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Any and every organization, whether enterprise-level or small and medium-sized; start-up or established, can incur the challenge of sustaining a full and flowing sales pipeline. There is always a need to generate leads, and that need only increases with time and scale as businesses grow.
Fortunately, we live in an age where generating leads at scale is easier than ever, thanks to technology, more specifically MarTech (Marketing Technology). To stay competitive, your company must take advantage of the right tools and strategies and turn them into an endless funnel of new leads. Here is your comprehensive guide to generating B2B leads.
What you need to do is develop multiple methods of communication that can help identify and reach decision makers. This means developing a lead generation strategy that includes:
In this article, we take a deeper look at the components of an effective lead generation set up, as well as some examples of how your company can build a winning strategy.
Lead generation strategies can be broken down into two methods of delivery: online and offline. The development of digital communications and technologies means that most people do the majority of their communication online. Email, text messages, and social media are all examples of online communications.
Offline communications, can sometimes be considered more personal, include things like direct mail, cold calling, events, and trade shows. Most, if not all, lead generation strategies fit within these two camps. For your lead generation strategy to be fully effective, you need a combination of both online and offline delivery methods. Before settling on any, let’s look at some of the most common methods.
Online lead generation strategies have come into their own in the past two decades as digital technologies took the lead in B2B sales practices. This is largely because digital methods let companies generate leads by reaching more people at scale with relatively little increase in cost. Here are some of the top options in terms of effectiveness and popularity.
Content syndication remains one of the most consistent tactics to build brand awareness in a B2B environment. Although figures will vary across industry, the rule of thumb among marketers is to designate 25%-30% of the marketing budget to content marketing.
Yet it’s very common for excellent pieces of content to either never see the light of day or just to get featured once and then disappear in the archives. To build out a consistent communication strategy with new prospects, repetition is key to be served up in different formats, via different channels and at different times in the customer journey.
Having the right ads delivered to the right audience significantly increases the chances of converting leads into sales. Programmatic ads can be served up to audiences when they browse through websites, scroll through social media, event visit their mail servers or favourite tools.
Even though you may know which accounts you wish to target, you may not always be familiar with the full buying group. Programmatic ads help you to amplify your reach so that you can reach every decision maker relevant to you. You can also explore new markets with lookalike audiences to tap into an audience that has much overlap with your ideal customer persona.
Email is still the main tool of communication within a B2B context. How often have you had organisations reach out to you via email? Or even after a social prompt continue conversation via mail? According to Hubspot, there are 4 billion daily email users, making email marketing an effective rival to social media marketing.
Email marketing is simply sending emails to potential leads that contain useful information and invite leads into the sales funnel. One of the most difficult parts of email marketing is getting the right contact data.
First-party media vendors are a great source to fill your pipeline with leads that are receptive to your brand via email marketing. Be sure to look out for quality first-party data to make sure that the accounts you engage with are compliant and fresh to start new engagement.
No matter which online methods you use, the key to being successful in them is to master SEO and SEM.
Search engines, like Google, are designed to take whatever the user searches for, find the references to it in its database, and return a list of search results in order of importance to the user.
To do this, search engines rank every website that they scan based on several factors. You can manipulate these factors in your favour if you understand how they work, essentially raising your scores and getting to more potential customers before your competition.
SEO (search engine optimization) is a method of improving how high on the search results list your company is for organic searches (i.e. people just looking for things online). Higher ranks mean a spot earlier on the list and a significantly higher return on investment. Ranking #1 for a given search term means you get an order of magnitude more traffic from it than rank #2.
SEM is a method of improving how high you rank for paid searches (people paying to find information) rather than organic searches. It works largely like SEO but focuses on paid services instead of free services.
Mastering SEO and SEM gives you full control over your digital marketing channels’ performance. It gives you the ability to target specific groups and develop content that will not only get in front of them but also get their attention.
Although offline marketing strategies have a long history, they are by no means “outdated”. Options like direct mail, cold calling, and trade shows are still effective ways to get in front of your target audience and start the sales process.
