If you are looking for B2B lead generation strategies then you are not alone. 61% of the marketers find B2B lead generation to be their number one challenge. The thing about B2B lead generation is it takes time because you have to test different approaches. Only then you can use the ones that work best for you.
One of the common mistakes that everyone makes is they jump right into checking out different lead-gen strategies. Don’t be that guy! Before trying out anything, you have to make sure that the foundations of lead generation are aligned with the sales funnel. In this blog today, we are going to break down the key elements for B2B lead generation.
| SL NO. | B2B Lead Generation Elements | B2B Lead Generation stats |
| 1 | Budget | 53% of the online marketers spend half of their budget on lead generation. |
| 2 | Marketing automation | 80% of marketers think that marketing automation gets more leads. |
| 3 | Following up | If businesses follow-up leads within 5 minutes, the leads are 9X times more likely to convert. |
| 4 | Social media | 66% of marketers generate leads using social media by spending 6 hours every week. |
| 5 | Effective channels | LinkedIn is the most effective social media channel for B2B lead generation because 80% of the B2B leads come from LinkedIn. |
| 6 | Content marketing | Content marketing generates 3X B2B leads compared to outbound marketing. |
| 7 | Email marketing | 42% of companies consider email marketing to be one of the most valuable weapons of B2B lead generation. |
| 8 | Landing pages | 68% of the B2B businesses make use of strategic landing pages for getting more leads. |
| 9 | SEO | 59% of B2B marketers think that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. |
| 10 | Lead nurturing | Companies that nurture their leads, get 50% more sales at 33% reduced cost. |
What are the essential elements of successful B2B lead generation?
Here is what you have to keep in mind before you start using the B2B lead generation tactics.
- Customer Touchpoints – These are the sections where the customers interact the most with your brand through their journey. You have to figure out the touchpoints and analyze the actions to make their journey more effective. Offer the right information on the right platform at the right time.
- Use the customer journey map – The customer journey map is like a visual representation of how your customers are interacting with your brand at different touchpoints. This will help you to figure out what information you can offer to your prospects at the different stages of the buyer journey.
- Ideal customer profile and buyer persona – This includes the combination of the type of customers that will fit best for what you are offering and the buyer persona, which involves the description of the individuals who might be involved in the buying process. Defining customer profiles and the buyer personas, you can target the right person from the target companies for high-quality lead generation.
- The Lead Generation funnel – The lead generation funnel contains the process of making your prospects know about your brand and also converting them into a lead. With a useful B2B lead generation funnel, you can guide an unknown person towards conversion.
These are the most essential elements of B2B lead generation. Therefore, you have to include them while forming B2B lead generation strategies. Now, we shall move on to how to align B2B lead generation with your sales funnel.
How to align B2B lead generation within your sales funnel?
You have to think about your sales funnel before you start any lead generation activity. This is above all. Because most of the leads are not ready to buy just after they have come to your website. It is crucial for the B2B companies to create a sales funnel at an early stage.
Did you know that 48% of the companies say that they need a long sales cycle before they can start converting the leads into paying customers? This is why instead of focusing on immediate sales, the B2B companies have to be a bit more patient.
We are pretty sure that you have seen multiple sales funnels with the classic structure of “attract-engage-convert”. However, do you know when the lead generation starts within the funnel? Let us show you.
Attract – When anyone has visited your website, the sales funnel has already started. This is the point when you start building awareness and trust. DO NOT focus on direct sales here because that will drive away your audience.
Engage – This is the second stage where the website visitors convert into leads. Therefore, here is where you apply the lead generation strategies. You have to leverage your marketing research and also find the pain points of the leads.
Convert – This is the bottom of the funnel which is tailored to convert your prospects to buy. This is the time for sales.
What are the most useful channels for B2B Lead Generation (Online & Offline)?
When you are thinking about B2B lead generation, you cannot depend only on online sources. Because in B2B the credibility of the brand and also the people behind it, is very crucial. This is why you have to think about using offline methods as well.
Some of the most common channels of B2B lead generation are as follows:
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
- Live Events
- PPC
- SEO
- Print Media
- Social Media
Now, which of them are the most effective ones? This will depend on how and where your audience is most active and available. However, if you follow HubSpot Data, the most reliable channels for B2B lead generation are SEO and Email Marketing. With that in mind, let us have a look at the 21 effective B2B Lead Generation Strategies for 2020-21.
