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About Jason Shafton
Jason Shafton grew up with marketing in his blood. His father, an experienced marketing professional in the audio industry, provided Jason with early exposure to the field. Fascinated by the intricacies of marketing, Jason pursued formal education in the subject at university, solidifying his passion and expertise. He realized early on that marketing wasn’t just about creating advertisements; it was a complex and intuitive discipline that came naturally to him. Today, Jason leverages his innate understanding of marketing, a craft he honed over the years, to connect with consumers meaningfully, channeling his lifelong dedication into a successful career.
B2B Growth Marketing: How to Drive Sustainable Revenue Growth Through Strategic Marketing
Key Takeaways:
- B2B growth marketing success hinges on deeply understanding your customer, not just your product
- Effective growth marketing requires both art and science—combining creativity with data-driven experimentation
- Building resilience and embracing brutal honesty creates stronger marketing teams and better business outcomes
- Creating a comprehensive growth flywheel involves brand, product marketing, channel strategy, and lifecycle marketing
- The most successful B2B growth marketers break out of traditional approaches and do the unexpected
“What are we selling? Who is it for? Why should they care?”
According to Jason Shafton, a 20+ year veteran in growth marketing who has built billion-dollar businesses at Google and Paramount and scaled startups like Headspace, these three fundamental questions form the basis of all successful B2B growth marketing efforts.
Yet most companies spend too much time on the first question and not nearly enough on the second.
“I see a lot of companies spend a lot of time thinking about what are we selling and what is our product,” Shafton shares. “It’s a little bit naval gazing in our own heads. We’re so excited about the thing we made.”
The result? B2B marketing that feels disconnected from customer needs and fails to drive sustainable revenue growth.
In today’s competitive B2B landscape, growth marketing has evolved far beyond traditional lead generation tactics. The most successful B2B companies are implementing comprehensive growth strategies that blend art and science, build resilient teams, and create flywheels that generate consistent, predictable revenue growth.
This article will explore how to build and execute a B2B growth marketing strategy that drives sustainable revenue growth, drawing on insights from industry veterans and research-backed best practices.
What is B2B Growth Marketing?
B2B growth marketing is a comprehensive marketing approach that focuses on driving sustainable business growth through customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. Unlike traditional marketing, which often operates in silos, growth marketing spans the entire customer journey and leverages data, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration to optimize for revenue growth.
The approach combines creativity with analytical rigor, making it both an art and a science.
“The combination of the art and science that comes with creating great growth marketing is what gets me super excited,” explains Shafton.
“The growth side of it in particular when it comes to digital products and creating experiments and trying to measure what you’re doing and understand what works and feeding that all back into kind of a framework that allows you to just keep iterating and getting better.”
A Harvard Business Review study found that companies with a clear growth strategy are 2.2 times more likely to outperform their competitors. Yet according to McKinsey, only 30% of B2B companies have a clear, well-communicated growth strategy, and just 26% have a culture that supports growth.
This gap represents a significant opportunity for B2B marketers who can successfully implement growth marketing principles.
The Foundation: Understanding Your B2B Customer
The first step to effective B2B growth marketing is developing a deep understanding of your customer. Shafton emphasizes that this is often the most overlooked aspect of marketing strategy:
“Great marketing is the connection of your magic and your user, your customer,” he explains.
So how do you develop this understanding? Shafton recommends a two-pronged approach:
1. Third-Party Research
Start by gathering market research to understand:
- Who’s in the market today
- What existing customers look like
- Current market needs
- Consumer sentiment (through product reviews)
This helps build a baseline understanding of your market and potential ideal customer profile (ICP).
2. First-Party Research
This involves direct engagement with potential customers through:
Qualitative Research:
- One-on-one user research
- Focus groups
- Product interaction sessions
“Record those sessions and get that feedback and take detailed notes on where people get stuck, what questions they have, what are their demographics and psychographics,” advises Shafton.
Quantitative Research:
- Large-scale surveys
- Statistical analysis of customer segments
“You can survey a thousand of them so that we can get statistically significant data on the tools that they’re using and what they’re interested in,” Shafton explains.
This comprehensive approach typically takes 6-10 weeks but creates a strong foundation for your growth marketing strategy. For faster insights, Shafton suggests talking to existing customers and using performance marketing to test messaging quickly in the market.
Translating Customer Insights Into Growth Strategy
Once you have a clear understanding of your customer, you need to translate those insights into a strategic growth framework. This involves several key components:
Develop Your North Star Metric
Every successful growth strategy needs a clear North Star Metric—the single most important metric that aligns everyone in the organization.
“What is the North Star metric that we’re holding ourselves to?” Shafton asks. “Is it revenue? Is it customers? Is it a compound annual growth rate? Is it month-over-month growth, weekly active users?”
