Customers are the lifeblood of your business, and if you want to see your business prosper, you need to keep this stream flowing. The fact is that half of your customers will churn in the next five years, no matter how hard you try to keep them.
If you want a steady growth rate for your B2B, you need to have a strong strategy in place to grab the attention of your potential clients, provide value and prove your solution credible.
Here are the six most effective strategies in B2B lead generation that will still reign.
Valuable Content
91% of B2B marketers use content to reach their target customers, but not every content performs the same when it comes to attracting new leads.
Although the quantity of content you produce does play a certain role – companies posting 16 blogs a month capture three times more leads than the ones posting less than 4, your lead generation will only be successful if your content is high-quality.
This means you need to create content tailored to the needs of your prospects, focused on solving their pain points.
You can use this content as a lead magnet, incentivizing your prospects to leave their contact details.
Still, having in mind that content marketing has a really broad scope, what is the type of content you should have more of in your next marketing campaigns?
- Videos and webinars that educate your leads on your product functionalities.
- Blogs dealing with the common challenges in your niche as well as how your product can be used to solve them.
- Blogs covering industry trends and aggregating learnings for your prospects.
- Giveaways, ebooks, and whitepapers are great tools for capturing new leads.
Search Engine Optimization
Besides high-quality content, SEO is one of the most valuable long-term strategies for B2B lead generation. In fact, these two go hand in hand.
Even the perfectly tailored content pieces won’t perform well and attract new leads unless they are easy to find in searches, nor SEO alone will give results if your content lacks true value. Optimizing the content for the search engine will help your target customers find you easier when they perform a query. This means your content needs to contain keywords that your prospect use when they are searching for a solution for their problem, and enough backlinks to prove its relevance and trustworthiness.
Social Media
Many claims that social media channels don’t give results when it comes to lead generation. Still, these claims have more to do with companies’ inconsistent approach than with social media’s true potential. When approached strategically and seriously, social media channels can generate high-quality leads.
For attracting B2B leads, LinkedIn is of crucial importance, as the greatest number of professionals and decision-makers use it. However, you won’t generate leads simply by the fact that you’ve set up your profile there. You need to be present and connect with your colleagues and other industry specials, as well as the professional groups, and be active.
Take part in conversations, provide your colleagues with adequate and timely support, and ask for help when you need it. If you’re using other social media channels, such as Facebook or Twitter, try to direct your followers to your website, in order to capture their contact details.
Evergreen Techniques
Apart from the digital marketing strategies in attracting and capturing new leads, don’t forget to utilize those more “traditional” ones.
Some of them give fantastic results and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Cold calling is one of such techniques.
Statistics show that 57% of C-level executives prefer to be contacted by phone, as well as 51% of directors and 47% of managers. Still, if you want your cold calls to be efficient, you need to prepare well – top sellers spend approximately six hours on LinkedIn every week researching their potential clients.
Direct mail is also a worthy investment when it comes to generating new leads, especially with the rise of Direct Mail 2.0, which has become a more streamlined and scalable process for B2B marketers. Marketers can now track their mails, have online follow-up ads, and track the number of calls their mailing campaign generates. In addition, when using services such as PostcardMania, you can design and plan your own direct mail campaigns, and enjoy all the benefits of this lead generation technique.
Also, make sure you leverage all the opportunities for in-person conversations, such as conferences and events, so that you can connect with professionals in your industry, and gather their contact details.
Email Marketing
Even though email marketing may seem like an outdated lead generation strategy, it’s still one of the tactics that bring companies the highest ROI.
After all, email is the third most credible source of information in B2B, right after colleague recommendations and thought-leaders.
Still, to be certain your email marketing campaign is effective, there are a few things to know:
- Segmentation. Your emails need to be tailored to meet the specific needs of your prospects, so make sure you’ve segmented your audience by their relevant traits and created the right kind of content for each subgroup.
- Personalization. Don’t stop at personalizing the subject line alone, try to personalize your whole offer as well.
- Follow up. Don’t give up after the first email, as your prospects will take time to become aware of your company.
- Include videos. Emails with videos increase CTR by 96%.
- Make your subject lines short but effective.
Cold emailing can also get you the desired results when it comes to generating leads if you’re persistent and have the right approach.
Obtain Reviews and Referrals
Referrals are an invaluable source of qualified B2B leads for your company.
You can gain referrals by starting a referral program and asking your most loyal customers to introduce you to your potential customers. If you’ve approached nurturing your customers seriously, and formed a meaningful connection with them, they will refer you to a friend gladly, especially if there is an incentive you’re offering too. Also, encourage your satisfied customers to share their experience with your brand online and leave positive reviews.
As most of your B2B prospects take social proof into account when making a purchasing decision, having positive reviews online will result in attracting new quality leads.
Lead generation is always going to be hard work, but if you leverage the strategies discussed above, you can expect your efforts to stock up on tons of new leads and bring you many new sales opportunities.
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