Generating leads is complex, and there’s no fixed formula for it, as what might work today might not work down the line.
While generating leads is a struggle for businesses of all sizes, B2B lead generation is more complex. That’s because you’re targeting business decision-makers and professionals, who often compare multiple products before investing in a solution.
B2B buyers are more cautious when making purchases, which means you need to use different strategies to engage potential leads for your sales pipeline.
Before we delve into some of those effective strategies, let’s understand what B2B lead generation means.
What is B2B Lead Generation?
B2B lead generation is the process of identifying ideal customers for your business-to-business products and services, and then, engaging them to purchase. It involves using several lead generation strategies to move them down your sales pipeline.
These lead-generation strategies include optimizing your landing pages, developing standout CTAs, organizing webinars, leveraging social media and content marketing, and much, much more.
There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for B2B lead generation, though. You need to test and see what works for your products/services, and then optimize your marketing efforts.
How to Generate Qualified Leads for Your B2B Sales and Marketing Teams
Let’s look at seven proven B2B lead generation strategies to capture leads and move them down your sales funnel.
1. Get Your Landing Page In Order
I cannot stress enough why landing pages are so important. For one, they not only inform visitors about your products and services but simultaneously entice them with an appealing offer that they cannot simply refuse.
The result: Visitors are okay with sharing their contact details and information in exchange for that invaluable deal. Well-optimized pages boast high conversion rates. The median conversion rate of landing pages across industries is 6.6%.
The point is that if your landing page’s conversion rate is below 6.6%, you can optimize it further to generate more qualified leads.
Tips to generate B2B leads through landing pages:
- Revise your copy: Keep your copy short and crisp. Remove all the extraneous, redundant sentences. And, yes, highlight how your product will benefit the target businesses and not its features.
- A/B test your headlines: This is the visitors’ first view on a page. If the headline is not intriguing, compelling, or click-worthy, viewers won’t be interested in viewing the rest of the page. So, go ahead and optimize your headlines to hook your ideal customers by catering to their pain points and interests.
- Add videos: Videos are in. Your target audience would prefer to watch a video than read a copy. If you are giving videos a go-by, let me tell you, you’re losing out on new leads.
Last but not least, keep the page simple, minus all links and navigation bars. Users will now only have two options: Close your landing page or stick around and finally sign up.
2. Add Eye-Catching CTAs to Your Pages
Once you offer a great deal to your potential leads on the page, the next step is to make them click on your CTA button. It could lead them to your product sign-up page or newsletter subscription page.
So, now you know how important it is to design your CTA buttons well. Ensure they stand out from the rest of the content and are easy to navigate.
Here are a few tips to optimize your CTAs:
- Use contrast colors, large fonts, and eye-catching visual elements to attract visitors.
- Avoid generic CTA copy. Tell people exactly where you are leading them.
- Lead visitor’s attention to your CTA using visuals, such as an arrow pointing to it.
See how you can play with your CTAs; however, when it comes to social CTAs, you won’t have much choice but to include the readymade ones. When it comes to your website, though, you can experiment with CTAs a little.
Remember, CTAs should stand out to help you generate more leads. You can capture customer data for your sales reps using lead forms. To ensure your CTAs stand out, A/B test them using different styles of copy, offer, and more.
3. Generate Sales Qualified Leads Through Webinars
Unlike the B2C market, the B2B market thrives on suggestions, recommendations, and feedback.
Well, the B2C market can also benefit from feedback. B2C products are economical and can be tested first-hand for their quality, which is not the case with B2B products, as most of them are priced exorbitantly. This means customers rely on feedback and suggestions rather than first-hand buying and testing of B2B products.
This is where webinars help, as you can show your product to several people, discuss its benefits and application areas, and handle customer queries.
Prospective customers often register for such free webinars, which helps you capture leads for your sales and marketing teams.
Tips to generate high-quality leads through webinars:
- Know your audience: Create buyer personas of your ideal customers and tailor your webinar content to engage those decision-makers and professionals who may convert into your paying customers.
- Launch a landing page: The landing page should have a webinar registration form and social media sharing icons to make it easily shareable. Ensure it is mobile friendly.
- Create compelling copy: The landing page’s content should be informative and compel readers to sign up for the webinar.
- Add interactive features: Keep the audience engaged with interactive features. You can also use their input to score leads and identify sales opportunities.
Finally, follow up with attendees based on their engagement and interest levels. You can share your marketing materials with the attendees to engage them further. If you are unsure of their engagement level, use analytics.
4. Target High-Value Leads Through LinkedIn Networking
When it comes to B2B networking, the only social networking website that comes to mind is LinkedIn. The platform is best at engaging existing leads and attracting new clients to your business.
You can even run B2B lead-generation campaigns on LinkedIn through lead-generation forms. It is a platform where decision-makers are the most active, which means you can use it for building relationships and attracting valuable leads with minimum hassle.
Tips to generate leads through LinkedIn:
- Update your profile: A fully updated profile appears at the top of search results. Ensure your personal and company profiles are up to date.
- Participate in LinkedIn groups: Relevant LinkedIn groups can help you connect with potential customers. So, make time to share content, leave comments, and even answer questions.
- Post high-quality content: Posting high-quality content can catch buyers’ attention, and they can start responding to your posts. You can often find quality leads among those who engage with your content.
