If you wish to run a successful online B2B venture, you need to establish an effective lead generation pipeline. However, pulling in worthwhile leads in the B2B sector can be a challenging endeavor.
Cast your net too wide, and your sales team will have to waste their time sifting through low-quality leads to find ones that are actually worth pursuing. Focus too much on finding the perfect lead, and you will end up putting all your eggs into a single basket, which is a risky move in today’s fast-paced business environment.
The trick then is to develop a lead generation strategy that sits somewhere between these two extremes. This strategy should ideally include lead generation tactics that are focused both on quality and numbers while maintaining a healthy ROI. Such tactics do exist, but they often get overshadowed by their many flavor-of-the-month counterparts, making your job unnecessarily difficult.
So in order to make things easier for you, we have examined some of the most popular lead generation tactics in use today to find the most effective ones. You can find the results of our research below.
1. Target Long-tail Keywords
Google Analytics is an indispensable tool for lead generation. Among its many features is the ability to discover long-tail keywords that your website qualifies for. Long-tail keywords are usually a couple of words long, and they are often very specific, and thus better at expressing user search intent. Their search volume is low, but their conversion potential tends to be much higher. By optimizing your website content for long-tail keywords, you can utilize organic search to snatch high-quality leads from competitors that rely on more popular search terms.
2. Produce Lead Magnets
Generating inbound leads is all about providing website visitors with value. And one of the best ways to do this is by creating lead magnets. Any type of content can be a lead magnet, from webinars to white-papers, to infographics, to instructional videos, and others. Think of lead magnets as a currency you can exchange for contact information, such as email addresses. Lead magnets will tend to generate positive user experiences (everyone can appreciate quality content given out for free), making inbound leads more likely to pursue to further interactions with your business as a result.
3. Be Active on LinkedIn
When it comes to generating B2B leads through social media, LinkedIn is your go-to network. With an audience consisting mainly of business professionals, LinkedIn is the perfect place to look for pre-qualified leads. LinkedIn allows you to participate in community discussions, connect with professionals in your industry, and spread the word about your brand. In order to be successful at LinkedIn lead generation, you need to look for opportunities to interact with people. One of the most effective ways to start a conversation is to look for posts that contain questions or problems, and then provide answers or useful information.
4. Run a Facebook Ad Campaign
Even though Facebook is not inherently geared towards B2B companies, it is still the largest social network in terms of users. This makes it worth using for B2B lead generation. Organic reach has been on the decline lately on Facebook, so most companies are focusing their efforts on paid ads for lead generation. Thanks to Facebook’s massive collection of user data, you can create laser-focused ad campaigns to find highly qualified leads. Facebook Ads also allows you to utilize retargeting, making your ad campaigns even more effective at generating leads.
5. Host a Podcast
A podcast is an underrated but effective lead generation tool. They require almost no effort to create, provided you like talking about industry topics for extended periods of time. Podcast transcripts are a good way to improve your organic outreach because they will tend to contain plenty of relevant keywords. You can promote your podcast further by hosting it on iTunes, SoundCloud, and similar services, further increasing their potential. The best thing about podcasts is that they are evergreen content – they will continue bringing in new leads as long your discussion topic stays relevant.
6. Nurture Leads with Email
Capturing the attention of a lead is one thing, but priming them for conversion is another matter entirely. Most B2B leads require additional nurture before they’re ready to enter the conversion funnel, and email offers a way to do this effectively and at scale thanks to automation. All the best CRM software come equipped with the email automation feature, which allows you to run both drip-based and trigger-based campaigns with ease. Segment your inbound leads into groups, create content templates for each segment, create an automated workflow, and you’re done. Your leads will automatically get nurtured until they are fit for conversion.
Conclusion
Creating an effective B2B lead generation strategy requires you to use a variety of online lead generation tactics such as the ones we have outlined above. It is a matter of assessing your target audience, the state in your industry, and your capacities as a company and choosing the approaches with the highest ROI. Becoming good at lead generation doesn’t happen overnight, so the sooner you start implementing these tactics, the better your results will be in the long run.