You might know the basics of lead generation, but how do you get the practice up to scratch? With the advent of social media and other online marketing endeavors, lead generation has reached its most advanced level ever. As a business owner, it is important that you learn about b2b lead generation strategies 2021.
Lead generation is all about driving your prospects towards making a purchase, whether it be to purchase a product immediately or signing up for your newsletter, downloading an Ebook, etc. Lead generation is about getting your prospects to take action. While there are different types of lead generation that can get you new leads, the purpose of this article is to discuss how the B2B companies can generate more B2B leads.
Do you know how to generate B2B leads for your business? The last thing you want is to spend all this money into advertising and not gain the amount of return you expected. So, is there a better way to generate more leads without paying a high cost? Of course there is! Here are some b2b lead generation tips that will help increase the amount of potential clients reaching out to you.
Business to business (B2B) lead generation is, in my opinion, the best use of your time and money if you want to generate sales leads. This is especially true if you are starting a new business or are looking to replace your existing lead generation methods with something better. If you do not know how to generate B2B leads effectively, read on past the intro or skip all the way down to the B2B lead generation strategies section. The rest of this article should be an interesting read, though!
The B2B lead generation process
Learning how to get leads is just one part of the process.
If you’re serious about increasing sales, you’ll need an intense lead generation process. Processes align marketing and sales teams and give reps a proven framework to follow.
We know that B2B lead generation describes the process used by sales/marketing teams to turn prospects into paying customers. But what do these steps entail? 
Step 1: Find B2B leads
The first step in most B2B lead generation strategies is finding the contact information of potential buyers. (Luckily, that’s what we’re covering 😏)
Contact information is often sourced in-house, generated by a third-party “lead gen” company, or bought from a lead database (not advisable for B2B lead generation).
Step 2: Reaching out to leads
With a list of (hopefully) high-quality leads, reps reach out to leads through cold outreach, social media, or by replying to inquiries.
Step 3: Qualifying & prospecting high-quality leads
While interacting with leads, reps measure how likely leads are to buy.
They’ll do this by gauging the stage leads are at during the buying process. These stages include: 
1. Research & awareness: The customer is aware of a solution they need or problem they face, and they begin to learn more about it.
The awareness stage is where they’ll consume content like blogs, whitepapers, and case studies.
2. Consideration: The lead knows the exact service/product that’s needed. They’ll detail their specific needs before researching and “opening up” to vendors.
3. Decision: Filtering through vendors that best suit their needs, the buyer will have multiple meetings and check-in with other decision-makers to complete a purchase.
Depending on what stage a lead is at, reps will initiate nurturing campaigns or focus on getting the prospect to book a call or demo.
Step 4: Close leads by making a sale
Success! After multiple meetings with different vendors, the prospect picks you, and the deal is done. They’ll now be transferred to customer success for onboarding. Woot!
B2B lead generation strategies that actually work
The best way to generate more sales is to tailor your strategy around your industry, product, and buyer.
This is why I can’t give you just one or two B2B lead generation strategies and call it a day.
Your sales and marketing teams must be willing to experiment, learn, and implement new ways to get B2B leads. This means testing multiple strategies until you find what works.
Ready to try something new? Here are 19 B2B lead generation strategies to test.
1. Run A/B tests on key pages
With thousands of visitors browsing their site for office wallpapers, WallMonkeys used a heat map tool to see where visitors’ eyes landed first on their website. After receiving the results, the WallMonkey team was confident that they could increase B2B sales leads by tweaking their homepage.
Putting their theory to the test, they split tested a new background image and search bar and boosted conversions by 550 percent. Not too shabby.
When WorkZone, a project management software, changed their testimonial bar from black to white, they got 34 percent more sign-ups on their submission form.
Here’s the control: 
Here’s the variation they tested: 
Not a huge change, but changing the colors to black and white (vs color) made a huge difference in leads.
Will changing your landing page image increase conversions?
Will a homepage redesign convert more visitors into leads?
A/B split testing is the only way to find out.
