Horizontal vs. Vertical Growth Strategy
What is a growth strategy?
The term “growth strategy” is thrown around a lot these days in the online marketing world, but few people really understand it. It’s an important term, but it’s also one that can be extremely confusing unless you have the proper context. Ultimately, a good growth strategy must be a clear and focused plan for aiding a business through expansion. It is the key to determining where, when, and how you should grow and take the necessary steps.
A lot of sites today use the term “growth strategy” as a catch-all for everything from traffic building to content creation to improving SEO. While many people tend to conflate the two, they are, in fact, very different and serve different purposes.
Difference between Horizontal and Vertical Growth Strategy:
In the beginning, when you are just starting out on your marketing or SEO journey, you may have realized the importance of having a strong foundation. Though initially, you might not have to worry about anything other than creating awesome content, eventually you will likely want to focus on more than just your blog’s content, especially in the competitive market we are living in today.
Apparently, digital Marketing is probably one of the most challenging and misunderstood tasks that you can do. However, some people define it very narrowly, which is a mistake. It is a holistic marketing strategy that aims to drive sales and increase brand awareness in new and existing channels. The big question for most companies remains how to grow their business with it and when to adopt which marketing strategy.
The first difference between Horizontal and Vertical Growth strategies is that the former is used to grow a website and a domain from a base, whereas the latter is used to grow a website by promoting it in search engines. Now, let’s take a look at each one separately:
Vertical Growth Strategy
- The Vertical growth strategy for blogging and marketing: building content and then promoting the blog for growth. This strategy is about creating content first and then promoting the blog to drive engagement and views.
- The “vertical” approach is the one that assumes that you start out at the top and work your way down to the bottom. You can start with keywords or phrases related to your site and then fine-tune them as you go.
- It refers to the way a website expands from a single page to multiple pages on the same domain, such as a blog, forum, or wiki.
- It is usually focused on attracting new users, while the horizontal growth strategy is focused on retaining existing users.
Horizontal Growth Strategy
- When it comes to blogging and marketing, there is the traditional approach: building a website, creating content, and then promoting the blog to drive traffic. This is the horizontal growth strategy.
- The “horizontal” marketing takes a different approach. Instead of starting from the top down, you work both ways simultaneously. Your plan should get more visibility for your search engine rankings and your site.
- It refers to how content is expanded from a single domain to multiple domains, such as through the addition of multiple subpages on a blog or subdomains, sub-websites, or sub-blogs to a website.
- It is apparently the most common type of growth strategy. It is structured so that the company or business creates one main goal or objective.
There are two distinct ways to grow a business. The first is to grow it through traditional, linear marketing methods. In this strategy, you get customers, ask them for money, give them products/services, and eventually get paid back. This is the approach most companies use to grow because it’s the most effective. However, if you want to grow a business quickly, this is not the best way to do it. Instead, you need to take the second way, which is the vertical growth strategy. In this strategy, you grow from the bottom up instead of from the top down.
That being said, the way people find a site has changed massively from the past. Today, search engines no longer have just one way to find a site. However, thanks to social media, users can now find sites by talking about them, joining communities, and reading content. Social media marketing is one of the most effective ways to better a site’s ranking. The key is the concept of “vertical” and “horizontal” marketing.
