Growth Marketing During COVID-19: Interview with Tyler Elliston

Growth Marketing in a Dynamic Landscape: Insights from Tyler Elliston

Growth marketers are currently in high demand, assisting numerous startups in capitalizing on prevailing market opportunities. However, navigating the challenges presented by the recent pandemic has proven to be a significant undertaking.

We recently spoke with Tyler Elliston, the founder of Right Side Up, a growth marketing firm, and a frequent contributor to TechCrunch, to discuss his experiences and current observations.

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Continue reading for Tyler’s perspectives on maintaining focus and allocating resources effectively for optimal growth, even amidst volatile market conditions.

Shifting Trends in Growth Marketing

How have growth marketing trends evolved from the onset of the pandemic to the present, as we move beyond lockdowns?

Tyler Elliston: The past few years have been characterized by considerable fluctuation! Initially, we observed a decline in CPMs and substantial budget cuts. A recovery began relatively quickly during the summer of 2020, gaining momentum through the fall and into 2021.

E-commerce businesses were among the first to adapt, including those with established online sales and brick-and-mortar brands rapidly transitioning online to generate crucial revenue. Subsequently, numerous new and existing businesses introduced innovative products, value propositions, and positioning strategies to survive or flourish during the pandemic.

Currently, consumer demand remains strong, and brands are eager to accelerate customer acquisition, particularly through paid advertising. Active investors have provided significant financial support, bolstering marketing budgets.

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The Importance of Partnership

You’ve previously emphasized the importance of treating your team as partners, not vendors. How has this approach been maintained throughout the pandemic?

Our established reputation for providing strategic guidance that prioritizes our clients’ interests has been key. Clients trust our judgment, knowing we will advise them against unproductive spending, and also believe us when we recommend increasing budgets based on evolving demand and channel economics.

We proactively communicated with clients about the potential impact of the pandemic on their businesses, utilizing a framework detailed on our blog. In some instances, this led to mutually agreed-upon terminations of partnerships to conserve funds. In others, we encouraged them to leverage performance marketing to capitalize on changing conditions.

The shift towards remote work and evolving company processes have facilitated quicker and more seamless integration with our clients’ internal teams, as companies increasingly view external resources as a lower-risk staffing solution.

Timing is Everything: When to Engage a Growth Marketer

You’ve stated, “We regularly tell companies, ‘You don’t need any growth marketing right now. Focus on product-market fit.’” How can startups determine when the time is right to collaborate with you?

Tyler Elliston: Growth marketing serves as an amplification mechanism, highlighting a product or solution with the assumption that demand will follow if people are aware of it. However, this relies on achieving genuine product-market fit.

We assess this through customer reviews, referral activity driving organic growth, retention rates, product engagement, and ultimately, realized and projected lifetime value. Positive conversion rates and attractive customer acquisition costs in initial channel testing indicate both a receptive audience and the ability to reach them.

These factors, in our view, are essential for sustainable growth.

Prioritizing Marketing Funds for Early-Stage Companies

For early-stage companies with limited resources, how should marketing funds be prioritized?

First, invest in developing an exceptional product, as validated by paying customers. Marketing plays a role in this iterative process of traffic acquisition, funnel analysis, and feedback collection, but it’s best categorized as “go-to-market marketing,” typically managed by a product marketer.

Once the product is refined, I recommend allocating some resources to nonpaid marketing efforts and testing paid advertising, often through Facebook and/or Google. These platforms serve as indicators of overall online marketing performance.

The most effective nonpaid marketing investments are contingent on the target customer and a company’s unique competitive advantages.

Common Startup Mistakes

What persistent errors do startups continue to make?

The most significant mistake is prioritizing growth before establishing product-market fit. Early-stage founders face intense pressure to demonstrate growth. Achieving product-market fit, for all but a fortunate few, demands considerable patience.

This is why founders who are deeply passionate about solving a personal problem often succeed. Their primary focus is on solving that problem for themselves, not on financial gain or external validation. It’s about achieving micro-successes, which then naturally lead to a desire to share the solution.

From an advertising perspective, many companies attempt to manage too many channels simultaneously, expecting rapid results, which often leads to inaccurate conclusions. Most channels require both expertise and patience to yield positive outcomes.

Tailoring Strategies to Company Maturity

How do your growth marketing strategies differ when working with early-stage startups versus mature companies?

With very early-stage companies, our work often focuses on establishing a foundational infrastructure (e.g., pixels, tech stack, initial value propositions, early staffing), driving traffic through new funnels to collect data, or setting up email campaigns. Once the product is solid, we may assist a founder or first marketing hire in launching initial paid channels and scaling from 0 to 1 – can we achieve a good return on an investment of $5,000, $10,000, or $20,000 per month?

On the nonpaid side, this could involve executing a content strategy, launching a referral program, or cultivating partnerships. When a company is profitably spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars monthly, we typically focus on improving channel performance, accurately measuring the incremental impact of spending, achieving a new level of scale, or diversifying channels.