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The Truth about Growth Hacking in B2B
Vishal SunakDirector of Operations, Backupify (acquired by Datto)
@TheSunak, [email protected]
What you can expect today
Today you will learn:● The Growth “Funnel”● How to get started● Tools of the Trade● Resources I love● Questions
About Me
● Vishal Sunak○ BS in Computer Engineering, Northeastern University○ MS in Systems Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute ○ SIB Graduate, WebDev, Fall 2012
● Current: Director of Operations, Backupify (acquired by Datto)● Past: Senior Systems Engineer, BAE Systems
● Contact:○ @TheSunak○ [email protected]
What is Growth Hacking?
Term coined by Sean Ellis in 2010
● Its not a replacement for marketing or better than a marketing
● “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth."- Sean Ellis
What is Growth Hacking?
Its widely known in B2C Businesses
Today we show B2B some love
The Untold Growth Story
The Growth Funnel for B2B
Visitors
Conversions
Leads
Set out to move the needle on one of these three things
The Growth Funnel for B2B
Visitors
Conversions
Leads
Increase visitors to your homepage, landing page, app store listing, etc
Getting the person visiting your page to take the action you want (schedule a demo, take a trial, contact us, download content)
Become a qualified prospect for your Sales engine
Lift - The Metric of Growth
This is the metric that you are trying to improve… and shows the progress of your growth activities
Now what?
Well you get the basic concept of focusing your efforts to a particular part of the funnel
Now you need to get organized and get a few people to help you with some specific skills
Growth Team Composition
Growth Team
Inbound Marketing Web Developer Analytics
Knowledge of web page design, SEO, content, Social Media
Implement HTML/CSS/Javascript, deploy to your production site
Understands data, where its stored, how to get it out and analyze it with tools (like Excel)
Quick Aside about Channels / Lift
This is a the desired lift
This is the channel (mechanism) to achieve that lift
Quick Aside about Channels / LiftLet’s do an example together...
Growth experiment:“Get more visitors to our webpage”
Channel:Via tweeting out a link to our followers on Twitter
Let’s get organized
Agile/Scrum methodology:
● Backlog - List of things to do your “experiments”
● In Progress
● Done
Trello is my preferred tool. Its free and easy to setup.
Or use a spreadsheet.
Tools of the Trade
We use many tools at Backupify on our Growth team:● SEO● A/B Testing Software● Google Analytics● Website Hacks● Moz● Google Spreadsheets● Google Webmaster tools
Tools of the Trade - SEO
Goal:
Get more visitors to your web pagesvia Google by ranking on Page 1
Tool of Choice:Funnel Stage:
Basic Principle:Content
Landing Page
Blog
Tools of the Trade - SEOI joined Backupify in February 2013… and then a few months later, something weird happened with our blog visitors:
What happened, we wondered...
Tools of the Trade - SEOHey, maybe it will go away… let’s keep blogging weekly.
It didn’t go away, it got worse.
Tools of the Trade - SEOAs we continued to research it… we discovered via Moz that Google did a Panda algorithm update in March 2013 and started to hand out penalties:
Google will penalize any pages that violate these principles:● Pages with thin content● Duplicate pages● Multiple domains pointing to the same IP address
Tools of the Trade - SEOThen we started looking around at the blog and the content and quickly discovered, we literally violated all the rules and were getting penalized majorly
So, we hired an SEO consultant (like a real one, not someone who emails you with broken english)
This is what he found:● Identified that we had been penalized
○ Thin content○ Duplicate pages○ Multiple test domains pointing to a single IP
● He told us to create a list of all blog pages and do an audit
● As a result we de-indexed many blog pages (noindex meta tags)○ Verified in Google Webmaster Tools
● Updated robots.txt file to tell Google not to index those
Trust me, I got this
Tools of the Trade - SEO
5x
We managed to fix our blog’s issues and let Google munch on some beautifully SEO’d content that led to a 5x increase!
