Questions, answered
Growth strategy, explained
What is a growth strategy, exactly?+
A growth strategy is the decision about where your revenue will come from over the next two years and what has to be built, in which order, before it can. In practice it contains a revenue model that works back from the target to leads per month, a positioning and offer, a channel plan with budgets, a message architecture, a measurement plan, and a 90-day build order. Campaigns, websites and content are execution of that decision, not substitutes for it.
How is this different from a marketing plan?+
A marketing plan usually lists activities for the year. A growth strategy starts at the number and works backwards until the arithmetic holds: how many customers, at what average order value and close rate, therefore how many qualified leads, therefore what one may cost. If those numbers do not meet, the plan changes before any budget is spent rather than after two quarters of disappointing reports.
How long does it take to build?+
About six weeks from the first call to a plan you can run. Most of that is spent on your numbers and your customers rather than on ours: pulling revenue, margin and close rates onto one page, interviewing your sales team, reading lost quotes, and mapping who else gets shortlisted. The 90-day build starts the week the plan is agreed.
Do we have to change agency to do this?+
No. Plenty of companies run the strategy with us and keep the suppliers they already have, at least at first. What usually changes is that everyone starts working against the same numbers and the same scoreboard, which is uncomfortable for a supplier who has been reporting activity rather than revenue. That discomfort is information.
How much should we be spending on marketing?+
The honest answer is that it depends on your margin and your sales capacity, which is exactly what the revenue model settles. A company with high margin per customer and idle capacity can pay far more per lead than one running at full capacity on thin margin. We would rather establish your number than quote you an industry percentage that ignores both.
What if the target turns out to be unrealistic?+
Then we say so during the free call, before anyone signs anything. It happens, and the usual causes are delivery capacity, average order value or a sales process that cannot handle more volume. Those are fixable, but they are fixed in the business, not in the advertising, and it is cheaper to discover that in week one.
How does the revenue guarantee work?+
Before we start we agree the growth target together and write it into the contract, along with what happens if we do not deliver. We can be blunt about that because we only take on companies where the model adds up: enough delivery capacity, a realistic market, and a sales team that answers the phone. The plan is what establishes whether that is true.
Do you work with companies outside Belgium?+
Yes. We work across Europe and in the United States, in Dutch and English. The arithmetic and the persuasion principles are identical everywhere. What changes is the market research, the language and the competitive set. The weekly review works the same in every time zone.