Something's shifted in B2B sales over the past couple of years, and if you're in healthcare or engineering, you're probably feeling it more than most. We've been talking to sales teams and marketing leaders in these industries, and the same themes keep coming up. Buyers who've already done most of their homework before the first conversation. Sales cycles that stretch out over a year with buying committees that seem to grow every month. Compliance requirements that turn every piece of content into a minor legal review. If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Here's what we've been sharing and learning from the companies navigating this stuff.

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.