2. Use epic content campaigns to (continuously) generate leads
With less than 100 monthly searches for its target keyword, Snack Nation, an office snack supplier, struggled to increase B2B leads through its SEO efforts.
Going after a bigger audience that would include their ideal B2B leads, they created an epic post on “employee wellness” — a broader search term that their target buyers use.
While producing the post, they took extra care to ensure that it was actually “epic” enough to generate leads.
Results of the “employee wellness” post:
- Snack Nation outdid competitors by featuring 121 ideas on “employee wellness.”
- They included a large number of contributions from other authorities in the industry.
- They also utilized an aggressive outreach strategy to get influencers to share their posts.
The post propelled Snack Nation to the # 1 spot on Google for their keyword.
Despite being over three years old, this post generates tons of traffic and leads for them to this day. 
As Snack Nation’s story shows, evergreen content can lead to evergreen B2B lead generation.
So if you can create content that outperforms your competitors, do it.
3. Earn your buyers’ trust with social proof
Social proof is a powerful part of most B2B lead generation strategies.
Because buyers may doubt claims about your product/service, they’ll look for social proof to make a more thoughtful purchasing decision.
The more social proof you can gather on your site, the easier it is to build trust and increase sales.
Consider adding social proof to your landing pages and homepage, sharing reviews on social media, and creating case studies — collecting positive reviews on G2 Crowd is another excellent way to build trust.
4. Build a free tool to generate leads
HubSpot offers a free CRM.
Crazy Egg gives a free Heatmap tool.
Ubersuggest offers free SEO analytics reports.
Notice a pattern?
For SaaS and tech companies, one of the best B2B lead generation strategies I’ve witnessed is a free tool.
Offering a free tool works for B2B lead generation because:
- It allows leads to “try before they buy.”
- It gives you a solid opt-in offer that attracts high-quality leads into your sales funnel.
In our early days, we used this exact tactic at Leadfeeder to get users to find and refer leads to us. It’s worked so well that we still offer free trials today!
5. Use Quora Q&As to generate more B2B leads
Using content to educate buyers and answer burning questions is nothing new.
The challenge that most B2B marketers face is:
- Getting content in front of buyers.
- And finding questions that buyers are asking.
Quora solves both of these problems.
As a social Q&A site, Quora is an underestimated platform for B2B lead generation. 
Writer Nicolas Cole, for example, built a loyal following and a solid reputation on Quora by answering questions with detailed and occasionally personal answers.
Thanks to his answers on Quora, he skyrocketed the growth of his 7-figure content agency, Digital Press, within a few years.
Find your buyers on Quora, answer their questions, link back to your content, and profit.
6. Use Leadfeeder to power up B2B social sales
AlertOps was struggling to identify the company visiting their website. They knew that “warm” leads were leaving without giving contact information.
Integrating Leadfeeder into their sales process helped them identify which companies visited their site — even if they didn’t download a lead magnet or fill out a form.
Within a month, they boosted their sales demo rates by 700 percent. They even landed a sales demo with a Fortune 500 company. 💪🏼
“Leadfeeder plays a huge role in the [sales] system we built to qualify sales leads and schedule demo calls,” says Nathan Rofkahr, Director of Growth for AlertOps.
To improve your social sales, pair Leadfeeder with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
You can start following or retarget cold visitors as warm connections on LinkedIn and personalize your approach.
And if these visitors return to your site, Leadfeeder will let you know they’re from LinkedIn.
7. Publish and promote more case studies
B2B buyers are highly analytical, risk-averse, and often need the approval of multiple ROI-minded decision-makers before purchasing.
And — as many buyers have admitted — this makes case studies actual sales enablement content for the middle-to-end stages of the lead generation process.
Don’t just let case studies sit idle on your website. Shamelessly promote them to skyrocket your credibility.
8. Publish original research to generate sales from savvy buyers
When High-Speed Training published an in-depth report for buyers in the hospitality industry, they saw massive ROI.
Not only did the report position them as the leader in their field, but it also boosted their site’s visibility and earned coverage from 38 different media outlets.
