The price of growth

Many of our products and services revolve around growth. Companies want to grow by doing better advertising, better innovations, better media planning. But how do you do that, doing things better? Or in other words: how do you organise marketing for growth? As we have surveyed thousands of marketers in our Brand Growth Research over the past few years about the ingredients for growth, we are starting to get a better understanding of what the success factors are. We do this by looking at which characteristics of companies are really different for the growing companies versus the companies that are not able to grow.

CHARACTERISTICS OF GROWING COMPANIES

The role of research and data plays an important part in this. The companies that were better able to successfully introduce new products first of all paid more attention to this structurally, but above all listened better to consumers. Creativity, too, was much better used by growing companies if time and effort were also put into gathering feedback. And our most recent study of over 2,000 marketers in Europe shows the biggest difference yet: more successful companies use significantly more data to make decisions. After all, growing companies have different characteristics than declining or stable companies.

Ingredient for growth

The question is then why does not everyone do it? Why are investments still being gambled on without knowing how consumers will react to them? In the answer to this question, we see a lack of the right qualities of marketers on the one hand and a lack of time for these marketers on the other. We also see this in the daily practice of DVJ. Over the past 5 years, we have managed to grow 25% or more per year (yes, even during a pandemic). What we have consistently found to be the most important ingredient for growth in recent years is the quality of the people giving the advice. We have our own Center of Expertise that continuously contributes to the further development of our solutions, methods, analyses and deliverables. But also the internal and external sharing and creation of knowledge where we bridge the gap with science is an important part of our growth. By structurally investing in sufficient people with the right training and guidance, we are increasingly seeing the results of this.

The only price

Therefore, the price you pay for growth is also different. Whereas at the beginning of the growth curve this was mainly associated with growing pains, we now see that this is mainly associated with something else. The price for our current growth is the opposite, real prizes. We received the award for best researcher in the Netherlands, we are among the Top 250 fastest-growing companies, we are on our way to our fourth FD Gazelle for the fastest-growing companies, and we have been nominated for 2 research-related awards in the UK. Not to mention the appreciation expressed by our clients, and being able to welcome many experienced and passionate new colleagues. As far as I am concerned, the only ‘prize’ of growth you want to pay.