Building long-term brand value & business growth through three stages of maturity

Examples of marketing activities through three stages of a company's growth journey.

How do we measure the value and results of marketing and branding, and what constitutes "sensible goals"?

To put these questions into context, we first need to understand where on the growth journey the client’s business is currently at. In this article, you can learn more about the three stages of maturity – the Crawl, Walk and Run stages – that growth companies / scale-ups typically face and the types of marketing activities that are suitable in each phase.

Three stages of maturity

For growth companies, we often talk about three different stages of maturity, the Crawl, Walk and Run stages. Simplified, I usually advise my clients to think like this depending on where they are at on their journey:

1. Crawl stage – create the right conditions and a strong marketing foundation

Focus on getting things in place to create the right conditions for generating Awareness. At this stage your company is probably immature, and you may not have progressed enough to measure the effect of what you do yet, so you may have to measure the activity as such.

→ The goals to be achieved can be, for example, identifying company values and desired behaviors, developing the value proposition, visual identity, processes, defining the marketing strategy, creating relevant marketing materials, launching a new website with the right functionality and content, etc., i.e. simply "putting the right things in place".

2. Walk stage – execute, listen/measure and learn

When you have put things in place according to (1) above, it is time to start attracting interest in what you have to offer, i.e. start driving traffic and implementing targeted marketing and communication (e.g. campaigns, events, content on social media, basic PR), follow up on the results of these and use the lessons learned to become better. You need to understand/refine the marketing and sales funnel and create a CRM strategy.

→ The goals you usually have at this stage are to start building a brand by creating Visibility, Awareness & Adoption for the company's offer. What and how to measure the effect depends on which channels you choose to reach your target audience(s).

3. Run stage – scale up & optimize / accelerate

The focus is now on scaling up the business and growing (usually quickly). To succeed, increased exposure on the market is usually required (bigger budget, more channels/markets or target audiences), more advanced lead-gen/marketing automation, scale-up of digital marketing and other external communication, etc. You also need to ensure you take care of the customers you have, keep them happy and make them buy more.

→ The goals in this stage can be both quantitative and qualitative: e.g. increased Brand Awareness (brand recognition), significantly increased traffic to the company's website and social media, Share of Voice in the media, how the company is perceived on the market (Market Perception), Preference, which can be measured in how good you are at converting and taking care of customers (Convert & Nurture), e.g. conversion rate, repeat business and customer satisfaction index.

In summary, it’s important to understand where your company is at, and where you want to go (where the company is at on its growth journey) in order to implement, measure and evaluate marketing and communication in the right strategic context.

Do the right things at the right time

As you will have understood from this discussion, to create long-term marketing value for an organization, you not only need to make sure that you do things right but also that you do the right things at the right time for the right target audience.

A clear target audience analysis, an assessment of the current situation, and the desired market position, image, and perception are important components of a company's marketing strategy to be able to develop a sensible marketing plan that leads to the wanted market perception and position.

What is the "right result", what should be measured and how can and should look different for different companies depending on the stage of maturity, size of the company, budget and resources available, and of course what overall business goals the company has.

Take stock, reassess and adjust along the way

Marketing and communications should evolve during the company’s growth journey. Things that were important before may no longer be important or relevant, so we can’t just keep doing the same things without reflecting. Activities that do not contribute to achieving the company's desirable position on the market and overall business objectives should be screened out.

Therefore, it is good practice to challenge status quo from time to time – we should ask ourselves:

What should we stop doing (to free up time, money and resources),
What should we continue to do (more, better), and
What should we start doing that is beneficial to the next stage of our growth journey?