21 Effective B2B Lead Generation Strategies for 2020-21
When you have to generate B2B leads, the first thing you have to do is optimize your website.
1. A/B Testing
Here is an example of what you can do to increase B2B sales. WallMonkeys, a decorating and designing company, thought of tweaking their homepage to boost B2B sales. They split tested a new background image and search bar.
Image Source: ctfassets.net
The new background image and search bar increased conversions by 550%. Also, they changed their testimonial bar from black to white. They got 34% more signups in the submission forms. Thus, A/B testing can help you to know which sections of your website can be tweaked to increase B2B sales.
2. Don’t send B2B leads to broken pages
404 pages, broken links, and slow loading speed will sabotage the website’s ability to generate leads. Not only Google will penalize you, but it will also hamper your organic traffic.
The worst case is, all these things will cause your visitors to bounce. The best way is to use tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush that will audit your website and show you the broken links that are causing you leads. The tools will also help you in fixing them.
3. Consider the B2B buyers on mobile
There is no doubt that a younger generation of buyers is entering the workforce. You have to optimize for mobile. Here are a few stats.
- 80% of the B2B buyers are using mobile everywhere for everything
- More than 60% of the buyers have reported that mobile plays a very important role in purchases.
B2B marketers also found that optimizing for mobile reduces purchasing time and increases customer loyalty. It hardly takes a few seconds to check your website’s compatibility. Therefore, you should not have any excuse to not have a mobile-friendly site.
4. Run campaigns on competitor keywords
If your competitors are going to certain websites for backlinks or they are targeting a particular group of keywords, this means they have found out the winning keywords that generate leads.
Use SEO tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs to turn this into your favor. Target the same sites and keywords for driving more sales-ready traffic to the site.
However, before you spend your time and money on a certain keyword, you can run a small paid ad campaign to check if it attracts and converts the ideal B2B leads.
5. Use a stronger microcopy to improve your messaging
This is pretty simple. In the following example, you see the brand Veenam, a management and data protection providing company, changed the word “quote” with “pricing”, they got 160% more clicks on their pricing page.
This is how microscopy works. Some words are designed to nudge the B2B leads further. If you want to increase the conversions on your website without making major changes, you can start by adjusting the microcopy on pricing, products, and landing pages.
6. Try to observe how your B2B target audience browses your website
There will be some leads that land on your site and go straight to the sales funnel. Others will be slower. They may complete a micro-conversion – like downloading the whitepaper and after a long nurturing process, they become your customers.
It doesn’t matter how “warm” your leads are while arriving at your site. They will all hit some barriers that will hamper the lead generation process. Use heat maps, scroll maps, and mouse tracking tools to fix the barriers and increase B2B sales.
7. Generate quick wins with few tweaks to the landing page
When you have to get more B2B leads, the landing page is the most important section to check. You can get a lot of leads by tweaking the landing page.
- Back up the copy with social proof
- Make sure that the call to action (CTA) is more relevant
- You have to update the headlines to get the attention of the buyers (thus, try to make them engaging and informative).
8. Offer the B2B leads with a friction-less experience
How is that? If you have a look at this article a change in a button that earned $300 million, Jared Spool, the designer, explains that removing a simple step of login got him $15 million. How did he get such a massive result from this small tweak?
According to Spool, when he removed the login request, it reduced friction. This is what made things easier for visitors to buy. The friction is considered as the bumps, barriers, and jarring experiences that any visitor faces on your site.
It can be anything like a broken search button, a clunky menu, or any other image which is so small that no one can see. When you remove these frictions, the website becomes much more lead-friendly.
9. Personalize your website using dynamic web pages
This is no longer an option for you. It is a must. Therefore to personalize the buying experience on the site, you have to use dynamic pages and content. It should adapt to the following:
- Visitor’s name
- Their location
- The industry
- Their company
This will add an intimate touch to the buyer’s journey and offer a powerful personal experience.
10. You can reach more high-quality leads with content marketing
Buying decisions are taken after multiple reviews and checks these days. on average, a buyer goes through 13 content pieces like the information on a vendor’s website, the analysis reports, reviews, testimonials, and more before buying.
