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A successful business strategy includes achieving a consistent business strategy and revenue growth, as well as caring and retaining existing customers. A Gartner survey shows that although the disruptions in supply chains during the pandemic attracted the attention of business leaders as one of the top priorities, most of them still mention “growth” as their number one priority in making business decisions.

To increase enterprise value, business leaders should pay attention to growth marketing strategies. In this article, we explain B2B growth marketing and provide best practices for achieving it.

What is B2B growth?

B2B (business-to-business) growth refers to the expansion and development of a company that primarily provides products or services to other businesses, rather than individual consumers. B2B growth can involve:

Increasing sales

Expanding the customer base

Enhancing product or service offerings

Entering new markets

Improving overall efficiency and profitability

What is B2B growth marketing?

B2B growth marketing is a data-driven, strategic technique for growing a B2B company by focusing on acquiring, keeping, and expanding its customer base. It entails employing numerous marketing channels, methods, and resources to attract, engage, and convert potential customers while nurturing relationships with existing clients.

B2B growth marketing requires a deep understanding of the target audience, continuous experimentation, and adaptability to changing market conditions and customer preferences. For this, there are vital business lessons marketers can follow.

What are the key elements of B2B growth marketing? 1- Customer segmentation

Customer segmentation is the process of identifying and targeting specific market segments based on factors like:

Industry

Company size

Location

Job function

to deliver personalized and relevant marketing messages.

2- Content marketing

Check our article to learn about the challenges of content marketing and how to overcome them.

3- Lead generation and nurturing 4- Email marketing 5- Social media marketing

Optimize website content and structure for organic search visibility by using a paid brilliant ad campaign to target specific keywords and demographics to drive traffic and conversions.

7- Conversion rate optimization (CRO) 8- Analytics and data-driven decision-making

Tracking and analyzing performance metrics across marketing channels to gain insights, identify areas for improvement, and make data-informed decisions that drive growth.

10 B2B Growth Marketing Best Practices

Here are some key best practices to help drive growth in a B2B context:

1- Set clear goals and objectives.

Establish measurable goals and objectives for your growth marketing efforts, aligned with your overall business goals. This will help you focus your efforts and track progress.

Research and develop detailed buyer personas to understand the needs, preferences, pain points, and decision-making processes of your target audience. This will help you create targeted and relevant marketing campaigns.

2- Develop a strong value proposition.

Clearly communicate the unique benefits and value your products or services offer to your target audience, and ensure this message is consistent across all marketing channels.

3- Create high-quality, relevant content.

Develop and distribute content that addresses your audience’s needs and pain points, while demonstrating your expertise and thought leadership. This can include blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, webinars, videos, and podcasts.

For more on B2B content creation challenges and solutions, check our comprehensive article.

4- Go multichannel.

The number of channels used by B2B buyers along a decision making and buying process is increasing every year (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. B2B decision makers are using more channels than ever before to interact with suppliers

Source: McKinsey & Company

Those companies that can keep up with the buyer expectation for multichannel share a bigger market share than others (Figure 2). So, enable different channels that are unified accordingly for buyers as a part of your growth strategy.

Figure 2. Companies that sell through more channels are more likely to have gained market share in 2023

Source: McKinsey & Company

5- Personalize marketing efforts.

According to a survey, 97% of marketers reported an increase in business results due to the implementation of personalization strategies.

Tailor your marketing messages and campaigns based on customer segmentation, buyer personas, and individual preferences to increase engagement and conversions.

6- Optimize your website and landing pages.

Ensure your website and landing pages are user-friendly, visually appealing, and optimized for search engines. This will help drive organic traffic and improve conversion rates.

7- Leverage marketing automation.

Utilize marketing automation tools to streamline and scale your marketing efforts, from lead nurturing and email campaigns to social media management and analytics. When marketers are asked what are the benefits of marketing automation, their first answer is that it increases customer experience, leading to brand awareness and business growth (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Leading benefits of using marketing automation according to marketers worldwide as of February 2023

Source: Statista

8- Test and optimize continuously.

