Where Are You Within the 5 Stages of Marketing Transformation?

If you’re looking to tie marketing initiatives to revenue, you’re probably wondering how much time and resources this will take. One of the most common questions we hear is: how do I get there from where I am today? Well, it depends on where you are starting from. In a nutshell, transitioning from ‘marketing-as-usual’ to growth marketing requires aligning with sales and measuring progress with more purpose. You’ll need to understand what sales calls a qualified lead and whether the leads your department is serving up are viewed as viable. You will also need to reassess all your programs to make sure they are not just creating brand awareness, but are also generating quality leads and supporting the conversion process.

But first, you need to figure out where you are at today. Once you determine what your current growth marketing status is, you’ll be able to develop a transformation plan that gets you to where you need to go. There are five stages of growth marketing:

1. Emerging

Marketers in this stage are rooted in traditional, top of funnel marketing. They are usually isolated from sales and are doing little, if any, lead generation. Typically, they are focused on brand awareness. Often, they operate with no marketing plan. Marketers in the emerging stage may feel as though their efforts are under-appreciated and worry that their jobs are at risk.

2. Managing

Marketers in this stage have evolved from simply generating awareness to generating leads. However, they usually don’t know what happens to those leads after they pass them off to the sales team. They create content for sales, but because there is very little alignment between the two departments, these marketers are never really sure if the content is being used.

3. Measuring

By this stage, marketers have laid the groundwork for alignment with the sales team by agreeing upon shared definitions of lead, marketing qualified lead, and sales qualified lead. They have implemented lead scoring to prioritize leads for sales follow-up, received feedback from sales, and collaborated with them to determine what content to create and what works best.

4. Optimizing

They collaborate with sales to make improvements based on campaign performance. Sales comes to them proactively as an ally, and the two teams think through strategy together in one collaborative effort.

5. Capitalizing

Marketers are supporting sales throughout the funnel and measuring results based on revenue. They adjust campaign strategy based on revenue goals and performance in real time. They have full alignment with sales and often operate as one team, with shared KPIs and successes.

Take our quiz to find out what stage in your growth marketing journey you are at today. Every journey begins with a single step, but until you know where you’re starting from, you won’t know which direction to point your feet.