Growth marketing for B2B is based on the techniques honed by “growth hackers,” who use data and experimentation to boost growth for internet startups. These data crunching experts are the marketers behind the huge growth rates at companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, Uber, Facebook and others.

There’s a lot of buzz today about growth hacking, or growth marketing. The growth hacking concept has been around since 2010, when it was created by Sean Ellis, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and startup advisor. Ellis defined a “growth hacker” as a marketing expert who could generate explosive growth by using a product itself to gain more customers. Ellis’ concept applied to startups launching a new software or application. These new companies have to grow fast or they die, so they need innovative marketing approaches to jumpstart growth, and also to compensate for a lack of marketing resources.