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What is growth hacking?

Guide to successful b2b growth marketing strategies

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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.

Learn more:

what is growth hacking?

Actionable growth hacking strategies

Essential growth hacking tools

Growth hacker marketing

What is growth hacking?

Growth hacking, coined in 2010 by Sean Ellis (GrowthHackers cofounder), is a strategy that combines digital marketing, web and product development, and engineering to grow online businesses with limited budgets quickly. Growth hackers take a scientific approach to test and improve customer acquisition and retention strategies.

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.

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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.

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Actionable growth hacking strategies

Here are proven, actionable growth hacking strategies B2B marketers can use in their digital marketing plans.

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.

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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.

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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.

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Paid social media ads

Paid ads on platforms like LinkedIn can be purchased in text, display, and video ad formats – reaching more target customers than earned media efforts alone. B2B marketers can also promote their viral social media posts or content on targeted platforms through sponsored content and native ads.

Social or earned media strategies

Marketers promote content on social networks to generate earned media exposure via shares, likes, and comments to attract leads and grow brand awareness. Many B2B marketers integrate public relations (PR) strategies with social media efforts to incorporate influencer and traditional media outreach that boosts customer engagement and online brand awareness.

Essential growth hacking tools

B2B marketers should use common growth hacking tools to test, track, and optimize the strategies for rapid online business growth.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Real-world growth hacking success stories

Finally, let’s review real-world growth-hacking marketing success stories and examples.

Mainstreet used sponsored content to boost qualified leads

Mainstreet is an online service that helps software, hardware, and venture-backed startups claim tax credits that accountants are more likely to miss. The platform scaled its qualified leads by 300% in a single quarter using LinkedIn’s Sponsored Content Ads and Lead Gen Forms.

Read the complete case study to learn how Mainstreet scaled its annual recurring revenue (ARR) from $3M to $15M using LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.

Real-world growth hacking success stories

Finally, let’s review real-world growth-hacking marketing success stories and examples.

Merkle helped Mimecast 2X lead gen form completion rates

Merkle, a B2B performance marketing agency, helped Mimecast extend its ad reach to ideal cybersecurity customers in APAC by 8% over six months. Using a full-funnel strategy on LinkedIn’s Feed and extended Audience Network, they achieved 2X their previous Lead Gen Form completion rates, decreasing its cost-per-click to the company website by 32% and boosting video ad completion rates by 3X.

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Growth hacker marketing is now standard practice

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.

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