The key to successful B2B sales starts with effective lead generation strategies. To generate better conversion rates, B2B marketers should use various methods to attract the target audience, meet their preferences, and influence their buying decisions.
B2B lead generation is a process of finding and attracting leads for a business. Without a solid lead generation strategy in place, it will be difficult for businesses to grow and thrive.
There is no single “best” or “perfect” lead generation method. What works for other businesses may not work for you. This is why it is important to consistently test and measure the effectiveness of each lead generation campaign. Try and experiment with different methods and find out what brings you the best results.
Lead generation involves trial and error. When optimized properly, it can fill your sales pipeline and massively impact current and future cash flows. We’ve put together a list of 59 lead generation ideas for B2B businesses that you can try and start implementing today.
1. Chase Leads with Exit-intent Popup Forms
Not all users who visit your website will end up purchasing your products and services. A portion of them will leave your site before reaching the conversion stage of your marketing funnel.
Adding exit-intent popup forms is proven to add 5-10% increase in conversions. The pop-up forms track web visitors’ mouse click movements and appear strategically when they are about to leave your window. By enticing them to share their information before they go, you are driving more potential customers to your funnel.
Popular exit-intent pop-up forms can be a free discount, downloadable free e-book, a discount code, or a newsletter subscription.
2. Use On-site Retargeting Methods
This is another way of using exit-intent popups. The goal of on-site retargeting is to send personalized triggers based on the users’ behavior and browsing activity on your site.
For example, a visitor who has scrolled to the bottom of your page receives a popup for an in-line campaign. An ad for your featured product or service may appear or it can be a case study. You may also like a discount coupon to appear before the user clicks the exit window.
The idea is to re-engage them and make them move deeper into your sales funnel. A chatbot that appears on the bottom right screen when a user doesn’t have screen activity on your site for 30 secs is also an excellent remarketing tactic.
3. Use Case Studies to Influence Buying Decisions
People buy from people they know and trust. An amazing offer does not completely guarantee that your leads will buy it. To persuade them to take action and convert them into paying clients, it is ideal to show proof.
Case studies are amazing tools to demonstrate what your products and services are all about. Showcase its benefits and highlight your past client’s results. Explain how your business works and how it will benefit your prospective client.
4. Write a Business Blog
Blogs help you establish thought leadership in your industry. It is one of the most straightforward yet effective approaches to capture the attention of your audience. Publish content at least twice a week and maintain a regular publishing schedule. When writing blogs, include a call to action (CTA) that encourages them to visit your landing pages, links, and other content.
Blog posts help businesses drive traffic to both your website and social media pages. They can influence your audience to make decisions. By sharing informative and educational blog posts such as buying guides, how-to’s, product reviews, and tutorials, you are making buyers more informed. With this, they will find your content valuable, consider you an industry expert, and become more interested in your brand.
5. Create more Content
Content creation can be a time-consuming process but it is always worth it. You cannot expect high results if you are only putting minimal effort into your content strategy. Create more content that resonates with your audience.
Blogs drive more engagement and appeal to both search engines and users. When building content, focus on its relevance and value to the audience. High-quality and in-depth content can become your lead magnet. Ensure that you have well-written content across your website and social media platforms.
6. Optimize your Content for SEO
In the competitive digital space, writing and publishing regular content is not enough. To maximize your business’s online exposure, you need to improve your search ranking. To do this, you need to optimize all your content with all relevant and targeted keywords that your customers are searching for in major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Boost your content visibility by targeting the right long-tail keywords. As much as possible, avoid high-competition keywords that are difficult to rank for. Instead, target the keywords that have minimal search volume and low to medium keyword difficulty. Focusing on specific keywords will give you targeted traffic and high purchase intent, leading to more prospects and sales.
7. Create Long-form Content
From an SEO and B2B customer’s perspective, long-form content is generating the most traffic and engagement online. Do not rush in building content. Sacrificing the quality for quantity is bad for SEO and lead generation efforts. Although short-form content doesn’t entirely mean wrong, the ideal length of a blog post or article should be between 1,500 to 2,000 words.
Google indicates that long-form content is more useful and comprehensive. It holds more information and provides more value to the users. Another good thing about long-form content is you can always repurpose it and extract bite-sized content to be shared on emails and social media.
8. Get Featured on Guest Posts to Extend your Reach
Guest posting is an underrated method of content marketing strategy. Connect with external publications and non-competitor blogs in your industry. Getting featured in guest posts extends your reach because the audience and readers of the external publication are checking out your content.
This improves your brand’s visibility and recognition. It also helps SEO as you build backlinks to your main site. When writing guest posts, keep your content in long-form so that you can discuss a certain topic in detail, provide more value to the reader, and entice them to visit your website.