B2B Lead Generation Process in Digital Marketing – A Beginner’s Guide
Lead generation can be erroneous and arduous: especially if you don’t have a plan. However, a combination of tools, strategies, and best practices can yield constructive results.
What is B2B Lead Generation?
Before launching a B2B lead generation campaign, it is crucial to understand what it is and how it differs from B2C lead generation.
B2B Lead Generation Definition:
B2B lead generation is the process of identifying and targeting the ideal buyers (key decision makers of a business) who have shown interest in your product and services. This process is possible by creating a situation with a web presence, paid ads, blogs, landing pages, case studies, etc., for a buyer to take action toward making a purchase.
Why Using Digital Channels for B2B Lead Generation is Important
Establishing a pipeline for steady leads is a critical consideration, and this is where digital marketing for B2B businesses comes into play:
- B2B digital marketing lays the foundation for sustainable demand and lead generation through SEO, Content Marketing, Paid Media, LinkedIn Marketing, and more.
- Digital marketing can significantly improve your business’s share of voice in the target market, increasing a brand’s recognition.
- Digital marketing can help you target leads across the funnel by creating bespoke campaigns at each stage.
- The advantages of B2B digital marketing are not limited to lead generation. It also aids in positioning you as a thought leader.
How to Build a B2B Digital Marketing Strategy in 2022
In the B2B space, the target audience is naturally the key decision-makers of an organization, and these individuals are tasked with driving growth for their business.
Since these individuals fall under the ambit of your target audience, they make decisions after much deliberation. Similarly, when you build a B2B digital marketing strategy in 2022, deliberation is important to make a constructive plan that targets the following:
SEO for B2B Businesses:
In the context of B2B SEO, since the target audience is the key decision makers, the keywords you plan to target will have a lower search volume compared to the B2C universe. More importantly, the content should be highly tactical and technical, if needed. Value addition should be the central theme here.
B2B Content Marketing:
The backbone of B2B lead generation is quality content: which provides real value to the users. Good quality and valuable content will position your business as an expert in its domain. It also makes for a natural environment for interaction with prospects and intelligently directs them along the funnel to make purchases.
A B2B content marketing strategy can include:
Create a Lead Magnet With Onsite Content
The first step is to fix or add content to your website. The idea is to increase awareness of your brand and generate traffic and leads, and quality content does just that! Common forms of onsite activities may include creating informative blog posts, infographics, case studies, landing pages, resource centers, etc.
Irrespective of the industry, the B2B audience always purchases after deliberation. Thus, you need to highlight your expertise, USPs, and value addition in different types of content. More importantly, it should complement the user journey and the sales funnel stage they are in. For instance, blog posts should be about informing the audience about a particular subject matter. Landing pages should have value propositions and CTAs that direct the visitors to make a decision.
Use Guest Blogging
It is one of the most effective ways to establish yourself as a thought leader and make your business a bankable name: only if it is done right.
- First, list out all the non-competing, authoritative websites and blogs catering to your target audience and are ideal for your business to generate good traffic and accept guest blogs.
- Pitch exciting and relevant topics to the editor or the owner of the blog. Be sure to include a great headline, as it will help direct relevant traffic to your website.
- If you receive a favorable response, write an interesting blog that provides valuable information to the reader, and publish it.
- These posts should be organic and directed towards genuinely helping the reader; you should steer clear of self-praises.
Additional Read: What is Guest Blogging
Personalize The Content:
Everyone likes to read content that caters to their needs. The content should meet the readers’ intent and resolve their pain points. If the reader wants to learn about B2B marketplaces, the content should resolve their queries. Depending on the funnel stage they are in, you should have different kinds of content, like blog posts, whitepapers, product pages, etc., to personalize their experience.
Leverage Quora Marketing
Quora Marketing is a great way for you to establish yourself as a subject matter expert in your domain. However, it should be done mindfully. Use the platform to open lines of communication with people by helping them with their queries or problems related to a certain niche. The best way to establish engagement is by adding value, and Quora is filled with people looking for answers.