- Personalize connection requests: When sending connection requests, make sure you personalize them.
- LinkedIn InMails: You can identify quality leads and engage them by sending relevant messages through InMails.
You can use LinkedIn marketing automation tools to automate your outreach. These tools often drive better results than LinkedIn ads.
5. Engage Potential Buyers on Social Media
If you think social media is just for B2C, think again. Both B2C and B2B businesses can profit from using social media to spread awareness about their businesses.
We already talked about the benefits of using LinkedIn for B2B lead generation as nearly 80% of B2B leaders use this social platform the most. In addition to LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter) can help you acquire sales leads for your pipeline. Facebook is known for its targeted approach and Lead Ads.
Tips to generate B2B leads through social media marketing:
- Know your target audience: Know who your qualified sales leads are and choose the social media platforms they use actively.
- Create valuable content: Create valuable content in different formats for your lead generation efforts. This includes carousels, infographics, and even videos.
- Join discussions: Participate in social media discussions relevant to your product or niche to build relationships with your ideal customers.
- Leverage video: Use video to promote your products and services and, more importantly, educate your customers.
- Leverage influencer marketing: Use influencer marketing to build your brand, boost web traffic, and market your product to new audiences.
- Use retargeting strategies: Use retargeted marketing campaigns to keep your brand and product on the top of the minds of your audience. This will help them progress through your sales funnel faster, resulting in closing deals faster.
- Build social proof: Build social proof to gain user trust and improve the quality of leads. Customer trust can help reduce your sales cycle.
Social media constantly exposes marketing and sales teams to new lead-generation best practices, so do your homework and find what works best for your organization.
6. Invest in Content Marketing
Unarguably, content marketing is an effective lead-generation strategy for businesses. It involves generating and distributing valuable content that strikes a perfect chord with users. It could take any form — blogs, videos, social media posts, podcasts, lead magnets, and more.
Creating and sharing educational content about your products and services helps you engage your target audience, build customer relationships, and generate high-quality leads for your sales team.
Plus, it cements your position as a thought leader in your industry, which helps build trust with your potential paying customers. So, it comes as no surprise that almost 47% of B2B marketers use documented content marketing strategies in their lead generation campaigns.
Adding content syndication to your content strategy, which means re-publishing your content on third-party sites, allows you to widen your content’s reach and generate more backlinks.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to content distribution:
- Choose high-quality content websites for distribution and syndication.
- The site should be relevant to your target audience.
- Add CTAs in your syndicated content so your readers know the next step.
Tips to generate B2B leads through content marketing:
- Know your customers: Research your customers and understand their pain points to generate content that aligns with their needs and interests.
- Generate valuable content: The content should address the customers’ pain points.
- Use case studies: Case studies will provide valuable insights about your company’s or product’s capabilities in making the buyer’s life easier or profiting their business.
- Create a content plan: The plan should include content to engage leads during all your marketing and sales funnel stages.
- Optimize for SEO: Optimize your content for the SERPs to increase organic traffic and leads. Here are more reasons to invest in SEO.
- A/B test your content: A/B testing content will help you nail down only those tactics and messages that help customers convert.
- Launch email marketing campaigns: Email marketing helps you re-engage your potential customers and high-quality leads, encouraging them to purchase.
- Blogging: Blogging is a proven way to grow your email lists and generate leads for your sales and marketing teams.
In addition, you can repurpose your content, distribute and promote it, track its performance, or consult some leading B2B lead generation companies to chart out ROI-oriented content marketing strategies.
7. Run PPC Ad Campaigns
PPC has been a B2B lead generation tool for ages. Earlier, it was used only for Google Ads, but now PPC has become a staple in the social media arena as well. You can run PPC ad campaigns via LinkedIn Ads, Facebook Ads, and Facebook ThruPlay, among others.
Why do you think this old paid ad strategy has retained relevance? Simply because businesses get to target specific audiences. I guess that’s one single reason why businesses can’t think of moving away from making the most of this lead generation strategy.
And, yes, PPC is fast. You can implement it instantly and realize results quickly. You can even A/B test your campaigns to determine what’s working and what isn’t.
Tips to generate sales leads through PPC campaigns:
- Find your target audience: Evaluate your existing customer base, research competitors, and use tools like Google Analytics to gather customer data.
- Launch landing pages: Well-optimized pages convert PPC traffic into customers.
- Create impactful ad copy: Writing an impactful ad copy can accelerate your ads’ click-through rate (CTR).
- Target relevant keywords: Target niche-specific, long-tail keywords that can drive leads with a higher conversion potential.
- Use calls-to-action: Include apt calls-to-action in your ads.
All said and done, combine search engine optimization and paid ads to improve website traffic and conversions.
Ready to Generate Sales-Qualified Leads Through Your B2B Website?
B2B lead generation is the mainstay marketing strategy for sales growth. I have just scratched the surface when it comes to B2B lead generation strategies.
Nevertheless, these seven strategies are crucial and could be a determining factor for your business’ success or failure. Implement them immediately without further ado, and watch your business grow exponentially.
Author Bio
Jennifer Warren is a resident wordsmith at GoodFirms – a review and rating agency that offers a level playing field to mobile app businesses of all sizes. She is a connoisseur of deep work and an addictive reader who believes in the magic of deeply researched posts to drive site traffic and conversions.
