B2B Lead Generation: Unlocking Your Business Potential Now

Learn how to generate more B2B leads with strategies that actually work in 2024. More leads, more prospects, more revenue.

Sales marketing can’t stop talking about lead generation. Unfortunately, this is not because it is popular, but because it is impossible to fix the model.

Lead generation is the one aspect of business that we may never fully understand. There are hundreds of successful leads and sales models when it comes to finding your potential customers, but even the most successful companies can struggle to collect leads in the first place.

While there is no perfect formula for creating a strategy for your business, there are proven strategies you can use in the 2022 market. In this piece, we’ll give you 15 B2B lead generation strategies you can start implementing today. B2B lead generation may not be easy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it easier. Let’s dive in.

What is B2B lead generation?

B2B lead generation is the process of identifying ideal buyers for your product or service and attracting them to purchase. Sales and marketing teams use a variety of creative strategies to engage their audiences and engage potential customers in the sales pipeline. B2B branding is an important first step, as future success depends on attracting attention from the right sources. Although

Directors are always considered part of the company’s advertising campaign, this is not limited to paid advertising. Most businesses utilize a cocktail of:

• Social media outreach
• Email marketing
• Content marketing
• Event marketing
• Pay-per-click advertising
• Cold calling
• Website optimization

Types of B2B leads

B2B leads are people, organizations, or businesses that have the potential to become customers for B2B (business-to-business) products or services. Unlike business-to-consumer (B2C) sales, these leads are often other companies rather than individuals. But sometimes some personal contacts and small business owners can also be B2B buyers.

B2B leads aren’t necessarily harder to find than B2C leads, but they can be harder to evaluate and convert. While B2C leaders are always human, B2B leaders can be mysterious. Most traditional B2B strategy developers only create email contacts, and let’s face it, no one will respond to anything sent to info@am-technewz.com

Your sales team can only work with B2B leads that have a person at the other end of the line. That’s why just generating leads isn’t enough; You need the right leads from sources.

Marketing qualified leads

Marketing Qualifiers (MQLs) are potential leads that the marketing team identifies as purchasing a product or service based on key criteria. Many are not ready to buy yet but have expressed interest in the company. They may have registered on your site or downloaded content that is closed.

MQLs are passive leads (or outbound leads) that should be passed down the lead funnel for a bit of nurturing to see if they’re ready for a sales representative.

Sales qualified leads

A sales qualified lead (or SQL) is an active lead (or inbound lead) that has directly engaged with your company and your sales team in some capacity. They may request a demo, call your sales office, or send an email/text to express interest in a product or service.

These practices are important for B2B lead generation and should be followed. Any leads who contact you should be quickly followed up through your sales channel before you contact them. Treat your SQLs as a top priority and your sales statistics will soar.

Why is B2B lead generation important?

B2B lead generation is important for sales and marketing teams, as well as critical marketing. Without lead generation, there will be no flow of leads through the sales pipeline, no conversions, no customers, and no additional business.

In addition to serving the company, B2B customer research provides valuable information to marketers, sales representatives and (downstream) sales representatives (SDRs). Focusing on strategic planning can help your business:

• Identify ideal customers
• Provide guidance on content creation
• Build brand awareness and visibility
• Cultivate solid marketing practices and strategy
• Discover a broader addressable market
• Provide accurate, up-to-date contact info for leads
• Increase conversion rates
• Optimize your sales cadence
• Improve sales pipeline flow
• Generate higher revenues

B2B lead generation process

The lead generation process ultimately begins with the marketing pipeline; how your target audience finds you and vice versa. These channels fall into two categories: inbound and outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing platforms typically bring potential customers to the company through sources such as advertising, online advertising, or search engines. Inbound leads often have short sales and conversion rates.

Outbound marketing is done through advertising such as cold calls, emails, or social media. These leads typically require more support and interaction and have a longer sales cycle. Generating

B2B leads is always a challenge, so we’ve broken down exactly how to generate these incredible leads into three steps.

Step 1: Identify your ideal buyer

Search leads are working frantically to find contact information for specific leads, but who are the leads you want to contact?

Start by creating a buyer persona. This is the ideal customer for your service or product. What industry are they in? What’s their job title? Where do they go for information and news? Perhaps most importantly, what concerns or pain do they have that you have a solution for?

To capture the ideal buyer, try describing the following:

• Company attributes (e.g., size, location, organization structure)
• Job title and decision-making authority
• Goals
• Pain points
• Barriers to doing business
• Purchase criteria

You often need to create more than one persona, especially if your product or service targets different buyers. Once you have your ideal buyers in mind, you can begin to create customized content for each one.

Step 2: Choose strategy

Now that you have a clear idea of ​​your ideal customers, it’s time to decide how to find real ones. There’s no single one-size-fits-all solution for B2B sales leads. Instead, you can choose from a variety of tools and techniques to attract your customers (we’ve rounded up 15 of them below).

You can generate interest through search engine optimization and content marketing, paid advertising, cold calls and emails, community building, or social media. Consider using a website builder to easily publish new website pages that can capture leads and push their information directly into your CRM.