Facebook’s North Star was monthly active users (MAUs), which they targeted to reach one billion. Having this clear focus helped align their entire organization around a common goal.
Establish Supporting KPIs
Beyond your North Star Metric, you need supporting KPIs that serve as leading and lagging indicators of progress:
Leading Indicators:
- Website traffic
- Demo requests
- Free trial signups
- Engagement metrics
Lagging Indicators:
- Revenue growth
- Customer retention
- Net Promoter Score
- Customer Lifetime Value
“What are the leading indicators and lagging indicators that help us understand how we’re progressing towards that North Star?” Shafton emphasizes.
Assess Product-Market Fit
Before scaling your marketing efforts, you need to ensure you have product-market fit.
“Number one is product-market fit,” Shafton states. “Do you have product-market fit, and are you connecting with an audience? Are people absolutely raving about you unprompted? Is there really high customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score?”
Signs of strong product-market fit include:
- High customer satisfaction scores
- Strong Net Promoter Score
- Low churn rates
- High retention
- Customers who are willing to advocate for your product
According to Shafton, “You know it when you see it. This is growing, and customers are happy. People are sticking around.”
Building Your B2B Growth Marketing Flywheel
A growth flywheel is a self-reinforcing system where each component builds momentum for the others. Shafton outlines several foundational elements for a successful B2B growth marketing flywheel:
1. Brand Development
Your brand is the foundation of your growth marketing efforts. Shafton emphasizes the need for:
- A clear brand promise
- A platform and story that resonates with your audience
- Consistent messaging across all touchpoints
2. Product Marketing
Effective product marketing connects your product’s capabilities with customer needs:
- Messaging architecture
- Positioning strategy
- Contextual messaging for specific channels and audiences
“At Google, it was know the user, know the magic, connect the two,” Shafton explains.
3. Channel Strategy
A strong point of view on your channel strategy is essential:
- Organic channels (SEO, content marketing, social)
- Paid channels (SEM, display, social ads)
- App store optimization (if relevant)
- Media mix optimization
4. Conversion Rate Optimization
“Making it easy for folks to convert,” is how Shafton describes CRO. This includes:
- Streamlined conversion paths
- A/B testing of messaging and CTAs
- Reducing friction in the customer journey
5. Creative Excellence
“Supporting all of this is best-in-class creative,” says Shafton. This includes:
- Design that communicates effectively
- Copy that is clear, concise, and compelling
- Creative that stands out in a crowded market
“Apple is the gold standard when it comes to marketing,” Shafton notes. “It’s just super slick.”
6. Lifecycle Marketing
Comprehensive lifecycle marketing ensures you’re communicating effectively at every stage:
- Pre-customer nurturing
- Onboarding and activation
- Retention and engagement
- Win-back strategies
7. Public Relations and Communications
“How do you leverage earned media as communicating with the press and media and putting your brand out there on major publications and outlets to get coverage,” Shafton asks.
8. Measurement and Analytics
“How do you measure performance and tracking? Data and analytics, business intelligence, attribution, media mix modeling, and multichannel funnels,” Shafton explains.
Proper measurement includes:
- Data infrastructure and engineering
- Executive and operator-level dashboards
- Real-time alerts and monitoring
- Attribution modeling
“Where I’ve seen this done well, there’s something stops working in a dashboard or an ad goes offline and people know about it immediately,” Shafton notes.
Breaking Out of Traditional B2B Marketing Approaches
One of Shafton’s most compelling insights is the need for B2B marketers to break out of traditional approaches:
“In B2B tech marketing, the difference between a great marketer and everyone else is the ability to do the unexpected,” he emphasizes. “B2B marketing is consistently boring and uncreative, unimaginative.”
He advocates for “zagging when everyone’s zigging” and offers several examples of companies doing this effectively:
Case Study: Stripe
Shafton points to Stripe as a company excelling at B2B marketing:
- Clear mission: “to increase the GDP of the Internet”
- Developer-focused from day one
- Excellent product marketing that balances aspirational and functional benefits
“From a product marketing perspective, Stripe is a great example of how to do a good job communicating the value of your product,” Shafton explains.
Case Study: Salesforce
Salesforce has built a comprehensive ecosystem around their product:
- Dreamforce conference creates community
- Platform approach that encourages partnerships
- Destination brand that’s central to an industry
Case Study: Monday.com and Ramp
These companies are breaking out of digital-only approaches:
- Investing in out-of-home advertising
- Targeting decision-makers in airports and on highways
- Creating unexpected touchpoints with prospects
“Think about traditional media channels and breaking out of some of the norm and the standard operating procedure and show up in the real world in innovative ways,” Shafton advises.
The Human Element: Resilience and Honesty in B2B Growth Marketing
Beyond strategies and tactics, Shafton emphasizes the importance of the human element in B2B growth marketing. Two factors he highlights are personal resilience and brutal honesty.
