Published 12 June 2020

Top 10 B2B Lead Generation Strategies For SaaS Companies In 2023

In the competitive B2B SaaS market, businesses must adapt lead generation strategies for 2023. Effective tactics include competitor research, targeted email marketing, leveraging directories, answering questions on platforms like Quora, mobile app development, paid advertising, SEO optimization with topic clusters, lead magnets, building a LinkedIn community, and repurposing content. Utilizing B2B lead generation tools like Zendesk Sell, SeedProd, Sendinblue, Hunter, and HubSpot can enhance campaign performance, attracting high-quality leads in the evolving landscape.

Introduction

Let’s face it, the B2B SaaS marketplace differs from 10 or 5 years ago. It is now a $186.6 billion U.S. SaaS Market

worth industry, expected to generate $344.3 billion in revenue by 2028.

B2B SaaS marketers are now highly focused on lead generation, which is the primary goal of about 91% of B2B marketers.

But unfortunately, lead generation is not that easy for businesses in 2023. There is so much competition and marketing experiments going around that your brand can’t survive with average marketing strategies.

We at Kraftblick believe that a more strategic approach to lead generation can help achieve better results.

You need proper marketing tools, strategies, and a roadmap to create marketing campaigns to attract leads in 2023.

This article will suggest some effective strategies and tactics to help you get as many quality leads as possible.

Why Must You Revisit Your B2B Lead Gen Strategy in 2023?

Most SaaS brands are not new to lead generation. Therefore, they already have a lead generation strategy in order.

But the thing is, your ancient lead generation strategy will not work today. You must re-evaluate and re-design your lead generation tactics to drive high-quality leads.

The reason?

Customers are Changing

TheB2B customer journey was never simple. According to a Gartner report, B2B decisions involve 6 to 8 decision-makers, each armed with different pieces of information on a solution.

That means you need to impress 10 business professionals to sell your products. This was not enough; As now, B2B buyers want personalized and simple buying processes.

So, to keep up with B2B buyers’ preferences, you have to reshuffle your lead gen plan.

The SaaS Market is Not the Same

The Software as a Service industry is on the rise today. There are around 30,000 SaaS companies in the world. And 10% of the market share is captured solely by Salesforce.

It is difficult to make a solid market position in this tight competitive market. Therefore, you need strategies and analytical lead-generation ideas to survive in this industry.

B2B Brands are Pumping On Ads

This year is crucial for the American business-to-business industry. It is expected that businesses will spend over $15 billion on digital ads in 2023.

This shows that B2B brands are taking marketing very seriously this year. Unfortunately, in this case, your average content marketing and sales calls can not help you generate high-quality leads. So, you must gear up and jumble up your lead generation strategies to sustain.

Top 10 B2B Lead Generation Strategies for SaaS Brands That Work in 2023

Now, you know why the B2B landscape is not the same in 2023. So, let’s now explore lead generation tactics that will work for your B2B SaaS brand in the changing dynamics.

1. Doing Competitor Research

If you don’t keep an eye on your competitors, you may miss a lot of valuable info.

Here’s what to do if you are not doing so already:

Target Competitors’ Keywords

Certain software can help you understand which keywords your competitors are using. You can use these keywords later to make your marketing efforts more effective.

For instance, you may use Ahrefs or its alternatives.

First, use keywords to optimize your own site and make it appear earlier in Google search results. Second, use those keywords to come up with topics for your blog.

Study sites of several of your competitors to get the “hottest” keywords.

Create an Excel table with a separate sheet for each of your competitors.

Add all the keywords you could find in this document and delete all duplicates. That will help you distinguish the most effective keywords and use them for your own purposes.

Target Competitors’ Brand Names

Another interesting tactic that doesn’t require much effort is using your competitor’s brand name to create keywords for PPC advertising.

For example, if you use keywords like “alternative to [competitor’s brand]”, you can lure your competitors’ potential customers.

Analyze Competitors’ Backlinks

Software such as Majestic SEO or Ahrefs can help you check the backlink profiles of your competitors.

After you find out which sites link to your competitor’s sites, create a list of these sites. Later, you can contact their owners and persuade them to link to your site.

Over time, Google will consider your site more authoritative and will raise it in the search results, which will help you get more traffic and leads.

2. Improving Email Marketing

Though email marketing is an old, well-known strategy, it still works. So, it makes no sense to abandon it.

But there are ways to make your email strategy more effective and practical. Here are a couple of tips:

Find The Most Relevant People to Email

Narrowing your focus to the most likely prospects will raise the chance of your emails getting read and of the recipients following up with desired actions.

For instance, try tools like Hunter.io or its alternatives. You can simply install a Chrome extension that’ll give you the email addresses of potential customers when you visit each site you are interested in.

