https://halogrowth.co/essays daily 0.75 2025-11-04 https://halogrowth.co/essays/direct-response-is-dead monthly 0.5 2023-01-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/ff9833e5-7516-4fbf-b124-25e508fe2d97/ResponseChannelFit.png Essays - Direct Response is Dead. Left: a sample evaluation of your marketing channels based on ability to elicit response types for your brand. A key dependency is running through the four fits framework first. i.e. market model fit being a consumer category in e-commerce affects your channels response potential. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/982b2427-8449-45ee-bdfe-76214ac3f32f/GrowthMarketingResponseSpectrum.png Essays - Direct Response is Dead. - Left: An overview of the Growth Marketing Response spectrum that should be defined at every campaign level. If you’re a growth marketer reading this, you’ll know what direct response is, and more than likely have run these campaigns in the past. The last decade of digital marketing has been a bull market for DTC (direct to consumer) brands running direct response marketing campaigns as their primary growth lever. The market, however, has shifted. Now, more than ever, brands need to familiarize themselves with the left side of the spectrum. You need to build trust and community with early adopters, and leverage that to demonstrate value to new customer who come from later stages in the product adoption curve. https://halogrowth.co/essays/why-growth-marketers-wont-work-for-you monthly 0.5 2022-10-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/d9a9b978-7f3f-4d68-8e8d-df12ba1a6eae/GPB+Intersects.jpg Essays - Why Great Growth Marketers Don’t Want To Work For You - Make it stand out Pictured above: examples of a deterministic system of distribution fueled by the partnerships between Brand, Growth and Product. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/c2ebe41d-18c8-4e94-bc16-59d6da4b80a0/cat.png Essays - Why Great Growth Marketers Don’t Want To Work For You - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://halogrowth.co/essays/what-is-growth monthly 0.5 2022-06-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/0bd5ae86-8af7-4e05-a6fe-b986ed6ce8bc/Funnel.jpg Essays - What is Growth, Anyway? - The traditional marketing funnel. Source: Neil Patel Furthermore, customers will engage on multiple channels, talk to people IRL who are in different funnel stages, and move along your marketing journey’s in extremely unpredictable ways. Embrace the chaos of this, otherwise, you will go crazy. This, however, does not mean a traditional funnel is not useful. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/31fa3ce7-b149-4fe4-ac58-42826de8179a/Opposing%2BForces%2Bin%2BOnboarding.jpg Essays - What is Growth, Anyway? - Source: Reforge Blog And is if their job wasn’t already hard enough, customers expectations are increasingly demanding. Think about this: when was the last time you got frustrated with a web site or an app? Was it a legacy company? Monopoly? Government organization? Lacking incentives to overcome these challenges really shows up in the UX. Would you be encouraged to open their email if they wrote to you after that experience? Would you sign up for their SMS campaign or want to be notified when they have an announcement? Probably not. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/30426390-d69b-46e6-85ee-b99513e45621/121003072343-chart-facebook-billion-youtube.jpg Essays - What is Growth, Anyway? - Facebook’s path to 1B users. Source: CNN Product Led Growth in a nutshell - a deterministic system of product level initiatives that materially impact customer acquisition, retention, and monetization. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/ec33eac7-2ffe-46ec-ac43-8f251260b144/Growth-loop-layered_3_v2.jpg Essays - What is Growth, Anyway? - The Reforge Growth Engine with Retention and Engagement front and Centre. Source: REFORGE In fact, many believe retention and engagement to be a core fundamental of growth. If you can’t get users to realize your Aha moment, and you can’t have them stick around and pay you what you’re worth, you are sailing against strong headwinds towards product-market fit. This may actually be a trap growth marketers solely focused on performance may fall into. If the platform says the ROAS is good.. then we’re making money right? Wrong. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/d8a3afa2-a66f-4ece-be74-ed7398b82e58/QualitativeMap.png Essays - What is Growth, Anyway? - An Example Qualitative Growth Model for a D2C Ecomm company. Source: Halo Growth Co. In contrast to product led growth, performance led growth relies on 3rd party channels for distribution, and scalable inputs from those channels. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/cef95f65-2984-456c-98f6-51b0378b7923/10%2BReasons%2BFail%2BAt%2BGrowth.001.jpg Essays - What is Growth, Anyway? - Source: Coelevate In fact, according to Brian Balfour at Reforge, not focusing on retention is the number 1 reason start-ups fail at growth. