagement can reshape target markets in unexpected ways
- Testing and Creative Strategy: Creative testing is essential for growth, but it must be conducted in a way that provides clear, actionable data
- The Evolution of Brand: As companies scale, the need for a robust and consistent brand increases in order to build trust and customer loyalty
- Adapting With AI: the creative role will evolve without diminishing. When used correctly, AI offers creative designers a chance to increase engagement and maintain human resonance
Understanding Your Audience
A pivotal early lesson for businesses is that their perceived audience may not align with their actual consumer base. Modern businesses should embrace a learning mindset, expanding their audience understanding far beyond initial projections. Broadening your audience scope can lead to remarkable growth, breaking free from rigid customer personas and embracing the fluidity of public preference. Here’s what Kyle has to say about this phenomenon: "I think a big misconception is that your audience isn't always who you think it is... Taking a step back from your own product, people get so close to these things, they truly understand it in a way that no one else does. And just trying to learn… unlocking new opportunities."
The Double-Edged Sword of Creative Testing
Creative testing is crucial for fine-tuning marketing strategies, but it is often misunderstood. Many companies assume that flooding the market with their ads is enough, expecting algorithms to do the heavy lifting. Kyle believes that meticulously controlling your variables during creative testing is crucial to ensure accuracy in the resulting data: "Running a test is great, and learning from it is great, but just ensuring that the data that you're going to get back is super clean and super usable so that you're not making decisions based on something that is a little muddy or unsure."
Evolving Your Brand: More Than Just a Logo
When companies take on brand evolution, there's a common trap of reducing the brand to simply a logo. Shields notes that while a logo is a significant aspect, it's merely the tip of the iceberg. In fac, branding encompasses design language, tone, and the overall narrative a company weaves across various touchpoints: "I think it's everything from tone, it's from messaging, it's the character, it's how you chirp someone on Twitter. It's that design language. So there's so many things that I think go into building a brand."
Adapting With AI
As the world turns its gaze toward AI and deeper automation, the creative role will undoubtedly shift, but not diminish. Understanding the evolving nature of creativity, designers and strategists will continue to play a central role in shaping a business's trajectory, ensuring its growth is not just numerically significant but also resonates on a human level with its audience.
Growth@Scale: Embrace failure, measure success
This episode of Growth@Scale features MAVAN’s very own VP of Growth, Malachi Rose. Malachi joins Matt Widdoes for a discussion about growth strategies, the ever evolving landscape of growth marketing, and why experimentation and iteration are critical drivers of growth for any company.
The Evolution of Growth
Over the past two decades, the concept of growth has evolved significantly. Previously, growth was seen as separate functions within a company, such as marketing, product, and data. However, the emergence of growth as a centralized swim lane has transformed the way companies approach growth. Today, growth teams consist of cross-functional experts who work together to solve problems and drive scalable growth.
The Challenges of Early-Stage Growth
In the early stages of a company, there are common pitfalls that can hinder growth. One of these is an overreliance on intuition and optimism. Founders often have a strong vision and belief in their product, but they may rush into growth mode without addressing critical product health issues. It is essential to focus on customer research and product development before diving into growth strategies. Additionally, many companies underestimate the time and effort required for growth. Scaling a business takes time, and it is crucial to have sufficient capital and patience to navigate the challenges along the way.
The Importance of Testing and Learning
Testing is a fundamental aspect of growth. It is essential to approach growth with a mindset of continuous learning and experimentation. By running tests and analyzing data, companies can gain valuable insights and make informed decisions. It is crucial to define success metrics and have a measurement plan in place to track progress. By embracing failure as part of the learning process, companies can iterate and improve their strategies over time.
Breaking Down Silos for Scalable Growth
As companies grow, they often become siloed, with different teams and departments working independently. This siloed structure can hinder communication and collaboration, leading to inefficiencies and slower growth. To overcome this, it is important to foster a culture of cross-functional collaboration and shared goals. By aligning teams and breaking down silos, companies can leverage the collective expertise and drive scalable growth.
The Power of Customer Insights
One of the most valuable resources for growth is customer feedback. Many companies overlook the importance of talking to customers and gaining insights into their needs and preferences. By actively engaging with customers and incorporating their feedback, companies can improve their products, marketing strategies, and overall customer experience. Customer insights should be an ongoing process, with regular communication and feedback loops to drive continuous improvement.
The Role of MVPs in Growth
The concept of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) is crucial for growth. By focusing on the smallest version of a quality product, companies can quickly validate their ideas and gather feedback from customers. MVPs allow for rapid iteration and learning, enabling companies to make data-driven decisions and optimize their strategies. By embracing the MVP mindset, companies can minimize risk and maximize learnings, leading to more effective growth strategies.
The Importance of Data-Driven Decision Making
Data is a powerful tool for growth. Companies should prioritize data collection and analysis to drive decision-making. By measuring everything and having a clear understanding of success metrics, companies can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions. Data should be used to validate hypotheses, track progress, and optimize strategies. By leveraging data, companies can gain a competitive edge and achieve sustainable growth.
Conclusion: Unlocking the Power of Growth
Sustainable, predictable, and scalable growth is essential for business success. By adopting a problem-focused approach, embracing failure as part of the learning process, and leveraging customer insights and data-driven decision-making, companies can unlock the power of growth. Breaking down silos, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and maintaining a culture of continuous learning are key to driving scalable growth. With the right mindset, strategies, and tools, companies can navigate the challenges of growth and achieve long-term success.