Once you’ve compiled a database of emails, you can use these addresses in your marketing campaign.

Send Old Blog Posts to New Prospects

This is a great way to use old content while attracting a new audience.

For example, your site may have many old articles that have been included in your newsletter.

You could try to update these articles and repost them on the site.

But there’s a chance Google will decide you are duplicating content and reduce the usefulness of your site, which will also reduce its ranking in the search results.

It’s much better to recycle old articles in a different way.

Include the posts in a newsletter for new prospects. It’s like giving the material a second life and drawing new leads at the same time.

Automate Email Marketing

Automation is a trend that is hard to miss, and for good reason too. It allows businesses to make many processes more effective and less costly.

Automating your email marketing provides several benefits.

Implementing a good automation solution allows you to reduce staffing costs, increase average deal size, and more importantly, boost the number of leads.

Depending on the actions of your potential client, the system may send them targeted messages that will turn your prospect into a lead.

You can also determine the most promising prospects and focus your efforts on them.

With the right approach, an automated system will generate leads for you all day, all night, seven days a week.

3. Getting On Listings and Directories

It’s important that your product is as visible as possible to potential customers (links to your site will also come in handy).

Two simple things will help make your product more popular and garner leads.

First, find on the net all the popular articles that list and recommend products similar to your product.

After that, contact the owners of the blogs and make sure they include your product in their articles. That will help popularize your product, and you will get some useful backlinks.

Second, find all relevant directories and add your product to these sites. Each site has its own rules for placement and you have to comply with them to create a profile, but the result is worth the effort.

Resources such as Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice, and others will help you get traffic and leads.

In addition to all of the above, directories offer one more advantage. In profiles of your product, you can accumulate positive user reviews.

Potential customers will be assured that your product is really good, and your SaaS tool will be able to go higher on the list in a particular directory.

4. Answering Questions On Quora

Quora is a very popular question-and-answer website that has millions of visitors per year. It may also help you promote your SaaS product and get leads.

All you need to do is find relevant user questions, give detailed and useful answers, and mention your product.

For example, if startups are your target audience, you can answer this or a similar question.

Once your answer passes moderation, it will be published, and hundreds, if not thousands, of people, may take an interest in your product.

5. Building a Mobile App

Today, mobile devices are a powerful source of traffic, so you shouldn’t neglect them. That is why you should develop a corporate mobile app (unless of course you already have one).

For example, if your SaaS tool is presented only in the desktop version, you can make a mobile version and get an additional source of leads.

Or you can create an application that is not directly related to your main software (for example, some kind of free converter or calculator), and use it to attract leads.

6. Investing in Paid Advertising

If you have the resources, paid advertising can often be much more effective in generating leads than relying on free approaches.

On the other hand, investing in paid advertising requires skills and knowledge, so you can’t do it without the help of experts.

With the right approach, services such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads can bring you scores or even hundreds of leads.

Nevertheless, be prepared for the need to experiment a lot and spend serious money to achieve a tangible result.

7. Optimize your SEO Strategy

Search engine optimization is essential for every online business. It helps you grow on search engine rankings and build your brand authority.

In 2022, approximately 9 billion searches were conducted on Google every day. That means if your website is not optimized on the right keywords, it might get lost in search engine results.

However, randomly stuffing high-performing keywords into your website will not work anymore. Google is now run by intent.

How often you have embedded a keyword into your content doesn’t matter. Instead, Google focuses on the information and value that your content provides.

You have to focus on the topic cluster technique. The topic cluster strategy means creating content that provides a full overview to readers. It includes multiple variations of keywords and side words where you can embed several internal links.

To follow this strategy, you must create a pillar of content containing all the information on the topic. Then, you can write a small brief on each sub-topic. Further, you can create multiple content pieces targeting each sub-topic.

This will show Google that you have mastered specific topics. It can build your brand authority on those keywords.

For reference, you can see our guide on content syndication. In addition, the pillar blog talks about everything the reader should know about the topic.

After that, we have a series of blog posts discussing content syndication from different angles. This helps us rank on the “content syndication” keyword.

Besides this, there are some other SEO optimization tactics you must consider, like:

Develop and optimize landing pages
Perform technical SEO audits
Focus on off-page SEO
Create a buyer persona, etc.

8. Create Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are crucial for SaaS brands to generate leads. These lead magnets help you drive leads to your pipeline.

For example, when a user enters an email address to open your gated content or ebook, it shows they are interested in your solutions. A lead might not be ready yet, but you can use email marketing to vet it.

Usually, case studies, gated content, and ebooks are considered the best lead magnets for SaaS brands. But that’s not correct.

Lead magnets that can make learning and processing information faster for your customers are the best. Therefore, you must understand your customer requirements and industry trends before selecting suitable lead magnets.

