What Really Works With B2B Lead Gen?

What works for B2C lead generation, might not work for B2B lead generation. B2B marketing tends to have a smaller focused target market, long buying cycle, more reliant on lead generation than brand building and there is more emphasis on customer relationship management. In B2C, the product might be more important than the relationship. These are just some of the key differences between B2C and B2B marketing. Here are a few methods that work for lead generation in a B2B environment.

Use social media strategically

Social media has invaded every aspect of daily life. The people of the current world rely on social media for everything they do. Search engine results could determine if a business is going to get sales or be lost in oblivion. Social media has remained at the forefront of customer acquisition for most businesses, however, some B2B companies are still lagging. It could be that they believe in the B2B industry, it is difficult to use social media as an effective tool or maybe return on investment is not good enough. That just means their social media strategy is not aligned with their value proposition. There is no doubt that the reach of social media is huge. About 76% of Americans who use the internet, use social media. There are few strategic ways to use social media for B2B lead generation. One of the most important aspects of a successful social media strategy is to identify who is your target audience? Then you will be able to determine if you need to focus on a certain social media platform or go for an equally balanced holistic approach for a variety of different social media platforms. For example, if your target audience is bankers, LinkedIn might be a great social media platform but if your target audience is factory workers, then maybe LinkedIn is not the best as compared to bankers, fewer factory workers are going to be very active on LinkedIn. This will depend on several factors such as location, type of business, demographics, etc. Each platform is going to have a specific strategy. To optimize your LinkedIn and generate B2B leads, you will need to include relevant images on your LinkedIn page, establish a good SEO standing, and have separate pages to showcase different products.

Launch a consistent content marketing plan

Content marketing involved creating and sharing content that will stimulate interest in the product and services. Marketing campaigns need to send a consistent message to prospects. Content marketing consists of in-person events, apps, websites, catalogs, and other channels of marketing. Consistency makes your value proposition relevant to the prospects and keeps the prospects engaged with the products or services. One of the important aspects of consistent content marketing is to focus on quality rather than quality. This also helps maintain consistency in the content for optimum B2B lead generation. At times, businesses shy away from quality as it is more difficult to quantitatively measure the performance of quality content. You can measure quality by the performance of the marketing such as the overall results of the leads generated. Your prospects expect a certain style of content from you. Content marketing is not about publishing content one after the other. You need to differentiate yourself from the clutter and make relevant, consistent, and value-adding content.

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation for most B2B companies uses basic channels such as email marketing campaigns or weekly newsletters. Marketing automation has to be more than just informing your prospects about the latest news update of your company. Some companies use more advanced email marketing automation that allows their sales and marketing team with qualified leads. Every business has a customer journey, and the primary goal of marketing automation is to improve that customer journey. Once email marketing is calibrated to deliver results, it can be scaled to increase the volume of the leads generated. Marketing automation also allows more time for your marketing and sales team to focus on B2B lead generation that cannot be automated, such as making in-person sales calls. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. The same email marketing campaign can be improved to offer more advanced marketing automation. You can include a web form that allows you to capture vital customer information that can be automated to qualify a lead as a potential customer.

Create Lead Magnets

Lead magnets offer added value to the prospects. Examples of lead magnets include e-book, tools, calculators, case studies, free demos, white papers, reports, free trial of product or service. These lead magnets should be designed to attract the customer and have them wanting for more. The prospects would be happy to share their information to know more about your product or service. Your prospect is bound to be interested if you share a case study that helped one of your other customers to double their sales. Keep in mind, the lead magnets have to be genuine, otherwise, they won’t work in the long-run. You need to share those items with your client that communicate the value proposition that can be delivered by your company.