Thea Earl

Marketing Strategy, Guest Lecturer

This past November, I was invited to guest lecture at a third year Marketing Strategy course at the Smith School of Business at Queen's University. I taught about the role of Product Growth and how it fits into marketing.

Product Growth: 

A marketing discipline focused on optimizing products so they are understood, used, and valuable to the target segment.

We went over a typical product growth funnel—Awareness, Adoption, Value, and Retention—and I shared some practical examples from my work at Shopify. 

We examined how to develop a product funnel and how to find opportunities for leverage. For each hypothesis on how to improve a funnel, it's crucial to have a replicable process for consistent tracking. The framework I use is a modified version of the scientific method, which details the hypothesis, experiment type, validation and scope of work.