Who hasn’t heard about growth hacking? It’s 2021 and this term has been around for a long time now, long enough to reach your ears at least once. In its initial years, growth hacking was perceived to be a series of tactics that can help to soar the numbers for a company, but with time it was revealed that it’s not just about the tricks you play on your customers – it’s a mindset, often supported with data, that guides companies along their journey to accelerated growth. This makes growth hacking, and the role associated with it – growth hacker, popular amongst start-ups.
A growth hacker is someone who leverages collected data, analyzes the target customers’ behavioral psychology to design various persuasion techniques to improve conversions. They have the ability to project growth opportunities and analyze both marketings as well as the technical side of a problem and since their only goal is growth, they are less worried about budgets, expenses, etc, and are more focused on this make-or-break metric – growth.
Over the years, growth hacking tactics have been implemented by several companies from Dropbox implementing refer-a-friend to Twitter nudging new users to follow at least 10 accounts to Airbnb using Craigslist for marketing, we have seen growth hacking tricks work wonders for these and other top players. Here are 5 growth hacking tips that you, as a product owner, can leverage:
Growth Hack #1: Referrals/ word-of-mouth
Growth Hack #2: Make social sharing easy
Growth Hack #3: Build a useful free tool
Growth Hack #4: Suggest to them what to do next
Growth Hack #5: Testimonials in video format
1. Referrals/ word-of-mouth
Nothing works better than converting a satisfied happy customer to your product ambassador. Encouraging your existing customers to refer to your B2B product will help you increase credibility along with boosting sign-ups.
This can make a significant difference in your growth, all you need to do is create templates they can use to reach out to their network to ensure that they will actually go ahead with it. You can play with this tactic by offering them something in return, incentives like “X% discount” or “X extra free” or like if you have a lot of cash lying around you can think about paying them pure hard cash like Paypal (this might not be ideal for startups lacking hard cash). Test out what works for you, don’t go ahead and copy your closest competitor. Don’t offer anything that will cost you more than what you can afford.
2. Make social sharing easy
Additionally, make it easy for your customers to share your content and ideas across the social media channels by adding a small option on every blog or content page. You can also do this specifically for content that is most popular for your market. In nutshell, don’t forget to add social sharing buttons to your website, links to your social media accounts for people to follow you, and most importantly encourage them to share throughout content with in-line links and buttons.
3. Build a useful free tool
Well, that’s a given. An ideal way to kickstart your growth journey is to get B2B buyers familiar with your product. You can offer your customers a freemium or basic version of your product or even better give them a glimpse of your product and its best features with a time-bound free trial. During this phase, have excellent service at their disposal and your lead will likely sign up/ convert at the end.
Make sure that the free trial is long enough for the user to acknowledge the added value, and short enough so they haven’t completely availed the full service you offer. A delightful experience and awareness of the benefits of the “premium” version is what your customers need.
4. Suggest to them what to do next
The easiest growth hack, I think, is to tell people what are the next steps they need to take, what’s ideal for them to do next, etc.
Remember how Hotmail used to suggest “invite a friend” or when you aren’t able to find someone on Whatsapp it suggests the same? Additionally, you need to find ways to set up “suggestions” like “newsletter sign up”, “download an asset”, “15 min demo session”, etc. Ensure that you choose the best CTA for the action you want them to perform.
5. Testimonials in video format
Video testimonials have become more popular amongst companies nowadays, the reason being they are highly influential, for both B2C and B2B. Videos are an easy-to-consume format and adding video customer testimonials is a great growth hack for companies as it builds trustworthiness and seems more realistic.
If a video testimonial is hard to get, you can also have a written testimonial with an authentic, good-quality picture of the person and the company details along with that. Customers need to believe in your product or the B2B service you’re offering otherwise they won’t sign up.
Final Thoughts
All these hacks might sound complicated especially for the B2B market but with a little planning and strategy, these growth hacks can work wonders for your business. Take Facebook, for example, it took 8 years for Facebook to reach a $50 billion valuation. So with a little time, proper strategy, and a touch of growth hacking strategies you will be able to market your B2B product or service at a faster pace than anyone else.