Guest post by Eddie Segal.
A lead is a potential client only one step away from purchasing your product. All you need to do is be responsive, earn their trust, demonstrate your value, and prove that your product or service will meet their needs.
B2B lead generation is one of the three key pillars of an effective B2B marketing strategy (along with web presence and brand building).
Creating a strong pipeline will help you maintain a steady growth rate and profitable business. This post outlines everything you need to know for running a successful B2B lead generation campaign.
What is B2B Lead Generation?
B2B lead generation is simply the process of identifying ideal potential customers for your service or product and attracting them to make a purchase. It’s the single most important activity for B2B marketing and sales teams.
B2B lead generation includes collecting prospective customers’ information, such as name, email, and job title, which is used to personalize communication. After this personal information is collected, these leads are usually nurtured with marketing automation and passed on to the sales team after they’ve been qualified.
The overall goal of B2B lead generation is to create a consistent pipeline of qualified prospects who turn into buyers.
8 Ways to Generate B2B Leads
Generally, using a combination of inbound and outbound marketing is the best way to build a lead pipeline. Here are eight of the most effective lead generation tactics for B2B marketing:
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Content Marketing
Content marketing is a great option for long-term lead generation by sharing interesting information or content to share in the form of articles, videos, infographics, and visual content. To make the most out of your content marketing strategy, you need to do thorough research on what topics are most important to your prospects and what type of language to use.
Support small businesses. Don’t buy through “review sites” and give your money to Gartner.
Learn about your target audience and provide them with high-quality content. This will serve as a great basis for your search engine optimization (SEO). SEO, in turn, will increase page views of your website so that more potential leads can discover your website through search engine queries.
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Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
While SEO and content marketing take time to produce results, PPC offers a fast and easy way to get quick conversions. It can be incredibly effective if you know your target audience, but it can get expensive, depending on what industry you are in. In addition, many people now use programs like Adblock, so there is a risk that they won’t ever see your clickable ads or banners.
You can use various platforms to post advertisements online. Some of the most frequently used are LinkedIn Advertising, Google Ads, and Facebook Ads.
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Social Media Marketing
The biggest advantage of social media marketing is that it offers a targeted approach, allowing you to refine your lead generation targeting further. For example, social platforms like LinkedIn give brands granular ad targeting capabilities based on company size, industry, location, job role, and more factors.
It’s nearly impossible today to meet someone who doesn’t have a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account. Ads placed on these sites can also be finely targeted based on age, gender, location, and interests of your audiences.
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“Out of Stock” Warnings
When your products run out of stock, you are guaranteed to lose customers. The good news is that there is a way to turn this into a lead-generating opportunity.
Instead of just displaying red “out of stock” warnings, add a form saying something like: “Enter your email to get notified when this product is back in stock”. That way, you will collect your shopper’s contact information and potentially fulfill their order at a later date.
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Use Quizzes and Questionnaires
Online surveys are inexpensive to run and flexible regarding question and answer types. And, thanks to the dependable anonymity, customers are more likely to answer honestly and provide real information.
You can create a free survey using Google Forms and embed it into your contact form plugin, WordPress site, or simply send via email. Set up an easy-to-use multiple-choice questionnaire, and remember to make the quiz fun and engaging!
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Get Creative With Cold Emails
Generating results from cold emailing is challenging, because there is no prior relationship with the company or person you are sending the email to. So, it’s vital to make a positive first impression and stand out from the crowd:
- Be creative and include things like memes and animated GIFs to catch people’s attention.
- Don’t be afraid to be funny. Sometimes humor can go a long way.
- Don’t spam people with marketing jargon; get straight to the point.
- Send at least two follow up emails.
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Gain Trusted Backlinks
Even in the online world, word of mouth referrals are the best way to obtain more customers. When you have another trusted source raving about your business and sending customers your way, you will gain immediate trust and curiosity about your product.
There are several ways you can gain trust from other websites and build links:
- Have other websites share your content.
- Write blogs for other companies.
- Provide infographics for other companies to share.
- Get listed on a website’s resource page.
- Write great content that people actually want to link to.
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Personalize Email Marketing CTAs
Imagine yourself as a potential customer. What sounds more appealing to you: “Sign up for the newsletter” or “Join our team of 3000+ world-class marketers”?
Old pitches like the standard “Sign up for the newsletter” simply don’t work anymore because nobody reads newsletters anymore. Instead, leads want to see content personalized to them—problem-solving, focused, and specific content that meets their needs and interests.
Summary
Finding the right B2B lead generation strategy isn’t easy, because you can’t simply copy and paste a general tactic that would work for anyone. Channels that may be working for one business might fail completely for another.
The key lies in finding a lead generation tactic that works for you—and in most cases, it starts with some form of content. It comes down to knowing your audience and what information they will find compelling and engaging.
Eddie Segal is an experienced web analytics specialist and technology writer. In his writing, He covers subjects ranging from finance, cloud computing to agile development to cybersecurity and deep learning. He also specializes in SEO, link building, and content strategies for technology brands, and is a project manager at Best Small Business Loans.