A campaign that is managed well will result in great outcomes for your company. The difference between a couple of leads coming to your site every week and a consistent stream of leads that are interested in purchasing what you’re selling.
Just considered these stats:
Digital content is used by 62% of B2B buyers to inform purchase selections (source). In order to be successful, you must have a well-planned and executed digital lead generation plan specifically for B2B.
86% of B2B companies maintain a blog (source). There’s a lot of competition, but also a lot of places to draw inspiration.
The source states that only 45% of B2B companies had a specific marketing plan in 2017. This means that if you have a plan, you are doing better than almost half of all other businesses.
The strategies provided on this page are what B2B businesses need in order to build an effective lead generation plan. This plan will result in more marketing-qualified leads, who will be guided through a smooth marketing funnel that addresses all their concerns on the way to making a purchase.
What is B2B Lead Generation?
B2B lead generation is a marketing technique used to attract potential customers. The goal of this process is to identify potential customers, contact them, and determine if they are qualified to purchase our product.
The process consists of the following stages:
Find leads
You can find leads through either active or passive marketing efforts. The goal is to attract prospective customers by offering solutions to the challenges they face.
There are many ways to find potential customers, or “leads.” Some common methods include marketing and advertising, networking, and giving away free samples or trials. Passive methods include referrals, recommendations, and similar.
Contact leads
The next step once you identify a lead is to start building a relationship with them. The best way to communicate varies depending on what kind of interaction has happened. If someone were to exchange their name and email for an ebook, you could then contact them with an email sequence to help them further along their user journey.
You could call someone who is interested in your service and try to get them to upgrade to a subscription at the end of their free trial.
Qualify leads
The process of qualifying leads involves assessing how engaged they are. The person above who is receiving an email sequence is someone who has the potential to be a paying customer, or a marketing-qualified lead (MQL). This means that they have expressed interest in engaging with your company, but have not yet shown interest in sales-based communication.
Sales-qualified leads are individuals who have expressed interest in becoming paying customers, while product-qualified leads are those who show interest in the products offered.
After you’ve defined your audience, you can better target your future communication to them.
Close deals
Leads that are targeted with relevant marketing communications are more likely to make a purchase.
When you formalize your B2B lead generation process, you are more likely to have success in getting leads to progress along the journey. An effective inbound marketing strategy is essential for generating leads in a B2B setting.
What Is Inbound Marketing?
Inbound marketing is creating marketing content to address and solve the specific challenges your prospective customers experience. The goal is to get potential customers interested in this content by giving them something useful instead of marketing material that is not relevant or that they don’t want.
Marketing that attracts customers, rather than interrupts them, and provides them with value, is known as inbound marketing. This type of marketing fosters goodwill and beneficial relationships between the customer and the company. People who come to your business through inbound marketing campaigns usually have a better understanding of what you do and how it can help them solve their problems. This often leads to more fruitful ongoing communication.
B2B Lead Generation Best Practices
The practice of B2B lead generation is specifically focused on attracting and identifying leads in the business-to-business channel. B2B leads refer to businesses that are struggling with issues that your product or service can help solve.
bring in more leads that will eventually turn into revenue. The main goals of B2B lead generation are to bring in more leads that will turn into revenue.
- Find leads: Businesses facing challenges that you can solve.
- Contact leads: Initiate contact on relevant terms.
- Qualify leads: Categorise leads based on the challenges they face and their level of engagement.
- Close deals: Solve their challenge by selling them your product or service.
If you want your B2B lead generation campaign to be successful, you should follow best practices. This will help you be more organized and effective. Best practice includes things like –
- Defining your audience. Successful marketing uses a clearly defined audience rather than a scattergun approach. Content tailored to needs and challenges performs better than guesswork.
- High-quality content. Investing time and effort into quality content – whatever the medium – will yield better results than low-quality pieces.
- Strategic content. Content created within an overarching strategy will have a higher success rate than that created on a whim.
- Effective CTAs. Attracting prospects to content is good, but guiding them further along their buyer journey with effective CTAs is vital. Otherwise, they’ll likely go elsewhere.
- Collect the right info. Certain pieces of information are required to qualify a lead, but you don’t need to go overboard. Trust is built by only requesting the information you need, and using each piece well.
When you follow best practices, you are more likely to have a lead generation process that runs smoothly and helps prospects move easily through their buyer journey. A challenge is identified, then content that describes the challenge and offers potential solutions from your business is served. Marketing communications that are effective help move the potential customer further down the funnel until they are ready to make a purchase that is informed and suitable.
Social Media Marketing Strategies
B2B marketing cannot be done without social media. Paid advertising is often not very expensive compared to traditional advertising but provides a lot of exposure. While social media is an effective marketing channel in the business-to-consumer market, it is more complicated in the business-to-business market.
What Is the Conversion Rate of Social Media?
There is no one answer to the question of what B2B social media conversion rates should be, but there are some ways to measure how effective they are. The study found that social media converts at 1.95%, while inbound converts at 3.82%, after studying more than 4,000 user account data.
Although social media has a wide reach, anecdotal stories suggest that it is not as effective as other B2B digital channels when it comes to conversion rates.
Many B2B companies seem to prioritize quantity over quality when it comes to generating leads through social media. This channel is beneficial for creating awareness at the beginning of the funnel–for example, you could promote a downloadable ebook to capture quality leads with an initial offer.