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/c10da302-1bf9-4cef-84b8-db7ed2d30fe7/GrowthSentence.png Essays - What is Growth, Anyway? - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://halogrowth.co/essays/creating-channel-synergy-for-growth monthly 0.5 2022-07-27 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/c92c1037-8772-4f40-a821-dccbf4c9451f/ChannelSynInputs.png Essays - Determining Channel Distribution Curves to Improve Growth Outputs. - A high level overview of the inputs that create brand synergy. Now, your brand might fit a high engagement audience, and your product might even be a direct response contender. But keep in mind that direct response is dead for most brands. In order to drive an effective cross channel Halo effect you need not just a clickable ad and a high converting landing page. You need brand, product, and channel synergy. So how do you know when you have a fit? Follow the guide below to find out. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/123a47e3-68db-4502-b916-d551c052813b/persona.png Essays - Determining Channel Distribution Curves to Improve Growth Outputs. - An example of a customer persona. Source: Hubspot Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the marketing world, you’ve heard of customer personas. And my god, can marketing teams be lazy with this exercise. They drum up a few key qualities of their ideal customer and call it a day. As a growth marketer, even if you practice another discipline you need to go deep on this exercise, as it will guide everything you do. At minimum, I recommend building at least three customer personas and two negative personas for a core product. If you have multiple products/services that deliver to very distinct audiences (i.e. male and female) you will want to develop another set for those. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/6a9fca75-a015-406c-8c44-98bc3fba5bd4/branddeck.png Essays - Determining Channel Distribution Curves to Improve Growth Outputs. - Make it stand out source: https://branding.cards/ https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/cffc1ded-8dbc-4dcc-aae0-bc76d60775bb/facebook-ads-average-click-through-rate-graphic1-3.png Essays - Determining Channel Distribution Curves to Improve Growth Outputs. - Industry Benchmarks for Facebook Ads Click-Through-Rates. Source: WordStream When your channels are finally decided upon, I highly recommend collecting as many industry benchmarks as you can. Talk to other growth marketers, media buyers, or whoever you can in your network. Find great data points and references, and constantly evaluate your channel synergies against whatever benchmarks are possible. Your moto for the process of evaluation shall forever be “eternal vigilance”. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/8024018d-4584-4466-a9c9-87468b11920e/Positioning+Statement-2.png Essays - Determining Channel Distribution Curves to Improve Growth Outputs. - A template for a clear positioning statement. Source: Trew Marketing To be clear, there is no particular order between positioning and brand identity. If you feel you have a clear picture of what value your product or service provides, you can always start here, and then let the implications of your positioning guide your brand identity. For right brained marketers, it tends to be identity first, positioning second. For left brains like myself, the inverse is true. Generally speaking, a positioning statement is something you want to re-visit at least once a quarter. Products evolve, people evolve and customer needs evolve over time. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/7da0a52d-072d-4d16-a9ac-b009e2892c77/iconic-fox-Atchetypes-12-jungian-map.jpg Essays - Determining Channel Distribution Curves to Improve Growth Outputs. - The great wheel of brand archetypes. Source: Iconic Fox The next resource I like to leverage at this stage are Brand Archetypes. These will really concentrate your brands essence and guide elements like voice, tone, and visual style. Halo Growth Co., for example, is one part Hero and one part Jester. These are not mutually exclusive, but I suggest limiting your archetype selections to two, maximum. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6239f14cdd8a8d41ce7a6ceb/cd4d75aa-7196-4ba5-ad28-064a0e7d005f/ChannelEval.png Essays - Determining Channel Distribution Curves to Improve Growth Outputs. - Channel Evaluation Matrix by Halo Growth Co. To help you with this, I have created a simple Channel Evaluation Matrix. Keep in mind, it is not necessary to evaluate every channel. Knowing now your product, brand and audience will help you narrow your focus to 4 or 5 key channels that you need to evaluate. Nailing down your input types is essential, and here is where a basic growth model can help. 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