What is the role of the growth hacker? Growth hacking for B2B businesses has gained popularity in the marketing community, but many people are still unsure of what it is or how it functions.
If you belong to that group, you shouldn’t worry. It’s not just you. This article will go over it in greater detail to address any questions that you may have on this topic.
I’m a big believer in growth hacking and the positive impact it could have on both my businesses and those of our clients. You can be hacking growth and choosing uncharted territory to leapfrog the competition.
Let’s explore growth hacking for B2B businesses in-depth and see how to make good use of it.
Meaning Of Growth Hacker
There’s a widespread notion that growth hackers are also marketers. The truth of the matter is that many marketers lack the skills required for hacking growth.
Marketers are instructed to get conversions, reduce costs, and carry out lengthy experiments. Growth hacking disregards those strategies.
Role Of The Growth Hacker
Someone who places growth above all other criteria is considered a growth hacker.
Instead of relying on certain metrics, growth hackers aim to increase growth by focusing on as many measures as they can, often adopting cost-effective marketing methods to do so.
For instance, investing heavily in paid advertising could help a new Startup grow quickly. Even though growth hackers do not necessarily take decisions based on cost savings, they cannot spend money that they do not have.
Content marketing, significant price reductions on goods or services, social media, generous rewards, and other similar measures may be included in growth hacking initiatives. One of their major strengths is creativity.
For instance, GoPro has developed its whole business model with creativity. In order to increase virility and spread the word, it supports user-generated content. In addition, it has developed giveaways like its million-dollar challenge.
Growth Hacking Explained
The term “growth hacking” is difficult to define, but in my opinion, it refers to swiftly experimenting with various marketing strategies, public relations initiatives, web design choices, and other duties in order to quickly generate leads and convert them into sales.
In particular, it is of lower priority to examine the benefit-cost ratio, spending for marketing or advertising, and any other statistic when it comes to growth hacking.
You may have guessed already – growth is the primary objective of growth hacking.
Let’s break that down further.
The first is that growth hacking takes place quickly. The idea is to test out new methods, decide whether to use them or not and then go on to something else. The only long-term objective here is growth.
Why is that relevant? It is because the success of a small or new business depends on its ability to grow. As you may have heard before, many restaurants and bars shut down within a couple of months of operation. This is a result of their inability to experience enough growth to generate a profit.
Examples Of Growth Hack Marketing
There are plenty of examples around us to get some inspiration for growth hacking. Companies are always coming up with new sales strategies, and frequently they incorporate the marketing funnel right into their services or products.
As Gary Vee says, it’s important to focus on “chasing attention”. His need to always be the center of attention has made him a well-known figure in the marketing community.
Without getting attention to your services or products, you can’t hack anything for incredible growth. You won’t find leads or customers if nobody knows that you exist.
Put yourself out there. You have to be on social media if your customers spend a lot of time on those platforms. You need an Instagram channel and a YouTube account if they enjoy watching videos.
What is the upcoming trend in your field? To show that you are an expert, write articles about it. Do many of the people in your target market follow a certain influencer? Try to establish a relationship with them.
Check out these two real-world examples of growth hacking methodology.
1. Dropbox
The most popular growth hacking example is Dropbox. To get the customers to talk to others about the platform, the business offered free storage space. This was a brilliant growth hack from Dropbox which increased their signups quickly.
2. Airbnb
You may already be using this well-known short-term apartment rental service. However, not many people know that Airbnb got a head start through Craigslist. This is what is referred to as chasing attention by Gary Vee. Airbnb discovered that the majority of its target market was looking for accommodations through Craigslist.
The business had already demonstrated its creativity using its box of cereal strategy during the 2008 US elections. But it really began to take off once it started posting its ads on Craigslist.
Airbnb increased its listing count from 50,000 to over 500,000 using the Craigslist hack.
Best Growth Hacking Methods To Increase Conversions
Here are 12 methods to consider if you’re ready to experiment with growth hacking techniques. Use these strategies to increase conversions while fostering growth across your entire company.
Sales often increase as a result of growth, but there are other metrics to look at as well. For example, your business is experiencing growth in multiple areas if you’re receiving more blog comments, collecting more emails through registrations, and creating more social media buzz.
Check out the top growth hacking techniques below. You can perhaps get started with one of them right away.
1. Collaborate With A Different Business To Gain Access To Their Audience
Partnerships are one of the most effective strategies used by the growth hacking community. If your audience includes 25,000 members and another business in a similar industry also has 25,000 members, you both can collaborate to reach a total of 50,000 members.
In this case, you’re not trying to work with a direct competitor. Instead, you are looking for a company that complements your business. You may, for instance, have a ski rental store and try to collaborate with a ski resort.
Call them over the phone or send out an email for a potential partnership.
Prepare some suggestions for natural ways to connect your audiences, including tagging each other on different platforms, selling bundled products that include both of your items, or something as basic as posting on each other’s websites.
2. Continue To Perform A/B Tests
A/B tests are very important in terms of growth hacking for B2B businesses. You won’t understand why something isn’t effective unless you test out other variations.
I suggest testing out everything, but begin with the parts of the website where you could receive more conversions:
Landing pages, the home page, sales pages, the ending of an article, contact page, etc.
To avoid skewing your results, focus on just one section of a page each time. If you modify multiple variables, you won’t be able to determine which had an impact on the result.
Utilize software like hotjar to run user behavior reports like heatmaps and conduct A/B tests on your website. The testing will be more effective when you have enough data and know what variables to test.