A plethora of sales enablement and lead generation software tools are available on the market. These provide tools for finding emails, cold calling, email marketing, and sales engagement. Focus on your idea of ​​the person you have created and plan to improve and update it each time.

Step 3: Qualifying and prospecting

Once you start engaging with potential customers, it’s important to measure their buying behavior. This comes from understanding where the prospect is in the buying process: information, emotion, or decision.

When it comes to awareness, potential buyers know they have a problem that needs solving. They’re possibly reading blog posts, maybe downloading a white paper, or performing web searches. They may learn about your goals for the first time.

When a buyer reaches the consideration phase, they have a clearer picture of their problem and the solution to it. They’re starting to evaluate possible products or services, but aren’t quite ready to make a purchasing decision just yet.

At the decision stage, the client has completed most of the research and is close to making a change. They can meet with vendors, book demos, and communicate with decision makers in the organization.

Depending on which phase a lead is in, you will focus your efforts differently. Creating unique content like ad campaigns or blog posts is great for buyers in the awareness stage, but it doesn’t help potential buyers make decisions. A product demo or free trial will be much more effective for those prospects.

If you feel overwhelmed with the number of leads pouring into your funnel (what a great problem to have), you can focus your efforts by assigning values to each lead. Focus on the most valuable people who are most likely to convert.

B2B lead generation strategies

MQL and SQL are great, but they don’t fall from the sky. Of course, you can generate B2B leads through traditional doorstep sales or cold calling methods, but 2022 will introduce a better way to find people. Below we have shared 15 proven B2B process improvement tools and tools that will make your sales team more effective.

1. Use consistent content to outshine your competitors

The effectiveness of your content marketing in attracting outbound people depends on their actual searches. You may rank #1 on Google when you type in the search term “super special gooey cheesy fries”, but if both your audience and your competitors focus on the search for “best fries”, Creativity – then you can ‘t.’ can never win the game.

Even if your company only sells cheese fries, invest in improving the content of fries produced overall. To make a lead magnet, write a blurb, create a video, and publish a blog, then continue finding clicks and optimize accordingly. You don’t need to have the most unique content of your competitors: just lots of clicks.

2. Run an A/B test

You don’t have to get marketing and outreach perfect on the first try. Most companies don’t. That’s where A/B tests come in. Experiment with different styles, colors, and words on your web pages and products to see what creates the best appeal.

B2B people can find the best products, but they’re also people with special (and sometimes weird) interests. Even something as simple as a button change can make a massive impact on visitor engagement—and therefore boost your B2B lead generation rates. You just need to follow the numbers and see what works.

Examples abound: in 2007, an A/B test increased the Obama campaign’s donation rate by 18.6 percent simply by changing their “Sign Up Now” button to read “Learn More.” Follow the data. It’s these small changes that make a big difference.

3. Collect buyer reviews

No matter how honest your company is, buyers will always trust other buyers before they trust you. B2B leaders also rely on finding valuable people who read buyer reviews. 95% of consumers say they read reviews before making a purchase, and 94% say they stay away from a business because of bad reviews.

Since reviews have a big impact on integration, you need to make sure they exist first. Nowadays, no review is as problematic as a bad review. Make feedback, reviews and suggestions part of the sales process.

If you have a long-term relationship with a client, they are usually happy to give you advice. Highlight these positive reviews in your marketing materials to capture new opportunities.

4. Get survey results

Many companies view surveys as a way to measure current customer satisfaction, but they are also an important tool for B2B lead generation. If your customer report is taking too long to contact a representative, you should not report the issue to customer service.

Look at other areas where communication can be improved so the prospect doesn’t have to wait. You can improve in many ways: improve the chatbot, increase email automation, or simply expand your staff. When you take good care of your company, you can solve the problems of your current and future customers.

5. Embrace case studies

In the world of B2B marketing and B2B lead generation, case studies are on the rise. Search engine data, previously relegated to the dark corners of company websites, now ranks as the third most used content in B2B sales (after email newsletters and blog posts), and tied with pre-produced short videos).

Data surveys are often conducted only in the middle and bottom of the funnel to entice buyers to complete their journey, but the truth is that B2B buyers love the hard truth. B2B sales don’t just impact one person—they’re made to benefit an entire business. So if you have cold, hard evidence, make sure people are seeing it.

6. Don’t let people escape your landing page

People are naturally drawn to interactive content. In fact, 81% of marketers believe that interactive content is more effective than static content at capturing people’s attention. So why do most landing pages look the same?

When a potential customer clicks on your landing page, you need to get them there fast. Catchy headlines, clear CTAs, and large-font statistics help, but pop-up boxes do more.

When you use a contact popup at the top of your landing page, you force your customers to engage with your content. Even if they close the pop-up, their attention will be focused on your website and not on anything else floating around them. And that’s the worst case scenario.

In the best case scenario, you can create a subscription box to capture emails from potential customers.

7. Personalize your website for your role as a B2B leader

B2B sales and marketing cannot be mutually exclusive. While mass emails and marketing automation are effective strategies, personalization is the secret sauce. B2B lead generation strategies are always evolving, and 2022 is the year of ABM (business-based marketing). With ABM, you can customize your website and marketing materials to appeal to the people or segments you believe will be most successful.

