To convert potential customers into paying customers and effectively boost lead generation efforts, your marketing and sales teams must collaborate closely. It's crucial that they work together to identify decision-makers who are interested in your content or offerings when selling to other businesses.
The role of leads in B2B marketing strategy
A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is someone who has demonstrated interest in your product or service offering as a result of your marketing endeavours, or is likely to become a customer for other reasons. If your marketing team can identify leads like this, they are then in a position to nurture leads with advice, proactive engagement, and valuable content as they make their way along the buyer's journey.
· Check out the following articles to learn more about lead generation:
- B2B lead generation guide: how to get more leads
- The Best Beginner's Guide to SaaS Lead Generation Today
- ABM Lead Generation: How to Reel in High-Value Prospects
At a certain point in this lead nurturing process, potential customers may transition to become a sales qualified lead, or SQL. Such leads are in a position where direct contact with your sales team can push them through the sales funnel to become paying customers.
Having leads to interact with in this manner is the ideal for B2B companies. So putting measures in place to actively generate leads is a winning strategy for B2B. In this article, we’ll look at six effective lead generation campaign strategies that can keep your sales and marketing teams furnished with a continuing supply of high quality leads.
[Image source: REVE Chat]
1. Identify your target audience
Thoroughly researching your target market helps identify potential customers' decision makers and create accurate buyer personas. By incorporating effective lead generation tools and compelling lead magnets into your strategy, you can map out each persona's buyer journey to create successful landing pages, engaging social media posts, captivating video content, and other materials. This approach will help you effectively engage prospects and generate sales qualified leads.
2. Use search engine optimization (SEO) for your lead generation strategy
B2B buying processes typically start with via search engines – and the majority of searches usually end on the first page of results.
Positioning your brand for B2B lead generation success therefore depends to a large extent on associating your offering with high ranking keywords that speak to the needs and pain points of your target audience.
3. Optimise your content marketing efforts to generate leads
Effective content creation attracts potential customers at a low cost, positions B2B companies as trusted advisers and thought leaders, and provides high exposure to potential leads. This valuable exposure plays a critical role in the sales process of B2B companies, according to research conducted by First Page Sage.
For lead generation or “lead gen” purposes, B2B content output needs to be both immediately relevant to the consumer, and of very high quality. Some lead generation tips:
- Offer free content such as eBooks, training courses, and webinars, in exchange for key contact information.
- Use a mix of fresh and evergreen content in your blog posts, social media output, and other publications.
- Include a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or Question & Answer (Q & A) section on your website, to provide answers for issues relating to your industry.
- If you distribute an email newsletter, use it to provide industry insights and insider tips that readers can’t find elsewhere.
- Use video content and infographics to encourage sharing on social media.
- Optimise your website and content for consumption on mobile.
4. Use social media strategically
To boost your lead generation, it's crucial to ensure your social marketing incorporates effective lead generation strategies while striking a balance between creating well-crafted content and actively engaging with potential customers. By posting video content and thought leadership pieces on platforms like LinkedIn, you can establish your brand as a trusted resource for lead-generation campaigns on social media. This approach not only benefits your sales teams but also ensures a more successful lead generation strategy.
Engaging in active discussions with social media users and encouraging social proof from paying customers (in the form of reviews, referrals, etc.) can boost your social media profile, and help generate leads.
5. Use marketing automation
With marketing automation software, you can configure your customer relationship management (CRM) system to automatically send highly targeted and personalised marketing emails to help generate leads, and nurture existing ones. For instance, you could automate lead nurturing emails for new sign-ups, or discount offers to paying customers who are showing signs of cooling off.
6. Partner with a specialist B2B marketing agency to generate qualified leads
A significant observation thrown up by the First Page Sage research is that inbound lead generation has the edge over an outbound generation strategy, in terms of your Return On Investment (ROI). That’s because inbound lead generation tactics offer businesses in most industries a far lower customer acquisition cost. What’s more, when done with expertise, a lead generation campaign creates lasting brand loyalty.
However, the generation of qualified sales leads demands a significant level of creativity and persistent hard work from your marketing team. For many organisations therefore, the best lead gen strategy is to engage the services of a marketing agency that knows how to generate quality leads for B2B companies, and using content marketing as a lead generation tool.
Over to You
Incisive Edge brings you the expertise you need to find your brand differentiation and build the essential foundation for your digital marketing B2B strategy to capture leads. We strongly believe that proper investment in your brand position will allow you to project a stable image to your potential customers that clearly defines: who you are as a company; your brand purpose; and tells your brand story.
We will work with you to define detailed Buyer Personas for your target audience’s decision makers. Each persona will identify the specific pain points and key issues that your target decision makers are trying to solve, and will create messages that address those key issues.
We design inbound marketing strategies, programmes and campaigns that fill your pipeline and drive revenue growth. Inbound marketing is not just about producing leads, it’s about revenue generation. Using our 10+ years’ experience in inbound, our specialism in tech marketing, our marketing automation software stack for email marketing, and our industry experience, quite simply, we will find your prospective customers and increase your bottom line. Generating leads is our speciality.
To find out more about how Incisive Edge can assist in your B2B lead nurturing, lead scoring, and lead generation content and strategies, get in touch with us.