Building Resilience in Growth Marketing Teams
Resilience is crucial for handling the ups and downs of growth marketing. A Harvard Business Review study found that 58% of leaders struggle with resilience, and 71% find it challenging to maintain a positive attitude in the face of adversity.
Shafton shares that his own personal challenges—including losing twins at 20 weeks of pregnancy and being diagnosed with a degenerative retinal disease—have influenced his approach to leadership and marketing:
“The resilience that you’re talking about really comes from a deep understanding of ourselves that results from experiencing loss or trauma or challenges,” he explains.
This translates to business through:
- Greater empathy for team members
- Giving people space to do their best work
- Supporting team members through challenges
“When people are cared for and they feel seen and heard and understood, and you give them the space to do their best work and the understanding that sometimes that’s not possible, and we’ll get through whatever is going on together—it allows people to feel empowered and supported so that they can show up and do things that are extraordinary or maybe even were seemingly impossible,” Shafton shares.
Embracing Brutal Honesty
Shafton recommends a “tactful truth” approach to feedback, referencing the book “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott:
“I always err on the side of truth over tact, maybe to my detriment. But I think it’s important to be honest and to tell people what you really think in a way that they can hear.”
This creates:
- Clearer communication
- Faster problem-solving
- Stronger team dynamics
To create an environment where brutal honesty works, Shafton suggests:
- Leaders need to model vulnerability first
- Ask for feedback before giving it
- Create psychological safety within teams
Internal Marketing: Aligning Your Organization
An often-overlooked aspect of B2B growth marketing is internal marketing—ensuring everyone in your organization understands and supports your growth strategy.
“Internal communications can be as important, if not more important than external,” Shafton emphasizes. “I think to get anything done in a complex organization today, you have to have cross-functional alignment and buy-in with the team.”
Effective internal marketing includes:
Cross-Functional Alignment
“If you’re a growth marketer, you’re often working very closely with the product team to make sure that kind of product-led growth functionality and growth loops and features can exist to support the growth marketing efforts,” Shafton explains.
Clear, Concise Communication
Shafton recommends the “Amazon, Jeff Bezos memo approach,” which involves:
- Writing clear, concise documents outlining strategy
- Articulating goals and metrics
- Identifying blockers and needed support
- Ensuring everyone is on the same page
“How can you effectively communicate the goals and what’s needed to get there and allow people to do their best work?” Shafton asks.
Avoiding “Make-Work”
Shafton warns against creating excessive internal presentations: “Not do lots of make-work or require lots of make-work as a leader—tons and tons of decks and presentation where people are spending more of their time presenting internally than they are executing. That’s the death knell for an organization from my experience.”
Measuring Success in B2B Growth Marketing
Effective measurement is essential for B2B growth marketing success. Shafton emphasizes the importance of robust analytics and reporting:
“That comes back to reporting. You have to have really strong understanding of the performance of the business and the implementation of a good BI tool is where I often start.”
Key elements of effective measurement include:
Business Intelligence Tools
“Are you using a Tableau or a Google Data Studio Looker, or any of the other products out there that help visualize?” Shafton asks.
Data Infrastructure
“Have you set up a data tech stack and data engineering so that all of the important metrics are being piped into those systems so you can analyze?” he continues.
Real-Time Monitoring
“There’s alerts and signal that, hey, that number is wrong or something looks funny there, and it can be addressed quickly,” Shafton explains.
Without proper measurement, “the organization’s flying blind, and the data is not available or not there or not structured in a way where you can see it, and then days or weeks go by before somebody realized that, oh, those campaigns have completely stopped.”
Email Marketing Within the B2B Growth Framework
Email marketing remains one of the most effective channels for B2B growth, with a potential ROI of 36:1 according to Litmus research. Within the growth marketing framework, email serves multiple crucial functions:
Customer Journey Orchestration
Email is a primary tool for guiding prospects through the customer journey. Educational email courses, in particular, can help B2B brands establish authority while nurturing prospects with valuable insights.
These courses can be structured to address specific pain points identified in your customer research, providing solutions that naturally lead to your product or service. The sequential nature of email courses allows you to build trust over time, making them particularly effective for complex B2B sales cycles.
Retention and Expansion
Beyond acquisition, email plays a critical role in customer retention and expansion. According to Bain & Company, increasing customer retention by just 5% can lead to profits increasing by 25% to 95%.
Educational content delivered via email can help existing customers get more value from your product, introduce them to new features, and open opportunities for upselling or cross-selling.
Feedback Loops
Email also provides valuable data for your growth marketing feedback loops. Open rates, click-through rates, and response rates offer insights into what messaging resonates with your audience and what content they find most valuable.