On average, B2B buyers encounter 13 content pieces before purchasing. Content includes information on a vendor’s website, in-depth reports, and third-party reviews.
You can use this reverence for data to radically transform your inbound lead generation. How?
Become a source for industry-related information, trends, and data. Thought-leadership will help you:
- Become a respected authority in your industry.
- Generate strong SEO backlinks and PR coverage.
- Deliver value to your potential leads.
9. Generate quick wins from landing page tweaks
Everybody loves ripe, low-hanging fruit.
When it comes to increasing B2B sales, your landing pages — the most transformative points in the buyer journey — are bountiful trees to source fruit.
Get quick B2B lead generation wins on your landing page by following these steps:
- Back up your copy with social proof (say it louder for the people in the back 📢).
- Make your call-to-action (CTA) copy more relevant.
- Upgrade your headline to catch the attention of buyers.
- Use a live chat feature on your page to educate and overcome objections.
10. Personalize your website with dynamic web pages
Website personalization is no longer a bonus in B2B lead generation strategies. It’s a must.
To personalize the buying experience on your site, use dynamic pages and content that adapt to your visitor’s:
- Name
- Location
- Industry
- Company
ABM efforts add an intimate touch to the buyer’s journey that creates a powerfully personal experience.
11. Create hard-hitting lead magnets and incentives
Lead magnets are the bread to your B2B lead generating butter.
Richard Wood, Managing Director at Six & Flow, describes it as, “A lead magnet is anything that you can offer a prospect that has enough perceived value in exchange for their contact information, like an email address. If you want to create an effective lead magnet, you need to focus on your buyer personas and a specific challenge that they have and that you can address.”
But most companies get the whole lead magnet thing wrong. They offer surface-level content that’s already available on a typical blog post. That’s not really “magnetic,” is it?
Don’t make the same mistake.
Unless you’re confident it’s valuable, scrap the high-level content and instead share your detailed, real-world experience in the format of:
- In-depth guides
- Comprehensive how-tos
- Detailed case studies
- Resource libraries
- Workbooks or checklists
- Templates
12. Cater to a visual B2B audience with in-depth YouTube videos
If you aren’t using videos in your lead generation campaigns, here are two reasons why you should:
- Ninety percent of marketers agree that video is the best way to repurpose B2B content.
- YouTube is also the second-largest search engine on the web.
The math is both easy and appealing:
You don’t need blockbuster videos. You can simply turn your existing content into informative videos that generate leads, just like I did with the example below. https://www.youtube.com/embed/DveKBq4F7IM?rel=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://www.leadfeeder.com
We wrote a guide on selling with video, which prompted the panel discussion — who doesn’t love a theme?
“As humans, we are all drawn to video because of the connections that video allows us to make with buyers. And when we can do that we win more business.”
– Robert Weiss, President at MultiVision Digital
13. Experiment with creative outreach
Ash Amibirge, a copywriter at The Middle Finger Project, got a 100 percent response rate by mailing physical roofing shingles to her prospects.
Sales rep Jeremy Leveille rapped a B2B song in his emails to get replies from his leads. 
With your competitors sticking to boring email scripts, a little bit of creativity in your outreach will go a long way to generate B2B leads.
14. Target high-value leads on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the place to be for “big deal,” high-value B2B lead generation. Advertising on the platform:
- Templafy generated 25 marketing qualified leads in a week with a 475 percent ROI.
- Reed Exhibitions generated 20 percent of all revenue for its SNSR risk and security expo.
- Mismatch grew its pipeline of suppliers 10x for its engineering materials platform.
While competition is rife and cost-per-click is higher than other platforms, the tradeoff is the ability to hyper-target your audience.
If you’re going to advertise on LinkedIn, make sure you offer:
- A premium B2B product or service. Larger lifetime value (LTV) usually allows for the large budget you need to play on LinkedIn
- Unique, high-level education. LinkedIn members are known for being career and skill-minded. If you’re offering content that will help them, you’re likely to see better returns from your ads.
15. Experiment with alternative social media platforms
Robin, a workplace platform, took a risk by directing their lead generation towards platforms where B2B leads are tougher to find — and it paid off.