Make a LinkedIn Marketing Strategy:
LinkedIn can be an excellent platform for brand awareness, engaging with your target audience, and generating leads. More importantly, it is a professional platform, i.e., you can target your B2B audience. Building a LinkedIn marketing strategy requires proper planning, where you use a combination of organic and paid methods to achieve the end objectives.
Also Read: How does Quora Marketing generate leads and engagement?
How to Generate B2B Leads via PPC Advertising:
An ideal Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for B2B businesses includes the following platforms:
Google Ads:
Google Ads is the most effective model for paid advertising. Search ads offer an average conversion rate of 3.75%. However, these average numbers primarily depend on the industry. For the B2B industry, this number can be even lower; however, the RoI is significantly better.
To effectively deploy Google Ads for your paid marketing campaigns, optimizing the following aspects is key to increase the reach, interactions, and leads:
Ads:
You need the right combination of ads to find the best-performing ones. For instance, if Google search ads yield better results than display ads, it is crucial to redefine the campaigns and direct your efforts there.
Landing Page and Ad copies:
It is important to optimize the landing page and the ads to highlight the value proposition and improve the placement of CTAs. You need to focus on the design, expertise, and creative elements to ensure this.
Targeted Keywords:
Since it is pay-per-click advertising, you need your keywords to be hyper focused in order to drive quality traffic. If you are running a campaign for a SaaS platform for CRM, the targeted keywords should be in line with the campaign and what the target audience is searching for.
Facebook Ads
Facebook is viewed as one of the most powerful platforms to run paid advertisements due to its data that enable advertisers to run extremely focused ads. Facebook Ads is a great lead generation tool, as it can isolate and target a very specific demographic, one that is most likely to convert. With ad retargeting and well-designed Facebook Ad campaigns, your business can see a great influx of new leads in no time.
LinkedIn Ads:
LinkedIn Ads is a part of LinkedIn marketing, and it can help you target the B2B audience by title, industry, and more. There are three types of LinkedIn ads you can target: Sponsored Content, Text Ads, and Message Ads. All these ad types have their advantages and disadvantages and are driven by the industry you are in. This means you need to actively optimize your campaigns by actively checking the analytics to find the best-performing ones that are generating the most leads.
Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing is when you incentivize another website or entity to promote your product or service in lieu of the commission they’ll receive after the completion of conversion or sale. This channel is viable only if you do it right. From selecting the right B2B affiliate to integrating the incentives, all of this is needed for B2B lead generation through affiliate marketing.
Also Read: What is Affiliate Marketing and How to Start?
How to Generate Leads via Email Marketing?
Email marketing has the potential to be the core channel for B2B lead generation if you can be creative and focused. However, for B2B email marketing to be successful, you need to get a lot of things right. For instance,
- Your target audience should be interested buyers.
- The emailers should have a good copy and proper CTAs.
- The value proposition should be highlighted correctly.
Furthermore, here are the strategies you can implement:
- Cold Emails: You need to be creative with the subject lines and the content to get a good response rate from a cold email campaign, and avoid being relegated to spam.
- Newsletters: Utilize a B2B newsletter addressing your subscribers’ needs that are in line with your objectives. You can distribute case studies, white papers, promote podcasts, etc., that genuinely add value to the reader.
- Automate: You can use tools to automate some tasks to bolster operational efficiency. However, you should not lose your focus on the best practices. Automation should be done mindfully while balancing the best practices alongside.
Additional Read: Newsletter Marketing
Make a B2B Referral Program:
Nearly 78% of B2B marketers state that referral programs can yield quality leads. To run a B2B referral campaign, you need to identify the right existing customers:
- Paying clients
- Loyal customers
- Willing promoters
If you plan on utilizing an informal way of reaching out to your customers for a referral, the results may not be constructive. However, a strategic approach that targets the right customers and offers the right incentives is an ideal way to bolster leads.
Conclusion
B2B lead generation is quite an overwhelming process that requires you to develop and execute strategies across various channels. More importantly, it is a combination of organic and paid efforts.
In this post, we have outlined all the relevant channels and best practices of B2B marketing for lead generation.
If you have any questions on the topic or would like to learn about our B2B marketing and B2B lead generation services, please connect with our team.