Monitor your marketing efforts’ performance, and use data-driven insights to iterate, optimize, and improve your campaigns. A/B testing, multivariate testing, and conversion rate optimization are essential practices.

9- Leverage product led growth marketing strategy.

Product-led growth (PLG) marketing can be a part of B2B growth strategy, particularly for companies offering software-as-a-service (SaaS) or other technology-based solutions. PLG focuses on the product itself as the primary driver for customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. By delivering an exceptional product experience and allowing users to quickly realize its value, companies can drive organic growth through word-of-mouth and referrals.

If you have questions or need help in finding vendors, we can help:

Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

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Web Analytics: How To Use Web Anatyics Tools To Achieve Your Goal

What is Web Analytics?

Web analytics is the collection, synthesis, and analysis of website data to improve user experience. It aims at business metrics for promoting specific products to customers who buy them and determining which products a particular customer is most likely to purchase. It can improve the ratio of revenue to marketing costs. Various web analytics tools automatically track key site performance metrics like conversion rate, bounce rate, monthly unique visitors, repeat visit rate, and more. Web analytics tools help brands achieve their goals systematically while simultaneously meeting and enhancing the customer’s needs.

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Web analytics tools can help brand managers understand and enhance their knowledge about visitors coming to their page. This can help them better understand how customers interact with a particular website, which, in turn, can help them reach their goals effectively.

Implementing a proper analytics framework requires some basic level of foundation. There have to be some effective changes made in the management and strategy to meet the goals and challenges of the organization. To get started, here are five things that every web team should try to implement right away.

These include the following:

Identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Micro Conversions (MCs)

Use of events to track KPIs and MCs

The outdoor marketing process to track campaigns in an effective manner

Use of Market segmentation

Create reports for appropriate actions based on the company’s goals.

The key elements among all this while developing an analytics framework are KPIs and MCs. Both of these elements can help brands to grow and truly empower themselves. By creating specific metrics, KPIs can help organizations determine the path to achieve their goals and objectives.

Better sales, newsletter subscriptions, contact form submissions, and higher organic traffic are key performance metrics that brands consider important for their overall growth and development. Brands need to understand their KPIs to work towards the company’s growth, or it will result in eventual failure.

According to Google evangelist Avinash Kaushik, good web analytics tools are something that every brand manager strives for. This strategic information helps brands decide whether they are performing well or dying a slow death.

Metrics are important but not always easy to decipher and comprehend. Brands must look ahead of their time to know their KPI metrics and start working on them as fast as possible. So the first question is, what is the primary purpose of our website, and what are we trying to achieve through this medium? When brands can answer these questions successfully, they not only can determine their key performance metrics but can also work on them in a way that makes it possible to achieve them systematically and easily.

If the brand perspective is that a website is a tool for prospective customers to learn about them or a medium for branding. In this case, this is a vague and unmeasurable answer. While they might be enough to get started on web analytics tools, they are not specific. On the other hand, if brands want their website to be a lead generation tool, they must set specific, measurable, and workable strategies. For example, if a prospective customer meets someone from your brand at a company, they will go home and visit their website. Customers who are impressed with the website are more likely to invest in the brand’s products and services.

Ultimately, the final impact will be based on employees connecting with the brand personally and intricately. It will help meet customer needs and also make better connections with brands.

Why are KPIs and MCs Important?

While it would be amazing if all visitors acted on KPIs, this is not always true. In fact, according to a study by Marketing Sherpa, only 10% of website visitors become actual sales. At the same time, the remaining 90% leave the website without making an actual sale. This is the reason why brand members must understand their micro-conversion elements. If brands had followed the prior process, they could understand their KPIs and those that were not. When a brand knows which performance indicators aren’t working, it can change to make them useful and help customers to convert their actions into sales.

KPIs and MCs are moving targets, so brand managers must use their resources and tactics wisely. This means that analyzing a particular website is a continuous process that requires dedicated time and effort. It is not something a brand can only do once and then forget.