There are several lead magnet options for SaaS brands, like:

Checklist
Webinars
Free Trials
Quiz
Free Demo

HubSpot is giving goals to create lead magnets for SaaS brands. They create various lead magnets like ebooks, case studies, webinars, and more.

But, we found HubSpot Academy to be the best. There is no better way to target potential leads than by offering free courses.

9. Build your LinkedIn Community

LinkedIn is a home for over 57 million businesses worldwide. Building your company page on it can put you on the radar.

You can attract, engage and directly interact with high-quality leads. LinkedIn is a great social media platform that gives you multiple avenues to generate leads, like:

You can DM potential customers
Share your articles and promotional content
Build relationships with leads
Build your expertise in a niche
Understand your buyer persona and more.

10. Repurpose your Good Content

Content is the backbone of SaaS marketing. Thus, you should leave your high-performing content piece alone.

Instead, repurpose your good content on different channels and formats. For example, suppose your blog post has generated significant traffic. In that case, you can repurpose that blog content in video and audio formats to drive traffic from other sources.

This strategy can not only generate quality leads, but also save you money as you don’t have to produce fresh content.

To execute this strategy, you must regularly audit your existing content and upgrade or repurpose it.

Best B2B Lead Generation Tools for 2023

As you can see, tools are essential to implement lead gen strategies. You need analytical tools to know your audience and monitor your campaigns. You’ll also need them for keyword research, SEO optimization, and more.

Here are the best B2B lead generation tools that we recommend to all SaaS companies:

1. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell offers built-in sales engagement tools such as lead generation, prospecting, and enrichment. These features allow salespeople to avoid tedious tasks and focus on crushing their quotas.

In addition, Zendesk will enable you to create target prospect lists for multiple channels. And, you can also create custom templates, generate an abundance of leads, and engage contacts with a personal touch.

2. SeedProd

SeedProd is the market’s best landing page builder. You can create beautiful landing pages with a drag-and-drop builder (and no coding) in just a few minutes.

You can create various pages for your site using a beginner-friendly drag-and-drop builder. SeedProd has you covered for sales, maintenance, webinars, and opt-in campaigns. You don’t need to worry about designing responsive and mobile-ready pages with 150+ landing page templates.

3. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a full-service marketing automation platform that combines email marketing and SMS messaging. Furthermore, they provide a drag-and-drop builder that can help to create highly engaging emails, automated workflows, and user segmentation.

Sendinblue can be your one-stop shop for all things email marketing. Sendinblue has it all, including automation, segmentation, and email design tools.

4. Hunter

Hunter is a perfect tool for conducting a quick email search. Simply enter the domain, and it will find the email address pattern.

Hunter also includes a confidence rating, so you can determine whether or not the email is likely correct. Hunter is thus one of the best email finder tools on the market.

5. HubSpot

HubSpot is the best CRM in the market. While HubSpot provides a wide range of tools, one of the most popular is its email marketing services.

With HubSpot, you can create beautiful conversion-ready emails while gaining valuable insights and reports on how your emails perform with your customers. Regarding sales and marketing, HubSpot can be one of your most valuable assets.

B2B Lead Generation Campaign Examples to Take Inspiration

Do you want to launch a campaign to promote your services? But, don’t know how to do that?

Then, these B2B lead generation campaign examples from popular brands can inspire you:

FreeAgent’s Data Collection Campaign

FreeAgent is aware that requesting only an email address during the initial contact significantly lowers opt-in friction. Later in the campaign, you can gather more customer information as you qualify leads with more product-specific offers. Therefore, the email address-only strategy initially ensures a larger initial lead base.

The Hustle Newsletter Tactics

The Hustle uses newsletters to generate leads for the event “Startup Tactics for Non-techies.” They send newsletters to get more attendees for the event. The newsletters are the best lead generation examples because you can reach your direct users and monitor your campaign’s success.

Consolto’s Festival Offers

Festival discounts or offers are also an excellent way for SaaS companies to get more subscribers. Consolto is a video conferencing platform that’s using Black Friday as an opportunity to attract new leads. They also offer a free trial and tutorials to nurture leads further down the pipeline.

Wrapping-Up

Most B2B businesses (SaaS companies are no exception) want to get as many quality leads as possible. For many companies’ marketing departments, this is the number one task.

But, lead generation is equally hard and challenging. Plus, there is no hard and fast rule to generate leads. All of it depends on how well you understand your audience and what methods you use to attract leads.

As you can see, several different strategies are available to generate leads. So, you must analyze your audience, market, and solutions before solidifying your lead generation strategy for 2023.

However, if you are confused after exploring so many different strategies, tools, and campaigns, don’t worry about it. That’s because the UnboundB2B team is here to help B2B SaaS brands generate high-quality leads using custom strategies. So, email or call us anytime.