The marketing landscape continues to evolve, and we are always searching for the tips and tricks or “hacks” to make our efforts more efficient and successful. Two techniques dominating the industry are “Hacking Demand Generation” and “Hacking Growth Generation”. These exceptional tools offer the B2B marketer essential opportunities to pull attention to their product/services, and to spur massive growth in the most rapid way conceivable. They form the highways consistently reaching the broadest audience.

Traditional thinking in B2B leadership has centered on the idea that if you create a valuable product it will sell itself – over and over again. As marketers we know that is not the reality. The product forms only half of the equation – with investing in growth and demand generation marketing being the other half. The focus is to attract a qualified target to your offering. What is your brand doing to magnetically draw customers to a product or service before they have even tried it out? It’s a process that also “demands” sales and marketing cooperate together to drive conversions.

The Bottom Line

Growth hacking and demand generation hacking focus on decision-making, and both impact the bottom-line. Both are highly successful at increasing conversion rates, and generating quality leads. They reach a wider, targeted audience than traditional B2B marketing, which aims to get conversions by directly communicating with the “right” people. Let’s unpack these two terms before we look at how to hack them to our advantage. First up: Demand Generation.

How Would You Define Demand Generation?

At its core, demand generation drives more business by creating a demand for the product. It makes use of tactics to first locate the prospect and then continues to nurture the target through multiple platforms and touch points, over the long-term. It builds the bridge between your sales department and your revenue operations. Demand generation is not inbound marketing, and should not be confused with it, but rather uses its tactics in its overall strategy. Part of its function is to identify quality prospects. These leads are then nurtured, so sales are not just dumped with oceans of unqualified leads that may or may not convert. You want to bring the best lead to your sales team to facilitate the highest possible conversion rates. This helps you to do that.

Hacking Demand Generation

The signs that you are truly hacking demand generation are visible when your customers start seeing you as a trusted advisor. You are perceived as the font of knowledge in your field, and considered a “thought leader” on topics impacting your industry. You, your team, and your product/service have become the “gold standard” in your field. Part of your success with your customers is derived from your six-sense style; an ability to detect problems. When you become aware of an issue – you can solve it immediately. One of demand generation’s primary goals is to build trust with the client base, and continuously track content performance. If you see that the alignment between sales and marketing has forged strong relationships through effective training, you’re hacking DG!

How Do You Hack Growth?

The term “growth hacker” was originally created by Sean Ellis in 2010 to describe a type of marketing approach. Ellis said, “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth.”

It’s merging both conventional and unconventional marketing strategies that lead to an explosion of growth for a company. The movement started by making its mark on startups, but has subsequently infiltrated all organizations’ marketing departments, thanks to its robust efficacy. Growth hackers might investigate many untraditional low cost options like social media, targeted advertising, and viral marketing to make a huge impact. Every strategy is geared to growing the business. It’s an obsessive pursuit of the singular goal of growth.

Because of the original growth hackers, we now have a plethora of methods, techniques, best practices, and tools that never existed before in the traditional marketing toolbox. When used singularly or together, they can, and do, create explosive growth.

Signs You Are Truly Hacking Growth

• You immediately test persuasive copy to find the best content that converts
• You embrace the power of SEO
• You don’t shy away from viral strategies (yes, even as a B2B marketer)
• Your efforts employ highly personalized outreach
• You leverage all of the opportunities that digital affords – like website analytics, intent signal monitoring, A/B testing, and content marketing

The Demand and Growth Generation Hacking Rules of Engagement

Now when you have these two forces working in concert in your B2B marketing department, your conversions rise. The synergy between the two forces creates a formidable approach to nurturing customers/leads and chasing growth.

Hacking Growth and Demand Generation results in:

• Content that people love to share. If you create content like whitepapers, webinars, e-books, SlideShares, etc. that are embedded and shareable, you are going to rank high on the SERP’s thanks to social validation. Your content must always address your customers pain points. You must be the go-to site for solutions.
• Re-purposing of Great Content. You don’t have to keep creating new content. Use a popular piece and give it a new frame. A blog post could be re-purposed into an e-Book. An info-graphic can grow into an article. It’s much easier to re-purpose than to create from scratch. Recycle your content, and always remember to make it easy for your readers to consume.
• Re-targeting Blog Visitors. You can create a personalized, custom ad for a target who visited a specific blog page. You will be putting relevant advertising in front of them, based on their interests.
• Segmented Newsletters. Create different newsletters for different segmented groups, based on their level of engagement with your product.
• A Thriving Community. Once you build a community you must be sure to maintain it with constant engagement.
• An Effective LinkedIn Presence. It’s where the B2B social network resides and interacts. Make sure you are constantly part of the conversation. Add content, comment and change your LinkedIn messages frequently and often. This continues to make you relevant.
• Social Proof. When your customers show you they appreciate your product, customer service, etc. use their testimonials and quotes with pride, on your website. We all respond well to positive reviews of a business, and it influences our decision to purchase.
• Multi-touch, Personalized Campaigns. You want many touch points along the sales funnel for your lead’s genuine interest to be ignited.
• Feedback. Feedback. Feedback. Customer feedback helps you make your message and your outbound communications more effective.

That’s how you hack growth and demand generation in the B2B arena like the professionals do!