10 Growth B2B Marketing Strategies For B2B Tech Startups

Nemanja Zivkovic
14 min readApr 18, 2022
B2B Startup Growth

Let me guess, you are a B2B tech startup founder and you are looking for growth strategies for B2B to take your startup to the next level?

Well, you’ve come to the right place.

In this post, I’m going to share with you ten growth B2B marketing strategies that will help kick your business up a notch and take your business to new heights.

I will dive into each strategy, explain it in detail, and provide you with actionable tips that you can implement right away. If done correctly, these strategies will substantially increase the growth of your company and help you get on the path to success.

Ready to take your startup to the next level? Let’s get started!

Table Of Content

  1. Offer freemium services or free trials
  2. Create Useful Blog Posts
  3. Email Marketing
  4. Set up a referral program as one of the growth strategies for B2B
  5. Make use of Social Media
  6. Repurpose your content
  7. Don’t forget about SEO
  8. If you want to see results fast, PPC is the way to go!
  9. Start a Podcast!
  10. Embrace the power of Storytelling

1. Offer freemium services or free trials

Everyone loves free stuff, right?

If you’re not giving your product away for free or offering a freemium service, then you’re missing out on A TON of potential customers.

Offering some sort of freemium service or free trial is a great way to get more customers and spread the word about your startup.

Now, you might be thinking that giving away products for free will hurt your bottom line, but this isn’t true at all.

Think about it…

By offering free trials or freemium services, you get potential customers familiar with your brand and you build trust between them and your company. And building trust with your customers is one of the most important factors to achieving long-term growth.

With that being said, you need to be smart about how you implement your freemium service or free trial.

If you offer a freemium product, make sure to provide a clear upgrade path to the paid version of your product.

If you offer a free trial, make sure the user is aware of how much time they have to try out your product before it expires.

Here are some ideas for offerings:

  • Full access to the product for a specific time period (i.e. 15 days)
  • A limited number of features for a specific time period (i.e. 30 days)
  • Win-back offers for expired trials

You want to make sure that you give your customers a reason to upgrade and encourage them to purchase the product before their trial expires.

2. Create Useful Blog Posts

Yes, I know… You are probably tired of hearing about blogging.

But guess what? If you want your business to grow then blogging is one of the most important things that you can do.

No matter what type of business you have, blogging is a great way to build trust with potential customers, showcase your expertise in the industry, and generate more leads.

Now here is where most companies go wrong with blogging…

They create a blog and simply post about whatever they feel like.

That’s not the way to go! Just creating a bunch of random posts is not going to help your business one bit.

What will help your business is writing valuable and relevant blog posts that will help your target audience.

Blogging is not just about sharing your opinion, it’s about providing value to people that read your content and helping them solve their problems.

If you want your business to grow, then it’s important that you provide value and help people with whatever they are looking for.

For example, let’s say that you run your own shoe company.

A relatable blog post that would help the customers and provide value to their lives would be something on what to consider when choosing a perfect pair of shoes for themselves.

This is something that they probably have problems with and you can provide them with valuable advice on how to solve it.

A blog post that wouldn’t provide value is one on how to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner because this is of no help to your target audience.

So think about what your target customer’s biggest pain points are and write blog posts that solve those problems.

Providing value to your customer is one of the best ways to achieve long-term growth for your business.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch and build trust with potential customers.

As we previously mentioned, building customer loyalty is one of the most important factors when it comes to achieving long-term growth for your business.

According to McKinsey, email marketing is 40x more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter together.

With that being said, you need to make sure that your company collects email addresses from visitors.

You can easily do this by adding an email sign-up form to your website and encouraging visitors to subscribe.

Email marketing is a great way for you to communicate with potential customers, build relationships, and get them interested in your product.

Offering a lead magnet is one of the best ways to grow your email list. A lead magnet can be anything from an ebook, a template, a checklist, a cheat sheet, etc.

Here are some lead magnets you could offer:

  • An ebook related to your industry or niche. For example, if you are a startup in the e-commerce space, you could offer an ebook on how to start an online store.
  • A cheat sheet or template that offers subscribers a step-by-step plan to achieve their goals.
  • A checklist that helps them solve a problem (e.g. how to create a successful marketing plan).

The key with lead magnets is to provide a ton of value and make it so appealing and convincing that people simply can’t wait to sign up!

Once you’ve captured email addresses, continue building your relationship by sending valuable and relatable content.

You want to communicate with them on a regular basis, but do not overload readers with emails or they will unsubscribe.

Your emails should be valuable and help people if you want them to open your email, read it, and then take action.