After deciding which tool can help the brand track its website, it can easily activate event tracking. In most cases, events require three categories: category, action, and label. This help brands distinguish between multiple events. The first part while tracking events is placing them in a category. All the videos on a website can be encompassed in a single category named videos. Similarly, all audio links can be put together under one category named podcasts.

Tracking Campaign in the Analytics Process

The next step in web analytics software is tracking campaigns, which is an integral part of understanding the website’s traffic. Once brand managers have started collecting their website data, particularly KPIs and MCs, this should help brands understand how visitors are coming to the website.

Many web analytics software has a basic overview to help brand managers understand the metrics. The three standard metrics include direct traffic, referral traffic from the outside website, and traffic from search engines. Understanding all these sources is important because they comprise only a part of the process. It is important to track other sources like email marketing, social media, and offline marketing. By collecting all this data, brand managers can get a complete picture of website traffic. Brands can then shift their focus on methods and techniques to help them deliver better outcomes and results.

By analyzing the data, brand managers will discover that visitors are likely to do certain things, depending on where they found the link to their website. For example, if a customer visits a page to sign up for a newsletter, the form will be the KPI for that brand. Through this form, a customer will build their relationship with the brand by requesting a quote, a demo, etc. So, if a company wants to increase its subscriptions by a certain number, the following strategies can be used:

Add links to the subscription page to professional emails sent to customers.

Start an email campaign to improve subscription rates.

Use social media like LinkedIn and Twitter to promote the newsletter.

Feature the newsletter on the homepage of the brand.

Campaign tracking can help in the first three tactics mentioned above to help brands reach their goals. The last step in web analytics software is the evaluation of the process. Brands must evaluate their web analytics software process to learn from their failures and success. As web analysts, they must provide valuable insights about how brands can learn effective management of resources like time, money, and people. It can also implement out-of-the-box and innovative strategies to develop brand power and loyalty.

Overall, this task requires high expertise from digital marketers and campaigners. It means that brand managers must clearly understand the problem and be creative to address it effectively. Massive data will finally make sense for businesses once thoroughly comprehended into appropriate segments. Finally, in creating a report, one can undeniably add immense value and benefits for brands in the true sense.

5 Highly Effective B2B Online #Marketing Tips

As a B2B marketer, you might find it hard to prioritize. With so many marketing channels, so many content formats to choose from, and constant changes in the field, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

If you find yourself feeling bogged down because there’s just so much to do that you don’t even know where to start, it’s time to take a step back and get your head on straight.

Let’s take a look at some guiding principles that are driving the most impact for your B2B marketing peers, along with some tools of the trade that make things easier.

1. Plan Everything out Before Executing

What’s the best way to keep yourself from feeling overwhelmed? Create a clear-cut plan, and document everything as you go. This makes it easy to make sure everything you do aligns with your plans. It also creates a resource you can share with stakeholders, and it provides a broad view you can break down into smaller chunks for managing your daily progress.

What’s more, research suggests the act of documenting your strategy can increase the chances you’ll achieve your goals. A recent study by Dr. Gail Matthews of Dominican University’s Psychology Department found that writing down goals and sharing them with peers makes you 21% more likely to reach your goals.

Strategy documents come in many shapes and sizes, but there’s no need to over-think it – just start jotting down some notes and see where it takes you. Here are some questions to address as springboards for thought:

What are your key performance indicators (KPIs)?

What are your pre-campaign baseline metrics?

What are your goals?

What tactics are you using to reach those goals?

What dates do you need to have these things accomplished by?

Who on your team is responsible for each component?

2. Automate Where Possible

You’re only one person, and you’ve only got 24 hours in a day. Even if you’re highly productive and efficient, automation can help you make even better use of your time by removing bottlenecks and rendering processes infinitely scalable. Automated tools also help your audience – bots might not have the same nuanced touch as a human, but they also never make mistakes like humans do and they respond far faster.

