Marketing Glossary / Growth Hacking
What is growth hacking?
Guide to successful b2b growth marketing strategies
The concept of “growth hacking” emerged as a need for cost-effective strategies rapidly grow startups. This guide explains growth hacking’s benefits for modern B2B sales and marketing teams, providing growth-hacking strategies and tools for sustainable growth.
What is growth hacking?
Traditional marketing vs. growth hacking
Traditionally, growth hacking was a startup function for scaling a business at little to no cost. For example, LinkedIn encouraged its early users to invite colleagues via email to join their online professional network for free. Strategic product development, partnerships, and digital ads have led to it having over one Billion users worldwide.
Dropbox used a similar growth hacking strategy by offering additional online storage space as a reward for referrals.
Over the years, “growth marketing” has gained prominence in B2B sales organizations of all sizes. They sometimes now hire a “Head of Growth Marketing” in lieu of al “VP of Marketing,” mainly due to the dominance of digital marketing strategies in a B2B marketer’s toolkit.
The role of a growth hacker in B2B marketing
The growth hacker or growth marketer's role is to maximize return on investment (ROI) within budget constraints. They must develop, track, and optimize effective online campaigns, and collaborate with product development or engineering teams to continually enhance product-market fit.
Actionable growth hacking strategies
Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is a growth hacking strategy that uses keyword analysis to boost website rankings on organic search results – attracting new visitors and driving conversions. Essentially, the goal is to create keyword-specific content that resonates with users to generate on-page and off-page conversions via ecommerce sales, free content downloads via Lead Gen Forms, free demo sign-ups, or email newsletter subscriptions.
Content marketing
Content marketing is integral in SEO marketing, sales lead generation, and ecommerce conversions, by educating and engaging prospects in industry dialogue. It resonates with specific keywords customers frequently search for when seeking solutions.
To be clear, creating high-quality content – such as ebooks, whitepapers, research reports, blog posts, videos, and webinars - it costs growth marketers time or money. However, that investment allows B2B marketers to boost their search engine rankings and control the narrative around their products and services while positioning their business as an industry thought leader. Content marketing helps grow brand awareness and favorability – making it a highly lucrative part of a B2B digital marketer’s toolkit.
Social media
Social media growth hacking involves paid advertising and earned media via storytelling and customer engagement through owned (e.g., websites and blogs) and branded social network channels.
Essential growth hacking tools
Website analytics data
Growth hackers mine website analytics data to optimize content on their pages and track customer traffic sources. Popular keywords that initially drove users to the site, revealed in this data, can inform future content marketing strategies.
Growth marketers can use web analytics data to track marketing funnel behaviors, such as completed ecommerce checkout forms, to optimize the checkout funnel and website conversions. This concept is also known as conversion rate optimization (CRO). Other trackable analytics metrics include an increase in ecommerce site conversions, email signups, pageviews on content pages, website referrals from social media, or lead generation forms completed to demonstrate that the business is scaling rapidly.
Campaign reporting and conversion tracking
Prospective customers’ interactions with online growth marketing ads and email campaigns can be measured using campaign reporting tools and conversion tracking. These automated tools help growth marketers monitor and nurture new lead captures or website visitors through the sales funnel.
Landing pages and lead generation forms
Growth hackers will use unique landing pages and/or lead generation forms on social networks to engage, convince, and convert prospective buyers into new leads or sales conversions. This video explains how to use LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms to capture and nurture new sales leads throughout the funnel.
Retargeting
Retargeting helps growth marketers re-engage their target audiences and deepen new business relationships. A retargeting pixel, like the LinkedIn Insight Tag, tracks visitor data and uses past interactions to retarget or enhance other paid ads and sponsored content campaigns.
A/B testing
Growth experiments help measure and optimize the impact of online ad or landing page design elements, such as headlines, copy, and images. This concept is known as A/B testing, helping boost the impact of growth campaigns and win new business.
-
Mainstreet used sponsored content to boost qualified leads
-
Merkle helped Mimecast 2X lead gen form completion rates
Since digital advertising is now a necessary B2B marketing strategy, many “test and iterate” tactics that were once considered “growth hacking” are now standard practice. The growth-hacking techniques, tools, and case studies shared in this guide can help new B2B marketers apply similar use cases.
For instance, paid and earned social media strategies are integral to a B2B growth marketer’s toolkit. Visit the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions website to learn how to use paid social media advertising tactics to grow a B2B sales organization online quickly.
