Each June we think about pulling together the mid-year measurement reports for our Board of Directors as there is often a break in meetings over the summer – and a time to reflect on what’s been working and what hasn’t. This can include realizing it has been difficult for teams to either a) shift into a growth mindset following the pandemic or b) find time to discuss the pace of change to ensure the team is managing sustainable growth during the transitions.
So what is a sustainable growth mindset?
Research has shown that a growth mindset can lead to resilience and learning. Stanford University researcher, Carol Dweck has often been quoted as noting that with a growth mindset potential is infinite – so it’s no surprise that marketing, customer service, sales and other teams are trained to believe that success can be achieved through hard work, learning, and ongoing development. The goal of a growth marketing plan is to identify new opportunities that will help build and engage your organization’s audience to rapidly grow your business. But pushing this fast-forward button can sometimes create issues the rest of the organization isn’t prepared to manage, so it’s important teams have a plan that will ensure sustainable growth.
“A company that cannot self-correct cannot thrive.” – Carol Dweck
What to consider when building a sustainable growth marketing plan?
In an NFP context, we often refer to sustainable growth as a combination of financial stability, leadership succession planning and strategic planning sprints. In building brands, marketing teams also refer to “sustainable” growth as designing campaigns that evoke sustainable choices from consumers and “brand loyalty”. In NFP and Social Cause Marketing, we are also conscious of the balance between:
- Socio-Economic Development
- Mission Impact Priorities / Measures
- Environmental Conservation
- or even Social Justice / Advocacy Efforts
3 Ways Teams can Better Prepare for Sustainable Growth
So how do we ensure sales/fundraising and marketing plans consider a growth rate that will ensure our team has the resources to support it?
a) Retention vs. Acquisition: Look carefully at your post-pandemic retention figures and new vs returning customer insights. Do you have strong brand loyalty? A very solid network of referrals / testimonials? Or are you driving growth primarily from those who are not yet familiar with your brand and may need to be onboarded? Revisit assumptions around your new customer ratios (probability of selling to a new prospect or for fundraising e.g. 1 donation realized for every 5 asks) and the true total costs of making a sale. This can include things easily tracked in campaign management software like incentives, referral fees and advertising, but should also include an estimate for resource costs such as the upkeep for CRM technology systems or eMail marketing costs.
b) Worse Case vs. Best Case Scenarios: The pandemic has taught us all how to up our scenario planning skills and consider what’s possible, plausible, probable and preferable. Organizations that embody a growth mindset encourage a test-and-learn approach to appropriate risk-taking. Organizations that practice sustainable growth-mindset thinking are described as open internally to sharing information, good at collaboration, and innovation, actively seeking feedback, or admitting errors.
c) Partnerships & Collaboration Capacity: Ensure you discuss your current capacity levels and expertise, including what is allocated or accessible via partnerships and collaborations. Flexible capacity with trusted freelancers / suppliers can help teams be confident they will have the resources to expand quickly if / when needed. On the flip side, partnerships can often consume significantly more resources than originally expected if they are not well planned and if teams do not already have a track record of working well together. One of your organization’s most important assets will be its people. Are they empowered to achieve maximum productivity, efficiency and impact? Does the team need to look outside of your organization for effective ways of identifying new opportunities, tapping into new markets, strengthening skills or achieving cost efficiencies?
Once your marketing and sales plan has been recalibrated for sustainable growth, do a check to ensure there is alignment with this mindset across your organization. The best marketing and sales plans focus on internal stakeholders first to build excitement.