Growth hacking is one of the most wide-spread “secrets” of small business start-ups. Its meaning can sometimes get confused, and it’s sometimes used (mistakenly) as another term for marketing. Growth hacking, for a lack of a better term, is really about employing techniques that can spur growth in the most efficient and rapid way possible.

In recent years, there’s been a renewed interest in growth hacking as marketers have realized that traditional marketing approaches are DOA. Businesses need to change and adapt to get a lead on their competitors and growth hacking has proven to be a useful tool.

Read on to see if growth hacking in B2B is right for your business.

B2B vs. B2C Growth Hacking

There is an ongoing debate as to whether B2B growth hacking is harder to achieve than B2C growth hacking, and experts are divided.

Ryan Kulp believes that it’s harder to sell to consumers since consumers aren’t often in a “spend money to make money” mindset. Whereas, in business, smart companies know that money invested well now, pays off big later. The B2B market is also more limited than the B2C one. Consumers often feel as though they have unlimited vendor options—making competition harder. Whereas in the B2B market, competition is still fierce, but there are far fewer vendor options to choose from.

This lack is precisely why growth hacking is so effective in B2B marketing. While traditional B2B marketing focuses on getting your business to the right people by directly reaching out to them, growth hacking allows you to cast your net over a wider audience, dramatically increasing your chances of success.

In the digital marketplace, where your competitors are numerous, and your battleground is a vast global web, growth hacking tactics need to be employed to generate more (and higher quality) leads. Here are some tactics to help you hit the ground running:

10 B2B Growth-Hacking Tactics to Generate Leads

1. Create Content That is Shareable and Embeddable

Whether it’s an eBook, whitepaper,webinar, or an infographic, the keyword here is shareability. Make it easy to for people to share your content, as social validation has a direct effect on search engine rankings, especially in Google.

2. Repurpose Your Content

You don’t have to keep churning out new content. You can repurpose old content, especially if it is useful and popular, into a new form. Try converting a blog post into an infographic, a slideshare presentation, or an e-book. You can do this continually to create diverse and easy-to-consume content for your readers.

3. Use Retargeting by Page/Post

Content marketing needs to be the focus of your B2B growth hacking tactics, but don’t forget to retarget blog visitors. You can use Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, and other services to do this and target a particular audience for maximum effect.

4. Use Your Newsletters and Emails as a Funnel

People who open, read, and click newsletters when they have the time are often in the right state of mind to read long-form content, making them prime targets for sales conversions.

Segmenting newsletters often does the trick. Consider sending different emails to paying customers, engaged users, and those who have signed up for the newsletter but have not yet bought anything.

5. Create Your Community

Part of your B2B growth marketing strategy should involve building, creating, and maintaining a community. Take, for instance, Qualaroo, who did a great job, when they created Growth Hackers. Moz and Hubspot have also created dynamic and engaged communities around their products.

6. Work on Your LinkedIn Presence

For B2B companies, LinkedIn has been recognized as the most effective social media platform for lead generation. A recent study showed that it was responsible for driving 80% of B2B social media leads. This is mostly due to the culture of LinkedIn as a social channel for businesses and professionals.

7. Create Great Content

Answer relevant industry questions and offer educational articles that provide solutions to problems faced by your target audience. These are subtle but very useful hacks to generate leads and conversions.

8. Use Quotes and Testimonials to Increase Conversions

Rebecca Churt, a growth strategist at OpenView Venture Partners, says that testimonials are “social proof” that will help you activate visitors.

9. Use Multi-Touch Campaigns

Cece Bazara, sales strategist at OpenView Venture Partners, says: “a lead needs to be touched several times in order for genuine interest to emerge.” In a multi-touch campaign, leads are directed through several different channels—each personalized in an attractive manner, engaging leads not only through the message but through the process itself.

10. Get User Feedback Often, and Begin at the Earliest Stages

Andy Nelson, director of Growth Marketing at Moz, advises, “Run surveys on your site that help you identify customer experience issues and inform your CRO strategy. Get feedback on major design/UX changes on sites like UserTesting.com to help maximize your testing efforts.” It is also a good idea to use a customer experience tool to see how people are interacting with your site.

Takeaway

As you can see from the tips listed above, there are so many growth hacks available for businesses today. The age-old SEO tactic, while still valid, is no longer enough to generate organic leads.

For your lead generation efforts to grow rapidly, you need to be aggressive and take steps that have the ability to make your efforts last for a long time to come.