admin / October 12, 2021
Generating leads and that too quality ones are a tough nut to crack, especially for the B2B business model. However, with a strong framework and effective planning, nothing is impossible. The groundwork for quality B2B lead generation starts with implementing a marketing campaign in the form of emails, paid ads, SEO, etc.
Not having a clear calibrated marketing system will likely result in wasting time, money, and effort. On the other hand, we can move towards quality lead generation with specific marketing systems in place. In this article, we’ve come up with few effective lead generation strategies that matter the most for B2B companies. But before we get into that, let’s first understand what lead generation means and which B2B lead generation strategies work?
B2B lead generation is focused on finding prospects who run their own businesses in similar or different niches. In B2B, businesses sell their products or services primarily to other businesses. Typically, lead generation is part of the marketing or sales funnel, which involves gathering customer information such as name, age, company name, email, job title, and other relevant data.
This helps businesses target their potential customers more personalized and present their sales pitch to get a conversion. B2B lead generation differs significantly in many ways from B2C lead generation. Meaning what works for B2C won’t work for the B2B type.
While initiating the B2B lead generation, you’d have to go through a minefield of shrewd customers, competitors, tons of misinformation, and overhyped case studies. The truth is you’d have to tailor your lead generation approach with respect to your audience and the products or services you are serving.
There are so many lead generation companies offering disparate strategies to different businesses. But what suits yours is a most important question whose answer depends on many factors. As per HubSpot marketing data, the best B2B lead generation strategies are SEO (14%), email marketing (13%), and social media (12%).
Further, data from Chief Marketer suggest that email marketing is by far the most effective channel for B2B lead generation. Other similar surveys have also reported that content marketing and social media are predominant in generating quality leads. Most lead generation services providers also employ different lead generation trends & methods to get similar results.
This surely will make you wonder why there are so many inconsistencies? Well, the answer to that question is based on the audience’s biases. The reality is how you utilize the lead generation channel is more important than what channel you use. With that thought in mind, let’s get to know the top 10 lead generation strategies.
Here, we have tried our best to present the top B2B lead generation strategies that work for any business with any audience type. In addition, we’ve included some unique and uncommon strategies that most of the lead generation services providers miss out on.
So, without further ado, let’s start:
HubSpot is the most significant example of this lead generation strategy that proves free tools pave the way for effective & quality lead generation. HubSpot offers many free tools and utilities such as CRM that users can sign up for free and later pay for further services.
Other examples of such strategies that grew big by offering free tools are Uber Suggest from Neil Patel, Crazy Egg, etc. Such tools don’t even ask you to sign up to start using them with a compelling call to action to trigger instant movement in the form of purchase or conversion.
Running a business that deals with other businesses are often not a piece of cake. You won’t always have time and effort to look after each lead generation strategy and analyze the results. That’s where automation comes to the rescue. You can leverage Chatbots to lend you a supporting hand for your B2B lead generation.
The best thing about them is they are available round the clock, helping you build rapport with a global clientele. Getting started with this strategy is effortless. First, you’d have to set them up to match your brand personality and make them your automated tool for generating leads.
Finding new leads is the most challenging part, but bringing the old leads back to life would be a much easier task. You already have their details to contact and convert them into your customers before they turn into cold leads. Roughly it takes less than 24 hours for any lead to turn cold.
This means you have less than 24 hours to establish a successful interaction by employing customer retention and re-engagement email campaigns. The campaign should aim users to compel them to come out of their closet and try your products.
You could generate leads from marketing video content and the sign-ups of the viewers of those videos. It’ll be disappointing to see a viewer leave after watching your videos and not taking any action. Your team might have worked hard to produce those videos but all in vain if you sit back and let the users walk away after they finish watching.
Many streaming service providers offer tools, including the sign-up CTAs at the end of the videos, to convert viewers into potential leads and eventually your customer.
As part of your digital marketing efforts, you may think of running ad campaigns on the biggest search engine — Google to bring more leads in. Google ads may bring you relevant, and quality leads with high chances of conversion. However, the personalization your leads receive when they click and are redirected to a landing page plays a crucial role in their conversion.
But how do you personalize your landing page? With the keywords, users enter to search for products or services they need. Google Keyword Planner helps you find keywords with high volume, which you can include in your landing page copy and match the search intent. Also, tools like Unbounce offer dynamic text replacement features to match the search intent of your ad copy.
One of the classic strategies to generate quality leads is not many businesses or lead generation services providers pull it off successfully. Also, the lead generation companies who use this strategy don’t utilize it to its full potential. Instead, they offer free stuff worth nothing to start with and expect users to choose their services over competitors.
For companies, free stuff like free trials of software means reduced chances of revenue generation. However, that’s not true at all. Value-driven freebies are designed to convert free users into paying customers once they start to rely on your products and don’t get as much value from your competitors.
A recent study published in the Search Engine Journal shows that over 90% of business professionals prefer webinars over other content types. Live or automated webinars are the topmost effective B2B lead generation strategy. Creating such a content format requires a lot of effort and time from your side, but the rewards it can generate are incomparable to other content types.
Further, with the whole thing running on automate, you’d save a lot of time and effort. Then, the only thing you have to do is keep track of the performance and leads generated by this strategy.
Another classic B2B lead generation strategy is to write long-form, in-depth content guides. Since you have already invested your time, money, and resources in creating certain types of content, it makes sense to go for this one as well. Gather all the necessary information or group information about your services or products and combine them to create one long content that offers readers so much value that they start to take an interest in your business.
What else you can do is find the content your target audience is searching for and tailor such content for them. Further, you can use social post engagement and traffic for each individual content to make your content even better and highly interactive. In-depth guides create an impression that you are the most knowledgeable in the industry, which tends to attract more leads.
No matter how great your PPC ad campaigns are, most of your visitors don’t convert into leads right away. Remarketing helps keep your visitors engaged with your ads or other content types until they are ready to be your lead. With the help of a strategic remarketing approach, you can achieve a great many lost quality leads.
Start by creating a list of remarketing for each stage of the funnel and prepare separate landing pages to offer a personalized experience to have a better shot at converting them into leads.
Already offer a lead magnet, but getting no result out of it? There can be many reasons for the ineffectiveness of your lead magnet. One particular reason is not optimizing your website for users to easily navigate to the lead magnet. Instead, design your on-site funnel in a way that drives your visitors towards your lead magnet that resonates with their needs.
What you can do is highlight it on your homepage CTA, use a pop-up, promote them throughout and at the end of the blog post or other pages, fill your sidebars with lead magnet content or visual, etc.
These were some of the most influential and top B2B lead generation strategies. Unfortunately, most lead generation companies don’t bother offering such lead generation methods. However, we have tried our best to pen down the most effective ways to generate as many leads as your business can. Now the question is, how many of those leads can you handle?
This might create a loop where you are stuck once your marketing campaigns overperform, so you stop them to an extent where no lead remains. Of course, now you’d have to go about it, again and again, every time. Thankfully, there’s a solution to automate everything from lead generation to prioritizing your business’s high quality and valuable leads.
We leave you with this thought. Keep generating & keep growing leads!
If you need any help with Lead Generation Contact Experts at Dark Bears.