Many B2B marketers are turning to automation to get more done. In fact, Salesforce reports that top performing marketers are four times as likely to use automation tools than the rest of us.

Fortunately, there are a number of marketing automation tools out there to help you. One example, Socedo, supplements manual Twitter activity with automated outreach and responses. It helps you search for relevant prospects using the search parameters of your choice, and it engages on your behalf. This allows you to spend your time nurturing the relationships you know are most likely to yield conversions, rather than using a spray and pray approach.

Don’t want to invest hours each week curating content to post to your social profiles? Quuu can automate that for you as well.

3. Track and Adjust as You Go

With all the analytics tools at your disposal, it’s easy to spend an entire work day logging in and out of the various platforms and taking notes about what you see. No matter what kind of campaigns you’re running, having the data to see how they’re performing is critical, but keeping track of all of it can be a pain.

Tools like Cyfe, Dasheroo and Supermetrics enable you to visualize your B2B funnel performance by aggregating analytics data from a variety of sources, to a single dashboard. This allows you to save time by having all the information you need in one place.

4. Get Eyes on Content However You Can

It doesn’t matter how awesome your content is, or how great your products and services are. If no one knows about them, then you won’t be able to feed the funnel. Savvy B2B marketers know how to use a variety of tactics to get eyes on their content. Start by making sure you’ve got the basics covered: email, social media, search engines, paid placements, influencers, and co-marketing alliances. (If you need to up your email game, check out these B2B email marketing tips.)

Make sure you’ve got a solid plan for content distribution. 62% of SEJ’s 2023 State of Digital Marketing survey respondents spend between $1,001 and $5,000 every month on PPC campaigns. Generally speaking, the more eyes you can get on your content, the better, although ideally, you’ll track each audience acquisition channel’s engagement metrics and sales conversion rates too, so you can determine the top performers. One recent study found that 31% of B2B marketers view email as their top marketing channel for driving revenue.

That’s why it’s also so important to create and promote a diverse combination of content formats and then pay attention to what your audience responds to the best. An Ascend2 study revealed that 54% of content marketers believe articles and case studies are the most effective types of content, while videos are a close second at 48%.

SEJ’s own research indicates that whitepapers and ebooks are the most effective for lead capture, with 68% of marketers agreeing, so there’s no way to predict what will perform best for you. Experiment, track, rinse, repeat, as they say.

Deciding which of these content assets should be gated behind lead capture forms and which should be freely accessible is likewise not easy – especially when so many of us prefer to keep marketers out of our inboxes.

5. Resist ‘Shiny Object Syndrome’ – for the Most Part

There are always new trends in the B2B marketing world – social networks, publications, forums, tools, trigger words, tactics and more. Keeping up with it all is a major challenge, but it’s one that you don’t need to take on. Social Media Examiner’s 2023 Social Media Marketing Industry Report shows that only 6% of marketers actively adopt new social platforms – over half of the respondents take a “wait and see” approach.

If it’s new and shiny, then yes, it’s attractive. But just because it’s attractive doesn’t mean it’s worth your investment. That said, there are a few trends you simply cannot afford to ignore as a contemporary, performance-oriented B2B marketer. Here are four of them.

The Rise of Mobile and its UX Implications – With mobile device use overtaking desktop, it’s time to realize customers are looking for a different experience. Mobile is more than a smaller, touchable screen – it’s used for different things and in different ways than computers are. People want access to the information they’re looking for quickly, and they want snackable media experiences. Make sure you build mobile optimization into your plan from the get-go.

Social for Discoverability and Engagement – Content Marketing Institute’s B2B Content Marketing 2023 Benchmarks report found that 93% of B2B marketers use social media content to help them get found and engage with prospects. 94% of them use LinkedIn to distribute their content, while 87% use Twitter, and 84% use Facebook. With search playing an increasingly smaller role in people’s content discovery lives, if you aren’t crushing it on social, you likely aren’t crushing it at all.

