
According to a report, “B2B lead generation is the top most priority of 60% of the marketers.’’ Reason being the fact that lead generation is what makes a business successful. However, ensuring a smooth flow of leads in the B2B lead generation funnel is not a cakewalk. B2B marketers constantly need to try new strategies and technology to be at the top of their lead generation game. In this blog, we will discuss some of the major B2B lead generation secrets that you might be missing.
Top B2B Lead Generation Secrets That You Are Missing
1. Build the Buyer Personas
One of the big mistakes that businesses make is not using targeted marketing strategies. Just targeting an expansive audience won’t give you desired results. It is rather a waste of your time and marketing efforts. To avoid this you should first make the buyer’s personas and define the attributes that they should have.
By knowing your target personas and key decision makers, you can craft your marketing strategy accordingly. This will also help you to know the ‘right kind of leads’ for your business. You can build the buyer personas simply by having a look at your existing data and past experiences. It will also help your sales and marketing team to filter out the perfect personas and target them.
2. Defined Sales Process
A targeted marketing strategy can help you to get B2B leads in your sales funnel. But do you think that is enough? Well not, till the time the B2B leads are not actually converted. The success of marketing strategy isn’t defined by KPIs rather it is about sales and growth. Also the sales results show the quality of B2B leads being generated.
But how can you enhance your sales? The answer is to have coordination between sales and marketing teams. You can close more deals by targeting the qualified leads created by the marketing strategy at the right time. Another way to do so is to have a formal roadmap for the sales process. This roadmap should include stages at which you would deal and the requirements to go to the next stage. Having a defined sales process will help you to secure more deals and get better ROI.
3. Automation and Latest Technology
Once you have created a defined strategy, organized business processes and made the basic blueprint of your lead generation program. The next step is to implement these processes and steps. You can make this process much easier for you by utilizing marketing automation tools and technology. It will help you to close more deals and identify the loopholes in your strategy. There are many modern CRM platforms available in the market that you can use. Using it you get in-depth understanding and insights about your Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).
4. Understand your Buyer’s journey
To do an effective lead generation process for B2B you should first understand how the lead enters the sales funnel. You should do the journey mapping of your buyer’s and see how they reach your website. You can research your target persona and see what triggers them to land on your website. Determine what type of content they like the most and where they spend most of their online time on. From there you can get a range of content ideas and craft content strategy that will attract your target audience.
5. Identify the loopholes in your B2B lead generation sales funnel
After your B2B lead generation process has started in full fledged you will get all sorts of data insights. You can study and do research on this data to identify what’s working for you and what’s not. From the marketing team you can get the insights on how many people clicked the links and how many visitors turn to leads. You can also understand how many B2B leads and MQLs it takes to finally close a deal. This way you can identify the loopholes and get opportunities to improve your B2B lead generation strategies.
6. Try Growth Hacking
Growth hacking is the process of improving outcomes by using marketing, product and data strategies altogether. This is done to get effective results and to drive business growth. It is a method of setting up experiments, measuring outcomes and identifying what works best.
Growth hacking can be used for sales, marketing and even product development. You can do growth hacking for any process as long as the variables used are measurable.
7. Focus on lead conversions
For better B2B lead generation tactics you can change the channels and your landing page content. Here, one of the major challenges that B2B marketers face is to get high quality leads and further lead conversions. Having dozens of leads won’t help if ultimately they are not going to convert. Wasting time and efforts on people that aren’t even interested won’t lead you anywhere. Thus, at first you must have a robust lead qualification strategy.
Your website must be updated and should be optimized for the search engines. The landing pages should be attractive and the follow up channels should be clear. Having good graphics, added CTA links at appropriate places can help you to get qualified leads or MQLs.To have a higher conversion rate your information should be updated and relevant to your target audience. The higher the number of qualified leads in sales, the more will be the conversion rate.
8. Have a good Follow-up plan
As soon as a lead enters your sales funnel that’s not where your responsibility ends. Your end goal is to make sure that the lead gets converted. For this you need to establish strong communication with your B2B leads. You constantly need to keep in touch with them and communicate the right messages at the right time. Sending them impressive emails or newsletters providing information about your business is a great way to keep them hooked.
You can analyze what content gets a good response and craft your marketing strategy accordingly. Make sure that you are not being too pushy in your approach or else you will lose more B2B leads. Track and analyze your drop off rates and make B2B lead generation strategies that keep people’s attention and interest.
The Bottom Line
Lead generation is an important process for any B2B business. For generating B2B sales leads consistent efforts of your sales and marketing team are required. Not only this, lead generation also depends on data resources and the competition in the market. However, you can generate B2B sales leads more easily if you do it with the right tactics. B2B lead generation is mostly affected by the methods and the practices that we use. By focusing on the veiled aspects of the B2B lead generation process you can boost your lead generation channel.