Tools of the Trade - Website Hacks
Goal:
Implement HTML/Javascript that gets people to convert on some call to action
Tool of Choice:Funnel Stage:
Basic Principle:
Add some HTML/Javascript on your website that can increase conversions
Open Source, $0
Tools of the Trade - Website Hacks
Scroll down the page, this flies out
Goal: Get more blog subscribers
Tools of the Trade - Website Hacks
7.5x Increase in our Blog Subscribers with the Fly out (#upAndToTheRight)
7.5x
Tools of the Trade - Website HacksA few more:
● Bounce monitoring Live Chat
Tools of the Trade - A/B Testing
Homepage 1
Web Traffic
Homepage 2
Split your website traffic to 2 versions and measure activity on each split through a Javascript snippet you install on each page
Goal:
Run experiments on our website to see if we can generate more conversions (clicks)
Tool of Choice:Funnel Stage:
Basic Principle:
Tools of the Trade - A/B TestingAnatomy of a Homepage
Headline
Subheadline
Primary Call to Action
Hero Image
To generate a backlog of A/B Tests - use these four attributes
Tools of the Trade - A/B TestingIn addition to Trello, we keep a A/B Testing Program dashboard:
CMOs / VPs of Marketing love to see this view - make it part of your monthly metrics collection
Tools of the Trade - A/B TestingEach Test gets its own Spreadsheet in a template - Objective
Tools of the Trade - A/B TestingEach Test gets its own Spreadsheet in a template - Supporting Information
Tools of the Trade - A/B TestingEach Test gets its own Spreadsheet in a template - The Test in Graphics
Tools of the Trade - A/B TestingEach Test gets its own Spreadsheet in a template - The Results
Google Analytics helped us collect Bounce Rate (Integrated with Optimizely)
Tools of the Trade - A/B Testing
In the last 2 years we have ran tests related to:
● Headlines● Subheadlines● Button Call to Action text● Button Color● Button Style (ribbon vs. button, round button vs. square)● Button Placement● Button thickness● Hero Images
Tools of the Trade - A/B Testing
Example, main Button Call to Action text we tested:
● Start a Free Trial● Schedule a Demo● Try it Now● Try it Free● Sign Up● Get Started● Learn More → Most popular in B2B SaaS companies by research
After many tests, ”Learn More” was the worst and “Try it Free” performed the best for a free Trial CTA (its the one we use today)
Tools of the Trade - A/B Testing
How long should your test run?
● Lots of opinions out there● It should be based on your web traffic so scale accordingly
○ Hubspot’s homepage traffic is slightly different than yours :)
We test everything 30 days minimum based on our traffic
Tools of the Trade - A/B TestingLet’s talk about results…
Game of small numbers
Tools of the Trade - A/B Testing
Multivariate tests:● Testing two variables at once
● For example: Headline + Call to Action on a Button○ Combinations:
■ Headline A + CTA A■ Headline B + CTA A■ Headline A + CTA B■ Headline B + CTA B
● Your traffic needs to be split 4 ways
Multivariate is really interesting, but remember more splits… means less traffic to each combination, which could mean longer tests and inconclusive data
Tools of the Trade - A/B TestingExample of Multivariate test results
Click tracking on the Homepage Trial Button
Testing 2 headlines and 2 button colors simultaneously
Tools of the Trade - A/B TestingLet’s talk about results for A/B Tests:
● Not all tests give you super conclusive, actionable results
● More likely its the Game of Small numbers○ 1-2% improvements○ Can be more frustrating than helpful○ Give you doubt about making a change
My advice:● Stay true to your original baseline (use common sense)● Little percentages can add up (better up than down)● Multivariate testing is great, but keep in mind the split traffic scenario● 30 days minimum (unless you have a compelling reason otherwise)● Get in a rhythm and keep experimenting!
Today’s Session Summary
● You can do it - I promise you, you’re going to be great :)
● Think about the growth funnel when setting up experiments
● Channels / Tactics - create experiments with clear objectives on both
● A/B Testing is the lifeblood of growth - get one running!
● Fail often, try different things
● Shamelessly steal ideas from other companies :)
Growth Reading
● The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking, Quick Sprout○ http://www.quicksprout.com/the-definitive-guide-to-growth-
hacking-chapter-1/○ @neilpatel
● Coelevate, Brian Balfour VP of Growth @ Hubspot○ http://www.coelevate.com/○ @bbalfour
● growthhackers.com○ @growthhackers○ @seanellis