Advanced B2B Growth Marketing Tactics
Beyond the fundamentals, Shafton shares several advanced tactics for B2B growth marketing:
Fake Door Testing
“Another thing I’ve seen companies do well and help companies do is fake door testing. Take people to a landing page for a product or feature that hasn’t been released yet and send them there. And just capture email address and interest or even have them click through on a pricing table, so you can see which price they’re interested in.”
This approach allows you to test market demand before investing heavily in product development.
Community Building
“If you can create a community around your product, if you can make your product a destination brand, an offering that partners well with everybody else, plays nice in the same box, and is a really central piece of an industry, a category, you can establish yourself as a leader.”
Shafton points to examples like Yelp Elite and the communities that form around products on Reddit as evidence of this approach’s effectiveness.
Exploring Traditional Media
While digital channels dominate B2B marketing, Shafton suggests exploring traditional media:
“Everything old is new again. If you look at some of these more modern tech brands, there’s folks now that have gotten off of the Google meta ads flywheel and said, we’re gonna try some more traditional tactics and measure.”
This includes:
- Connected TV and OTT advertising
- Modern out-of-home advertising
- Print and direct mail
Creating Sustainable B2B Growth: The Long Game
Sustainable B2B growth marketing isn’t about quick wins—it’s about building systems that generate consistent results over time. Shafton emphasizes several key elements for long-term success:
Building High-Performing Teams
“I think my superpower is helping to connect the dots and build really high-performing teams,” Shafton shares.
“I feel like at this point, I have a really good eye for talent and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of people to be able to create complementary teams of diverse perspectives and interesting ways of thinking.”
Embracing Vulnerability
“Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. It’s okay to share your vulnerability with your team, with your partners, even with your customers. It makes you human,” Shafton advises.
This vulnerability creates stronger connections and more authentic marketing.
Focusing on What Matters
With clear North Star metrics and supporting KPIs, you can focus your team on what truly drives growth:
“Once we have alignment as a leadership team and with any kind of board or investors, then it’s a question of helping everyone on the team understand what we’re going to do to help move those metrics and what we’re not gonna do, which is equally, if not more important.”
B2B Growth Marketing: Putting It All Together
Effective B2B growth marketing requires a comprehensive approach that combines customer understanding, strategic planning, tactical execution, measurement, and the human elements of resilience and honesty.
Shafton summarizes the fundamental questions that should guide your growth marketing efforts:
“What are we selling? Who is it for? Why should they care? Don’t ignore that middle question. Make sure you understand your customer, and then everything else will follow.”
By focusing on these fundamentals and implementing the strategies outlined in this article, B2B marketers can create sustainable growth engines that drive predictable revenue growth.
Key Takeaways for B2B Growth Marketers
- Know your customer deeply. Invest in both third-party and first-party research to truly understand your ideal customer profile.
- Establish clear metrics. Define your North Star metric and supporting KPIs to align your organization around growth.
- Build a comprehensive growth flywheel. Integrate brand, product marketing, channel strategy, creative, lifecycle marketing, PR, and measurement.
- Break out of traditional approaches. Do the unexpected to stand out in a crowded B2B marketplace.
- Embrace resilience and honesty. Build teams that can weather challenges and communicate honestly.
- Align your organization. Use internal marketing to ensure everyone understands and supports your growth strategy.
- Measure obsessively. Implement robust analytics and reporting to track progress and identify opportunities.
- Focus on sustainable growth. Build systems that generate consistent results over time, not just quick wins.
By implementing these principles, B2B marketers can transform their growth marketing efforts and drive sustainable revenue growth for their organizations.
Looking to implement these B2B growth marketing strategies in your own organization? Sproutworth specializes in creating educational email courses that establish your brand as an authority while nurturing prospects through the buyer’s journey. Contact us today to learn how we can help you grow your B2B business.
Recommended Reading:
Building a B2B Content Marketing Strategy That Drives Results
The Growth Handbook: 10 Steps to Predictable B2B Growth
How to Create Educational Email Courses That Convert
Some areas we explore in this episode include:
Listen to the episode.
Related links and resources
- Check out Winston Francois
- Learn from Jarie Bolander – How to Win With Storytelling in B2B Marketing And Drive Growth
- Learn from Avetis Ghazaryan – How to Get Reliable Pipeline Growth Via B2B Marketing Strategies
- Learn from Julie Brown – How to Unlock Customer-Centric Innovation to Drive Growth Via B2B Marketing
- Learn from Gary Garth – B2B Multi-Channel Marketing And Sales: How to Drive Growth With a Blueprint
- Learn from Kerry-Ann Stimpson – 9 B2B Internal Marketing Insights to Thrive And Drive Revenue Growth
- Check out the article – B2B Video Marketing: Ultimate Strategies for Success And to Drive Growth
Connect with Jason Shafton
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