Visuals, Including Video – The aforementioned Content Marketing Institute study found that 48% of B2B marketers believe videos are the most effective content, with 43% choosing infographics and 24% choosing images. The key takeaway is visuals matter, and audiences are confirming it. YouTube watch time growth continues to rise at least 50% year-over-year, and has for three years straight.

Putting it All Together

Though it may require more time to initially set up, using these tools to plan, automate, and track your progress can help keep you on the right path. Instead of being overwhelmed at what needs to be done, you can look at everything you’ve got in those tools to see how well your strategies are working. Based on the number of prospects you’re working with and the conversions you’ve made, you can make adjustments to current and future campaigns to ensure you grow.

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Integrate And Test Your Tech Stack To Drive Business Growth

Building a tech stack involves more than selecting the latest technologies and integrating them for business growth

Building an integrated technology stack or “tech stack” plays a vital role in enabling business growth. Too often business leaders are investing in applications, connecting them to existing systems, and hoping for the best. They soon find out that is not an effective way to achieve their business goals. A better approach starts with setting clear objectives, collaborating company-wide, and picking the right tools for an organization’s specific needs. For long-term business growth, business leaders must also prioritize continuous integration testing of their tech stack to ensure usability and functionality in the long run.

What is a tech stack?

A tech stack is the collection of digital products and technologies an organization uses to accomplish tasks. It encompasses the software, web applications, databases, and other systems that are core parts of how an organization operates. This includes tools used across different organizational departments – from marketing and sales to HR and finance. The right tech stack includes applications that easily integrate with each other to further streamline business practices and support growth. Delivering value and increasing growth is high on the list of objectives for every enterprise organization. Achieving this is made easier by curating a tech stack with the right set of tools.

Building The Right Tech Stack

Building a tech stack involves more than selecting the latest technologies, integrating them, and expecting your organization, department, or team to improve the way they operate. Before investing in new software or application, business leaders should consider the following:

1. Evaluate outcomes before tools

Implementing a set of tools before knowing what needs improving is a sure-fire way of creating a tech stack that will hinder rather than aid. First, organizations need to ask themselves, “What are we trying to achieve? What is the desired outcome? What is preventing these outcomes from being achieved?” For instance, if the customer experience is delivering below expectations, implementing a brand-new CRM system is not a comprehensive solution. First, leaders must look into why customer experience is not performing well. Delays in order fulfillment, ineffective customer communication, or slow system notifications can all cause an unpleasant customer experience. Customer order details might be entered incorrectly or could fail to reach the logistics center altogether. Perhaps the software delivering team is spending too much time checking code defects manually, leaving no time to work on new features. Understanding the root cause of performance issues is critical to solving them. Tools should merely be a facilitator. The immediate and primary purpose of building a tech stack is to align processes with business objectives to deliver as much value as possible.

2. Collaboration is key

Organizational silos must be broken down to improve decision-making when creating a fully functioning tech stack. Using a consultative approach across departments is necessary, regardless of the type of tech stack being built. For instance, if a CRM platform is implemented in isolation to solve customer experience issues, but a distribution center is unaware, an order fulfillment workflow might completely break down. Having a discussion early with relevant stakeholders can flag any bottlenecks and determine if additional technologies are required to plug any gaps. With representatives from relevant teams and departments, identifying problems and setting clear objectives are easier. Once established, creating the appropriate workflows that streamline and automate processes is simple.

3. Consult the experts

Any application or system can work straight out of the box on its own, but few organizations require this level of simplicity. To cater to unique business needs and ensure any tech stack delivers value, varying degrees of customization are necessary. One main area is implementing business logic to create custom workflows. Custom workflows throughout any tech stack will typically follow a step-by-step process and include intricate rules. Features, such as mandatory fields, business rules, and “if/then” statements, will be implemented to ensure each application and workflow functions correctly. Although many application UIs are fluid, the number of potential actions, paths, and routes a user can take are many – there’s no guarantee they will follow point A, to B, to C, and then to D in that order. It is critical to consult with software teams to ensure the business rules are correctly implemented and the various user paths adequately tested. Consulting the software development team is necessary because end-to-end testing will have to continuously take place. In addition to different codebases, updates, new features, and maintenance work will regularly occur, requiring rigorous testing to maintain functionality across every platform.

