10 B2B growth hacking strategies for marketing leaders

“In the early phase of growth, you want to craft a strategy for running the experiments that will have the greatest impact on growth in the least amount of time. The more focused efforts are at the start, the more intentional your experiments will be, and the more impact you’ll achieve.” – Sean Ellis, Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

Buying cycles are longer, buyer groups are larger, and expectations are higher. So, to stay ahead, you must hack growth to get high-quality leads, increase revenue, and turn your experiments into successes.

1. Nail your niche with great positioning

Before you start spending money on campaigns, it’s important to be brutally honest about who your product is for (and who it isn’t).

Effective growth hacking starts with a precise ICP (ideal customer profile), which means getting into things such as what they value, how they make decisions, and what language they use to describe their problems.

You can conduct interviews, analyze LinkedIn comments, and review competitors’ case studies to build a good narrative. You can use this to refine your messaging and, when you show up in your customers’ inboxes or feeds, you want them to think, “this is exactly what I need”.

Positioning isn’t just one-and-done. You have to continuously refine it based on data and market trends.

“Let’s say experiment A is testing a small change, such as the color of the sign-up button. As results start coming in, it becomes clear that the increase in the number of new visitors signing up is very small – garnering just 5 percent more sign-ups than the original button color.

“Besides the obvious assumption that changing the color of the sign-up button may not be the key factor holding back new users from signing up, it’s also an indication that you’ll have to let the experiment run quite a long time in order to have enough data to make a solid conclusion.

“As you can see from the chart above, to reach statistically significant results for this test, you’d need a whopping 72,300 visitors per variant – or, in other words, you’d have to wait 72 days to get conclusive results. As Johns put it in an interview with First Round Review, “That’s a lifetime when you’re a start-up!” In a case like this, what a start-up really ought to do is abandon the experiment quickly and move on to the next, potentially higher-impact, one.” – Sean Ellis, Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

2. Create hyper-personalized cold outreach

This involves creating outreach messages that feel individually crafted instead of mass-produced.

So, rather than relying on generic templates, you should build emails or DMs around data points like:

Job title
Company news
Tech stack
Recent social activity

It’s not just “Hi [First Name]”, it’s “I saw you recently hired a RevOps leader and launched a new GTM motion. Here’s how [Product] could support that”.

This works because most decision-makers receive dozens of cold emails a day, so a personalized message that references something specific is more likely to stand out.

In addition, people are also more likely to respond when it’s clear you’ve done your homework instead of targeting a vague persona.

“Growth hacking has a subtle message of ‘what have you done for me today?’ You never stop as a growth hacker.” – Blake Commagere, Angel Investor

3. Consider product-led onboarding loops

Product-led onboarding guides new users through your product in a way that helps them quickly experience its core value without needing a sales call, support ticket, or manual intervention.

So, the product itself is the driver of acquisition, activation, and retention.

It’s crucial you find what the "aha moment" is (where the user first experiences value) and build the onboarding journey to get them there as fast as possible.

Common tactics include guided checklists and tooltips, pre-filled templates, and in-app messages prompting collaboration or upgrades.

This works because it offers immediate value, which, in turn, helps you increase adoption and retention.

4. Take advantage of account-based retargeting

This tactic focuses on showing personalized display ads or LinkedIn ads to people working at specific companies that have visited your site or matched your ICP.

You're not targeting based on keywords but on known accounts and the decision-makers within them.

In short, you identify who’s visiting your site (e.g., via cookies) and serve them ads that reinforce your product’s benefits and/or offer case studies.

B2B decisions aren’t made from one touchpoint (and can take weeks or months), so retargeting adds more exposure during the buying journey. In addition, you’re not wasting your budget because you’re showing the ads to people who’ve already shown interest.

For example, Snowflake (a cloud-based storage and analytics company) used an ABM platform with account-based ads and retargeting, which led to:

40% faster pipeline velocity
25% higher win rates
30% lower customer acquisition costs

5. Use thought leadership flywheels

This is a repeatable content system that can help you build credibility and trust with your audience.

It's called a flywheel because once it's spinning (through content, social engagement, SEO, and repurposing), it builds brand authority and lead generation with less and less effort over time.

Let’s say you host a webinar with an expert. You record it and slice it into multiple formats:

Key takeaways for a LinkedIn carousel
60-second highlights for YouTube Shorts and TikTok
Quotes for X threads
Audio clips for podcast episodes

By taking this approach to content distribution, you can make the most of each piece of thought leadership content you create and use it to generate awareness and engagement.

People buy from people they trust. If your founder or VP of Product regularly shares smart, opinionated, helpful content, people are already sold before they land on your site.

And thought leadership is also hard to copy, so your frameworks, voice, and presence can set you apart, especially in B2B spaces.

6. Invest in reverse trials

A reverse trial is about giving people access to the full premium experience from day one, and then taking it away after a short period unless they upgrade.

This is different from free trials because these usually limit access or have gated features.

It works because people see what your product is capable of, meaning they’re more likely to buy it as they want to keep it.

This method also uses something called loss aversion, which means that losing something you’ve used is a stronger motivator than gaining something new.

7. Use AI-powered personalization

Using AI and automation tools, you can dynamically change website content, CTAs, email sequences, and even pricing tiers based on who’s visiting or what they’ve done.

For instance:

If a visitor is from a healthcare company, show HIPAA compliance case studies
If they’re a CFO, emphasize ROI and cost savings
If they’re returning, show a pricing page instead of a demo page

Once set up, AI personalization runs alone, optimizing without needing constant manual changes.

8. Stack channels for maximum impact

Again, it’s very unlikely that a single touchpoint will close a B2B deal. That’s why you have to create multi-channel journeys that reinforce your message across multiple platforms.

Let’s say you’ve identified an account. You might show them an ad featuring a customer quote, then drop a personalized email from a sales rep, followed by a remarketing ad with a relevant ebook.

If they engage, you then trigger a chatbot that offers to book a demo in real time.

This cross-channel approach ensures your brand stays top-of-mind. It also gives you more chances to deliver the right message.

9. Use chatbots to increase leads

Chatbots aren’t just for customer support, as they can help you accelerate growth as well, especially if you use them strategically on high-intent pages to qualify to convert traffic.

A good chatbot can:

Ask tailored questions to segment visitors (e.g., industry, role, use case)
Route qualified leads to sales reps instantly
Offer smart content based on visitor behavior

This improves the buyer experience as there are no forms or delays.

According to a recent survey, 38% of marketers worldwide named chatbots as the most impactful AI use case to enhance digital engagement. Likewise, 27% of B2B marketers are already incorporating chatbots into their strategy.

10. Add live chat to high-intent pages

Not everyone wants to talk, but when they do, make sure you can address that.

Live chat on pricing, product, or demo pages can convert at much higher rates than static CTAs – in fact, live chat can lead to a 40% increase in conversion rate.

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