The act of identifying and initiating the interest of a potential customer is essentially the first step your business—and every business—must go through before making a sale. B2B (Business to Business) lead generation programs identify ideal customers for a company’s services or products, then persuade them to purchase.
What is a B2B Lead?
The term given to those who have been identified as potential customers—those who are most likely to find value from your services or products—for your business are known as leads. B2B leads include marketing-qualified leads and sales-qualified leads. A marketing-qualified lead is one that is very likely to become a paying customer—someone who repeatedly visits your website, someone who fills out a form on your website, someone who downloads content from your website, or someone who signed up to attend a company event or webinar advertised on your website.
A sales-qualified lead is a marketing qualified lead that has progressed to the point that it is deemed ready for engagement with your sales team. A sales-qualified lead is a lead that has shown clear intent to purchase your services or products. Such an intent could have been shown via telephone conversation with your sales team, a request for a demo of your services or products, a request for more information regarding your company’s offerings, or a response to a message or email.
Sales and Marketing Working Together is the Key to B2B Lead Generation Success
It is necessary for sales and marketing departments to be closely aligned in this effort. On the sales side, lead generation may be split into two groups—business development managers and sales development representatives.
Sales development representatives (SDRs) source leads, engage with those leads, and book meetings, while business development managers conduct demos, close deals, and generate business revenues. There are likewise two categories of marketers that focus their efforts on B2B lead generation—growth hackers focus on the generation of quick revenue growth and often work at early-stage startups, while demand generation marketers keep their focus on the entire cycle of B2B lead generation, nurturing leads along the way.
How Important is Data in B2B Lead Generation?
B2B lead generation is almost wholly dependent on sales and marketing-generated data. When that data is incomplete or inaccurate, then lead generation will not be successful. Not only is data fundamental for B2B lead generation, it is also fundamental to forecasting and analytics. Analytics based on complete and accurate data allows marketers to quickly determine whether B2B lead generation programs are falling short or succeeding, enabling them to make appropriate adjustments as needed. B2B companies that keep on top of their data, using it wisely in decision-making, are those that will be the most successful.
Successful B2B Lead Generation Channels
The key to successful lead generation is to plan, experiment, evaluate then adapt. It is also important to create accurate buyer personas. A buyer persona is a detailed description of an individual who represents your target audience. It is not a real customer, but a fictional person who represents your best potential customers’ characteristics. Once you have created your buyer personas you can develop targeted messages to them.
There are several proven lead generation programs that perform well for B2B companies. These include:
- Email Marketing – A well-orchestrated email marketing program builds a relationship of trust between you and your prospects and customers over time through carefully planned emails sent at exactly the right time. Your emails should offer new content, tips and tricks, and other helpful information and resources, without being intrusive.
- Webinar Marketing – Webinar marketing is a valuable lead generation tool where you provide free valuable information to a targeted audience in an online setting that will hopefully encourage participants to buy the products or services you offer.
- Content Marketing – High-quality content which is tailored to your audience helps establish you as a trustworthy brand leader, keeping you fresh in their mind when they come to make a purchase. Your content should always include call to actions for your products and services.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – SEO is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of your website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through non-paid (organic) search engine results. It would be best if you targeted keywords that are likely to draw in relevant, high-quality traffic from search engines which will be valuable for your business. While competition will be high for broader, generic terms, you can use longer tail keywords (more than 3-word phases), bringing in even better-qualified leads.
- PPC – Pay-Per-Click advertising targets key terms or phrases within search engines with relevant ads which only appear when the specified search criteria are met. The results of a well set up PPC campaign happen quickly. Google estimates that businesses make an average of $2 for every $1 they spend.
- Social Media – Social media lead generation is all about engaging with your customers and potential customers and promoting your company, culture, and mission in an approachable way so that they will seek out your products and services when needed.
You should test out each strategy, giving enough time to gather the data you need to make an informed decision on whether it’s working for you or not. If it’s not working, try something else.
Technology Used in B2B Lead Generation
Today, marketing automation software and CRM software offer marketers a way to automate the lead generation process to make their campaigns more accurate, empower their sales team with better leads, and achieve greater ROI. Marketing automation also offers analytics for better forecasting and attribution. B2b Lead Gen Infographic
Reach Marketing for B2B Lead Generation
Reach Marketing is a recognized B2B lead generation agency with B2B lead generation experts. We have more than 40 years’ experience servicing small to large companies across all industries. Contact us today! SaaS Lead Generation Tips