Testing Your Tech Stack Is Imperative Test and monitor the user experience

An unused tech stack defeats its entire purpose. To ensure usability, it is best to test from the user’s perspective. However, not all test automation tools have that capability. Most testing tools simply look at the code and verify the user experience from the backend, but for most modern applications, that’s not enough. Today’s applications have complex UIs that use features such as iFrames, drop-downs, and pop-up windows, to offer a better experience. These can be great for a user but can be hard to test with tools that only verify the code.

Figure 1. Creating a digital twin of the application allows you to test from the user’s perspective. (Image of Keysight’s Eggplant DAI)

Test user journeys with AI

Essential to any tech stack are customizations, in particular, workflows. Business logic drives these custom workflows, increasing the number of user journeys that need testing. Users don’t necessarily move down a linear path in sequence. One step in the process might be accessible from different routes. Users may forget to enter necessary data, meaning they have to go back a step or refresh the page. Expecting a manual tester to predict every possible user journey and action is not viable. Use a test automation solution that conducts intelligent exploratory testing by utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to increase coverage by auto-generating test cases for all possible user journeys.

Figure 2. Example of a possible user journey determined by full exploratory testing using AI. (Image of Keysight’s Eggplant DAI)

Test any technology

Due to the complex systems, devices, and codebases involved with every tech stack, organizations require a solution that can automate true end-to-end testing via only one test, regardless of the technology. The alternative option is to utilize multiple manuals or automated testing tools and create test cases for every technology, system, and application that makes up the tech stack. Considering that most tech stacks are cloud-based, users will be accessing platforms on different web browsers, on multiple devices, and built on various programming languages. In some cases, merely logging into an application requires two-factor authentication, which involves testing user journeys across a range of computers and mobile devices. Manually testing these scenarios or using multiple tools takes time — time your competitors are using to release new features and digital products to the market faster than you can.

Figure 3. Digital twin model of testing 2-factor authentication across multiple devices. (Image of Keysight’s Eggplant DAI).

Summary

With the right tech stack, business leaders can connect digital workflows across teams and departments, improve collaboration, and achieve common business goals. To ensure long-term business success, continuous testing of the tech stack must be a priority. To learn more about AI-driven test automation, visit

Author:

Anna McCowan, Software Solutions Manager at Keysight Technologies

10 Growth Hacking Concepts And Best Practices

Nowadays, the key difference between a good startup and a great startup is whether or not the business has mastered a set of tactics called “growth hacking” — namely, strategies such as search engine optimization, social media integration, and more.

A relatively new term, “growth hacking” refers primarily to innovation in online businesses. Because of its low cost, growth hacking is especially useful for startups with a low budget. The term was coined in 2010 by entrepreneur Sean Ellis, who recognized a void in the startup industry.

Traditional marketing skills are successful at pushing products and services in established businesses, but the skill set may or may not be technologically oriented enough to develop growth without external resources. In contrast, growth hackers will identify a niche in the industry and develop a way for a product to sell itself. In other words, growth hackers and marketers can be the same, but the words are not synonymous.

Let’s look at 10 growth hacking concepts and best practices you can use to see a difference in your startup or established company:

1. Be Accessible

Accessibility to a wide user group enables businesses to successfully develop their products. With the adoption of mobile devices and abundant competition in almost every industry a company that can offer several touch points in trending platforms to enhance connectivity will see an increase in user adoption.

Case in Point: Spotify is now worth more than $10 billion, and the company has only been around since 2008. It successfully used a multi-pronged approach to encourage users to listen to its free platform. Now it has 12.5 million paying customers who are brand loyal to Spotify’s pricing model, features, and availability of music.