3. Look For Social Media Channels Not Used By Your Competitors
It’s possible that you won’t be able to get enough attention on Facebook or Twitter if your niche is quite competitive. Look for unconventional social networks, such as The Dots for creative talent or Profit.ly for financial traders.
You have full access to your audience when you can outperform your competitors on social media platforms. You can also direct visitors from the social network to your website and vice versa, which will help you make the most of your traffic.
There are different ways of using this hack. Perhaps some of your visitors have mentioned a website. So, you then look it up and begin posting. As a result, you may soon experience a surge in followers.
4. Giveaways
People like to shop at Costco for a reason. It is not just the discounted toilet paper – they offer free snacks that people enjoy.
Freebies have always been a tried-and-tested method to quickly get people’s attention to a business.
One option is to run a well-publicized giveaway on social media. Promote it as much as possible to encourage participation. People could also receive rewards for telling their friends about your giveaway.
Or perhaps you include a bonus with each item your consumers purchase. For example, if you are in the food industry, maybe each new customer receives a complimentary treat along with each meal.
5. Encourage Your Viewers To Connect Via Email
I’ve tried it a number of times and have been successful with this approach. I occasionally ask my list of subscribers to reach out to me with comments, questions, or solutions to a problem I’ve posed, going against the grain of conventional email marketing principles.
Emails with the “DoNotReply” addresses stop further communication. They imply that you are not interested in hearing back from them.
You can engage your audience in conversation and learn more about them by keeping the channels of communication open.
6. Modify The Layout Of The Landing Page
Perhaps it’s time to change up the layout if the landing page fails to engage the visitors. This is particularly the case if you’ve done all the A/B testing and your conversion rates are still low.
Look at your landing page entirely differently. If you were the customer, what would entice you to take action?
Perhaps you’re aiming for a younger demographic that enjoys playing video games. The landing page becomes considerably more compelling by adding gaming elements.
For example, suppose that you are in the fitness industry. To help establish the kind of diet that would be ideal for the visitor, you may formulate a series of questions regarding their body type and health conditions.
7. Engage With Your Audience
These days, interactive content is so popular. People enjoy consuming this type of content online, whether it be animated videos, quizzes, infographics, or calculators.
Why not produce this type of content yourself?
Hiring someone to create interactive content has never been simpler. There are specialists on websites like Fiverr and Upwork who can produce anything you need (be sure to check out the Fiverr vs Upwork comparison).
Conduct interviews and read reviews to hire a candidate suitable for the work.
8. Participate In Local Events
A growth hacker doesn’t rule out any possible opportunities that could help them achieve their goals. Working offline to attain growth is a part of the job.
If there are any local or even distant small-scale niche events, try to attend them. You can participate as a guest or set up a booth at the event.
An in-person meeting, a handshake, and talking to them about their needs make you more appealing than an unknown online company.
9. Showcase Your Personality
I have previously discussed Gary Vee. There are many followers who are unaware of his past of doing the wine business.
His personality makes Gary Vee popular among his fans. He is unapologetically himself regardless of the communication channel he chooses.
Make the most of your unique personality. Use your personal brand to help and inspire others. Finding out what can be offered to people before requesting a sale or conversion is necessary for growth hacker marketing.
10. Put Forth A Challenge
Issuing a challenge is a fantastic method to build rapport with your visitors and increase your credibility. It could be associated with a personal development goal, a creative project, or a charitable event.
For example, Tim Sykes started a Trading Challenge for his audience. He has created a number of millionaires through his programs, as well as several traders making six figures.
Making something that isn’t accessible to everyone is the key to making this work. Tim doesn’t ask people to join his challenge; rather, he gets them to apply.
Similar to this, raising awareness of a charitable event while encouraging others to donate to it would benefit both parties. Participating in a cause that matters to you will naturally attract other people to join.
11. Create A Free Tool
Growth hackers are beginning to understand the advantages of offering free tools. You can purchase the code on CodeCanyon to build it yourself or hire a developer to do it for you. It is a good investment since it attracts a lot of visitors.
12. Provide A Freemium Model
You may want to think about creating a freemium business model if you own a SAAS business or software company. All types of apps benefit greatly from this model.
Provide something for free. It may not accomplish much, but it will draw visitors to the site.
They’ll desire more of your product once they realize how it can help them. Even if some users may never become paying customers, your focus should be on refining the onboarding procedure.
Retaining consumers is easier than finding new ones. The success of the freemium business model is based on this principle. There are already leads in the pipeline. You just need to get them to buy the premium version of the product.
Begin Your Growth Hacking Plan
Are you prepared to become a growth hacker? Not everyone is able to easily use growth hacking.
Make a list of growth hacks for your company. Use the ideas that I have mentioned above to get started.
Implement your strategies as soon as you have them planned out. Don’t get caught up in overanalyzing things. Just take action.
Use analytics software to test your hypotheses and keep track of results. Perhaps a lot of people visit the landing page without converting. You must determine why this is the case with the page.
It can be the headline, the offer, or the design. The only way to find out is to test.
All growth hacking tactics may not work. It’s alright. You can quit doing those activities and start trying out different things. That is the attitude of a growth hacker.
Final Thoughts
Growth hacking is sometimes mistaken for lead generation and conversion marketing. Actually, it’s very different.
All the small metrics don’t matter to a growth hacker who seeks to generate exponential growth as quickly as possible.
This can also entail spending money on customers in the form of advertising, prizes, competitions, and freebies. Sometimes, basic incentives are more effective.
Only you would be able to decide what is ideal for your specific business. Try some of these growth hacking ideas to see what works for you the best.