Instead of doubling down on conventional channels like LinkedIn or Twitter, they posted user-generated content on Instagram and Pinterest.
To Robin’s surprise, it paid off. The company’s web traffic increased by 50 percent and brought 20 percent more leads to their door.
As Robin’s story shows, even if you’re B2B, that doesn’t mean you can’t generate sales from B2C social channels.
Don’t be afraid to test out new platforms like TikTok, Clubhouse, and Vero. By getting there first, you might just find a diamond in the rough.
16. Cast a wider B2B lead generation “net” with guest posts
There’s a reason why Inbound lead generation pros like Hubspot still use guest posting to increase B2B sales:
It’s an underused (and misunderstood) strategy that works.
According to a survey by Aira, 42 percent of digital marketers they polled use guest posting: 
Even though it has a controversial past, guest posting is still the number one link-building strategy SEOs recommend. 
As a way to enhance your overall SEO, and present you as an authority to a fresh audience of new B2B leads, guest posting is far from “dead.”
17. Cater to new B2B buyers on mobile
As mobile traffic continues to grow, optimizing for mobile is becoming an increasingly important part of an effective B2B lead generation strategy.
According to DemandGenReport:
- 91% of B2B buyer searches occur on a mobile device.
- 74% of B2B buyers research half or more of their purchases online before making a decision.
They also found that B2B marketers already optimizing for mobile are experiencing “reduced purchasing time and higher customer loyalty.”
Given that it takes seconds to check your site’s compatibility with mobile devices, there’s no excuse for not being mobile-friendly.
18. Optimize for long-tail keywords to get more qualified leads
A long-tail keyword is three or more words long and is very specific. And yes, it usually gets a very low search volume.
But target the right long-tail keyword, and you trade off search volume for extremely high purchase intent that increases sales with very little SEO effort.
19. Run campaigns based on competitor keywords
If you’re Nike, one of your many strategies might be to check out what’s going on behind the scenes with Adidas. The screenshot below shows an overview of the adidas.com/us domain, but Nike would also click around in their organic and paid keywords.
If your competitors flock to certain sites for backlinks or seem to favor optimizing a noticeable group of keywords, that’s a pretty big deal.
It means they’ve found winning keywords that generate leads.
Using SEO research tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush, you can take advantage of this by targeting the same sites and keywords to drive more sales-ready traffic to your site.
A quick tip: Before you spend time and money optimizing for a particular keyword, run a small paid ads campaign to see if it actually attracts and converts your ideal B2B leads.
B2B lead generation tools to get more leads
As any sales rep will tell you, the more time you can devote to making sales, the more sales you’ll make. Shocking revelation, we know.
Unfortunately, reps usually find themselves sinking in a quicksand of increasingly time-consuming manual tasks.
In fact, research shows that they only spend a third of their day making sales.
Emails, prospecting leads, data entry, and meetings eat up most of their working hours.
With the right B2B lead generation tool, reps can automate manual tasks and spend more time closing leads.
While there are a ton of sales tools on the market, listed below are the bare-bones essentials to beef up the entire B2B lead generation process:
Lead generation tool #1: Leadfeeder
Leadfeeder shows you what companies visit your website, even if they never interact with your page, or contact you.
The tracking information is enriched with the contact info of employees from the visiting company. You can follow up with buyers during the research phase, kickstart social selling campaigns, or time your outreach perfectly — all with behind-the-scenes insight that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
Lead generation tool #2: Hubspot Sales Hub
From email templates, follow-up automation, and scheduling, to automated data entry, Sales Hub is designed with salesforce productivity in mind.
Lead generation tool #3: Reply.io
Reply.io helps you find prospect emails on LinkedIn in a few seconds. You can also automate LinkedIn email searches, personal email outreach, calls, and tasks.
Lead generation tool #4: Hunter.io
Hunter.io lets you find emails by typing in a lead’s name and the company they work at. You can also browse all emails at a specific company. The first 100 email searches are free.
