B2B lead generation plays a significant role in a company’s growth. As a matter of fact, 53% of B2B marketers say half or more of their budget is allocated to lead generation efforts.
If the term “B2B lead generation” is new to you, check out our blog here to learn the basics of B2B lead generation before exploring the best practices.
While B2B lead generation is key to boosting company revenue, it requires a lot of moving parts to work to your advantage. B2B lead generation best practices include:
- Implementing a Variety of B2B Lead Generation Tactics
- Streamlining Sales and Marketing Efforts
- Setting Goals and Routinely Measuring Your Success
- Creating Collateral That Reflects the Wants and Needs of Your Target Market
- Sending Personalized Content That Aligns With a Lead’s Interests and Buyer Persona
- Writing User-Focused Landing Pages and Blog Posts With a Call To Action
- Routinely Contacting and Nurturing Sales Leads Through Various Platforms
Implement a Variety of B2B Lead Generation Tactics
When it comes down to it, there are two B2B lead generation strategies sales and marketing teams can practice for their business growth efforts: outbound and inbound lead generation.
Outbound lead generation is when sales development representatives (SDRs) actively reach out to potential buyers to pitch their company’s product or service. Outbound lead gen tactics include cold calling, emailing, and connecting with leads on LinkedIn.
On the other hand, inbound lead generation is when a marketing specialist optimizes their company’s digital presence to be found by potential buyers actively looking for an alternative B2B product or service solution. Inbound lead gen tactics include search engine optimization (SEO) and targeted ads for search engines and social media platforms.
Many business owners believe they need to practice one B2B lead generation strategy over another for sustainable business growth. However, this is far from the truth. When you take advantage of both inbound and outbound marketing strategies, you can maximize your efforts and put more qualified leads into your sales pipeline.
The more B2B lead generation tactics you follow, the greater the opportunity you have to boost conversion rates and reduce a lead’s time in the sales cycle. This is because using a variety of lead generation tactics supports top-of-mind awareness, guiding leads closer to the end of the sales funnel.
Streamline Sales and Marketing Efforts
Simply having both inbound and outbound lead generation strategies isn’t enough to build sustainable growth. To get the most out of your lead generation efforts, you need to align your sales and marketing strategies. When streamlining sales and marketing efforts, your company can use inbound and outbound lead generation tactics to introduce your company and build relationships with leads in the sales pipeline.
Let’s say that an SDR cold calls a lead that’s not currently interested in your company’s product or service, but their circumstances may change in the future. In this case, instead of just following up with them via warm call in the next three months, your SDR can implement the lead into an email marketing campaign where they’re routinely sent information about products or services that interest them.
Additionally, the lead could be integrated into a retargeting ad campaign. This way, they start seeing your content on their social media platforms, building top-of-mind awareness. The next time your SDR calls the lead, they’ll be more than likely to remember your company because of your streamlined sales and marketing efforts, and they’ll be more likely to schedule a sales appointment with a member of your internal sales team.
If the SDR only made that one cold call and followed up with a warm call in three months, the lead could have forgotten about your company by then. But since you decided to take advantage of practicing a variety of B2B lead generation tactics, your sales and marketing team had the opportunity to present the lead with a valuable experience, increasing the chance to convert them from a lead into a customer.
Set Attainable Goals and Routinely Measure Your Success
When it comes down to it, what do you want to get out of your lead generation services? Once you have an answer to this question, you can start setting short- and long-term goals for your B2B lead generation program.
To measure the effectiveness of your B2B lead generation program, it’s essential that you routinely use data to determine if you’re where you want to be with your lead generation efforts. As you analyze data, it’s essential to consider the industry data averages so you can make sure your lead generation program is heading in the right direction.
So, what metrics should you be looking at to measure the effectiveness of your lead generation program? Well, that depends on whether you’re practicing outbound or inbound lead generation.
Here are some key metrics you should look at for outbound appointment setting success:
- Key decision-maker (KDM) pitched to appointment: This metric should tell you how good your SDRs are at piquing a lead’s interest from the get go. A good ratio to follow should be for every two KDMs pitched to, one appointment should be scheduled.
- Dials to appointment: This metric averages how many calls an SDR takes to set a sales appointment. As a best practice, our SDRs should have one appointment set for every 135-150 dials.
- Appointment show rate: Appointment show rate is how often a sales appointment set actually attends the sales meeting. If you have less than a 50% show rate, you may need to reevaluate the appointments set by SDRs.
- ROI: How much are you getting back from the work your SDRs put into setting sales appointments? If you don’t see a positive ROI, it may be worthwhile to evaluate your strategy and discover where there may be gaps in the process.
