Using Growth Hacking & Inbound Marketing To Grow On A Budget

Kennedy Andersson AB www.kennedyandersson.com
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Low cost & high impact inbound marketing can ignite growth on a limited budget – Stage 4
Introduction
There is no magical formula to growing a business apart from a lot of hard work and sometimes a little luck. But sometimes
you can make your own luck through digital marketing, leveraging it to build brand awareness, drive demand, and
ultimately generate customers and revenue.
The Internet and access to cheaper technology have leveled the playing field in today’s competitive market place, so now is
a great time to take advantage of low-cost, high-impact inbound marketing strategies to fuel growth.
If you add to this environment, multiple new communication channels, an increasing number of mobile devices and the
rising influence of a new generation of consumers, it’s no wonder that as businesses we may sometimes wonder where and
how to apply effort to digital marketing.
Whether you are a start-up, giving up, or ripe for change, all businesses can benefit from a better understanding of their
customers and an appreciation of where and how they can impact their customers “share-of-mind”. Most companies are in
a crowded market place, and need to assess how they can stand out and capture those digital moments along a typical
buying journey.

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If you want to upgrade your company’s ability to get found, get leads and close sales, then this guide should open up your
mind to consider all the elements of a comprehensive inbound marketing programme as a part of your digital marketing
strategy.
Our aim is to help you understand how you can grow dynamically on a limited budget with inbound marketing. In this guide
we are helping you develop a clear view on positioning, understand more about your customers and the importance of
having an effective website and SEO strategy – all of which can be done for little or no cost.
In this e-guide we cover:
• Critical Success Factors
• Buyer personas, buyer’s journey and the sales funnel
• Website
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
And by the way – what did I miss in stage 1? Our e-guide called “How to make a brand attractive”
And what did I miss from stage 2? Our e-guide ”How to marry growth hacking & inbound marketing”
And what did I miss from stage 3? Our e-guide ”Sales funnels & content marketing ”

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Low cost and high impact inbound marketing can ignite growth on a limited budget

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1. Critical Success Factors:
To start this journey, it is important to have a clear view of what your company stands for, how you are going to be different
and how you will fulfill your customer’s needs better than the competition.
One way to get that clarity of thought is to go through the exercise below to help you define the Critical Success Factors,
that will make you position your business for success.
Follow the example we have made first to ensure you understand the logic, then take a turn filling out the table with your 5
critical success factors.
2.Buyer personas
The complex nature of a buyer’s journey today, with an increasing number of touch points, different stakeholders and
multiple decision makers makes the process far more complicated. Some businesses have applied a broad focus to covering
as much as possible of the customer experience in the hope that they will influence a “key digital moment” along the
journey from awareness through to purchase decision. But there are challenges when companies fail to understand their
buyers, what content they are looking for and how they want to interact.
For a growth hacker the application here is to adopt a mindset that is particularly “customer or buyer-centric” when
developing their value or brand proposition. For a more mature company this could represent a major mind-shift to employ
tactics that drive increased engagement and revenue – based on understanding their buyer personas.

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So - know Your Audience!
If you don’t know who your ideal customer is, how can you attract them to your business?
Buyer Personas
Each type of ideal customer has different wants and needs. And when you know what these are, you can target your
message to each group (and avoid sending irrelevant content to the wrong persona) plus build trust and credibility in what
you communicate.
It is important to invest time developing your unique buyer personas. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of
your ideal customer based on market research, and real data about your existing customers.
How to build Personas
First, expand your own customer view, as it could be a little narrow if you rely just on your own feelings. To start
researching your personas look close at hand through your database, capture information from forms and data fields on
your website, and get feedback from colleagues and directly from customers.
What information do you need to determine your persona?
Background (buyer role, type of job, etc.)
1. What job do they have, level of seniority?

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2. How long have they been in the company?
3. What is their role in the company?
Demographics (male / female, age, location where they live, seniority in work, etc.)
1. Describe their career path.
2. How did they end up where they are today?
3. What does a typical day look like for them?
“Firmographics” (industry type, company size, location, number of employees, etc.)
1. What kind of industry are they in?
2. Do they sell a service or products?
Goals (Primary and secondary)
1. What are they responsible for?
2. What does it mean to be successful in their role?
Pain (Primary and secondary)
1. What are their biggest challenges?
2. What we offer (to help them achieve their goals or overcome specific pain)?