Lead generation tool #5: Bombora
Bombara analyzes content consumption by millions of companies to show the topics your leads are searching for.
It’s a great lead generation tool to help you catch B2B leads during their research phase.
I’ll repeat: This is a bare-bones list that will help you increase B2B leads, regardless of the B2B lead generation strategy or tactics you use. Check out this lead generation tools post for advanced recommendations.
The explosion of content addressing consumer concerns at every step of the buyer’s journey has developed increasingly educated consumers. Additionally, advancing technology has heightened consumer expectations for customer experience.
In fact, a study by Walker Information, projected that customer experience has surpassed price and product as the key brand differentiator.
Some B2B brands are getting better at converting their prospects while others are stuck in their old ways, perhaps unsure how to spice things up.
But 61% percent of businesses say that lead generation is their biggest marketing challenge.
B2b Lead Strategies
There are many free lead capturing tactics out there, but few will help you maximize your ROI. Here are effective B2B lead generation strategies that will play up your game.
1. Create High-Quality, Evergreen Content
Content is the currency of the web nowadays, so you should regularly publish content. This not only helps your credibility as an expert, but it also increases your reach and exposure. But don’t create content for content’s sake. You want your content to provide value to your audience, not just sit there and make your brand look pretty.
When you publish valuable content that informs, educates, and entertains your target audience, you earn their loyalty. It’s easier to convert leads once you’ve gained their trust.
Also important is the frequency of your publishing. Publishing quality blog posts more often shows your target audience your commitment to go to great lengths to provide them with valuable content that addresses their concerns.
According to a study by Hubspot, companies that publish 16 or more blog posts per month generate 4.5 times more leads than those who publish only 0-4 posts per month. The study further revealed that 47% of B2B buyers rely on content for research and making purchasing decisions.
More significantly, B2B buyers consume at least three to five pieces of related content before contacting a sales person. Leverage this information by producing more content more frequently so you can cater to your audience’s information demands.
Lastly, while moment marketing is a great way to stay relevant or go viral for a certain duration, coming up with evergreen topics in your niche is a sure way to get noticed no matter what stage your potential clients are in the sales funnel.
Evergreen content works hand in hand with your SEO strategy, allowing you to stay fresh on search engines. Evergreen content is helpful, informative, and shareable—all the things people love about high-quality content. Plus, it never goes out of style.
2. Gate Your Content Strategically
Not every marketer is confident whether or not they should gate their content. However, this is still one of the most effective ways to attract and identify leads who care about your business.
When done right, gated content can increase leads and conversions. Case in point: Finance and trade website Trading Strategy Guides added almost 11,000 targeted subscribers to their email list in just one month by using a content locking script. Unbounce’s gated content stats reveal more campaigns with conversion rates that fall between 19-45%.
Putting out gated content is wise if you’ve already built a library of content that you are sure your audience is enjoying. This way, loyal readers won’t be apprehensive in giving you their names and email addresses to read what you wrote.
3. Offer Content in Exchange for Email or Personal Information
Make use of content offers that require contact details for users to access them. This will help you to quickly grow your contact list and kick-off the lead generation process. Provide various resources such as eBooks, guides, whitepapers, checklists, tutorials, tools and anything else you can produce that gives value to your audience members.
Other opt-in offers like newsletters and webinars should also be utilized if possible. Whatever you choose to produce, make sure that it’s actually useful in the form of education, problem solving or entertainment.
You’re going to need to use forms if you want to capture your visitors’ contact information. The best practice is to minimize the number of required fields and only ask for the information that your sales team really needs.
If your form is too demanding, you’ll be scaring off potential leads on a regular basis.
4. Personalize More Touch Points
One-size-fits-all marketing is dead. Users are now craving for that human touch that allows them to cultivate deeper connection and more meaningful relationships with brands.
In a SalesForce survey of 7,000 consumers, 57% of the respondents said they are willing to share their data in exchange for personalized offers, 53% for personalized product recommendations, and 52% for customized shopping experiences.
So personalize your content marketing efforts. No need to use first names or stalk people across the web. But use your audience’s content consumption behavior to present personalized content.
