One hallmark of growth marketing is the practice of leveraging data in real-time to align tactics and messaging to meet the needs of your ideal customer. This requires a keen intuition as the strategy is developed, an intuition shaped by years of experience and an understanding of current market trends. It also requires an agile methodology to accurately assess and quickly adapt a campaign as it moves forward. This is our approach, which we apply specifically to marketing for B2B tech companies.
Regardless of your niche, growth marketing can be enhanced by a few practices, and here are seven to keep in mind:
- Define your target customer and create your Ideal Customer Profile, or ICP
- Develop a content marketing strategy
- Leverage B2B SEO tools
- Utilize social media
- Invest in paid advertising
- Use email marketing
- Continuously test and optimize
1. Define your target ICP.
Before you begin any growth marketing efforts, it’s important to have a clear understanding of who your target customer is. This will allow you to create buyer personas that will help guide your marketing efforts and ensure that you’re reaching the right audience.
Take time to analyze the clients you have served over the past 24 months. In what role was the person who initially reached out and did he or she need to bring in other decisionmakers? Chances are they did—document which roles came alongside the person who made the initial inquiry.
It’s also helpful to recall and document the pain points each prospect felt and what kinds of questions were asked by each decisionmaker. You’ll begin to note patterns around the types of questions that come from specific roles or personas. The data from past and current clients should shape your methods and messaging to reach new clients.
During the research and nurturing process, your goal is to break down the barriers by digging deeper into technical product specifications, presenting case studies about cost savings and creating a space of trust.
2. Develop a B2B Content Creation flow.
Taking a growth marketing approach to content marketing enables you to establish your company as a thought leader in your industry by providing valuable information to your target customers using their language. Note the descriptive terms they use to search for your product or service online and what types of questions they’re asking.
Tools such as Google Search Console make it obvious if your online campaigns and landing pages are a one-to-one match for what people are searching for. Using gated content best practices, you can leverage this content in ways that draw organic traffic and top-of-funnel growth.
3. Leverage SEO.
SEO (search engine optimization) is a powerful tool that can help drive traffic to your website. By optimizing your website and content to be crawled and accurately categorized by search engines, you can increase your visibility and reach more of your target customers. Be sure to focus on both on-page and off-page SEO, as well as local SEO if your company serves a specific geographic area.
Tools such as Ahrefs, Moz, and SE Ranking will track how your website ranks for specific phrases in a particular area, and other tools such as Google Keyword Planner will give you an idea of the phrases worth tracking. Adding tools like these into your arsenal will allow you to fully leverage SEO in your growth marketing strategy.
4. Utilize social media.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can be powerful tools for reaching and engaging with your target customers. Use these platforms to promote your content, engage with your audience, and build relationships with potential customers. Keep a close eye on the data for which posts get the most engagement. As you monitor the trends, you will learn what types of content and media forms are attractive and valuable to your followers.
5. Invest in paid advertising.
While organic reach on search engines and social media platforms can be slow to bear fruit, paid advertising can be a fast way to get your company’s products and services in front of a precisely defined audience at the exact moment they need it.
Consider using platforms like Bing Ads, Google Ads, and LinkedIn Ads to promote your content and drive traffic to your website. These are particularly powerful tools for growth marketing because of their detailed analytical reporting and automated optimization features. Specific search terms, job functions, and other categories will rise to the top as the best at driving engaged website visitors, and these platforms can be programmed to promote the content that brings the most conversions within a set budget. Don’t hesitate to pause underperforming aspects of paid campaigns. The goal is not simply to gain more website traffic. You are going after the right traffic.
6. Use email marketing (it’s not dead!)
Email marketing to subscribers who have opted into receiving communications from your company is a cost-effective way to keep your company top-of-mind. As new visitors come to your website through organic search, paid search, or social media, be sure to invite them to sign up for emails to learn about your latest offerings and expertise. Offering a newsletter is easy and you can make it easy for subscribers to choose the topics and frequency that suit their preferences.
Use email campaigns to promote new blog posts, whitepapers, webinars, and other content. Follow up with event attendees if you were an exhibitor (attendees often opt into communication from exhibitors when registering for the event). Purchasing email lists for cold email campaigns can be worthwhile, but the list source, sending domains, email platform, and other aspects need to be set up correctly to avoid being blacklisted.
7. Continuously test and optimize.
What works now will not always work. Continuously test different strategies and tactics to see what works best for your business and use the data you collect to optimize your efforts and improve your ROI. Be open to trying new things, and don’t be afraid to pivot if something isn’t working. Use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and LinkedIn Analytics to gain insights into your audience, their behavior, and how they interact with your content. Need an expert? We can help!
Ready to Get Started?
Growth marketing is a key aspect of B2B companies today. By defining your target customer, developing a content marketing strategy, honing your tactics, analyzing your data, and continuously testing and optimizing, you can create and adapt marketing campaigns that will cause your company to be found by the businesses that could benefit by working with yours.
We’ve been providing growth marketing for B2B tech companies for nearly a decade, and we invite you to talk with one of our marketing strategists to explore a partnership to drive growth for your business.