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How do they buy things?
1. How do they prefer to interact with vendors (e.g. email or in person)?
2. Do they use the Internet to research vendors or products?
3. Describe a possible recent purchase and how they would approach it.
4. Why did they consider a purchase, what was the evaluation process, and how did they decide to purchase that product
or service?
Objections (why would they not buy your product or service?)
1. Have you had any feedback before on resistance to buy?
2. Have you done any research to see what are the key reasons to buy, and how does your solution match that list?
Short message you would give them (how would you describe your solution?)
1. “This is your 30 second elevator pitch” – the what, why, when and how
Where and how would your persona search for information?
1. The type of information, keywords, etc.?
2. What do they read?
3. How do they learn about new information for their job?
4. What publications or blogs do they read?

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5. What associations and social networks do they participate in?
6. Where can you find them, and how would you educate them, do they have a preferred format for learning or digital
engagement?
You can also refer to the great website www.makemypersona.com from HubSpot that provides a template for you to
develop a persona.
All of this information can help you build a profile of what your ideal customer looks like, behaves, their pain and priorities.
Typically, there can be between 1 to 4 personas for you to develop as ideal customers for your business and evolve as you
learn more about them.
Once you have your personas, now it is time to work on how they got to you, the buyer’s journey and the various stages of
the sales funnel.
Creating content for the buyer’s journey
Once we understand the buyer persona and their pain, it’s time to create content that helps accomplish your business
goals. To make a campaign successful, we will need to use content that the target persona will find valuable enough at your
first touch point to download in exchange for their contact details.
Buyer’s Journey:
To help you define your sales funnel you will need to think through the questions below, to see if you have any gaps in your
understanding of how the buyer gets to your business and what you know about the environment your business or industry
is in:

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o Do you have a Customer Lifecycle definition (suspects, prospects, leads, contacted, converted, lapsed or lost)? These
are references to the different contacts that you may have in your database and the lifecycle stage they are at.
o What is your industry, are there particular buying patterns, preferred contact channels, decision maker profiles?
Review the example customer journey below - where do you have contact with your customers, in what order, and are
there any contact points that have a strong influence on the “share of mind” of your customers?
Keywords SEO Website Video Emails Telephone Face-to-
Face
Social
media
Display
ads
Re-
marketing
Webinars
A great site to check out is Google and their customer journey to online purchase. You can search by country and industry
to see how different marketing channels affect online purchase decisions.
o Where is your competitive set (local, regional, national, international, etc.)? Do you have a list of who all your
competitors are, and how you compare to them?

o Where is your industry as a whole going?
o Are you able to identify groups that are becoming opinion formers or influencers?
o Do you have a competitor strategy (proactive, reactive, copy, run away, etc.)?

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o What are the noticeable trends (type of business, customer requests, new source markets, etc.) seen recently?
So you are starting to get a grip on your buyer’s persona, you are working on the buyer’s journey – now you need to put it
all together with the sales funnel.

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A basic approach to the sales funnel
The details of sales funnels vary considerably — after all, there is a huge selection of products and services available on the
Internet, but there are some basic points to consider on how customers start their journey through a funnel.
1. Discovery stage: Gathering options and establishing some criteria for what they want
Customers first encounter your product when they’re looking at your business alongside your competitors. Unless they
have previous purchase experience with products like yours, customers first have to understand the pain they are trying to
address or opportunity that lies ahead of them. They may not realise what kind of problem they have, and at this early stage
they are looking to understand more.
Help customers answer this question by bringing important details to their attention in a credible and trustworthy way. So
make sure that your site can be found, use the keywords that they are looking for and use a message that educates rather
than sells.
2. Short list: Select prospective suppliers
Next, customers may choose a set of options to check your solution against, in order to assess whether they can shortlist
you after their initial research. Assess your solution against what you know to be your buyer personas challenges, are you
ticking boxes against their needs?

