Build a Growth Engine 🚀

In today's competitive market, companies need to innovate and optimize growth strategies. Building a growth engine is one such strategy, focusing on user acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue.

I will explore touchpoints and user journeys to attract visitors, convert leads, and create loyal customers. This guide is for any start-up founders and business leaders seeking to fuel their organization's growth.

PS: Adapt this template for your own business to get the most out of this Engine.

Awareness

This is a Visitor Journey.

Human is the term we use for anyone who discovers our platform. These individuals are also referred to as Persons.

A Human fitting a specific category is termed a Persona. Our ideal Persona is a […], although we also value other Personas such as […]. These Personas can assist in promoting our platform through various referral methods, including roles as […], or even as existing users and customers.

Our Humans are strange Personas, different than any other kind of humans: [Reasons]

Once a Human visits any of our domains, they become a Visitor.

Visitors originate from various sources we call Funnels.

A Visitor showing significant intent by exploring pricing or contact pages is termed an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead), representing high-quality traffic.

Acquisition

This is a Lead Journey.

When a Visitor shows interest in connecting with our team, they evolve into a Lead.

Leads are typically linked with a company, characterized by industry, account size, and other attributes.

Leads engage with us in two primary ways:

1. Inbound: The Leads find us without any proactive outreach from us.
   1. Google Search or SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
      1. Our website with a deliberate actions such as filling out the 'Contact Us' form, scheduling a Discovery Call, or using chat support on our website.
      2. Our internal blog, documentation, changelog or webinar can lead to an organic interaction within our Marketing Lifecycle Automation, like onboarding, roadmap discussions, documentation, or SEO articles.
      3. External articles written by other people on Medium, Youtube, Dev.to, Quora or Press. We generally call this Backlink. It can be called: co-writing, backlink, referral link, press, public feedback, public use case, etc…
   2. Social Media like Reddit, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter (X) or HackerNews
      1. Social can come from our post or other Human/Visitor/Lead/User/Customer
2. Outbound (or Outreach): We reach out to the potential Leads, and they respond positively.
   1. Outbound (or Outreach): We reach out to the potential Leads, and they respond positively.
      1. Warm/cold reach tailored to different Personas' specific needs, pains and preferences. The ultimate aim is to get leads on to a call with the sales team to qualify them into pipe.
         • Warm can consist of anyone who has had a form of interaction with your solution in the past e.g. an old active user, closed lost opportunity or interacted with us at an event.
         • Cold refers to outreach to individuals who are unaware of your solution as a company/solution and aims to educate individuals on an alternative way to build cloud infrastructure.
      2. Multi-touch: Call / Emails/ LinkedIn / video messages
         1. LinkedIN outreach is done through either connecting with a prospect and sending a personalised message based on the information provided on their page. Alternatively if a connect is not accepted after a few days and the prospect is a key target the message can be sent via LinkedIN INmail which bypasses the need for a connect to be accepted before a message is sent.
         2. Email campaigns will be part of the flow and can be either personalised to the individual, the job title, the industry or be generic depending on the nature of the outreach. These emails will be short in length.
         3. Calling will be done in batches and will be dependent on the ability to obtain accurate phone numbers, sometimes individuals cant be called as the data is not available. Calling will be done for both warm and cold prospects and different call structures will be done for each.
         4. Video Personalised 30sec videos to prospects via free tool Vidyard will also be done and added to certain emails/LinkedIN messages to “cut through the clutter” and boost reply rates.

Leads can be triggered through different touchpoints, can be a mix of outbound and inbound interactions.

Activation

This describes the User Journey on our platform.

A Lead converts into a User after completing the signup process on our app.

Users have the ability to:

• Register using either a professional or personal email.
• Enjoy a [X]-days free […] trial accompanied by an onboarding sequence which includes [Key questions]
• Receive outreach for feedback, aiding in enhancing customer satisfaction and steering product development based on feature requests.
• Be recognized as an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) User when meeting specific criteria.
• Become dormant, which then requires reactivation efforts.
• Initiate their User Journey in our platform based on their chosen method of creating [Product], whether starting from [User journeys]
• Contact our support via in-app chat, support email, or the "Contact Us" form on the website.

Retention

We monitor User activity to distinguish between Monthly/Weekly Active Users.

• Users become Active Users by engaging with at least one feature on our platform.
• They transition into a PQL (Product-Qualified Lead) if their PQL score is over 100.

Referral

Leads convert into Customers after purchasing any of our products or services through several pathways:

1. Self-Serve Purchase: Customers can buy products independently.
2. Customer and Partner Recommendations: Current Customers or partners can recommend us, leading to new deals.

Revenue

This is a Customer Journey.

1. Classic Sales Process:
   • Initiating with a Discovery Call, we create a Deal. We have a script of questions we ask to our prospect to determine if a Deal should be created & the next steps needed.
   • The Deal can move fast depending on Customer Priority.
   • This process is dynamic, allowing Deals to start at any stage, involving multiple stakeholders.
2. In-depth Sales Engagement:
   • Includes briefings by the [Product Specific] team, involvement of decision-makers from the start, evaluation and successful proof of concept, and concluding negotiations once the sales offer is approved.
   • We encourage Employee Advocacy, leveraging employees to promote the brand and engage with potential customers via their own networks.
3. Deal Closure:
   • Deals that do not result in a purchase are marked as closed LOST, with daily analysis of the reasons.
   • Successful deals, resulting in the purchase of contracts, are marked as closed WON.
     • A Happy Customer has renewed his contract and is maintained by the Sales team for post-Purchase Support such as customer support channels, ongoing training, and resources.
     • A Churned Customer is defined as one who discontinues using and paying for our services.