Business to business (B2B) lead generation has become the life-blood of today’s sales process. In other words, a B2B lead generation process requires sales reps to use strategies that can find prospects and convince them to make purchases or sign a contract. Modern B2B marketers now use online lead generation techniques and strategies to make the process quicker and more efficient. According to a Google report, 89% of B2B buyers search online before contacting a supplier.
If you are a B2B marketer, your focus is to generate quality leads for your sales team. Generating leads is easier said than done since you have to understand various nuances of selling B2B products and services. Thus you have to incorporate sophisticated tricks and strategies that can keep your buyers engaged throughout the sales cycle. Whether it is B2B or B2C campaigns, people and relationships are at the core; so the prospects must pass through the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of the buyer’s journey. Furthermore, B2B buyers are generally very specific in what they’re looking for and highly risk-averse.
The following tips will help you generate highly effective B2B qualified leads:
Create a compelling website that converts
This is the digital age and your business needs a strong online presence to make a cut. You have to begin with a B2B website design that is crafted around converting and capturing leads. Your website is where potential prospects, customers, leads, and advocates all interact with your organization and learn more about you. So a compelling website is first and foremost prerequisite for generating qualified leads. A great website gives a unique and dynamic user experience to your admins and your visitors. To create a great user experience, your B2B website design must be easy to navigate and intuitive to the user. A well-organized design of your website will more likely to compel your users to become potential leads. So for creating better user experience, a reliable hosted CMS plays a pivotal role. It helps disseminate engaging content and create a responsive site. That is why a hosted CMS trumps any free website builder. Thus a great website works as a part of your overall B2B marketing strategy.
Make your offer enticing
Before putting your offer on the table, you have to understand the pain points of your buyers. Sometimes prospects already know about the solution they want but they are more interested in benefits they can get. So you have to convince them only you can provide the benefits they are seeking. Now at the time of making an offer on various channels, it’s important that it should stand out. This is the time to brainstorm ideas and grab the attention of your target audience. Make sure your offers reach to worthy and qualified prospects who are ready to undertake a defined step in your sales process. Your website’s landing page must be aligned with your prospects’ needs. There must be feeling that your product or service can effectively address their pain points. Doing this will have a sizeable impact on your conversion rate.
Email marketing is still the king
Email marketing is one of those lead generating techniques that has stood the test of the time. This online strategy is over two decades old, yet it merrily features on the top of many marketers’ B2B lead generation tips. According to a report, 59% of B2B marketers consider email marketing as the best source of lead generation. Many established business and startups use this method, which primarily depends upon how effectively to draft the message.
So how will you draft an effective message? Well, it should draw your prospect’s attention, educate them with relevant information, spark interest, and contain a powerful call-to-action. Basically the purpose of your message should be to provide value to your leads. It needs to be short and stand out from the rest of your lead’s cluttered mailbox.
Over the years, email marketing has gained an interesting and excellent trend – marketing automation. It essentially refers to the hybrid email marketing tools that connect with your CRM and automatically send highly targeted emails that are personalized as per your prospects’ interests.
Content marketing is a creative way of reaching your prospects
Content is one of the foundational pillars of your lead generation and nurturing efforts. The way people are consuming digital content; businesses have found it as a great opportunity to reach a larger audience through quality content in the form of blogs, eBooks, webinars, case studies, newsletter, etc. According to a study, B2B marketers who blog consistently generate 67% more leads than those who don’t.
So to create a lasting impression and to engage your prospects, your content should educate, inspire, and capable to be shared. As everyone knows, the key part of the lead generation process is attracting people that can be converted. Now contextualize this to your website. What attracts visitors? Content — the written and visual part of your site. Furthermore, an interesting aspect of your content marketing strategy is the way you tell stories to your audience. Storytelling is an effective way to engage your audience on an emotional level, which in turn can tap their passions.
Use social media strategically
The unprecedented rise of social media has transformed digital marketing landscape forever. It is often said that the full power of social media hasn’t harnessed in B2B industry as yet, but it is highly promising nonetheless. The truth is social media lead generation is quick, cost-effective, and relatively easy to implement. According to a source, 43% of B2B companies that are on Facebook report generating leads as a result. Also, businesses active on Twitter generate twice as many leads than those not using the platform. Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. are the most prominent social networks through which you can communicate your message to the new prospects and brief your valuable products. If used correctly, Facebook can help drive traffic to your company’s website. The platform boasts the largest audience of all the social media sites. Twitter has also become highly popular in the recent years. It allows users to build lists of targets to engage with, publicly or privately. Finally LinkedIn is a giant platform for businesses to interact with each other. Users come from a range of different cultures, industries, markets and job levels, including CEOs, upper level management and C-suite professionals.
Author Bio:
Smith Willas is a freelance writer, blogger, and digital media journalist. He has a management degree in Supply Chain & Operations Management and Marketing and boasts a wide-ranging background in digital media. You can follow him on Twitter.