5. Personalize Social Media Interactions & Build Communities
Social media is no longer just an extra channel of publishing or promoting your content. Social media is good for business.
This is your chance to engage with your audience. The average person has 7.6 active social media accounts and spends more than 2 hours a day on them. Take advantage of this.
Be active and consistent across the platforms you choose to operate on. It’s recommended that you choose at least 3 or 4 different social media channels to promote your brand. The ones you choose should depend on who your target market is and where they tend to hang out.
You can start a Facebook group where you can have regular discussions on pressing issues relevant in your industry. Use hashtags on Twitter and Instagram to connect with like-minded individuals or specific causes or topics.
LinkedIn Marketing is so important as this social network is clearly the leading platform to communicate with B2B prospects and tell them more about your brand. It has impressive traction as a B2B lead generation network. In fact, more than 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn—a tell-tale sign that CXOs need to expand their social media.
With every other marketer reaching out on social media channels, merely connecting to prospective customers is not enough. To reinforce the “humans” behind your brand, be sure to send personalized connection requests and messages to cut through the noise of spam and irrelevant marketing. Best results come from being an active member of your community.
6. Optimize Your Landing Pages and CTA
Did you know that a lot of landing pages contain more than one offer? If yours falls into this category, it’s time to rethink your lead conversion strategy. Marketing Experiments found that multiple offers in one page can decrease conversion rates by up to 266%.
Optimizing your landing pages for lead generation means addressing SEO best practices, focusing your content on the value of your offering, optimizing your signup form for engagement and implementing a customer testimonial campaign.
These strategies will make your offer more compelling to your visitors and increase the likelihood of conversions.
Focus on a single goal for each landing page and be clear with your messaging in your Call-To-Action (CTA) to reduce distractions. Your primary goal is to convert your visitors into leads, so make sure your landing pages and CTAs are convincing. Make it an engaging, straightforward, and natural experience for them to type in their information on your forms.
Your CTA buttons can make a big difference as to whether or not someone clicks through to your landing page. Make sure you have the right colors, shapes, sizes, positioning and any other attribute that affects how users see your buttons. A/B test your CTA buttons to determine which combinations work best to improve your conversion rates.
7. Record the Actions of Your Website Visitors
An excellent way to diagnose why your website visitors aren’t converting is through analyzing their actions on your website. Tools like Hotjar or Mouseflow can allow you to record user sessions and plot heatmaps on most-clicked buttons on your site.
Many Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) experts swear by this step and maintain that it’s one of the fastest ways you can uncover the “whys” in your process:
- Why are they not converting?
- Why are they not filling up my forms?
- Why do they like this webpage so much?
From here, you can rectify a situation or apply more of the same strategy to your other pages. This is helpful for A/B testing as well.
8. Encourage Online Reviews
A study by RevLocal found that 92% of consumers read online reviews when considering a product or service.
If your website doesn’t have a testimonials page or a reviews feature, it could be hurting your chances to get contacted. Create opportunities for your clients and customers to add a review and post it on your website.
Reviews build consumer trust, improve your local search ranking, and ultimately improve conversions. The RevLocal study also found that consumers are likely to spend 31% more on businesses with stellar reviews.
9. Expand Your Online Presence
The persona of your brand is not limited to your website and social channels only.
Branch out and appear on other sites to grow your credibility, such as guest blogging, getting interviewed, or answering questions on Quora.com or other industry-specific Q&A sites or forums.
This is a great way to build authority for your personal brand and put your business name in front of those seeking relevant solutions to their problems.
Quora alone can help you gain thousands of leads if you answer the relevant questions in your industry. Developing your brand as a thought leader can increase brand awareness and also help first-time learners about your brand build trust faster.
10. Use Gmail Ads to Target Your Competitors’ Audience
Email is still the most popular lead generation channel—77% of B2B marketers use email marketing to drive leads, according to SuperOffice’s State of B2B Email Marketing report.
