Working cross-functionally to drive growth sounds great in theory… but how does it work in practice?

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Yesterday, I was asked by an awesome fintech marketer how to take the theory of cross-functional teams to solve conversion and customer drop-off issues and put this into practice.

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To be honest, it’s not always easy.

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But it is always worth it.

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1. Align behind a shared goal

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The first important step is to align the teams behind shared goals. Marketing can sometimes be focused on acquisition and Product focused retention but this can lead to a top-heavy funnel with an emphasis on quantity rather than quality.

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It’s better (& cheaper) to keep a current customer than find a new one.

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In the early days of your startup's growth, this common goal is usually proving that your initial users want to stay (demonstrated through a high ratio of Daily Active User (DAU) / Monthly Active User (MAU)) building towards lifetime value (LTV) as your brand becomes more established.

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Therefore the focus can be, not on attracting new users but on keeping them so the Cost Per Active User is more important than your Cost Per Acquisition.

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Marketing and product become aligned.

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Most analytically driven businesses will commonly look at their funnel conversions regularly to understand where the key drop-offs are.

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2. Prioritise focus areas

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The next stage to aligning the teams is to prioritise the focus on improving particular conversions - the lowest conversion point (i.e. the highest drop off) would be a relevant place to start.

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Businesses that become integral to a user’s life cannot be created in a silo.

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3. Create the team

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Each team must share their expertise so the cross-functional team is made up of one member from growth, customer, product and UX design teams:

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Customer: knows the customer the best, runs testing and direct communications

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Growth/marketing: knows how best to find and attract new customers

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Design: knows best how to bring this to life through seamless UX

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Product: knows what is possible and how best to build it

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4. Build the cyclical working pattern

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Continuous cyclical working pattern: analyse, hypothesise, prioritise and test should be adopted to continually build and optimise for the target audience.

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• Define the problem, i.e. we lose 30% of customers between weeks 3 and 4

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• Hypothesise potential solutions

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• Prioritise the impact for each test (often picking off the easy, non-build, tests is the first step as they can be actioned quickly)

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• Test, optimise and scale!

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This process can go on for a few months, especially where product-build is required and therefore the backlog needs to be considered.

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5. Adopt this into long-term ways of working

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Depending on the size of your team, there could be multiple teams, each focused on a specific section of the funnel. Or there could be one team tackling each section in turn.

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The important action is to create the cyclical working pattern so this way of working is adopted into your everyday working pattern and the focus of the business is on improving the customer experience, ensuring you will have happy, sticky customers and lower acquisition costs.

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Winner, winner, chicken...

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If you’re interested in how to build out your marketing team as you scale your business, then check out this workshop I ran with Anthony Rose, Founder of Seedlegals: How to Build a Kickass Marketing Team.

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And, make sure you’re signed up to Power Up, my monthly newsletter full of tips to fuel your growth.

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