The Truth about Growth Hacking in B2B

Vishal SunakDirector of Operations, Backupify (acquired by Datto)

@TheSunak, vsunak@datto.com

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○ vsunak@datto.com

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

Thanks! Questions?

@thesunak, vsunak@datto.com