How Personalization Will Drive Growth Marketing in 2024

It brings to mind buzzword-filled blog posts, would-be SEOs, and lame strategies that either don't work or only work until Google updates its algorithm.

Honestly, it just felt like a rebranding of the same old marketing strategies.

Over the past few years, however, I've been digging deeper and found that growth marketing works — if you know how to use it well. (And ignore all the hype.) In fact, it's one of the most powerful marketing strategies for B2B companies in 2024 and beyond.

Here's what B2B companies need to know about what growth marketing is, how it works, and how personalization tools like Leadfeeder will drive growth marketing in the coming years.

Note: Want to see which companies are on your site? Leadfeeder provides real-time data about site visits to drive your growth marketing strategies. Sign up for a free 14-day trial.

What is growth marketing (AKA growth hacking)?

Growth marketing is a strategy that focuses on optimizing business growth by implementing and testing strategies that attract and keep customers through an ever-evolving customer journey.

I know, it still sounds like a buzzword, right?

At its core, growth marketing, or growth hacking as it's sometimes called, means focusing on customer experience and retention, rather than just cold hard cash. Despite its reputation as a buzzword, it's actually a pretty well-defined strategy for putting customers first.

And it's completely customizable, which is ideal in today's hyper-competitive online market.

Growth marketing focuses on strategies like personalization that attract and keep the right kind of customers, which is crucial for startup growth.

Here's the deal — early-level SaaS companies have an average churn rate of around 15 percent, which means those companies are, quite literally, burning 15 percent of their marketing and sales budget.

Ouch.

On the other hand, growth marketing helps businesses at all levels focus on keeping customers happy, not just driving signups.

Growth marketing strategies and tactics to test

A growth marketing strategy focuses on metrics like customer acquisition, conversion rates, customer retention rates, and customer lifetime value.

The most important metric, however, is retention. That means growth marketing is not just about finding customers and taking their cash; it's about finding the right customers from the start.

Let's look at some of the top tactics today's growth marketers use to attract, convert, and retain customers. All of these tactics are used frequently in SaaS and B2B but can be useful for B2C businesses as well.

Personalization 

Personalization creates customized experiences for each customer or prospect. For example, personalizing a landing page to reflect a customer's location or using dynamic ads are both forms of marketing personalization.

Actually, we recently did an entire post on ad personalization.

It's incredibly effective at driving sales and increasing ad ROI. According to Google, 90 percent of leading marketers say personalization increases business profitability. Because personalization helps brands understand customer pain points, it also increases retention.

Personalization isn't just a single strategy; it supports many of the other growth “hacking” strategies we'll cover below.

A/B testing

One of the tenets of marketing is A/B testing. After all, how will you know what works — and what doesn't— if you don't test?

Here's the thing — not all strategies work for all companies. And sometimes it's impossible to know what your audience will respond to until you try it. A/B testing allows brands to continually test and tweak new strategies so they can stay ahead of the competition.

Testing is particularly important in growth marketing and personalization efforts, as it shows you what types of content, ads, and personalization your audience responds to — and what types of strategies attract customers that actually stick around.

ABM (Account-based marketing)

Account-based marketing isn't new, but it is one of the less-talked-about growth marketing methods. This tactic flips the sales funnel upside down. Rather than attracting as many leads as possible and filtering them down to qualified leads, you start with the most qualified leads and then create personalized content for that company.

For example, you might use Leadfeeder Discover to see a company visited your services page, visit their social channels to see what challenges they face, and then create a white paper that outlines how you can help solve that issue.

ABM creates a personalized experience for businesses and allows you to focus on attracting and converting high-value leads that are likely to stick around.

Referrals

People talk — and if you're lucky, they're talking about your business. Referral marketing strategies leverage current customers and the conversations they have with their friends, family, and colleagues.

When prospects see people in their network rave about a business, they get curious. They wonder if the same company could help them, and they trust recommendations from people they know more than marketing messages.

At Leadfeeder, referrals accounted for 13 percent of new MRR acquired in the last year. Throughout the pandemic, people were still actively promoting technologies that helped them thrive and remain competitive.

Of the total amount of referrals (in dollars, not signups), 26 percent of the referrals were from individuals. The rest came from marketing agencies, sales consultants, and business communities. This is pretty impressive since we only started investing in our partner referral program a year and a half ago.

Cross-channel marketing

Cross-channel marketing is a customer-focused strategy that provides a consistent experience across platforms. For example, using the same tone and type of content on both LinkedIn and in your email marketing campaigns.

Cross-channel marketing isn't just about using the same brand colors, though. It also means paying attention to each customer's specific buyer journey. For example, sending out cart abandonment emails or sending customers who refer your company a thank you card.

When incorporating cross-channel marketing into your growth marketing strategy, focus on the individual user so you can create a personalized campaign based on their communication preferences and the platforms where they hang out.

A/B testing can help you understand, for example, that a particular user responds to push message offers at a higher rate than email marketing offers. That information lets you focus on the highest converting channel for that particular customer.

Onboarding

The onboarding process can make or break your sales cycle. Getting customers to sign up is just the first step — to keep them around, it's crucial to make sure customers know how to make the most of your tool or service.

For example, at Leadfeeder, we found customers are 80 percent more likely to sign up for Leadfeeder if they've been through our training. During the training, sales goes over how our tool works, how to use our filter feeds, and even breaks down how to get buy-in from higher-ups. 

When people know how to get the most value from Leadfeeder, they’re far more likely to stick around — and for good reason; because Leadfeeder works.

Use Leadfeeder Discover to drive your growth marketing strategy 

Personalization is a major strategy for growth marketing both now and going into 2024. Leadfeeder Discover is a powerful tool that helps brands create highly targeted audiences using IP address-based firmographic filters.

This lets marketers target visitors from specific IP addresses, and ad tech companies can offer advanced IP-based targeting possibilities to their client base. This approach is more accurate and has a higher match rate than cookie-based targeting (which Google is phasing out, btw.)

With our Discover tool, there are no shortcuts or “hacks,” just a database of website visitor identification and IP identification to give you the tools you need to prioritize growth marketing. Incorporating data enrichment tools like Leadfeeder Discover can further enhance your targeting capabilities, ensuring you reach the most relevant prospects with personalized messaging.

Note: Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Leadfeeder and start finding more leads today.