Are you struggling to produce quality B2B sales leads?
Want to learn how to do it right and fast?
Creating quality B2B leads is not easy. In fact, 85% of B2B marketers admit that B2B lead generation is the most important content marketing goal for them. Although this is difficult, the good thing is you can work your way around it to make it work for you.
Here are 13 effective ways to generate more B2B sales leads.
1. Identify your target audience
Before you start your B2B marketing, you should first identify your target audience. You have to know who your ideal customers are so you can design your marketing strategy according to what they need.
90% of B2B marketers considered “audience relevance” as the leading attribute of content marketing effectiveness. Ask yourself, who will benefit from your product most? How relevant your service is to your prospect?
If you already know who your target audience is, then focus your efforts in those leads. Design a marketing plan that will convince them to buy your product.
2. Create a targeted list of leads
Once you know who to target, you can create a list of your prospects. To do this, you can use databases and social media as these platforms have many potential leads.
You can try TechTrack’s’ database which has over 700K companies and more than 50K investors. The good thing is you can filter the leads according to company size, industry, location, revenue, funding, job title and more. The leads that you have already engaged are automatically removed which is a good thing because with this feature you don’t appear spammy to your prospects.
You can also use LinkedIn to widen your network. The platform has millions of professionals from different fields and for sure you will find numerous quality leads for your business there.
3. Create a sales funnel
Your leads will go through several stages before they decide whether they buy your product or not. Sales funnel can help you track your potential customers.
Simply put sales funnel is an illustration of what the prospects go through before they become regular customers. You can market your service to thousands of individuals but only end up with a few sales. Some of them already know what they want, others are looking for a particular item, while the rest are just searching about the product to understand it because they are interested but not yet decided if they buy it or not.
A sales funnel includes these four stages.
Attract. Market and advertise to bring visitors to your websites. These people can be anyone. They might be aware of your product or not. Maybe they just saw your ad on Google, found it interesting and clicked on the ad.
Convert. In this stage, you are asking the visitor to do something for you after visiting your site. A call to action may include signing up for an email newsletter or signing up for a free trial.
Close. Encourage your visitors to become paying customers. Buffer convinces most to upgrade by adding more number of platforms to post on so you can make stay active on more social media channels. LinkedIn encourages premium subscription by offering access to more professional content and giving more capabilities in terms of growing your network. Consider something of a similar factor in your product that will prompt your leads to close a deal with you.
Delight. Deliver quality service and products that will make your customers happy. If they are satisfied with your business, they will refer you to their friends and this will help you generate more leads!
If you don’t know how to get started in creating your sales funnel, you can research the web as the internet abound with articles on this topic such as this one. The most important part is to get started by writing down your marketing efforts and categorizing them into the four factors mentioned above.
You can update the stages depending on your industry.
4. Create an educational and actionable blog
B2B marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads than those who do not. Blogging is more time and cost-effective than other traditional methods of lead generation.
In the early days of inbound marketing, blogs weren’t taken very seriously. However, this has changed. Today, a blog has been rated as the 5th most important source for accurate online information.
When writing content for your blogs make sure that the details are clear and consistent. Confusing content will not be helpful to your prospect’s buying decision.
Lastly, give away your best content as a way to instantly build trust with your target market.
- Engage in real conversations
Yes, blogs and websites work! However, it is still best if you talk to your prospects directly instead of relying on those one-directional communication platforms.
An important factor in business is building a relationship. It is important that you communicate with your leads as often as possible.
If one asks about one feature in your product, don’t just provide a link to your website and leave them to figure things out. Take the time to personally connect with them. Offer to jump into a quick phone call to discuss the said feature. Get engaged with your leads!
6. Take advantage of social media
Speaking of engaging with your leads, social media is a great platform to do so. Most, if not all, are present online whether on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or Snapchat. Social media is a great outlet to build a brand, find prospects and connect with them.
The three most used social media channels by B2B marketers are Facebook (89%), LinkedIn (81%) and Twitter (75%). However, you should know that among the three, LinkedIn generates more leads than the other two. LinkedIn was considered the best social network for lead generation. It can convert visitors at 2.74% which is three times higher than Facebook’s .77% and Twitter’s .69%.
That’s not all, Smart Company has learned that LinkedIn is also used by 74% of B2B buyers for purchasing decisions and social proof, and 79% of B2B marketers believe that it’s the most effective marketing channel. In addition, 91% of executives rate LinkedIn as their no. 1 choice for professional content.
Facebook is another great social media outlet because it has a wide audience for different markets. It also brings high engagement to businesses and brands. Since Dec. 31, 2017, Facebook has 13 billion monthly active users with an average of 4 billion active users daily.
In addition, if you use Facebook advertising, you can even target employees of a certain company.
Twitter is also relevant in finding prospects. A lot of people use this outlet to create buzz, find information, deliver customer service and connect with influencers. Sixty six percent of their active users discovered new business using their channel while 94% are planning to buy something from businesses they follow on Twitter. Also, 69% bought something as a result of a tweet. Thus, this is a great outlet to find prospects.
Aside from the three, you can also use Instagram. Seventy percent of the users look up a brand on Instagram and 60% of them learn about new products on the platform. The brands present on Instagram also reported that their engagement rate is 10 times higher on this channel compared to Facebook.
