Framework

Growth is a process

To give founders the confidence to do what’s right (not what’s easy), we distilled our collective experience into a step-by-step framework. Providing strategic focus and realistic expectations, the framework helps remove a lot of the risks in growing a business.

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First, let's be realistic about where you are as a business

All scaleups have followed same predictable pattern of success. Being brutally honest about where your business is on the Startup J-Curve is the first step toward structuring priorities and understanding how to get to the next stage.

 

If you’re not familiar with the Startup J-Curve methodology, we’re happy to help you identify your current position and what the priorities are at that stage.

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Next, recognise what is blocking your growth

90% of startups fail to survive. Ignoring any of these 7 growth strategy blockers will make it impossible to progress through the Model and Scale stages of the Startup J-Curve:

 

X Focussing on scale before finding product/market fit

X Running marketing tests that won’t yield positive ROI

X Drawing conclusions without statistical significance

X No indicators of what ‘good’ performance looks like

X Unreliable messaging created from best guesses

X Poor audience targeting selling to the wrong people

X Not nurturing prospects through a customer journey

Then, you're ready to take your business all the way

Our 4M’s of predictable growth framework combines market-leading startup insight with our own proprietary ROI calculators and agile marketing methodologies. With these tools, we ensure the right information always drives the right decisions.

 

Deployed in 9 iterative steps, our framework helps to design and deliver a growth strategy that will accelerate your business through the Startup J-Curve.

How does it work?

1 | Map

X Blocker: Focussing on scale before finding product/market fit

✓ Our solution: Product/market fit alignment audit

In this foundational session we interview founders to understand what jobs their target audience are trying to get done and how their solution stands out in the existing market.

2 | Map

X Blocker: Poor audience targeting selling to the wrong people

✓ Our solution: Target audience audit

Having understood jobs-to-be-done, demographics and competitors from the product/market fit alignment session, we then research over 20+ marketing channels to identify target-match audience volumes.

3 | Map

X Blocker: Running marketing tests that won’t yield positive ROI

✓ Our solution: Marketing channel ROI calculator

Using the audience volumes per channel, we next forecast how many leads/sales are possible based on audience size and budget. We process the data using industry and industry-matched benchmarks to ensure our return on investment predictions are realistic.

4 | Map

X Blocker: Unreliable messaging created from best guesses

✓ Our solution: Brand messaging generator

Using the output of the product/market fit session, we identify and organise language triggers to move a prospect through the customer journey. Our copywriters then use these selected messaging components to create example copy.

5 | Map

X Blocker: Not nurturing prospects through a customer journey

✓ Our solution: Marketing ecosystem flows

Having selected which channels to include in our go-to-market strategy using our Marketing channel ROI calculator, we build flowchart diagrams to illustrate how a prospect would move between channels and what content they would engage with at each stage.

6 | Measure

X Blocker: No indicators of what ‘good’ performance looks like

✓ Our solution: KPI benchmark calculator

Setting up KPI tracking across your business allows us to fully understand and proactively improve your key foundations for growth: Product/market fit, Messaging strength, Audience relevance, Top of funnel, Website experience, Bottom of funnel, Client Success. All data is measured against industry-matched performance benchmarks.

7 | Modify

X Blocker: Running marketing tests that won’t yield positive ROI

✓ Our solution: Marketing experiment database

Once we obtain enough enough data to confidently diagnose business strengths and weaknesses, we filter our extensive database based on the challenge we are trying to solve and generate a list of potential solutions. We then select experiment ideas and organise them in a project plan to test at pace.

8 | Multiply

X Blocker: No indicators of what ‘good’ performance looks like

✓ Our solution: KPI benchmark calculator

Once our KPI benchmark calculator radar diagrams are showing 100% success against all benchmarks across all key metrics, we can be confident we have established the foundations needed to progress to the next stage in the Startup J-Curve.

9 | Multiply

X Blocker: Running marketing tests that won’t yield positive ROI

✓ Our solution: Marketing channel ROI calculator

To produce accurate forecasts of what can be expected if more money is invested to amplify impact, we can return to our Marketing channel ROI calculator and replace industry benchmark data with the real business data.

Give your strategy the structure it needs to succeed

Our step-by-step framework is most transformative at Morph, Model and Scale stages of the Startup J-Curve. If you would like us to diagnose where you are on the Startup J-Curve and provide some no-commitment advice on what you should do next, just get in touch.

Start your journey