Growth Marketing Report: Spotlight on the retail industry

Growth drivers are the backbone of any quality marketing strategy–they’re the solid framework upon which everything is built, and investing in growth drivers is the key to crafting a successful growth marketing strategy. Let’s explore their significance:

1. Strategy and Planning: Develop a roadmap and guide that steers your marketing efforts in the right direction. A solid plan helps you prioritize initiatives, identify target audiences, and outline the overall approach to drive growth. It enables you to make informed decisions and allocate resources effectively, ensuring your marketing efforts are focused on activities that generate the highest returns.

2. Data and Analytics: Gather and analyse data for actionable insights. By understanding customer behaviour and market trends, you can make data-driven decisions and uncover opportunities that may go unnoticed otherwise. Data and analytics help you optimise your marketing campaigns, identify cost-saving measures, and adjust your strategy based on real-time analytics.

Example: Recognising the importance of a scalable business intelligence solution, Douglas partnered with DEPT® to develop a central data platform. With the existing IT infrastructure presenting limitations in scalability and slow processes, a flexible data stack was essential for Douglas’s growth.

Implementing a modern data stack resulted in significant time savings for Douglas. This investment in data and analytics empowered Douglas to make data-driven decisions, enhancing its competitiveness and paving the way for growth.

3. Creative: When we talk about creative in the context of growth drivers, we’re talking about crafting a cohesive, customer-driven experience that provides a seamless brand experience. Investing in your unique brand experience is about curating an experience that speaks to your customers and resonates with them on a deeper level.

Example: DEPT® partnered with Savage X Fenty to build a production team predominantly women-led, aligning with the brand’s sense of confidence and inclusivity. By investing in creative, Savage X Fenty and DEPT® were able to harness the power of visually compelling and authentic content to attract and convert customers.

The team seamlessly integrated creative strategy and streamlined planning to produce 18 months’ worth of content across various platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, streaming media, and Instagram. The extensive production efforts across multiple platforms allowed them to reach a wider audience while maintaining the brand’s unique personality and message.

To be a successful growth marketer, you must diversify your investments by including all growth drivers and essential activities in all three funnel levels. So now that we’ve established that to practice growth marketing, brands need to understand it, adopt the proper mindset, and invest in all three growth drivers, let’s talk about how economic uncertainty is causing waves in retail marketing.

Based on the investments in retail activities in 2023, here are some key points to take away.

• Emphasis on paid media: The highest investment percentage (67%) is allocated to paid media, indicating that retail marketers recognise the importance of reaching their target audience through various paid channels and are allocating a substantial portion of their marketing budgets to drive brand awareness, customer acquisition, and sales.
• The ongoing significance of eCommerce: The significant investment of 55% in eCommerce suggests the increasing recognition of the importance of online retail and the need to enhance the digital shopping experience. Retail marketers are acknowledging the shift in consumer behaviour towards online shopping and are allocating resources to improve their digital presence and capabilities.
• Taking a multi-channel approach: The allocations to paid social (49%), brand media (53%), and paid search (51%) indicate a comprehensive approach to reaching a broad range of customers across various platforms and search engines. By utilising paid social media advertising, brand media placements, and paid search campaigns, retail marketers see the importance of targeting different audience segments and maximising their reach across various online channels.
• Losing focus on SEO and organic social: The investments in SEO (19%) and organic social (15%) are much lower compared to last year (which was an over-prioritised activity). Marketers are likely pulling back since paid advertising channels offer more immediate visibility and quicker returns on investment.
• Leaning into video, audio, and social commerce: The allocations to video and audio (41%) and social commerce (41%) suggest that retail marketers recognise the power and effectiveness of multimedia content in engaging their target audience. And when it comes to social commerce, retail marketers are embracing interactive and seamless shopping experiences to keep their customers engaged and satisfied.
• Under-prioritised areas for retail marketers: Includes programmatic advertising, display advertising, native advertising, CTV, emerging media, OOH/DOOH, and SVOD. Content marketing, influencer marketing, SEO, and organic social are under-prioritised activities in the middle of the funnel. Retargeting/remarketing and CRO are under-prioritised at the bottom of the funnel.

Growth marketing is like a complex puzzle–several moving pieces must be finely tuned for your unique brand. But here’s the thing: simply understanding, adopting, and investing isn’t the end of the growth marketing road.

You must also be able to put everything into practice. In the marketing world, everything can–and should–be measured. That’s why we’ve created a special tool called DEPT®’s Growth Marketing Maturity Index™, or GMMI™ for short.

The GMMI™ is our proprietary tool that assesses the level of growth marketing maturity within companies. It considers six fundamental pillars that come together to measure a brand’s vision and investment in growth marketing and how well they put it all into action.

In our comprehensive assessment of retail marketers, a pattern emerged as we evaluated their growth marketing maturity levels using our five-level GMMI™ scale. Notably, 32% emerged as “Performers,” positioned at the third level, and 38% achieved the “Transformer” status, scoring at the fourth level.

What sets this year apart is the notable uptick in the number of respondents reaching the highest level, as 10% scored at the highest possible GMMI™ designation as “Disrupter.” This figure starkly contrasts the 4% recorded in the previous year, showcasing an impressive leap forward in the realm of growth marketing excellence within the retail industry.