In B2B, there is a lot of value at drawing the attention of your competition’s customers. Gmail ads allow you to target your Google Ads campaign to people who have received emails from your competitor. Sounds sneaky? It is, but it’s effective. It gives you direct access to people who are already familiar with the nature of your service.
Use this opportunity to show what sets you apart from the competitor. Use familiar language, optimize your email marketing layout, and give them an offer they can’t refuse.
11. Ramp Up Your Video Marketing
Video marketing presents a promising opportunity to reach your target audience. More than 75% of Fortune 500 executives view video content regularly and around two-thirds of that number visit the vendor’s website, as per a Forbes study titled Video In The C-Suite. So, it’s safe to say that video is a highly-effective way to attract leads.
Indeed, video content has been known to be a major driver in purchasing behavior. Animoto’s State of Social Video study found that 64% of consumers make a purchase after watching branded social video content. What’s more, a video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more, according to data from Adelie Studios.
HubSpot’s State of Inbound Report also found that 48% of marketers are already planning to include YouTube in their content strategy in the coming years. Don’t lag behind the competition. Get your camera rolling!
12. Automate Social Media Sharing
Give your digital footprint a boost by promoting your content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other social platform used by your target market.
However, most marketers have too much on their plates to prioritize social networking. Thankfully, there are numerous tools and apps for automating social media or scheduling posts, shares, likes, tweets, and any other social engagement you can think of.
I use Hootsuite, but Sprout Social and Buffer are also highly recommended by marketers, as they not only automate sharing but also provide analytics to make sure that you’re sharing content optimally.
13. Attend Offline Events
It’s not enough to just be visible online. Your clients see you on the web, but do they physically see your brand anywhere else?
Attending offline events such as digital marketing conferences and trade shows can help you generate leads from other areas of interest.
Some businesses, especially the older and larger companies, do not rely on the web for networking with partners and customers. They like putting a face on the name, and they want someone they can trust.
14. Optimize Your Website for Mobile
B2B online queries are noticeably shifting from personal computers to smartphones. Indeed, Google’s research confirms that 50% of B2B queries are made on mobile phones.
This number is expected to reach 70% by 2020 as we take into account the entry of more B2B employees from the “digital generation” (Millennials and Gen Z), and the increasing use of smartphones by older generations.
Additionally, a recent BGC report on B2B buyers’ usage reveals that 60% B2B buyers admit that mobile played a significant role in a recent purchase. Specifically, mobile can accelerate time to purchase by 20% by increasing efficiency in decision making and enhancing team collaboration. BGC further reports that 42% of the average share of total revenues are contributed and influenced by mobile.
The questions you need to be asking yourself are:
- Is AMP implemented on my website?
- Are all my web pages responsive? Do they pass the Google Mobile-Friendly test?
- Is the content of my website optimized for mobile-first indexing?
- Am I maximizing engagement with micro-interactions?
Optimizing your website for smartphones is not only beneficial to your B2B marketing goals but also help your buyers make business decisions efficiently. You need to factor mobile into an omnichannel customer journey and finding new and improved ways to reach and engage your audience.
15. Turn Up Your Retargeting
Prospects usually browse several websites and comb through dozens of articles to guide their purchase decisions. Only 2% of buyers make a purchase on the first visit. Retargeting aims to reel back the 98% and give them a nudge towards your brand.
Retargeting is still underutilized by B2B marketers, but it is catching on. About 70% of marketers allocate 10% or more of their budgets to retargeting. So, if you haven’t already, start retargeting your website visitors now and increase the chances that they choose your brand over your competitors by 70%.
You might consider putting up ads that show varieties of content (soft sell vs. hard sell). Prospects who aren’t ready to make a purchase might be convinced to buy if your brand is continually visible to them.
16. Maximize Marketing Automation
Marketing automation tools are the marriage of email marketing tools and CRM. Marketing automation software connects with your CRM to automatically send highly targeted and personalized marketing emails to leads. This tactic ensures that you put relevant and timely content in front of the right prospects.
Thomson Reuters testifies that their revenue increased by 172% when they adopted a marketing automation solution. Nearly a third of marketers attest that email is their most effective lead generation tactic. In itself, email marketing is already acing it, and it has been for quite some time.
