If you’re running a business-to-business (B2B) company, the ability to generate new leads is key to driving growth and fostering success. The internet provides huge opportunities to bring in a large number of leads for your business, but how do you create these B2B leads?
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy.
Generating B2B leads online is a complex task for any marketer and can be highly competitive. To create a great strategy, you must incorporate a combination of digital tactics. Here are 10 tactics for digital B2B lead generation that you might want to try:
- SEO leads
- Focusing your landing pages
- Content marketing
- Leverage larger audiences
- Web forms & email marketing
- Google Ads & PPC
- Webinars
- Social Media
- Live chat interactions
- Customer referrals & reviews
SEO leads
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an essential marketing practice for long-term lead generation. Previously, targeting keywords was a surefire way to rank in any search engine results page (SERP). However, modern SEO strategies can no longer focus on keywords as new search engine algorithms constantly change your website’s ranking. In addition to those keywords, B2B marketers must consider numerous factors, including website optimisation, content creation, and many more.
Remember that you’re playing the long game when it comes to SEO. Optimising your website will not have leads falling at your feet overnight. Instead, building SEO into your lead generation strategy will slowly and steadily increase traffic to your website and generate more leads.
It’s also important to note that Google is continuing to roll out their mobile-first agenda, so it’s more important than ever to ensure that your website is optimised for mobile devices and has a design that connects with your target audience. A website that looks great on all devices will help generate new leads.
Focusing your landing pages
Focusing on your website’s landing pages is an extension of your SEO tactic. If web traffic searches for financial consultants, you don’t want them to land on a page about tourism consultants.
Make sure your key landing pages are well-optimised, and the content is relevant.
This focus will make converting general web traffic to new leads much more likely.
As with the rest of your SEO, this should be an ongoing project which you tweak and improve over time.
Content marketing
Content marketing is a great strategy for marketing your brand as an expert within your industry. Content creation could include blogging, customer case studies, and more. The more quality content you produce, the stronger your reputation will become.
This tactic will also enhance your SEO strategy, as good content can gain backlinks to your website and encourage engagement on social media. This may be the least direct lead generation strategy; content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads.
Leverage larger audiences
Content doesn’t have to be on your website. Guest blogging can be a powerful way to increase brand awareness and generate more leads. If you contact an influencer within your industry and provide them with good content, they might let you publish on their website. Your association with the larger brand can generate more traffic and, therefore, more leads.
Web forms & email marketing
Before you can start an email marketing campaign, you first need to construct a contact list. You can’t just buy contact lists, which goes against GDPR compliance. However, through Web Forms, you can gather new contacts that subscribe potential leads to your company news and marketing. Why would they be interested in subscribing to you? That’s where content marketing comes in.
Email marketing is the go-to B2B marketing channel as it returns the best ROI statistically.
When it comes to B2B sales, most businesses will not impulse purchase but instead make purchase decisions based on their relationship with your brand.
The key to a successful email marketing campaign is to personalise your messages and nurture your relationships with prospective B2B leads throughout the campaign.
When you begin an email campaign, check your lead development progression at every stage. Adopting relationship management software that can automate your marketing allows you to keep key information all in one location, making this easier.
Google Ads & PPC
While Pay-per-Click (PPC) may seem like a surefire way to generate leads, it is deceptively difficult. For example, in Google Ads, there could be high competition on broad keywords, which results in a high cost per click (CPC).
It’s important then to decide how you are going to target your adverts. You could decide to target niche Keywords that are less competitive but also have low search volume to minimise CPC, or instead target highly competitive but high-volume Keywords, the strategy will depend on your budget. Using Google Ads takes time and requires a trial and error approach, however, the clicks can payoff.
You don’t have to run everything through search engine ads. Creating profiles on comparison or review websites is a great place to generate new leads. As mentioned with email marketing, businesses like to shop around and make informed decisions before purchasing and will want to compare your services/products against your competitors.
Webinars
Webinars demonstrate your expertise and the quality of your product. Every time you host a webinar, you are pitching to potential leads while nurturing the ones you already have. This is an excellent way to build relationships between your business and prospective sales online.
Social Media
Actively participating in conversations that involve your industry is a great way to show off your expertise in a way that generates leads and builds trust in your brand. Contribute to online discussions on social media websites and engage with visitors regularly.
You can also promote and provide exposure to your other tactics, such as content marketing and webinars on social media sites. LinkedIn is the most valuable social platform for discussing B2B tactics, as it is built for professional networking.
Live Chat interactions
Even though you’ve spent plenty of time trying to ensure that all content on your website is relevant and all possible questions have been answered, some visitors can’t find what they are looking for.
According to live chat research, 44% of online consumers say having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer. Of course, this will generate more leads from your website traffic.
Customer referrals & reviews
More and more leads are influenced by peer recommendations, and businesses often look to review websites for guidance. Because of this, leads generated through customer referrals and review sites are often high-quality.
To generate these high-quality leads, you must encourage your existing customers to leave honest reviews on prominent websites.
Once you have a solid amount of reviews, ensure your prospects find favourable reviews. If a customer has gone out of their way to write a great review, ask if they are willing to take part in a customer case study and use it in your content marketing or share the review on social media and other platforms to generate brand exposure.
Many websites also allow you to manage your company profile and provide options to generate quality leads through PPC.
Summary
These different lead generation tactics can work alone or in tandem. The best strategy will incorporate all the above in some form, the important thing is that they all increase your business’s visibility online and turn your digital audience into leads.
