He’s the Co-founder and CEO of Live Bearded, an 8-figure ecommerce brand with one of the most passionate communities I’ve ever seen. He’s also a valued member of my Blue Ribbon Mastermind and the proud owner of the most majestic beard in all the land.

At a Smart Marketer virtual event, Anthony did an amazing session sharing the different strategies he’s using to grow his business. And in that presentation, he did a great job breaking down a fundamental concept of growth marketing.

In this excerpt from Anthony’s session, you will learn:

• The only 3 ways to grow any brand
• How to use this concept to leverage your time and energy more effectively
• Why you need to know where you are in order to get where you want to be

Enjoy!

The Only 3 Ways to Grow a Business

There are an endless number of new tactics, strategies and marketing platforms that you can use to grow your business…

Which is why it’s so surprising that, when you look at how these things actually generate growth, they all fall into one of just three buckets.

“When we think of strategic growth, there’s really only three ways that you can grow your business… and all of the sales and marketing strategies, all the traffic generation tips, everything that you do to grow your business really falls into one of these three categories.”

Those 3 categories are:

• Increase your customer acquisition: bring in more first-time customers
• Increase your customer frequency: get current customers to make purchases more often
• Increase your average order value: get customers to spend more per purchase

“I learned these from Jay Abraham. If you don’t know who he is, I highly recommend you find out. If you do know who he is, I highly recommend you read everything he puts out. He’s a master at business and marketing.”

How to Gain Clarity on Your Action Plan

So, why does this matter? Sure, it’s a clever method of categorization — but does it actually help you in any way?

Anthony says looking at growth strategies in this way helps him better understand what he’s trying to accomplish and how to accomplish it.

“When I get overwhelmed in business, when I learn a new strategy, when I’m like, ‘Oh, man, I just learned this new trick for Instagram or for Facebook,’ or, ‘You know, we’re buying ads on Snapchat now,’ or, ‘We’re looking at building more sales and visibility on YouTube’…

Whenever we get excited about a new strategy that we learned, I always come back and say, ‘Okay, what growth bucket does this fall in? Is this increasing new customer frequency? Is this increasing retention and purchase frequency? Is this going to help raise our average order value?’ And then ultimately I get really clear on identifying which one of those categories of growth I want to focus on next.”

Want Growth? Build a Bridge.

This concept doesn’t just help you better understand your goals; it also helps you understand where your business currently is, and Anthony says that when it comes to achieving growth, that’s just as important.

“All growth happens between understanding where you are and where you want to go and building a bridge. So if you want to build new acquisition systems — if you need new, fresh customers, new clients into your ecosystem — you’ve got to understand where you are.

You’ve got to look at all the acquisition systems that you currently have. You’ve got to look at some ways that you can build new acquisition systems and then ultimately go out there and build a bridge, create strategies from where you are to where you want to go. And that’s really where all of growth is found…”

So next time you’re thinking about how you want to scale your business, remember these 3 categories of growth marketing.

“It’s going to help you get clarity and ultimately you can look at your business and really attack the different categories of growth very intentionally and very strategically.”

“Anthony Mink is a branding and community building expert who has applied his expertise throughout his 10-year digital marketing career to build and sell 3 brands, accumulate 10+ million followers and generate millions in revenue.

He is currently the Co-founder and CEO of livebearded.com, a men’s grooming company dedicated to helping beardsmen look, feel and be their best. He’s passionate about people and business, and loves creating ways to bring them together for a common purpose.”