13 Powerful B2B Growth Hacking Strategies & Examples

B2B Growth Hacking

Growth hacking is a modern approach to marketing that’s commonly used by SaaS startups to achieve rapid growth through a variety of unorthodox tactics. It is the foundation of success for several multibillion-dollar companies, including Uber, Airbnb, and Dropbox.

Growth hackers usually scrap traditional marketing strategies in favor of anything else that can help them scale their businesses faster and more efficiently. Nothing is off-limits to them as long as it can help them achieve their one and only goal: rapid growth.

B2B Growth Hacking Examples

Hubspot’s Growth Hack

Hubspot is a sales and marketing software that provides various automation tools for businesses. At the time of this writing, the company’s valuation was around $27.4 billion.

Hubspot’s growth hack involved acquiring users by offering free marketing tools such as a CRM and website grader, and then later upselling more advanced paid tools.

The company’s founder, Dharmesh Shah, credited the free website grader for helping grow the company to 15,000 users and a market value exceeding $1 billion.

Hubspot still offers a myriad of free tools and resources. Its award-winning blog gets around 10 million monthly visits. Whenever you search Google for any marketing topic, chances are that you’ll come across a Hubspot article covering it in-depth.

Offering free things is one of the most effective growth hacking tactics. When Uber was starting out, it not only offered free rides to first-time riders, but also paid people to use the app.

Slack’s Growth Hack

Slack is one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the world. In just about 4 years, the company went from zero to around 4 million daily users and a $4 billion valuation.

The app was created to make communication more seamless within organizations. The company’s founder, Stewart Butterfield, came up with the idea when he was working on a game app and then suddenly realized how difficult it was to communicate with all the members of his team.

Slack integrated seamlessly with popular project management platforms like Asana and Trello, which meant that its users would not have to abandon other tools they were previously using.

Slack had solved a lot of the communication problems organizations were facing. The company’s early growth can be attributed to word of mouth. An IT manager would try it out and get his team to start using it. Then word would spread to the marketing department, then HR, and before long, an entire organization would be using it.

Slack’s key to success was creating a superior product that genuinely solved people’s problems, and then scaling through word of mouth. Its marketing campaign at launch got around 8,000 users, many of whom became advocates of the platform and would keep referring it to other people.

13 Effective B2B Growth Hacking Tactics

1. Proactively collect ratings and reviews

Did you know that 77% of B2B buyers will not talk to a salesperson until they’ve done their own research? Can you guess what the first things are that catch their attention while researching? Ratings and reviews! Proactively collecting them is undoubtedly one of the most effective growth hacking strategy.

The easiest way to collect reviews is by simply asking for them from your clients. If you have a physical store, you can also get a Google My Business page. Whenever people visit the store, Google automatically requests them to submit a rating. That helps streamline the process so that you won’t have to follow up yourself.

Positive reviews give businesses credibility and social proof by showing that other people are using their products and finding success with them.

2. Set up retargeting ads

Retargeting is a digital advertising model where ads get displayed to people who previously visited a website or app. It’s one of the best ways to generate leads online. You can create a campaign specifically targeting people who landed on your website but did not take your call to action.

Retargeting enables you to filter out your website visitors, since they’re most likely to be leads (otherwise they’d have no business being on your website), and then show them ads that are designed to drive action. For example, you can offer a limited-time discount to get them to proceed with their order. Website visitors who are retargeted are 70% more likely to convert.

3. Start a referral program

Referral marketing, or affiliate marketing, is an efficient marketing strategy for growing a business by taking advantage of other people’s networks.

The entire program can be managed using third-party platforms like ShareASale and Awin. And since affiliates only get paid for the sales that they generate, the risks on your side are minimal.

The most successful programs usually offer above-average commission rates and numerous other incentives to lure affiliates. For example, Hostgator pays up to $125 for every sale generated, which is far higher than most companies offer. That encourages more people to sign up to the program and work hard promoting it.

Another advantage of affiliate marketing is that it helps display social proof. People are more likely to buy products based on recommendations from other people than from a company’s self-promotional efforts.

4. Create shareable content

This is a great B2B growth hacking tactic to help you increase your brand awareness online. You can create shareable content such as e-books, infographics, and elaborate “how to” articles. Every time people share them with their friends, they’ll be helping increase your brand awareness and subtly advertising your business.

5. Form cross promotion partnerships

Cross promotion involves partnering with other businesses that you’re not in direct competition with, however target a similar clientele, and then actively promoting each other.

One of the reasons Slack achieved such rapid growth is because it partnered with project management platforms like Trello and Asana and then integrated them into its messaging app. All the companies involved in the partnership would benefit equally by getting access to new markets.

You can partner with companies in different niches, even if your products are completely different in nature. For example, a hotel can partner with a car rental service since they both target tourists. All that matters is that your target audience is the same.

6. Use LinkedIn to find leads

Unlike all other social media platforms, LinkedIn’s userbase mainly consists of business decision-makers, which makes it one of the best places to find potential clients.

LinkedIn allows you to search for people based on their job title, location, and even companies they work for. You can search for users who have the characteristics of your buyer persona and then do a cold approach.

Let’s say you’re selling a HR payroll software and you’re specifically targeting the HR manager of XYZ Corp. You can find him or her on LinkedIn by searching for “HR manager” under job titles, and then filtering the results by companies, and adding “XYZ Corp”.

Once you identify your targets, the next step will be to send them connection requests accompanied by a brief introductory message. Avoid the temptation to start selling right away, that will only get you blocked and reported for spamming. Check out this guide on how to find clients on LinkedIn and do a cold approach.