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3. It’s all in the detail:
At this stage if there is more interest and the customer is considering your product worthy, they will want to understand
more about your particular offering. Make it easy for customers to filter and compare options based on the criteria that
matter most to them.
4. Validate: Who can I trust to give me a second opinion?
When customers are close to a purchase decision, they often look for alternative sources of endorsements or
recommendations that they feel they can trust. Adding customers’ logos or third-party reviews, ratings, and testimonials to
your own marketing can boost credibility.
5. Try it!
In many instances, customers can try a product before they commit, a free trial works wonders. If you are not able to do a
free trial, work on an alternative approach that can capture the experience that can then be shared.

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The sales funnel
The idea of the funnel is that your potential
customers reduce in number as they move down the
funnel. At the top of the funnel (TOFU), there are a
more people who you will want to make aware of
your brand. The middle of the funnel (MOFU) is
smaller, as there are less people who would actually
consider buying your products or services, and the
bottom of the funnel (BOFU) is even smaller, as you
narrow down the number of people who are in a
position to buy from you. Your mission using inbound
marketing is to guide as many potential customers
toward eventual conversion at the bottom of the
funnel as you can. Beyond the funnel after your sale,
you need to concentrate your efforts on engaging
your customers for repeat business and
recommendations.
MQL = Marketing Qualified Lead, SQL = Sales Qualified Lead

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3. Your website or “shop window”
Did you know that people conduct two thirds of their research on a purchase before they ever talk to a business? Google
research shows that on average, B2B researchers do 12 searches prior to engaging on a specific brand's site.
It’s important to have an online presence so that your business can be found, as customers are drawn in by your great
content and keen to hear more about the solutions that you offer. Getting found and creating a positive website experience
are key to succeeding in a buyer-centric world.
Building a website doesn’t have to be costly and time-consuming
Start with the basics
You can get started with just a homepage, about us page, contact us page, and a blog. Then, once you start creating content
you can add landing pages to capture details of your customers as they download your content.
Designing your website
You don’t need to have the flashiest website, but a basic approach that supports your business values and generates
qualified visitor traffic who want to hang around and engage with you. Most companies can happily create with little
programming skill an effective website with one of the low-cost options such as www.squarespace.com, www.wix.com,
www.godaddy.com to name a few that offer a great website based on their templates.

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So, first things first, what are some simple design tips to help you attract and keep your visitors?
Typography that stands out
When creating you’re the look and feel of your company website, your choice in typography can reinforce values that you
want your company to represent. But keep things simple, choosing a font or typeface that is not supported by common
browsers and computers could mean that your website does not display properly.
Symbols and iconography
The use of icons can help your website visitors find what they're looking for much more quickly especially if you have a site
that has lots of text. The icon visuals can illustrate a concept well and their distinctive look helps guide the eye from place to
place.
Make your text easy to read
Text is important. It’s there to provide information and answer questions even before they’ve been asked. With that said –
don’t make your readers get their magnifying glass out read it. There are a few simple rules you can adhere to that will keep
you and your text crystal clear and easy to read.
Make sure your colours work together. For example: putting blue coloured text on a black background will leave your site
with visitors struggling to make sense of what you are writing. Always test the legibility of what you write. And be consistent
with the fonts that you use. Create a theme and stick with it, having too many fonts makes it difficult for the visitor to read
or make sense of what you are about – the site needs to have a nice and easy flow to follow.

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Image compression: the need for speed
Nothing kills engagement like slow load times on your website. In a world of short attention spans, if a site is taking too long
to load, your visitors will almost invariably leave and with websites becoming more and more visual in their efforts to stand
out load times can be impacted. Look at plugin’s that can minimize the size of an image automatically, which will reduce the
time it takes to load.
Keep your site clean and clutter-free
The world around us has become quite cluttered and websites are no exception. Ads, banners, icons, badges, signs, pop-
ups, buttons, and so on can dazzle and confuse your visitors. Keep everything simple or even minimalistic with only your
most important content highlighted and focus on a great user experience.
Research your competitors and find out what works for them
First of all, assess how your customer would interact with a particular design based on the understanding you have of your
buyer persona. With this in mind, start to look at your competitors and how they deal with a particular stage in the buyer’s
journey.
Design with your customers behaviour in mind
For example, if you create a ‘click here’ button for a landing page, visual hierarchy tells us that the eyes move top to
bottom, left to right. So you will need to try a few versions of your buttons to see where you get the most clicks.

