8 Essential B2B Lead Generation Tips

8 ESSENTIAL B2B LEAD GENERATION TIPS

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When it comes to B2B marketing and sales, it is all about generating viable leads that can be converted into loyal customers. This is most successful and gives the greatest return on investment when the leads pursued are of high potential, and the customer journey qualifies them for sales quickly and effectively.

There are many different approaches to lead generation, and the best options depend on the industry and the market. But there are a few things that are fundamental to getting B2B lead generation right.

With that in mind, here are our eight essential lead generation tips for ensuring successful B2B sales and growth, as well as maximum return on marketing investment.

8 B2B Lead Generation Tips

1. Know Your Target Market

B2B marketing is all about knowing exactly who will likely buy your product and speak to them directly.

B2C (business to customer) marketing is challenging because you are likely targeting large and diverse segments, such as 18-25 year-olds living on the East Coast or women over 60.

With B2B marketing, however, you are probably looking at a very narrow market, such as IT managers in the public services sector or finance teams in the construction industry.

This narrowing of the market allows you to be much more precise when understanding your potential customer needs and what kind of message is likely to appeal to them.

But this also means that it is even more critical to get it 100% right. If you are missing essential pieces of the puzzle, you could miss your entire audience.

This is why you must invest upfront in genuinely understanding your target market, their challenges, and what motivates them. This information should form the basis for all your lead generation ideas.

2. Invest in Targeted Campaigns

Optimize your return on investment by investing in campaigns that will appear before the eyes of your target market. Click To Tweet

Think about it: Placing search engine ads for anyone searching for relevant keywords probably will not render genuine leads. Anyone popping those words into a search box probably isn’t in a decision-making position to buy your product. Those are the actions of the curious rather than the industry experts.

Instead, you want to invest in targeted campaigns that will get your content in front of industry decision-makers. This could mean running affiliate campaigns with professional groups or businesses that provide complementary goods and services to the industry.

It could also be campaigning on platforms such as LinkedIn, where you can target your content at people based on their geography, industry, job title, years of experience, and much more.

Please read our complete guide to LinkedIn advertising, including successful lead generation examples here.

3. Map The Customer Journey

It is a mistake to provide potential customers with information about your service or product and assume they will go from a consumer of your content to your product.

You must understand the customer’s journey, from realizing they have a problem your product or service might solve to considering investing and finally becoming a customer.

You need to map the steps they will need to take on the journey and understand the pain points and barriers they face along the way. This will enable you to tailor your communications to land at the right time to help them pass through each of these points successfully and complete the journey.

Learn more about creating customer journey maps here.

4. Invest In Your CRM

While it is a good idea to communicate with your potential customers via multiple channels, nothing is more frustrating than receiving the same message repeatedly, missing critical information, or speaking to someone who doesn’t have any idea about previous discussions or challenges might have.

The best way to prevent broken communications is to invest in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and make it the backbone of all your customer communications. Click To Tweet

It is the best way to track your various communications with potential customers and ensure they are being passed through the sales funnel effectively.

CRMs work best when they are integrated with all of your communications channels. You can use Growth-X to integrate LinkedIn with your CRM.

5. Establish Trust & Authority

When considering investing in a product or service, decision-makers are significantly more likely to be drawn to businesses and brands they are aware of and trust. 

This is why you mustn’t just peddle your product but also establish yourself as a trusted industry authority. 

One of the best ways to do this, and therefore one of our top lead generation tips, is to be active in the industry space, sharing informative and educational content related to your product’s field but not always designed to sell your product directly.

This is why it is worth investing in a blog, getting your people speaking at conferences, and participating in professional conversations on platforms such as LinkedIn.

6. Optimize CTAs

Whenever you communicate with potential leads or share content, you should always include a call to action (CTA) so that your audience knows what you want them to do next, and it is easy for them to do.

While CTAs are fundamental to successful B2B lead generation and sales, it is incredible how often campaigns get them fundamentally wrong. Click To Tweet

Here’s how to do them right:

• Don’t bury your CTA at the end of your email or post. Ensure it always appears “above the fold” so that audiences are primed to act even before they have completed the content.
• Offer one clear CTA for an appropriate next step at this stage of the customer journey, rather than multiple CTAs that can leave audiences needing to make decisions. When faced with a decision they are not prepared for, a busy person may decide to do nothing.
• Make your CTAs clickable buttons that jump off the page, rather than expecting audiences to notice that hyperlink buried in the text.
• Ensure the CTA is a particular next step for the audience of the specific content, rather than a general link back to your website.
  

Learn more about best practices for this.

7. Leverage Existing Customers

Remember that bringing a customer on board is not the end of their customer journey.

Of course, the company needs to continue to nurture the relationship to ensure loyalty and upsell, but existing customers are also a vital tool to generate new leads.

The reality is that people trust what other people say about you more than what you say about yourself. This is why word-of-mouth is still the most effective form of marketing in all industries.

You want to leverage your existing customers to provide testimonials and recommendations. The best form of advice? A case study in which the current customer can explain precisely how they benefited from your product or service.

8. Track & Evaluate Relentlessly

The only way to evaluate which of your lead generation strategies are working is to track and evaluate success constantly.

This involves a variety of activities. 

You should be A/B testing your campaigns and copy to determine what exactly speaks to your customer and encourage them to move to the next step on the customer journey. Ideally, you should simultaneously run 3-4 campaigns and replace the least successful approach every 1-2 weeks.

Have a strategy in place for scoring leads. Award points for activities that show interest in your product or service, such as visiting a particular website or attending a webinar. Scoring helps you determine when leads are ready to be passed to the sales team and evaluate which methods qualify your tips with tremendous success.

The Verdict

Successful B2B sales depend on effective lead generation. While there are many different approaches to lead generation, a few underlying principles are fundamental to getting it right. Follow our eight top lead generation tips, and you will have a solid basis for implementing successful B2B lead generation campaigns.

What are your top tips for effective B2B lead generation? Please share them with the community in the comments section below.

Growth-X is the #1 automated LinkedIn engagement service for managing, engaging, and building your network of leads on LinkedIn. Growth-X works on various social media platforms and is the leading social media management tool for B2B sales.