69% of the successful B2B marketers create a documented content strategy for increasing sales. Guest posting is one of the best factors to increase B2B lead generation.
According to Neil Patel, “I’ve tried many different inbound marketing strategies, but guest blogging has remained my most treasured tool. QuickSprout wouldn’t have been as successful as it’s become if I’d neglected guest blogging.”
11. Creating hard-hitting lead magnets
The lead magnets are the bread of your B2B lead generating butter. How? According to Richard Wood, the Marketing Director at Six & Flow,
“A lead magnet is anything that you can offer a prospect that has enough perceived value in exchange for their contact information, like an email address. If you want to create an effective lead magnet, you need to focus on your buyer personas and a specific challenge that they have and that you can address.”
Most of the companies fail to understand the lead magnet thing. Instead of offering a simple blog that is already available, try to create better quality stuff like an in-depth guide, how-tos, and detailed case studies.
12. Upsell on the popular content
Inbound lead generation is not a popularity contest. So you have to take it as a way to get high-quality leads and then turn them into sales.
Therefore, to make sure that the viral content you created doesn’t go to waste, you can offer upgrades on your popular content. This will convert curious visitors into high-quality leads.
Brian Dean is a good example of this. After creating lengthy guides, he will offer a complimentary content upgrade, which can also be a PDF or a checklist version of the post. This helps in getting more leads.
13. Create and publish your original research or case-study
You have to remember that B2B buyers are very serious about their research. Therefore, you have to be the company that they get their research from. This will help you increase the inbound lead generation.
You can interview the subject experts, survey your buyers, and collaborate with industry influencers. This will help you in improving your credibility and get you a lot of leads. Also, you will soon become the go-to source for industry information.
14. Treat every piece of content as a lead-gen campaign
If you check SnackNation’s article on the “employee wellness program”, it is there on the no.1 spot on Google SERP for quite a few years. Their secret is to use long-tail keyword terms that their target audience is bound to use and then create content around it.
So, how to create content that stays? Follow these:
- Feature more points to outdo your competitors
- Share details from other authorities in your industry related to the topic
- Use an aggressive outreach tactic to get more influencers to share your post.
You can also use other means of content marketing like YouTube videos, co-host a webinar, create EBooks, podcasts, and backlinks from sparkling infographics. Content repurposing works for B2B lead gen as well. Use cheat codes like swipeable templates and instantly usable checklists to lure in curious leads.
15. Increase B2B sales with effective email marketing
Did you know that every $1 spent on email marketing, will give you $42 in return? You have to create a strong email marketing strategy. Because it is going to be the backbone of B2B lead generation.
Unlike any other lead-gen channels, this is the channel that you control on how you want to interact with the leads. Once they subscribe, you will be better prepared to track how the leads respond to the varied forms of sales content.
You can use videos in your emails to boost B2B leads, tweak the CTA’s, follow up with the leads, create engaging subject lines to make a persuasive email copy. Add emojis and gifs to engage with your buyers emotionally.
16. Use social media to generate high-quality B2B leads
Social media is one of the most powerful lead generators out there. A lot of B2B marketers do not take Facebook seriously and therefore it costs them leads. Facebook will offer you a lot of chances to advertise and get high-quality leads with lower costs. In fact, you can turn Facebook to be one of the top-performing paid lead generation channels.
Use LinkedIn as well for B2B lead generation. Yes, it is true that the competition is hard and the price is high compared to other platforms, the best part is, you can hyper-target your audience. If you are going to advertise on LinkedIn, you have to offer a premium B2B product or services, or a unique/high-level education.
17. Reach out to B2B buyers with well-placed ads on niche websites
Most of the authoritative sites will offer you the option to buy media ads like banner ads or you can pay them to get your content in front of the buyers. For instance, consider the authority SEO site SearchEngineJournal. If you are offering SEO services, this is one of the best sites for paid ads because it has got an executive and qualified audience.
Getting B2B leads and increasing the B2B sales can be a tough job at times. However, it is not at all impossible. In fact, this is just like being a chef in a busy restaurant. You will have a lot of ingredients at hand to make a successful recipe. Similarly, you will have a lot of elements to create a great sales strategy. All you have to do is figure out the “flavor” that works. The trick is to use the right element at the right for the right audience. That’s it!
