A Return to Organic Growth Tactics in the COVID-19 Era
*Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
In the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, there has been much discussion about the economic impact of the virus. We are fully expecting another global recession that Bloomberg predicts could rival the Great Depression of the 1930s. In fact, Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi, in an interview on CNBC, said a second wave of the virus will reduce consumption and drag down economic prospects.
“We may not shut down again, but certainly it will scare people, spook people, and weigh on the economy. That would be the fodder for a depression.”
In light of all these dire predictions, I’ve wondered what the net effect on how businesses execute strategies for growth. In particular, I can’t help but ask myself if there might be a resurgence in organic growth tactics, especially for small to midsize businesses.
Pay to play, no more??
Here’s how I look at the COVID-19 impact on businesses.
For many years, companies have pumped millions of dollars into digital advertising. In 2019, over $330 billion was spent, globally, on digital advertising across diverse platforms and in various ad formats. Early projections for this year also anticipated double digit growth in global digital ad spend throughout 2020.
In light of the global shutdown, mass unemployment numbers, and declines in industry-wide net revenue, spending projections will almost definitely be reforecast.
Now, I’m not saying that paid advertising will disappear. Fortune 500 companies and other large organizations with budgets for omni-channel campaigns will continue to spend on digital advertising. Platforms like Google and Facebook offer guides on how to get more value from ads to encourage greater investment in their platforms.
However, for companies with razor-thin marketing budgets, even during the best of times, paid advertising isn’t a viable channel right now. As your overall revenue declines as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, so too does the amount of money available for promotions.
Yet, to borrow a line from the entertainment industry, “the show must go on.”
Grow organically for the long term
Paid advertising is a great approach for rapid lead generation. Unfortunately, during a pandemic like COVID-19, let’s be honest - rapid business growth, in most industries, is just not going to happen.
Consumers are not buying in the same ways. People are concerned about how to pay their mortgages or their rent; how to keep food on the table and their families healthy. Buying the newest product or piece of software you aggressively advertise ranks very low on the list of priorities. That means, as a business, you can spend an abundance of money on ads, but they won’t generate the same pre-coronavirus conversion rates.
To adapt to this new reality, your business needs to do two things:
Reset your monthly, quarterly, and annual growth targets to realistic numbers
Double down on the long game with an organic growth strategy
Ground your forecasts in reality
The business community can learn many lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. One critical learning from the outbreak is how quickly an unexpected incident can throw growth strategies by the wayside. Brands need more consistent ways to expand visibility and become ubiquitous with their target consumer’s behaviour.
The innate problem lies with unrealistic growth expectations. Companies in high growth industries, especially in the tech space, forecast YoY growth rates of fifty, seventy five, one hundred percent, and so on. Even as projections rise, investments in marketing, sales, and other departments remain flat or end up cut. You need to budget for growth to meet expectations; otherwise, like Icarus, you will collapse under the weight of your own hubris.
Rapid growth is achievable in some circumstances, but you can’t make a blind assumption that it will magically happen. There’s a great article by Asheesh Advani in which he describes the optimal forecast as “audacious optimism.” In the article, he encourages companies to create both a conservative forecast and a more aggressive forecast. Together, those two roadmaps will help you find the realistic path to growth.
Invest in your brand identity
In light of the pandemic, I believe that companies should prioritize building their brand identity. This is a more cost-efficient, scalable, and repeatable path to growth. Establish your company as a thought leader in your respective space, and use that credibility to broaden your reach and visibility.
Identify your niche; what makes your brand unique from all others in the market.
Conduct proper keyword research to find the ideal search terms that relate to your brand positioning.
Determine the category your product or service lives in, and communicate how your solution is more effective at solving real problems.
Invest in detailed content creation on your website, your social channels, your emails, and other non-paid channels.
Create a variety of assets including blogs, guides, webinars, research reports, podcasts, and other forms of content.
Build your brand library with a coherent and consistent story for consumers to digest.
This is how you build your brand voice and credibility, which will earn followers and customers who are interested in your storyline. A strong storyline helps people grasp what you stand for as a corporation, and they can then understand the value of your products.
You can become more aggressive with growth forecasts once you have that core brand positioning fleshed out. Then, you have a consistent narrative you can take to market. As you build an organic following of customers, you can diversify your marketing channels and expand into more aggressive promotional strategies. You’ll also have hard-won advocates through existing customers who can recommend your brand to their own networks.
Rapid growth vs. long term growth
High growth environments set lofty goals for KPIs like revenue, pipeline, lead volume, and overall inbound traffic. But they’re not achievable without the right strategy.
The key variable is timing. Timing is everything and sets the tone for how your business will carve a path for the future. High growth expectations in very short timelines require reliable means of generating new leads. You need to be willing to invest in costly channels like paid advertising or syndication to achieve the desired results. You can’t expect to reach the sun without investing in the means of actually getting there.
High growth targets are perfectly fine and motivate marketers to bring their A-game to the table. But growth and timing have to be grounded in reality to achieve sustainable results. You cannot set lofty aspirations without a strategy to achieve those targets and expect to be successful. You will almost certainly fall short of expectations, and it will also demoralize the members of your team. People can see the writing on the wall when expectations are set too high and operations are not capable of meeting those targets.
Organic growth is more cost-effective, financially, but it does require a commitment to the long game. Paid channels ensure rapid lead generation; organic channels generate lower volume but, with a strong brand identity, attract higher valued prospects. People who match your customer profile are far more likely to make it through your sales funnel and become paying customers. This means less time and money wasted on non-qualified prospects in exchange for more sustainable revenue that will help grow your business.
