For a while, it felt like nothing more than a rebranding of the same old marketing tactics we’ve seen for years. Over the past few years, however, I’ve dug deeper and discovered that growth marketing truly works—if you know how to use it effectively and ignore the hype. 

It’s a practical, data-driven approach that focuses on attracting, converting, and retaining customers across the entire journey. For B2B companies in 2026 and beyond, growth marketing is becoming one of the most powerful strategies available.

In this article, we’ll break down what growth marketing is, how it works in practice, and why personalization tools like Leadfeeder are essential for driving growth and creating targeted, high-impact campaigns that deliver measurable results.

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 tactics that attract and retain customers across an ever-evolving customer journey.

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 a 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 to attract and retain the right 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 also be useful for B2C businesses.

1. 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. 2. 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.

2. 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 enables brands to continually test and tweak new strategies to stay ahead of the competition.

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

3. 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 visit 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.

4. 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% of new MRR acquired over the last year. Throughout the pandemic, people continued to promote technologies that helped them thrive and remain competitive.

Of the total referrals (in dollars, not signups), 26 percent came 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.

5. 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 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 to create a personalized campaign tailored to their communication preferences and the platforms they use.

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.

6. 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 ensure they know how to make the most of your tool or service.

For example, at Leadfeeder, we found that customers are 80 percent more likely to sign up if they've completed 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 growth marketing strategy both now and into 2026. Leadfeeder Discover is a powerful tool that helps brands build highly targeted audiences using IP-based firmographic filters.

This lets marketers target visitors from specific IP addresses, and ad tech companies can offer advanced IP-based targeting to their clients. 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.