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn is a social network that is especially popular for business-to-business (B2B) interactions. It is no surprise, then, that LinkedIn has above-average conversion rates for B2B social media interactions. B2B marketers should consider using LinkedIn as it is the top social media platform for them.
Although you may see high engagement rates on certain channels, this does not mean that it will be successful. The tactics you use on LinkedIn need to:
- Audience targeting based on buyer persona
- Lending to the ad a newsworthy, topical angle
- Continuously testing CTAs, images, and copy
Facebook Lead Ads
Facebook Lead Ads is a tool that should be integrated into your social media strategy. The survey showed that 60% of B2B buyers used mobile in their recent purchases. More and more people are using their phones to search for businesses online. This trend has been going on for a few years now.
Since Facebook Lead Ads are designed to generate leads inside the world’s largest social media channel, they are especially powerful. After Facebook’s analytics showed that users found it difficult to signal their intent to businesses on Facebook mobile, the company launched a service in 2015 to address this issue. With Facebook Lead Ads, B2B users can sign up for your offer with just two taps, without having to leave the social network. It’s both targeted to your audience and highly customizable.
Facebook Lead Ad is not intended to replace your stand-alone landing pages. The cost-per-lead for AdEspresso’s Landing Pages and Lead Ads was approximately $0.94. Even though Facebook Lead Ad can help you collect leads from Facebook, you will still need to have landing pages to capture leads that come from organic searches and PPC campaigns.
Examples of Great B2B Social Media Lead Generation Campaigns
Use of scarcity and exclusivity
EntreLeadership created a sense of urgency by offering a limited-time deal, making their offer more valuable. The fact that their slogan is “Sharing Dave Ramsey’s business wisdom” gives the impression that they are exclusives. It’s a chance to gain rarefied insight. The way they use light colors against a dark background makes their visual engaging, and their key messages and CTAs are highlighted.
Asking for only the data you need
FreeAgent understands that asking for only an email address during the first encounter greatly reduces opt-in friction at the early stage. If businesses wait until later in their marketing campaigns to gather more customer data, they can use more specific offers to attract leads. This approach of only using email addresses guarantees a wider initial lead base.
Giving before you get
Digital Marketer doesn’t charge for its services; it gives them away for free. That’s a compelling deal. The image they use strengthens the message and the call to action is easy to see but not too pushy. Digital Marketer uses the law of reciprocity to get leads instead of selling anything. This makes users feel like they should return the favor at some point.
PPC Lead Generation Strategies
Pay-per-click lead generation campaigns focus on a wide range of paid advertising platforms, the most popular being Google AdWords and Display Network. However, you’ll find a wide range of PPC lead generation options outside of Google, including:
- B2B review directories or comparison sites
- Trade media display ads
- Social media advertising
- Affiliate marketing
What is the conversion rate in PPC lead generation?
The average conversion rate for Adwords is 2.70%, while the average for Display is 0.89%. But the rates vary depending on your industry. It’s important to know your industry benchmarks. How many conversions does the PPC vendor typically see? This lets you evaluate your campaign results better.
Should PPC replace organic marketing? No — they complement each other. When you search for something using a high-value keyword, the only ads you see are from Pay-Per-Click advertising.
This means that even if you have a good ranking in organic searches, your site may be hidden behind paid advertisements. Google researchers analyzed their SERPs data to see if paid search would take away from organic traffic. The result showed that only 11% of traffic generated by paid ads is replaced by organic.
Example of an Efficient PPC Lead Generation Channel
Review directories and comparison sites can provide a new lead source for B2B businesses. PPC channels in a crowded industry are already saturated by big players with deep pockets.
For example, in the software as a service (SaaS) industry, where competition is high across different sectors, advertisers need to target a large number of relevant keywords to be successful with AdWords. Sometimes your brand’s competitors will bid on keywords that are associated with your brand. For example, Netsuite might rank higher than Intuit for the keyword “Intuit Accounting.”
An Example of an Efficient PPC Lead Generation Channel
PPC platforms such as B2B review directories and comparison sites can provide fresh leads. In a crowded industry, other PPC channels are most likely already saturated by big players, who have more money.
For example, in the software as a service (SaaS) industry, which is highly competitive across different sectors, companies bidding for advertising space on Google AdWords compete fiercely, so it’s necessary to target a large number of relevant keywords. Sometimes your competitors will even bid on keywords that are related to your brand. For example, Netsuite might rank higher for a search related to “Intuit Accounting”.
Many SaaS startups and SMBs rely on lead sources such as B2B review sites to meet or exceed their monthly lead quotas. Let’s examine which popular marketing tools are used to generate leads on these types of websites. For example, here’s what FinancesOnline, one of the top software review platforms, offers:
- Lead generation campaigns: The review site can link directly to a vendor’s sign-up landing page, encouraging people who read your review to try out your free trial next. These campaigns can generate as much as a 24% conversion rate.
- Premium placement: In an increasingly commodified SaaS category, like a CRM where features are more standardized than unique, being included in a premium placement can make or break your sales opportunity. You have a much higher chance of attracting new leads if you’re listed among the most popular solutions, as prospects will usually only try out a few products. Make sure you get on such a list because your competitors are probably already there.
- Industry awards: When buyers are comparing your product to your closest competitors, having your product stand out thanks to a featured quality award can have a critical impact on your sale. FinancesOnline, like many other review platforms, can give your product an edge with such awards.
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