For example, if you have a marketing agency and want to send an email about your latest blog post, instead of just sending the link with no explanation, you should send a brief email saying something like:

Hey, John!

I wanted to let you know that I just published a blog post that I think you might be interested in.

I always love getting your feedback, so please let me know what you think!

This email will not only get John to open the email but he might reply back and give you valuable feedback.

By sending helpful emails like this, you are building trust with your subscribers while also positioning yourself as an expert in your industry.

This is a great way for you to communicate with potential customers and build relationships.

4. Set up a referral program as one of the B2B marketing strategies

A great way to drive more new customers and achieve long-term growth for your business is by setting up a customer referral program.

Customers who are happy with your product will be more than willing to recommend it to their friends.

You can easily set up a program where customers receive a discount or get a certain amount of cash back for every new customer they refer to your company.

This is a great way to incentivize customers and encourage them to spread the word about your company!

You should promise a discount, a free gift or cash back that is appealing enough for people to actually take advantage of the program and refer you to their friends.

For example, you could offer a discount of $20 off their first purchase or give them 20% cashback on every referral they make.

If you are a B2B company, offering cashback might be more tempting since people will actually want to receive money instead of discounts.

In any case, offering a customer referral program is an excellent way to acquire new customers and achieve long-term growth.

5. Make use of Social Media

You’ve probably heard the saying: “Go where your customers are“, and social media is the perfect example of this.

Today, almost everyone is on social media, including potential clients and customers, so you should be there too!

LinkedIn and Twitter are two of the best social media sites for B2B companies, but feel free to use whatever social media sites your customers are using.

There is no limit to the ways you can leverage social media to achieve growth for your business. You can share valuable content, engage with your audience, monitor trends in the industry, and so much more!

Social media is a powerful marketing tool that should be used by any business to achieve growth. However, many companies only use social media to share pictures of their teams, post product updates, and share company news.

While there is nothing wrong with sharing this type of content, it shouldn’t be the only type of content you share.

You should focus on providing real value and offering something that is useful to your customers or potential clients.

A lot of people forget that social media is about building relationships with the audience, not just broadcasting messages about yourself. Think about it, would you follow someone on social media who only posts the facts about their company and nothing else?

Probably not.

However, you would probably follow them if they shared valuable content that you found helpful.

So focus on creating valuable social media posts and building relationships instead of just talking about yourself or your company.

And posting valuable content is not the only thing you should do. You should also engage with people, comment on their posts, reach out to them and talk to them.

Like we’ve already said, social media is about building relationships and relationships are a

2-way street.

You should put some deal of effort into it and not just wait for people to come to you.

If you do this, your social media presence will grow and your company will start to get the word out.

And that is exactly what you want!

If you focus on building relationships with people, you will surely achieve growth for your company.

So make sure to do it!

In case you need any help with your social media marketing, don’t hesitate to contact us! We are here to help you in any way we can.

6. Repurpose your content

Creating content can be time-consuming and expensive.

Even if you are not spending money, it can still take a long time to create something that is actually valuable to your audience.

After investing all that time and energy into creating something, you don’t want it to go to waste, right? You want to make the most of it. And what’s the best way to do that?

To repurpose it!

You can turn your content into a podcast, webinar, article, video, blog post and so much more.

By repurposing your content and creating new formats, you can reach a bigger audience and ensure steady growth for your company.

That’s the power of repurposing!

You can be as creative as you like and repurpose your content in a way that is going to resonate with your audience.

And as long as you keep your audience in mind, there is no way for this to fail.

There is no limit as to what you can do with your content. You can repurpose almost every content you create.

Did you create an ebook? Turn it into a couple of blog posts.

Did you create a webinar? Turn it into a podcast.

Did you create a blog post? Turn it into 5 social media posts.

You get the idea.

So, take advantage of it and get creative!

Doing this will surely help you achieve growth for your company.

7. Don’t forget about SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a strategy that improves the quantity and quality of traffic to your landing page or blog directly from search engines.

Everyone knows that you can’t achieve growth without gaining wide exposure.

And one of the most effective and cheapest ways to get more exposure is by using SEO.

People tend to forget that SEO is a long-term strategy and it’s not something you can implement in the short term.

But that doesn’t mean you should ignore it.

Search Engine Optimization takes time and effort, but it’s totally worth it.

It will help you achieve growth in the long term and when done correctly, it will help you rank higher in search engines.

And the higher you rank, the more people will see your content and visit your website or blog.

That means more exposure and in turn, growth for your company. So don’t forget about SEO!