If you don’t have a LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter account for your business yet, it’s time to create one. It’s best if you have a social media presence on all of these platforms.
7. Create optimized landing pages
Landing pages are effective in helping you increase your conversion rates. That is because they are designed with a single objective that matches the intent of the ad that your visitors clicked. In fact, 68% of B2B businesses use strategic landing pages to generate new sales leads.
Unfortunately, about 75% of businesses have problems optimizing their landing pages. When designing your landing pages, you should consider the length and number of fields in the content.
The same report reveals that long landing pages can generate up to 220% more leads and reducing the form fields from 11 to 4 can increase conversion by 120%.
It is also important that you test your landing pages’ effectiveness. To do this you can use, split testing software or do A/B tests.
Just like any other marketing technique, you have to monitor your landing pages’ efficiency and update it if necessary.
Check out popular landing page software like Leadpages and ClickFunnels.
8. Use webinars
A web-based seminar is another effective way to find leads as 73% of B2B marketers and sales leaders consider a webinar the best way to generate high-quality leads.
“We do one webinar and we get between 500 and more than 1,000 leads…with an hour of live webinar and a little promotion,” said Patrick Whatman, Head of Content, Mention.
Webinars are high-quality and interactive content that both marketers and customers love. It generates leads to onboarding new customers and gives marketers the power to have a real conversation with their prospects. Is it effective? Yes, it is!
About 60% of webinars are designed to move people through the entire customer lifecycle from unaware prospect to loyal customer.
Due to the effectiveness of webinars, 57% of marketers confessed that they would create more webinars the following year.
9. Send cold emails
Cold emails remain a good option when it comes to finding leads. Why email? because 86% of professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.
Emails have 5% open rate, 29% response rate and 5% conversion rate. Considering these numbers, you should not skip this traditional approach.
However, you should learn how to send cold emails effectively. Here are a few tips that you can apply in your subject line to get the same or more response and conversion rate
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- Make it personal by adding a name
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- Include numbers
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- Add a sense of urgency and exclusivity
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- Offer immediate value
- Get emotional
For cold emails, you can use email service providers to get the job done conveniently. You can try, Infusionsoft or ConvertKit. The latter is cheaper but includes the powerful email automation capabilities.
10. Make warm calls
Cold calling is no longer as effective as it was. In fact, 97% of cold calling is a waste of time.
People can now easily block your calls through Caller ID. Business calls should not be random and unsolicited. Today, cold calling is shifting to warm calling.
“In this day and age, there’s no excuse for a call to be cold anymore,” Anneke Seley, Founder and CEO of Reality Works Group wrote.
Warm calling is 99% better than cold calling because you tailor your message according to your prospects’ interest and behavior. You reach out to them not just to make a sale but to offer something valuable to them.
11. Increase website traffic
More traffic can help you generate more leads. Sixty-three percent of marketers confessed that generating traffic and leads is the most challenging part of marketing for them. If you are also aiming for the same goal, here are some tips that can help you increase your website’s traffic.
Use Google Adwords. Use paid ads to increase traffic on your website. This can be tricky and expensive depending on your industry and competition. When using this ensure your target sales leads by looking at the keyword search volume and user intent.
Is this effective? Yes! Statistics show that 65% of search results clicks go to Google Ads with buyer intent keywords. You can capitalize on this behavior, test its effectiveness and use it in your next marketing campaign.
Use SEO. Another popular approach in optimizing your website traffic is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Google usually updates its algorithm for better search results. This means that you have to continue crafting good content to rank well and land on the first page of the search engine results page (SERP).
“Ranking higher in the SERP = more leads”, says Adam Gingery, DMi Partners.
Why still use SEO if there are already paid ads? Because organic SEO is about 5.66 times better than search ads.
In fact, 61% of marketers say that improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority.
12. Promote customer referral
Use your current customers to get new leads. Most people find referrals reliable and 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know. Cha-ching!
In fact, 82% of sales leaders find referrals as the best leads you can get. In addition, referrals have a higher conversion rate compared to frontline and marketing sales at 75% and it closes faster by 70%. That’s not all, referred customers have higher lifetime value.
Start fostering trust with your current customers so you can ask them for introductions. You can also use a software solution to get started with partner, employee or customer referrals.
You can try any of these to promote customer referral.
13. Offer something valuable
Offer something interesting and helpful to your prospect in exchange for their name and email address. You can create a white paper, demos or webinar. Of the three, the white paper is the most effective.
In fact, 80% of the respondents are willing to register for white papers. Meanwhile, 38% are interested in demos and 31% on webcasts.
Aside from these three, you can also offer eBooks to your prospects. eBooks are as effective in generating quality leads. According to Benjamin Brandall, their eBook landed them over 1,000 leads in a day.
When creating eBook make sure that your content is relevant to your prospect. Also, you can use this to address every component of your product. However, writing one can be time-consuming.
Here are some tips when creating an eBook for your product.
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- Write clearly
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- Make it as engaging as possible
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- Keep a consistent style
- Make it look good
To land more leads, give your prospects a teaser by sending a pre-release copy. Also, provide a brief description why the eBook is relevant.
Conclusion
These are the different ways to generate quality leads. Always start by identifying your target audience and do not forget to offer something valuable to them. Make your offer so attractive that your leads can’t afford to miss it.
Just follow these tips and you’ll find more potential B2B leads for your market.
