If you suspect that you haven’t been able to claim your fair share of the B2B pie, you’re far from alone. Many B2B marketers express frustration with generating leads. Even successful marketers sometimes watch their leads level off over time.
If you feel as though you’re not generating as many marketing qualified leads as you could be, this guide is for you.
Below, we review seven B2B lead generation tactics that are relevant to the marketers of today. Some you may be running already but need to review how you manage them; others, you may not have even considered for your business or industry.
Either way, done right, these lead gen strategies are guaranteed to help you generate more MQLs through your marketing output.
1. Email Still Leads B2B Lead Generation
Many people saw the introduction of GDPR as the end of email lead generation, but as a result of that trend, we’ve actually seen an increase in the number of leads that our clients get off the back of email campaigns.
The fact is most of your potential customers still check their inboxes on a frequent basis. Provided you execute them correctly and send to quality data with the intent of selling something you know is a fit for their business, email campaigns generate more leads than most other B2B tactics.
One of the reasons email is still effective is that it allows for a good deal of customisation. A personalised message is easy to craft. If you use the right software, you can also send customised offers to people on your mailing lists.
Looking to write and automate emails that convert? Talk to our experts.
2. Website Tracking a Must-Have
You’ve no doubt heard someone say content is king when it comes to lead generation strategies. To be sure, a content marketing plan is a must-have for any B2B company in this day and age. After all, content is what drives visitors to your website.
Many marketers forget the next step. To convert on an excellent content strategy, you must use some form of website tracking. Otherwise, people may visit your site, but you’ve no way of following up with them.
Tracking enables you to create a more personalised website experience for your visitors. It allows your site to recommend relevant content, which then enhances the user’s visit.
Heatmapping tools like CrazyEgg (see the gif above) show you the way your visitors are actually behaving on your site by recording their visits as video clips.
This allows you to tweak your output and convert more website visitors into leads, allowing you to improve online lead generation as a result.
For more on increasing online leads, read: 5 Tiny Hacks to Give You Huge Conversion Rates.
3. Social Media Marketing On The Up
While other, more direct tactics like email marketing still win over social media, that doesn’t mean you should turn away from social platforms altogether.
There’s a bit of a stigma that social media lead generation is just for B2C businesses, but it can be as effective for B2B marketers as it is for companies selling directly to consumers.
The trick, of course, is to determine which platforms are most relevant to your target markets.
LinkedIn is a great choice for most companies that want to connect directly with buyers from other firms. Twitter is another platform you might consider for driving quality traffic to your website.
That said, with the shift in the average age of Facebook users from teenager to parent, Facebook is now a brilliant place for B2B businesses to advertise to prospects and therefore makes a good value lead generation strategy.
Do some work to create quality buyer personas and within them, identify exactly where each person you’re targeting spends time online. That will help you to identify which social channels are right for you, where to share your content and build your network.
4. Content Marketing is Key
If you haven’t included content marketing as part of your lead gen strategy, it’s high time you adopted the tactic. Time and again, blogging is cited as a driver of new business.
Not only does blogging bring in relevant traffic to your site, it also helps to convert visitors to leads and then nurture them during the decision making process.
If your blog hasn’t been performing the way you want, it may be time to take an audit of your content. Determine which pieces are popular and which ones haven’t met performance expectations. From this, you can:
- Determine the types of content your clients are looking for and adjust accordingly.
- Repurpose popular content.
It’s also key to do some work to identify the keywords you should be writing around to show as high in search engine results as possible.
Be sure to include a mix of content types. Blogs do more than generate leads. They can establish your firm as a leader in your industry and an authoritative expert.
Need support optimising your content? Book a call to speak to our content specialists.
5. Video Marketing Changes the Landscape
One of the most talked about developments over the last few years has been the advent of video marketing. The majority of content used on the internet today is video.
B2B firms like yours have hesitated to embrace this trend. You may believe busy CEOs and harried buyers aren’t watching video, but surveys show the opposite. The majority of company executives watch video each week.
What kinds of content are they watching? How-to videos are popular. Videos that help with product research are also good additions to your content plan.
Again, research is the key to working out exactly what your video marketing strategy should look like.
Have a look on YouTube and search for terms around your products and services to see what people are watching and go from there.
6. Social Ads Are Tried and True
Technology has made lead generation techniques like social media and content marketing possible. Even with these new platforms, marketers can rely on some tried and true formats.
A case in point is social ads. Almost every social media platform has introduced an advertisement program. Pay-per-click advertising on search engines and other websites has been around longer.
These new advertising outlets put the age-old principles of advertising into new contexts. The bottom line is that advertising still works. What matters most is where you place your ads.
7. Referrals Can Be Goldmines
When it comes to B2B lead generation tactics, you may have forgotten a crucial one. Like ads, word-of-mouth lead generation has its roots in the pre-digital age. The opinions of other clients still have a profound influence on buyer decisions.
Again, the internet has merely repackaged referrals for a new audience. You can encourage reviews on your own website. You might also include trust-building social proof in your email campaigns.
You may even ask some of your most loyal customers to become brand ambassadors by building a referral scheme which rewards them for introducing you to other businesses who would be a perfect fit for whatever you do.
This is something we’ve set up for numerous clients in the past, to great effect.
Refresh Your Approach to Lead Generation
It should be plain that there’s no shortage of B2B lead generation options you can choose to adopt. The right mix for your firm depends on your brand, audience, and industry.
At Catalyst, we specialise in B2B lead generation. Whether you need us to fill marketing skill gaps in your team, or provide an end-to-end marketing solution, we can help.
Get in touch with our team of lead generation specialists today for a friendly chat about your business’ unique marketing needs.
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Interested in finding out how we can help you to generate more, quality leads to grow your business? Click here to view our lead generation services.
