The Internet is filled with guides and how-to plans to aid businesses to reach out to consumers. Few marketers focus on how their company can generate better leads to improve B2B sales. This guide seeks to change that by offering the top sales lead generation techniques available to today’s marketers. The lead generation methods and strategies below will help you achieve phenomenal growth in your business in the weeks, months, and years ahead when applied properly.
1. Content Marketing
Content remains the undisputed king of Internet marketing and shows no signs of slowing. Content is how businesses find you, how they learn about your products and services, and how you solidify your brand positioning on the World Wide Web. Most importantly, it is how you generate leads on the Internet.
Content comes in many forms, including:
- Blog posts
- Website content
- Infographics
- Videos
- Case studies
- Research reports and findings
- Whitepapers
The more content you generate, the greater your opportunities for generating leads. Especially if you produce quality content that is relevant to the businesses you seek to serve.
How essential is content marketing? Placester reports that 71 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing to generate leads.
2. Email Marketing and List Building
Email marketing is one of the most important lead generation marketing strategies businesses can follow when reaching out to other businesses. You will hear time and time again, “The money is in the list.” Building your email list and marketing effectively to your list is essential for generating bigger, better B2B sales.
While the standard method of encouraging people to sign up email marketing newsletters is tried and true, Kinsta recommends adopting the godfather approach when building your lead generating email list.
Make them an offer they can’t refuse. Whether you’re offering access to a case study, free admittance to a webinar, or even a “front row seat to the latest news and product innovations” your organization has to offer, making an offer is more attractive to businesses than asking them to sign up for your email list.
3. Social Media Marketing
While not the powerhouse tool for lead generation marketing that content and email are, there is still plenty of room for generating B2B leads with social media marketing. Unlike B2C strategies, however, B2B lead generation strategies for social media focus tightly on LinkedIn for more powerful results. Whether you use one or all the social media platforms for your social media marketing strategy, the right social media automation tools can help you automate the process so that it is practically effortless for your organization.
4. Event Marketing
Going back to the Placester reference above, marketing at events, webinars, and tradeshows get the lion’s share of attention (outside of telemarketing and outbound sales, of course) for successful lead generation. These events, including webinars, generate audiences that are already kicking the tires for the products and services you offer.
That means they are ripe for the picking and all you need to do is close the deal with flawless product demonstrations and, perhaps even more importantly, relationship building. In a world where so many transactions take place online, it is crucial to understand that the B2B community still prefers the conversation and handshake approach to doing business and your best leads are going to be generated over conversations and connections.
5. Social Shares
Oddly enough, creating viral content. Content that takes the web by storm and generates shares that take on lives of their own, is another great way to generate unexpected leads. While commonly taught to B2C audiences, this philosophy is commonly overlooked by B2B audiences.
However, the types of buzzworthy content that are most effective for B2B lead generation are different than those that “go viral” to generate interest and sales in a B2C capacity.
Some of the best options for buzzworthy social shares in a B2B environment include:
- Whitepapers.
- Case studies.
- Research reports and findings.
- Product demonstrations.
- Videos.
- Infographics
Mastering this art will help you attract more customers in the B2B spectrum and generate lasting relationships for repeat business.
6. Audio and Video Content
From how to videos and product demonstrations to audiobooks, podcasts, and webinars; audio and video content are powerful tools to generate leads for your business. Not only do they generate initial leads upon their release. They also continue to generate leads long after the initial content is posted.
In the case of webinars, by making playbacks infinitely available, these tools not only answer the question, “What is lead generation done well?” It provides a nearly evergreen opportunity to reach new audiences for your existing products and services.
7. Pay Per Click Advertising
When doing business on the web today, pay per click advertising is a cost-effective tool for getting your message out to your target business audience without wasting your marketing and lead generation efforts on businesses and/or consumers that have no use for your services and products.
PPC is a more advanced method of advertising, though, and should not be utilized unless you have analytics in place to determine the effectiveness of various ads within target demographics. Many businesses prefer to master the other lead generation methods discussed here before diving into PPC marketing.
Whether you put one of the methods discussed above or all of them into place, you should expect to see impressive growth in your lead generation capabilities. The more of these remarkable methods and techniques you employ, the more impressive the results should be. It is up to you to follow up on these leads to enjoy lasting rewards.