You can also code your website to key in on a visitor’s location via their IP address, which enables you to create different content for different geographical demographics.

Personalization always requires more effort, but since over 70% of B2B businesses do it, you can’t afford not to do it.

8. Learn the savvy side of social selling

Social media is not for companies targeting B2C customers. As more and more businesses enter the retail space, B2B marketers are increasingly exposed to B2B connections across multiple platforms.

You’ve probably already posted and interacted on LinkedIn (and if you haven’t, you should: 55% of people decide to use LinkedIn to review other companies). But don’t stop there. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook all have unique and similar B2B leads and engagement opportunities for your team. Making your company appealing on social media doesn’t just attract amused scrollers—it also attracts other businesses who see that you know how to market.

9. Try your hand at video content

You don’t need to be a professional editor to create video clips. Even if all you make is a video made from a different image of the work with some jazz behind it, you can still publish video content online. And that’s essential.

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet after Google. Depending on the demographics of the business you want to work for, this may be the first place they turn to.

YouTube video content can impact B2B producers in a variety of ways. YouTube is a popular platform that offers detailed information and analysis of videos of different products provided by individual users. However, you can still see detailed product videos and trainings prepared by competitors. If your video content isn’t consistent, you’re falling behind.

Let’s say a person is interested in accounting software, but needs to make sure online training is available. If they search on Google they get mixed results, but if they search on YouTube companies that provide video tutorials are significant. No matter what platform your potential customers are on, video can get you to the top of search results.

10. Optimize B2B lead generation through SEO

You’ve probably already thought about SEO for long-form articles, but did you know you can improve your company’s content? From your website to your press releases, SEO lets your company cut to the front of the line.

If you’re having trouble finding a good SEO angle, look at your competitors’ pages and see what keywords they’re returning. You can also re-examine your target audience and try tailoring your SEO to their specific interests.

For example, if we are reviewing accounting software, one of your demographics might be small businesses. Creating content with a specific audience in mind can help you identify more SEO questions and keywords to focus on when implementing your B2B lead generation strategy.

11. Get B2B leads to click the subscribe button

Having a click button on your website is a good start, but you need resources to click it. One of the easiest ways to increase your subscription is to add incentives. Many B2C websites use this discount system, but B2B companies looking to leverage their B2B resources can also try offering anything from free consulting to additional promotion. These lead magnet strategies translate well to the B2B world.

Remember, your registration button is used to write emails, so entering into the contract is final. It’s unlikely you’ll get the actual request, but if you do, that’s a good thing. Product satisfaction means qualified inbound leads. Embrace it.

12. Make sure all your content is optimized for mobile viewing

A staggering 40% of customers will switch to a competitor’s website after a bad experience over the phone. This should be enough motivation to optimize your content for mobile viewing, but here are a few more numbers to motivate you:

That last statistic is especially important. If customers are looking at which companies are willing to optimize for mobile and only 35% of them are optimized, that means your company has a wide window to make an impact on traffic and B2B lead generation.

13. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice

If you do good things and build good relationships with your customers, a decent number should fall into your lap. Just like analytics, your vision cares about what other people think. A full 92 percent of consumers trust referrals from friends. Not only that, but customers referred by a friend have a 16 percent higher lifetime value than non-referred ones.

But only 11% of sales professionals ask for recommendations. This complaint can affect the quality and frequency of your leads. When you offer a good product or service, you will have more or more interesting customers, so don’t hesitate to reach out to them. Make your request specific and personal and provide more details so it can be sent to the appropriate contact person. If they are interested in your service, they will join.

14. Invite guests to help with your marketing materials

Nothing differentiates your company like professional references. If there are big names in your field or target audience willing to lend their names to your content marketing, take advantage of the potential to create offers.

Expert visitors add credibility to your product and brand. They also make you far more searchable. Anyone looking for an expert in your target audience will find you based on expert advice. This is the B2B equivalent of the social media effect.

15. Organize times for dedicated lead gathering

One of the biggest traps with B2B lead generation is that companies think they have to do it year-round. Your company should always be advertising, but not every day needs to be dedicated to B2B lead gathering. Some days are better than others for your sales team to reach customers.

If managers are mostly open on Wednesdays and Thursdays, put those days on sale. You can also look at B2B ideas created on the other three days of the week when your sales team doesn’t have other commitments to focus on.

If you are not sure when your best sales days are, you can use sales during low business hours until sales reset.

How can you do better B2B lead generation than your competitors?

The best way to stay ahead of your competitors is to use fast B2B processes and the best CRM strategy. Zendesk offers unique software packages through different software sales through the Zendesk Sales Rewards program.

Zendesk Sales includes our most advanced CRM software with many features including:

Generating leads is only half the battle. Once you find it, you will need to create smart distribution strategies and adjust your sales and marketing strategies to convert these prospects into actual customers. Zendesk is the powerful all-in-one tool that allows you to do all of that, while giving you all the benefits of pipeline software: speed, efficiency, and a clear trajectory. Request a demo and experience how Zendesk’s game-changing software for sales can revitalize your B2B lead generation strategies today.