Top 10 Tips for B2B Lead Generation

By thought-horizon | Aug 11, 2019

B2B lead generation is a huge thing. Every marketer has a set of favorite strategies and some success stories as well as epic fails to share. Each one invests time in understanding market dynamics, budgets, and expectations typical for each lead generation channel.

B2B lead generation is not about chasing a secret method that churns out tons of lead. It is rather, building the best strategy for your business and finessing your strategy with understanding the tried and tested channels.

Here is a nice long list of tips to consider if you need help brainstorming on how to super-charge your B2B social selling:

1. Create Compelling Content

Content is king, of course.

Content has been the undisputed champ of digital marketing channels. Unless you have an excellent content marketing strategy in place, you don’t really have the soul of your plan. Find out what content resonates with your buyer persona, i.e., B2B. Identify your way through the prospect’s mind and create content your audience would love to engage with. Here are some ideas for you to consider to craft content that acts as a lead magnet to your audience:

1: Authoritative posts: Content that helps you demonstrate your expertise.

2: Videos: Videos engage your audience better. You can try combining it with your storytelling technique and present it before the audience.

3: How-tos: Find out what problems your audience is suffering from and share the solutions.

4: Opinions: Share your opinion and don’t forget to back it with in-depth insights.

5: Trending content: Find out what’s popular in your industry and use it to keep your audience engaged.

6: Infographics: Well, a picture speaks a thousand words; why not design them to convey your message.

 2. Content: Be As Specific as Possible

Do you think your readers hang on to each and every word you write? Trust us – they don’t.

A large proportion of your audience skims your content – no matter what. But that still leaves a large portion of those who don’t. And unless you create a piece of content that has the potential to grip the readers, it’s certainly something you can’t nail.

The simplest solution to this problem is to make the content as specific as possible. Figure out an unboring angle to portray the content; don’t go for the same old angle to say the same old something. That’s never going to capture your audience. While explaining complex stuff, do it like you are putting up a presentation in front of a 5-year-old. Keep it interesting. And most importantly, keep it to the point. Curiosity comes not with what you are writing, but with how you are writing.

3. Add Relevant CTAs

You can find out which content scales high on engagement level and optimize it by adding calls-to-action (CTA’s) or simply updating an old CTA. Ask users to sign up, share, or follow to help you connect with them.

Having said that, don’t overwhelm your audience by adding a CTA. Be altruistic- go slow and offer information that is specific to the clients. Make it useful for them to discuss internally to determine how to evaluate your products/services.  

4. Make Friend with Chatbots

Simply put, they work. If you are spending money to drive people to your webpage without them, you are losing money.

Gone are the days when buyers would avoid talking to machines. They are now moving to the mainstream, changing the way brands interact with the customers. Oracle’s study estimates that over 80% of brands would prefer using chatbots by the year 2020. And the best part is over 35% of customers would want to use chatbots.

That gives you the perfect reason to get a chatbot attached to your website and social profile to make yourself accessible to clients when they need you.

5. Digital Ads

Content and SEO are definitely allies that show results. However, it takes time. The easiest way to drive quick results here is to use PPC or to use digital ads. Spend money to promote content on social media. Run A/B tests and double-down on things that work.

It can be super effective if you know who your target audience is. When people look forward to finding a piece of information, simply put forth your ads and direct them to the content.

6. Watch Your Visitors

Regularly monitor your visitors and share those results with your business development team. That will help you gain insights into what your prospects are dealing with and hence, offer a solution accordingly. You can use the cookies to help your sales team figure out where to focus if they know who is regularly looking around for products and services in your niche.  

7. Social Selling Program Combined with Distribution Tools

Distribution tools are to content marketing what variables are to an equation. Without them, you can’t really reach the expected results. After all, can there be anything sadder than a stellar blog post without any attention from the target audience? It may be an exaggeration, but arguably it is a downer. Merely writing content is not enough; you need to guide relevant people to it to absorb the information you are sharing.

Content distribution tools come to the rescue. Enabling you to share your content copy with multiple people across the globe, they deliver a path for your audience to reach you.

8. Closed-Look Marketing is A Reality

Marry online results and interactions to your Salesforce or MS Dynamics. Closed-loop marketing is a new reality. It can be done! With marketing and sales so essential to revenue generation, closed-loop marketing represents an all-new way to impact B2B marketing and sales revenue.

You can simply approach closed-loop analytics in connection with website traffic and activity. Start by setting up a marketing automation tool to garner all the necessary information. Get your traffic URL to every marketing campaign sending traffic to the website. Find out where your visitors are coming from, what part of your website are they attracted to, and what is their course of action before converting.

Collect all the information from all the sources you can and profile and segment them. Once done, use strategic sales strategies to convert those visitors into customers.

9. Repurpose Content

Breathe fresh air into your existing content by grouping multiple ‘hottest’ posts into a “Best Of” list, or clubbing them together to allow customers to download them. Find out how can you repurpose content for various channels. You can find out the best-performing blog post as a conversion topic on LinkedIn, and find out what the target audience looks for that content. Maybe you can add more data to it. Take key statistics from a report or whitepaper, and design an infographic for Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, or SlideShare to expand your audience and draw new attention to existing content.

10. Create a Small, Personalized Direct Mail Campaign

Nurture relationships with customers who have done business with you in the past, or anyone who has signed up for your content. Segment customers and buyers based on buying patterns and time-lapses. Target them with personalized messages explicitly customized for them. That way, you’ll book a place in their mind. Not only will they reach you when in need, but will promote your brand in case one of their friends need services/ products in your niche.

Take-Home Message

While these are some fantastic techniques that can help you augment your B2B lead generation, you can also hire an expert social selling team like Thought Horizon for better results.