Spotify is one of only a few products that features both free music and a premium service to let listeners choose what they want to listen to when they want to listen to it. The company partnered with Facebook as its exclusive music service in 2011 to further expand Spotify’s accessibility. As an established company, it is now leveraging its model to enjoy further mobile growth and international brand recognition along with exploration into cutting edge platforms and partnerships that spring forward every day.

2. Listen to Users

Case in Point: TractionVC helps entrepreneurs attempting to grow a business. The company regularly emails messages that best benefit the average business model. Business owner or leaders can take the information and use it how they see fit.

3. Find Your Niche

Even if you think your company is more mainstream than “niche” oriented, take another look. There is most likely some aspect of your business that feeds into a specific field. Leveraging that industry in a different online forum will translate into expansion for your main product. It doesn’t have to be a complex strategy: choose a relevant topic of interest and become an expert in it. Create a blog, write guests posts, or otherwise gain traction as a thought leader. Create a login for your primary website that will allow the user to participate in special insider forums or receive added benefits just by virtue of signing up.

Niches don’t have to be limiting or exclusive, and finding your own niche can benefit your business greatly when used appropriately. Combine technology with effective marketing tactics to find an audience ready and willing to help improve your business.

4. Prospect Nurturing With a Twist

This concept is all about serving potential clients at the appropriate time with the right content. Prospect nurturing does require intimate knowledge about what your target market is looking for, so do some research beforehand! Promotion, re-engagement content, educational and training tips, and targeting prospects who engaged with your brand are all traditional forms of prospect nurturing.

Case in Point: The Naked Wines CEO created a promotional nurturing campaign that benefits wine customers who receive orders via mail as well as independent winemakers starving for capital. With careful research and consideration, Naked Wines has established a win-win promotion that nurtures both target groups.

As part of its promo, the company includes $100 gift cards with purchases from various virtual vendors. Many who use the gift cards become “Angels” whose $40/month fee goes straight to winemakers. In return, customers receive orders at a savings rate of 40-60%.

5. Use Scalable Tactics

Start small with any tactic you choose to implement. The ones that catch on in a scalable way gather momentum on their own and lead you to higher conversion rates. The trick is to make sure you have the infrastructure in place to accommodate growth so back-end difficulties don’t slow you down.

Case in Point: Social media companies are great examples of scalable efforts that have the potential to skyrocket to success. Facebook started out small, but used sharing techniques and other tactics, along with a model for hiring new engineers to maintain the platform, to develop a viable, scalable plan that supports its growth.

6. Rethink Your Content And How It Is Presented

Modern companies cannot disregard the information they present online. Relevance and precision are vital in content. The more quickly you can get a message across to the user, the more likely he or she is to react. Visual stimulation, such as infographics and video, has gained traction in driving conversion rates. Headlines tend to carry more weight than content, so craft yours carefully.

Case in Point: Upworthy uses powerful visuals and intriguing headlines on its main site to capture attention. Twenty-five headlines or more are produced for every post to ensure the topic is considered from all angles. The result? The site is categorized as viral news and has thousands of followers.

The concept of viral marketing takes this concept to the next level by focusing on grassroots efforts to get an ad or video seen. With social media, every “Like “ or “Share” means more visibility, so all measures must be taken to maximize publicity. An important aspect to remember is the nature of social media is on your side – it’s completely free to post something on digital platforms such as Facebook or Twitter! Because it is a low-cost and low-risk endeavor, make sure you have engaging, creative and interesting content.

7. Leverage Alternative Platforms

Today the integration is no longer available, but Airbnb had enough time to leverage Craigslist’s community to see significant growth. Many tactics of this nature can only be used for a finite period of time, since a host company generally will not approve of your business piggybacking and will find a way to shut it down. To avoid this, always proceed with caution and ask yourself questions such as, “If I were the host, would I approve?” Be diplomatic and avoid completely relying on the host company for your success — create a backup plan in the event your chosen platform is taken away.

