Top 16 Best B2B lead Generation Strategies for 2019
Leads are the linchpin of sales and marketing. But finding leads can be like a game of “Where’s Waldo,” where instead of minor disappointment, failing can result in bidding bye-bye to your B2B business journey. Whether you are running a small business or a bigger one, you will always need one thing that is- More Customers. And the mystery is a catch-all term for the way to get new customers! A perspicacious B2B marketer should understand the different budgets, dynamics, and expectations typical of lead generation channel.
Lead generation is simply about getting as many high-intended and high-quality potential customers in front of your business. All-in-all, a lead generation goes hand-in-hand with marketing and brand exposure. Though, lead generation strategies will be peculiar in the proximity to the sales process.
One-size-fits-all marketing is dead, and that’s the same case with lead generation strategies. This write-up will help you gain insights into a major channel for B2B lead generation strategies that you can implement in your business in 2019.
We will cover strategies such as blogging, email, PPC, social media, etc. And the best of all, we’ll share effective strategies for each. Let’s get straight into it.
Imagine that you’re visiting a website for the very first time. There’s a signup form in the site’s sidebar that requests your email address. That’s it. Then you scroll down the page and see a CTA. The website still wants your email address, but now they’re offering a free case study that will help you solve a problem you’re already experiencing. You might have ignored the first request, but now you want that case study. That’s exactly how incentivizing opt-ins can work for your site.
A Referral program is still the major factor behind almost 50% of buying decisions. The B2B companies with referral programs reportedly have 70% higher conversion rates. Your satisfied customers are the best people who can market your business to others. Incentivizing referrals will make it more exciting for them by creating customized referral codes that entitle them to discounts. This also makes it easier for you to track where your leads are coming from, and which are converting.
If you’re planning to buy mailing lists, then say hello to the spam folder. Go for the collection of organic email ids that you get by signups or surveys. The good subject line is sufficient to convince 33% of recipients to open an email. The most common lead generation strategy is email marketing with 78% ratings. In the professional world, many people still rely on emails as their source of communication. So, as this strategy is going, reach your customers through emails where they live.
Tips for direct email marketing:-
With so many different deals and discount sites, it might be worth considering seeing if your product is a fit for any national or local opportunities. If you’re a little hesitant, you could also look into partnering up in a package with other complementary businesses that are more familiar with the deals territory. Since these sites are all about reaching new customers, they’ll do the legwork of finding the eyes for you to get your product or service in front of new customers. And with a budget and reach you likely don’t have. A heads up those margins on deals sites are pretty thin, so this isn’t a permanent solution. But you certainly can generate new leads on them who can hopefully convert into loyal customers over time.
Gone are the days where only digitally focused businesses, media companies, and tech organizations needed to impress with beautiful websites. Whether you’re building apps or building bagpipes, you need a website that marries elegant, smart design with speed and efficiency. A website that gives visitors the clear who, what, where, and why behind your company is your best asset. A good website is like your digital business card.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for attracting organic traffic from search engines like Google. Without organic traffic, you have to pay for it — such as through PPC or social ads.
It’s far less expensive to concentrate on optimizing every piece of content you distribute. Conduct keyword research, write a descriptive headline, organize your article with H-level subheadings, and add alt text for your images. Keywords with high volume suggest top levels of interest. Focus on them and make sure you’re delivering content that will dispense valuable to your target audience.
Content marketing can include setting up a blog and video content on your site or writing guest posts for other sites. Content marketing gives you the chance to demonstrate your expertise while building relationships with potential customers at the same time. Being able to answer user questions or share new insights with them will build trust, and they’ll see you as more credible as a result.
Following are the content marketing trends on which you can generate leads for your company. Based on the research conducted previously, choose the leading strategy accordingly. For best results, you can subtly mention your product in some of your posts, slowly introducing customers to your products and services without making your content feeling like overwhelming sales pitches.
Believe it or not, the tools you already use to establish and promote your brand can become B2B lead-generating machines. Social media is great for not only spreading brand awareness but also converting followers into leads.
As mentioned above, LinkedIn often provides the best source of leads for B2B marketers. However, don’t discount other social platforms, including the following:
All of these channels can make you a more effective B2B marketer.
Other than the above mentioned social networking sites, make use of Quora to generate best deals. It is a question-and-answer website that reaches more than 100 million people monthly. It can be used to establish yourself as a thought-leader in your particular niché. There is a right way and a wrong way to use Quora. If left to their own devices, most people will use it as a self-promoting service wherein they drop their contact info and the name of their business. This isn’t going to generate any leads and will only serve to annoy people.
Quora is best used as a way to open up lines of communication as you engage others who are looking for help or answers to a particular subject. The laws of reciprocity will come into play, and people will start to reach out to you after you’ve established yourself as the expert on a particular subject.
A lead magnet is a piece of content or a tool that you use to incentivize potential leads to interact with your brand. In other words, you’re trading the valuable piece of content for something you want, like the user’s email address.
The best lead magnets offer value far and beyond what you might post on your blog. Ideally, they’re immediately useful for your target audience.
Some of the most effective lead magnets include the following:
Whatever you choose, make sure you can pinpoint its value during the lead-generation process.
PPC is of the easiest ways to get results quickly. It can be super effective if you know who your target audience is. However, it can also be very expensive, depending on the industry you’re in. It’s also important to remember that a lot of people are using Ad block (or other programs) nowadays, so there is a possibility that they won’t even see banners or other clickable ads.
The rule of thumb is to get only the most basic customer data at the initial stage (e.g., name and email address) and, as you work the lead down the pipeline, ask for a little more data.
Mobile marketing is the next battlefield for B2B leads. More business buyers are using their smartphones in the purchase journey. Make sure your forms, emails, websites, and ads are optimized for mobile. A website that hasn’t been optimized for mobile will struggle to rank in the search engines. Additionally, people who access your site via mobile devices might click away because of poor user experience (UX). Non-mobile-optimized sites often render poorly on mobile devices, as well. Images might appear stretched, distorted, or too big for the screen, and the text might prove too large or too small for easy reading.
Focus on a single goal for each landing page and be clear with your messaging in your 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.
You’ll be happy to know that many of the landing pages contain more than one offer? Cool! If your marketing strategy fails in this category, then its’ time for a redo!
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.
Mouth referrals are the best customer! The second best referral is a trusted website sending their clients your way. This is known as backlinks.
There are numerous ways to build backlinks and gain trust from other websites. You can:
Twitter is great for positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry. It’s not meant to broadcast a spammy advertising message for your company. With it, you can pre-schedule posts so that you’re not trying to rack your brain at the last minute for content ideas because you haven’t made a Twitter post in over a week. Other than Twitter, LinkedIn is also helpful in generating leads. LinkedIn is all about participating in communities, connecting with new people, and getting your name out there as the expert in your industry. By engaging with the community, you’ll be helping others, and people will take notice. If, however, you use LinkedIn as your personal billboard, advertising your business or service after connecting with a new contact, you’ll quickly find that people will start to ignore you.
Other than all the strategies, the last but not least, lead generation strategies are to become unique. Make your business a brand. Do something different that no one in the market is doing. You’ll be definitely on the top results of search engines.
These are few of the best B2B lead generation strategies that will work out for your business in 2019. This year, stand up for your buyers. Avoid the leaking bucket effect in your marketing strategy. After reading the above write up, you may have found that some of the strategies are old, but with an interesting twist in it. Be creative, because that is just a start. Apply these strategies in your digital marketing campaigns and share with us how much they improve your lead volume. Happy reading!
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