Here are some things you should keep in mind when it comes to SEO:

– Write long, detailed, and informative content.

– Use the right keywords (i.e. the ones your target audience is searching for).

– Don’t forget internal links.

– Create backlinks (i.e. link to other pages on different websites).

– And finally, write for humans, not just search engines!

A lot of people focus too much on the technical side of SEO and forget about the human factor.

And that’s the most important thing when it comes to SEO. Yes, you need to focus on keywords and things like that but keep in mind that people will be reading your content and you should write for them. That’s the key to success!

By doing this, you can achieve growth for your company and get your content in front of more people.

And that’s exactly what you want, right? So don’t forget about SEO! It’s a very important part of any growth strategy.

8. If you want to see results fast, PPC is the way to go!

If you want to see quick results, then paid ads are the way to go.

That’s why so many companies are using this strategy to achieve growth. And it’s not surprising since paid ads are so effective.

Google Ads and Facebook Ads (to name a few) allow you to target the right people and get your content in front of them. And that’s exactly what you want, isn’t it?

Paid ads are a great way to achieve growth for your company and if done correctly, they will help you see results fast.

It’s important that you set up your ads correctly and that you target the right people.

If you do this, your ads will be more successful and ultimately help you achieve growth.

Obviously, PPC landing page conversion rates aren’t quite as high as organic conversion rates, but the sheer number of new leads coming in is impossible to ignore.

This is why this strategy is particularly effective for new businesses and startups looking to increase brand awareness and accelerate growth.

The final result is a solid (and cost-effective) list of leads who are interested in your content.

And that’s a great place to start nurturing a relationship with them.

9. Start a Podcast!

I’m sure you’ve heard about how popular podcasts are, but did you know they’re also a great way to achieve growth?

Many companies and startups are turning to podcasts as a way to reach new customers, raise their brand awareness, increase revenue and ultimately achieve growth.

Podcasts are great because they give you an opportunity to express your personality and share interesting and valuable content with people.

And the best part is that podcasts are very popular and there’s a huge audience out there.

This means that if you do it right and create a good podcast, your company can get in front of a lot of people.

Another great thing about a podcast is that it gives you an opportunity to connect with other influencers in your industry.

And that will also help you achieve growth.

The key to success with podcasts is consistency and sharing good content on a regular basis.

Just keep in mind that podcasts are a long-term strategy, like every other inbound strategy, so don’t expect to see the results right away.

It takes time and effort to create a successful podcast and achieve growth, but it’s definitely possible if you put in the work.

If done correctly, podcasts can be a great asset for any company and that’s why they’re such an effective growth strategy.

10. Embrace the power of Storytelling

Storytelling is not only an effective growth B2B strategy, but it’s also a great way to connect with your audience on an emotional level.

Everyone loves a good story and that’s why when you share one with your audience, they will feel more connected to you.

This is the key to success because the more people connect with your brand, the more likely they are to become customers.

The truth is that storytelling has been around for centuries and it’s one of the most powerful growth strategies out there.

But to achieve this, you need to put a lot of effort and time into creating great stories.

It’s not like you can just say that your product is the best and it will sell itself, right?

You need to create a story that people will be able to relate to and connect with.

One of the best ways to use storytelling is by telling a story about your brand and its mission.

This kind of story will help you build a better connection with your target market and show them that there’s more to your company than just the products and services it offers.

Another powerful way to use storytelling is through content.

And by content, I don’t just mean blog posts and articles — storytelling is effective in every kind of content you create.

Also, remember that storytelling is not just for your website — it’s also effective on social media channels.

This means you can tell stories in the form of images, videos, and even GIFs.

There are so many different ways to use storytelling in your marketing strategy, but it all comes down to one thing — telling your brand’s story in an emotional way that resonates with people.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many different growth strategies for B2B that can help your company achieve growth.

However, none of these strategies will work unless you know your audience and what they want, so before you start doing any of this, make sure you have a very good understanding of your target market.

Once you have a clear understanding of your audience and their needs, finding the right growth strategy won’t be difficult.

As long as you put in time and effort, all of these B2B growth strategies can help your company achieve growth. And in my opinion, you should use all of them.

Additionally, if you need help with any of these 10 growth strategies or if you want to discuss your overall marketing strategy, don’t hesitate to contact us. We are always happy to help. Schedule a call today and let’s see how we can help your company GROW!

p.s. this article was previously published on the Funky Marketing blog.

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Nemanja Zivkovic

I combine research and strategy with creatives to help B2B companies develop demand for the way buyers buy now |