7. Give out freebies

Giving out free things is sort of like a bribe to get people to buy your products. It’s one of the most effective growth hacking tactics because it helps eliminate the hesitancy for first-time buyers.

The freebies can include samples of your products, free trials, discount vouchers, and essentially anything that holds some value. If you truly have confidence in your products then the cost of the freebies will be recouped later down the line.

Uber gives free rides to first-time riders because it is confident that once they try it out, they’ll most likely not want to use any other taxi services.

8. Get featured on popular publications

Getting featured on well-known publications is a fantastic growth hacking tactic for building credibility and authority on the internet. Whenever prospective buyers Google your name (which they probably will), they should find articles that have been written about you by credible sources. That will enhance your brand’s perceived value and make you stand out from your competitors.

You can get your business covered on popular blogs and magazines either through sponsored articles and reviews, or by signing up to become a contributor. Contributors usually get a byline where they can briefly talk about their businesses.

You can also sign up on platforms like Help a Reporter Out and answer interview questions. Whenever reporters use your quotes in their stories, they’ll give a shoutout to your business as well as a backlink to your website, which will help boost your SEO.

9. Prioritize SEO

Although SEO can be labor intensive and time consuming, prioritizing it will be beneficial in the long run. It can even eliminate the need to spend money on online ads.

SEO is broken down into two categories: On-page SEO, and Off-page SEO. On-page SEO is the process of optimizing the individual web page so that it gets the best possible rank in search engines.

On-page SEO ensures that your content is search engine friendly so it can rank high in search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Here are some things to keep in mind when doing your on-page SEO:

Keyword Density: Just like people, search engines have a certain liking towards words and phrases. It’s important to make sure you use your main keywords enough, but not too much. Keyword stuffing will not only look bad to people using the search engine, but will also hurt your search engine rank. You should aim to use your keyword or phrase once in the title tag, twice in the header (H2,H3 etc..), and 5-6 times through out the page.
Use a meta description: The meta description tells people what your page is about before they even click on it. Use this field to tell people why they should use your site, and what benefit will they get from it. For example, instead of having a meta description that says “Bob’s Bike shop has all the best bicycles” you could have something like “Come to Bob’s Bike Shop for all the best bicycles, you’ll find your favorite brands at great prices”. The second meta description will turn more heads than the first one.
Tag your images with keywords: Many people don’t do this, but it’s a great way to get more mileage out of your images. When you upload an image, open the properties window and then add a title and a description. Title should be your main keyword, and the description can be more long-tail keywords that describe what the image is about.
Increase your page loading speed: Google gives a massive boost in ranking to pages that load in less than a few seconds. It would be in your best interest to find out what is slowing down your site. Use various tools like Yslow, Page Speed Insights etc… to see what’s slowing down your site, and fix the issues.

Off-page SEO usually involves the process of link building. Given how complicated SEO is, it would be advisable to outsource the work to an SEO agency or a freelancer to reduce the burden on your in-house team.

Your goal should be to rank your website on the first page of the Google search results for all search queries which are related to your products. For example, if you’re looking to find graphic design clients, some Google search queries you can aim to rank for might include:

“cheap graphic design services”
“logo designers”
“business card designers”
“brochure designers”

10. Focus on growing your email list

An email list is one of the most important digital assets a growth hacker can have. Email campaigns have an average open rate of 21.3%, and an ROI of 4,400%. There are not many other forms of digital advertising that can yield better results.

An email list makes it easy to generate leads and conveniently communicate with them. You can send them messages whenever you launch new products, have a promo, or even just to wish them a happy birthday. A lot of people spend as much time browsing through their email as they do on social media.

You can grow your list by adding an opt-in form on your website and then using lead a magnate such as a free e-book or discount voucher to get people to sign up.

11. Host free webinars

Studies show that webinars can generate 20-40% new leads for a business. You can host your webinars every month (or quarter) on popular and in-demand topics which are likely to generate interest.

For example, if you sell marketing software for small businesses, and your primary targets are business owners, you can host a webinar on “how to double your sales in 6 months using automation software”. Such a topic is likely to appeal to business owners. Make sure to start advertising the webinar weeks in advance to get word out to as many people as possible.

12. Automate all repetitive tasks

Automation can help free up time and resources which can then be redistributed to other areas. It is the ultimate productivity hack.

You can automate your social media posts using Hootsuite, your email campaigns using Mailchimp, your sales and marketing tasks using Hubspot. You can even manage your customer relationships more effectively using a Salesforce automation software.

For any task that’s too sensitive to automate, such as responding to questions on social media, you can outsource to a freelancer or a virtual assistant.

Time is such a limited resource. Automating and outsourcing repetitive tasks can help you free up some extra hours that you can use on more important things that actually need your personal involvement.

13. Create an online omnipresence

The majority of B2B buyers do a substantial amount of research before buying anything. An online omnipresence means being in all the places where they could potentially go search for your products.

If they do a Google search, your website should come up in the results. If they go to social media, your business pages should also come up. And if they go to B2B marketplaces and directories, you should still have a presence.

Having such an omnipresence helps ingrain your brand in their memory. People generally have a subconscious bias towards brands that they recognize. When they keep stumbling upon your name during their research process, then they start to develop some familiarity with it.

Conclusion

The growth hacking tips we’ve discussed in this blog post should be beneficial to B2B businesses looking for ways to boost their sales. We hope you found them helpful and can apply them right away! If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out anytime. Our team is always happy to help. Have a great day!