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Don’t forget the mobile revolution
In today’s world your website has to be responsive to the devices that your customers are using, and there has been
explosive growth in the penetration of mobile usage.
Large imagery
Large images on your home page can have a major impact on how your visitors feel about their engagement with your
brand. Large hero images can be placed in the background with text and other content overlaid and they are great at telling
a story or as call-to-action without you resorting to writing lots of text.
Hamburger menus
Most website menus offer the user the chance to see an extensive list of everything that is on offer throughout the site, the
disadvantage of these types of menu is that they can take up a lot of valuable site real estate. The hidden, or hamburger,
menu changes this. The pages of your website should have a clear path for the user to take. Removing a busy navigation
makes the experience cleaner and free of distractions. This improved experience increases the likelihood that the user will
find the information they need and appreciate the efforts you are making to have an improved user experience.
For inspiration on website design, my references for what is hot are:
www.behance.net
www.dribbble.com

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4. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
The SEO practices today are about optimising for those making the search, rather than the search engines themselves.
Whenever you are assessing a sites SEO performance keep in mind how the customers are using and arriving at the site.
When optimising the content on your website, start with:
Page Titles - A page title is the text you see at the top of your browser window when viewing a web page. It’s also the title of
a page that is presented in search engine results, so make sure you have used your keywords appropriately.
Meta Descriptions - A meta description is a short summary that you can write for a web page, which search engines display
in search results. These descriptions don’t count toward search engine rankings, but they are still useful. When creating a
description, the goal should be write compelling copy that accurately describes what’s on a page to attract somebody
searching to want to click.
Headings - If a piece of text appears larger or more prominent than the other text on a page, it’s probably part of heading.
You can verify this by checking the HTML code of your website and looking for text with an <h1>, <h2> or <h3> tag
surrounding it. Typically, you would have only one header <h1>, make sure you include keywords whenever possible in the
heading.
Both search engines and your customers tend to pay more attention to headings in comparison to regular paragraph text.
Keep in mind that <h1> tags give the text more weight as keywords than <h2> or <h3> tags, so we would suggest that you
use the <h1> tag only once per page so as to not dilute the impact.

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Use appealing imagery to enhance the user experience, and remember, “a picture can paint a thousand words”. When
inserting images into your website, you should not be excessive as it could slow down the loading of your site and
remember to title your pictures in case they do not render. Use “alt text” with keywords to cater for image searches.
Separate the words in the file name with a dash, e.g. example-image-title.jpg.
A great resource on all things SEO is:
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
http://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-seo/

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All that we have addressed in this e-guide can be executed for little or no cost. The idea is always to fuel growth in an
affordable way, especially for those start-ups that are high on energy and low on budget, but still have the same narrow
focus on growth as the rest of us.
There have been big shifts in how buyers behave, we owe that to some extent to the Internet revolution and how this has
helped put the power back into the hands of the buyer, now we face a call of “seller beware”. How buyers or customers use
the tools available to them for research and education have major implications on any business that has a focus on sales
and marketing. Decision makers now need to be approached in a different way, attract rather than distract them, get them
on your side, build a level of trust and become an influencer rather than a follower in your market.
The inbound marketing methodology is about attracting the customer to your website, to pull them in, rather than push
them away with an interruptive style of communication that may suit your needs but not your audience.
Use this guide to plan you approach, work on a strategy with your ideal customer as the focus and work hard at
understanding what they want and how you can tap into their pain or opportunity by providing educational information in
the form of content marketing. How you do that we will address another day!

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Questions or comments?
John.kennedy@kennedyandersson.com
VD / CEO Kennedy Andersson AB
www.kennedyandersson.com
+46 705 78 42 66

Using Growth Hacking & Inbound Marketing To Grow On A Budget

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