8. Embrace Change

Your job as a growth hacker or vendor is never done. The marketplace is evolving at an increasingly rapid rate, and a company that expects to remain viable for years to come must change with the tide. Use analytics, your current user base, and competitive intelligence to stay informed about the next big thing. Companies unwilling to adapt to the future will die or someone with vision will acquire them.

Case in Point: Twitter suffered from a lag in use shortly after it launched. People tried the product for a few days, but didn’t return. Many were leaving the network without interacting with anyone. So, Twitter analyzed its data and found out that users who followed 5-10 others within the first 24 hours after opening an account were more likely to become long-term tweeters. Twitter reformatted the platform to encourage this kind of behavior and augment growth. Now it is bigger than ever, but if it had not evolved after that initial obstacle, Twitter might not be a household name.

9. Integrate Into Other Platforms

This form of relationship is more symbiotic than the parasitic technique in #7. Many platforms welcome cross recommendations. Two or more sites will benefit from the increased traffic of using one central touch point to get started. Put a button, badge, widget, or other link to increase traction.

Case in Point: Google is almost like a governing body. Its analytics, webpage rankings, and search capabilities are a hub for company integration. Now you can put all your enterprise information, including social media page buttons, in the knowledge box on the right hand side of search results page. The pins are relatively new, but provide easy access to a website or relevant online page.

10. Make Smart Suggestions

Case in Point: YouTube grows through pooled videos, so it encourages users to share every time they visit. By suggesting other videos a person may want to endorse, YouTube created a “viral loop” in which viewers burrow through content and are more likely to recommend what they find as it becomes more relevant. The site also makes it easy to insert content and share it across multiple platforms. Providing easy-to-use tips for embedding and navigating other actions is how YouTube encourages higher growth levels.

In a Nutshell

Although growth hacking suggestions may also focus on generating business through innovative programming, there are several other ways to creatively promote meaningful growth. Basically, you don’t need to be a programmer to be successful in growth hacking.

Try some of these tactics in your marketing and startup strategies this year, and analyze the results compared to your past numbers to determine what is effective in your market. Every company is different, and it may take a few unique strategies to land on one that works for you. Don’t discount the power of technology – it is absolutely essential for any smart business owner wanting to remain competitive. Like mastering any craft, all you need is some perseverance and dedication.

Featured Image: amenic181 via Shutterstock

Security Debt Can Hinder Your Business Growth

According to Industry figures, Three out of four startups fail. 70% of these failures occur when the company is just two to five years old. While startups face many obstacles on the path to survival, 20% of them fail. Because of fierce competition. This environment can be particularly harsh for SaaS-based businesses. Although the product-market fit is crucial to success, there are many startups that failed to succeed despite having superior products. Building a strong security position early in your business can help you project more business maturity and be able to compete against other companies.

Security Matters

Security can be a problem, with the negative impact on businesses and the cost of fixing it. However, it is possible to increase growth by ensuring security. Many companies are seeking to sell into large enterprises and highly regulated sectors like financial services and healthcare. It can be hard to get into these large organizations and brands because they don’t want to take risks with patient or customer data. It can be difficult to get a foothold in these big brands and organizations because they aren’t interested in taking risks with their customer or patient data. A recent survey shows that 10% of US companies are currently working to comply with more than 50 privacy laws and another 26% are working to address between six and 49. This is a requirement for buyers. They need to be confident that the organization with which they do business can manage this level of responsibility.

Optimizing for growth and feature creation are often priorities in fast-growing companies. As with technical debt, the decisions you make today will impact your ability to meet your prospects’ security expectations quickly. If you don’t pay attention to security while you are negotiating deals, your company’s “security debt” will grow. Unintelligible, often ad-hoc privacy policies and application agreements can leave you with terms that are unclear (and sometimes conflicting!) It is filled with security or legal jargon. This makes it extremely difficult to manage, and even more difficult for everyone to follow internally. It puts all your deals at risk. Your competitors, on the other hand, take security seriously and go through the procurement process with no problems, growing their businesses at each turn.