There are three types of events that you should consider for generating leads: trade shows, corporate or industry events, and webinars. Trade shows are a staple in many industries, while webinars are becoming more popular.
Trade shows are industry-wide events where companies come together to exhibit what they are working on. This works exceedingly well for lead generation because people come to trade shows with a problem that they need to solve. Going to the show lets them explore a wide range of options to find the right solution.
Trade shows also let you build a reputation in an industry by networking with other companies.
Industry and corporate events are similar to trade shows, but they allow a more intimate, peer-to-peer setting for companies to engage with decision makers. These shows are great if you can bring together a larger segment of your target audience that is already interested in what you have to offer. It lets them get a deeper look and hands-on experience with your company and products before they make a commitment to purchase. Formats can vary featuring discussion roundtables, briefing, showcases, evening events and more.
Webinars are online meetings where your audience comes to learn more about a specific product or service. It often works in small groups, and the focus is usually on a one-to-one business relationship.
These are done entirely online, so the overhead cost is lower than other options, and you would reserve a webinar to confirm registrations before qualifying leads.
We have all gotten advertisements in the mail. These advertisements are direct mail, and they have been a marketing option for a long time. Direct mail, whether it goes to a business or a home, can be an effective way of targeting decision-makers in business. Since it goes directly to them, there is a higher chance that they will see the advertisement. You have to make it enticing by offering something of value that they want.
Cold calling is another way to get directly to the person that you need to talk to in most cases and start a conversation about how to fix business problems. The difficult part of cold calling is that you have not qualified any of the leads you are about to call. It is best used for companies that can make a large profit per sale since the chances of finding leads are lower than other options.
Aside from the delivery method, it is important to look at whether a marketing method is active or passive. Active methods promote conversations about products and services in real-time and require you to be active in that conversation for it to progress.
Some examples of active methods are:
Passive methods let you send out communications without necessarily having to be deeply involved at all times. In many cases, you can create marketing material and send it out while waiting for a reply from interested parties.
Some examples of passive methods are:
While passive methods can work well on their own, you can make them active with components that enable active communication. For example, enabling comments on social media and blogs lets you interact with the people who comment. Email marketing becomes an active method when a prospect responds to the email, and you start a conversation.
To build an effective lead generation strategy, you need a combination of active and passive options. You also need online delivery methods and can use offline methods depending on your circumstances.
Having a mix of active and passive options lets you engage people who are ready to talk right away while also building a network of content that will lead other people back to you when they are actively looking for solutions that you offer.
These days, it is essential to have online marketing methods for your company. The importance of digital marketing cannot be understated, given the way the world works today. Up to 75% of people, including those representing business, shop online, according to Drip. If the majority of people shop online, you can’t afford to not have resources online for them to find.
However, offline methods should not be wholly discounted. They can still be effective and are widely seen as a standard in many industries. Make sure that if an offline method can benefit your company, you take the time to explore it to see what you can do with it.
Finding the right lead generation strategy is a balancing game between trying different methods, refining them, and keeping the ones that work for you while trying new things. It is not something that companies find right away. It takes time, patience, and effort to get the right combination of strategies for your company.
However, there is a way to shorten how long it takes to build your strategy. The key is to work with a company that can help you. S2W Media is dedicated to helping companies build lead generation strategies that work for them. We have helped thousands of companies develop effective strategies that create long-term stability and enable rapid business growth. We do this by understanding your business down to its core and identifying different ways of engaging with your target audience that are authentic to your business.
Take the first step in creating a better foundation for your business by downloading our guide to lead generation strategies. If you are looking for a partner that can help you reach a new level of B2B lead generation, contact us to schedule a consultation. Let’s work together to take your business to a new level of success.
Finding the right lead generation strategy is a balancing game between trying different methods, refining them, and keeping the ones that work for you while trying new things. It is not something that companies find right away. It takes time, patience, and effort to get the right combination of strategies for your company.
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