Integrate the functionalities of CRM, and you’ll see why B2B marketers rank marketing automation as one of the best ways to generate better and more qualified leads.
17. Engage Prospects with AI Chat Bots
Chatbots are artificially intelligent messaging-based bots that can autonomously engage your website visitors and automate business transactions. AI processes text or speech input by your prospect or customer and sends an appropriate response.
Adopting chatbots sends a strong message to your prospects such that you want them to have a seamless interaction. Additionally, integrating AI into your lead generation strategy creates new avenues for process efficiency and optimization. Minimizing your dependency on human customer support and lead generation will also inherently reduce operational costs.
18. A/B Test Your Paid Campaigns
A/B testing with paid campaigns makes sure that you’re employing strategies and channeling money into what works. The beauty of A/B testing is its ability to quantify the value of each strategic tweak to your lead generation campaign, so you know exactly how well each experiment performs.
You don’t want to cast your net blindly, so keep testing new strategies and ideas to figure out which you need to stop, and more importantly, which you need to scale.
19. Harness the Power of Micro-Influencers
Influencer marketing is as strong as ever, but in 2018, we’re seeing a shift towards brands making use of lesser-known influencers (people with authority in smaller niches). These guys might have fewer followers, but their relative level of influence remains the same.
The industry is getting saturated, and major influencers are getting bombarded with requests. Not only does this make popular influencers very expensive, it also makes them extremely picky about who they work with.
The best solution to this is for brands to leverage micro-influencers. These micro-influencers are relatively untapped despite their huge potential for reaching new audiences effectively. What’s more, they tend to cost less and aren’t sick and tired of unsolicited approaches from other brands.
20. Analyze Your Data
Improve your market research, data gathering methods, and analytics to determine who your ideal audience is, where your prospects are coming from, which channel is generating the most leads, and which leads are more likely to convert into sales.
Data analytics can also help you determine behavioral changes in your buyer personas so you can adjust your drip strategies accordingly. Analyze constantly! Metrics and numbers don’t lie. Identify significant trends and learn from them.
At a minimum, you should be collecting data using Google Analytics, but if you’ve got the resources, it’s worth investing in a CRM tool that fits your specific needs.
21. Profile Your Target Audience
User behavior evolves just as quickly as innovations in technology. It’s important to study your target audience and create effective buyer personas to better understand users’ pain points, challenges, goals, and buying behavior.
If last year, you were able to provide their needs and wants, then maybe this year you can focus on another challenge they may be facing.
Think about something you can address with an innovative product or content offer. Remember that your buyer persona will shape your content marketing strategy and that this is where it all begins.
22. Work Closely with Your Sales Team
Your sales personnel are the ones who interact with your clients, so it’s important to get their qualitative feedback so you can combine it with your quantitative data.
You can also get a clearer picture of who your buyer persona is from your sales team.
Sales and marketing have always worked hand in hand to achieve the best results. Proper sales and marketing alignment usually results in higher conversion rates, better performance from both departments, and a more functional working environment altogether.
23. Stay on Top of Google
Is your website on the first page of Google? More than 90% of users don’t go beyond the first page of SERPs. This is why the first page is a much-coveted spot. SEO today is all about relevance and authority, and that’s how you should address your brand’s online assets.
Also keep in mind that ranking well isn’t just about the traffic. Getting your business on that first page also says a lot about your company, as it establishes you as an authority in your niche.
Conclusion
Lead generation is one of the most important parts of your business, and it is what every company needs. For lead generation to be effective, you will need to use some strategies that can help you source quality leads that eventually become clients for your firm.
B2B Lead Generation Strategies: If you work in a field where there is an opportunity to buy lead lists and send out “bulk” emails, you may be wondering just how effective that contact information is. Is it worth the money? Will it really make a difference in closing deals? The answer to that question: Yes. It will absolutely make a difference. Just know when your marketing automation company is emailing these contacts, they’re still going to likely be getting bounced back as undeliverable (or worse, ending up in the recipient’s spam folder).