Growth marketing has been gaining a lot of popularity in the past few years. From big companies to small startups and even B2B businesses, many are investing in growth marketing strategies to hack their growth and achieve their targets more efficiently. But what really is growth marketing? And how can you, as a B2B brand, use the growth marketing framework to improve your results and hack your growth? Read on for a complete guide to help you get started.
What is Growth Marketing?
The term growth hacking was first coined by Sean Ellis in 2010, to describe the strategies used by startups with budget constraints to boost their growth and maximise their return on investment. These growth hacking strategies are also known as growth marketing and have been adopted by large and medium sized companies like Twitter, Shopify, TikTok and more to help them grow.
Growth marketing can be defined as the newer approach to marketing that is focused on conducting experiments to collect data so that blocks in the funnel can be identified and cleared in order to boost growth. Growth marketers use various tactics to solve existing business problems so that they can achieve quick growth on a budget.
For those B2B brands looking to use these growth marketing strategies to boost growth, here are some tips to help you get started in the right way:
Select the Right Growth-Marketing Framework
One of the most commonly used growth-marketing frameworks is the AARRR framework. This stands for the various phases in the customer lifecycle starting from Acquisition, and continuing through Activation, Retention, Revenue and Referrals. The framework requires you as a growth marketer to take a closer look at your B2B business and identify various metrics for each of the stages in the framework. Data from these metrics will help you identify bottlenecks, so that you can work towards finding the best solutions to improve results.
You can download a free template to help you get started.
Invest in the Right Digital Marketing Tools
Growth hacking is the approach to improve your digital marketing results, and in order to do so, you will need to invest in the right tools to help you succeed. Using tools like Moz or Ahrefs can help you understand user acquisition and the channels driving traffic to your website. Other tools like Hotjar can help you gain greater insights into how users behave when they are on your website. A/B testing is another tool that can be used to gain insights into what strategies work best with your audience. The best recommendation is to learn as much as possible so that you can invest in the right tools to aid your success.
Get Approval from Management and Key Stakeholders
In order to get started with your B2B growth marketing strategies, you may want to get internal buy-in from key stakeholders. One aspect of growth marketing is to conduct experiments and gather data. It is important to highlight this since a part of your budget will be allocated to these experiments, that could or could not perform the way you expect them to.
So, before you start, you may want to explain to all the major stakeholders about your plans to experiment. You may also want to explain to them the purpose and goals behind the experimentation. This will help you gain their approval and create the right experiments to help you capture the desired data.
Become Obsessed with Data
The biggest reason for the success of growth marketing is that every decision made by the growth marketer is guided by substantial data. They are data-obsessed and not only do they study the data and analytics readily available to them, but they also conduct A/B testing and surveys to gather more insights into the minds of their customers. This helps them refine their approach and alter their strategies to help them achieve their goals more efficiently.
