Heather Dopson on growth in larger organizations
Last Updated on February 7, 2022 by justin
Heather Dopson, Community Builder at GoDaddy, gave a speech on the big stage on day two in San Francisco with a speech called “11 Game Changing Steps to Building A Power Brand”. It was extra fun to see a woman step forward as this is unfortunately still a male-dominated industry.
When we interviewed her afterwards, she told us about how consultants and practitioners of Growth Marketing have a responsibility to continuously communicate the work they do to their clients. It’s about helping people and companies succeed, and about delivering unique value. As long as a consultant is aware of his area at both strategic and operational level, you can solve the customer’s problems. Her model when she works with Growth is therefore to offer project-based prices, instead of hours. She simply charges for delivery, and as long as there is a need for her services, she does not negotiate a price.
Retain responsibility for your in-house growth initiative
To begin with, she evaluates the business and its needs. Most often it is not just about improving the customer’s marketing, but rather about helping the customer to move towards a “Growth Phase”. Regardless of whether she is with the customer for 3 months, 6 months, or longer, she makes sure that the customer never becomes irrevocably dependent on her. Responsibility for the growth initiative is retained in-house, so that nothing is dependent on a single person.
Solve simple problems first
Heather says that many companies still do not even have a viable website, where they capture email addresses. These will then be used to do email marketing, which is still the most effective channel for B2B. She usually suggests working more in social media with flexible and “evergreen” content. Thus, to avoid following a calendar and posting content at holidays, but rather to make content that is relevant to the business, but that comments on trends in society from week to week or day to day. She also advises companies to use more video, and to ensure that the customer experience of a company’s brand is seamless no matter where the customer interacts with it – so that a customer experiences the same kind of customer experience regardless of channel.
Tips
- Start with an evaluation of where the company stands today
- Retain responsibility for the in-house growth initiative
- Find “low hanging fruits” and fix them for quick results
- Make more video
- Abolish content calendars without making relevant and current content
- The brand needs to be seamless
Read more:
- Our interviews with other profiles within Growth
- The entire E-book on Growth Hacking from Growth Marketing Conference 2017/2018