When it comes to measuring inbound lead generation (specifically your website), it’s important to routinely review the following metrics:
- Keyword volume: How many keywords does your website obtain? How many are on the first results page of search engines? What’s the growth rate of your keywords over time? Analyzing keyword effectiveness ensures that the right users are directed to your website for a solution to their program.
- Bounce rates: Bounce rates are how frequently a user enters and immediately leaves your website. This could be because your page didn’t provide the value they wanted or because it was slow to load.
- Traffic sources: How are users directed to your website in the first place? Through social media? Email marketing assets? Understanding the source of traffic allows you to see how intended users find and navigate your website.
- Drop off rates: Why are users leaving your website? Knowing where users drop off allows your marketing experts to identify gaps in the process, encouraging them to strategize and better guide users to the end of the buyer’s journey.
Create Collateral That Reflects the Wants and Needs of Your Target Market
Creating sales enablement assets for the sake of having content is ineffective for intended users and wastes the time of your B2B marketers and designers. Sales collateral and content marketing materials should serve as a lead magnet for B2B buyers, which is why it must reflect the wants and needs of KDMs in your target market.
Before your copywriters and designers jump into creating a new marketing asset, your marketers must identify current industry trends for them to highlight. This ensures that content created is valuable and relevant, welcoming users to engage with the industry-focused insight your company has to offer. Additionally, you position your company as a thought leader in the subject matter, encouraging users to trust your business.
Send Personalized Content That Aligns With a Lead’s Interests and Buyer Persona
While content as a whole should align with the needs of your target market, it’s essential that you send leads personalized content that aligns with their interests, industry, and buyer persona. Each conversation a sales rep has with a lead via warm call should resonate with the lead and circle back to the previous discussion. This ensures that each call is warmer than the last, making them feel like more of a business partner than just another potential business opportunity in the sales pipeline.
Additionally, each sales email sent should be relevant to the lead. This reduces the risk of them unsubscribing from your email list. For example, let’s suggest that you’re a commercial cleaning company. If a lead says they’re interested in your company’s disinfection services, it’s important that you don’t send them sales enablement assets about deep floor cleaning. While it may be an excellent service your company provides, it’s not currently what they’re looking for.
Write User-Focused Landing Pages and Blog Posts With a Call To Action
In addition to creating useful and relevant content, it needs to encourage readers to do something with the information provided to them. Including a compelling call to action (CTA) enables the reader to take the next step in the buyer’s journey.
A CTA could influence a user to read another piece of content on your website or schedule a sales appointment. However you choose to approach your CTAs, the CTA must align with the user’s current stage in the buyer’s journey. If a lead is at the top of the sales funnel, a general CTA that encourages them to engage with more content would be the best approach. However, if the lead is at the bottom of the sales funnel, a CTA encouraging the user to contact your company would be most effective.
For example, if a managed service provider writes a blog about the benefits of migrating to the cloud, you can assume the reader is looking into cloud migration for their company. In this case, a call to action would be compelling because it encourages the reader to contact the managed service provider for cloud migration services.
Without a call to action on landing pages or blog posts, the reader looks at your content with no end game. However, with a call to action, you’re helping the reader make an easier purchasing decision and guide them to the end of their sales journey.
Routinely Contact and Nurture Sales Leads Through Various Platforms
Lead nurturing is one of the most critical components of B2B lead generation. Lead nurturing is the process of building and maintaining relationships with potential buyers in your sales pipeline.
Outbound and inbound lead generation strategies rarely result in an immediate partnership. Building these relationships takes time, trust, and continuous communication, so it’s crucial for your sales and marketing team to actively listen to the prospect’s needs and concerns. Although they may not be interested in your company’s product or service today, they may be interested tomorrow or a year from now.
Nurturing sales leads includes regularly calling them throughout the year, sending personalized email campaigns, or actively posting on social media. These tactics enhance brand awareness and show potential customers that you haven’t forgotten about them and their potential partnership. Even if they’re not ready to purchase at that moment, you’ll be the first company that comes to mind when they’re ready.
Key Takeaways
While there is no one true method to generating leads, there are many B2B lead generation best practices you can follow to pique the interest of your target audience and convert them from leads into customers. Many B2B companies choose to practice lead generation on their own; however, that’s not a cost-effective solution for many small- to medium-sized businesses.
Abstrakt Marketing Group is a lead B2B lead generation company located in St. Louis, Missouri.Our sales and marketing experts are trained to follow all the B2B lead generation best practices to pitch target customers, provide high-quality content marketing materials, and encourage them to meet with our clients.
When you’re ready to get the most out of your inbound and outbound lead generation efforts, contact the specialists at Abstrakt Marketing Group!
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