Published 10 September 2019

Lead Generation Strategies That Work for B2B Companies

Lead generation strategies play a crucial role in driving business growth by attracting potential customers and converting them into leads. Content marketing, social media advertising, PPC campaigns, viral marketing, newsletter promotions, and leveraging FOMO are effective strategies for generating B2B leads. Building trusted backlinks also helps in establishing credibility. By implementing these strategies, businesses can ensure a steady flow of high-quality leads and optimize their lead generation efforts for success.

Introduction of Lead Generation Strategies

Leads are users blipping your radar who are continually allowing you the opportunity to provide the kind of value-added services that solve their problems. When you’re offering that kind of service, you’ll be converting potential customers to strong leads that drive the business growth engine.

A regular stream of leads strengthens the spine of any B2B marketing strategy. Securing the integrity of the lead pipeline is the key to maintaining a steady growth trajectory.

Imagine the lead pipeline to be a two-lane highway. How you handle the inbound customer traffic is vital for establishing your credibility and consumer-friendliness. The outbound traffic is where you experiment and innovate to forge a deeper connection with potential clients.

International SEO agency experts at Miromind insist that the evolving complexity of search algorithms requires an integrated approach that goes above and beyond mundane SEO strategies. Let’s take a closer look at the b2b lead generation services and strategies that worked for the world’s most successful B2B companies.

Increasing Organic Traffic through Content Marketing

The prime movers and decision-makers in companies read content just like everyone else, and this makes content marketing an essential resource for generating B2B leads.

WordPress hosting major, Kinsta, added zing to its content marketing strategy using sophisticated tools such as Ahref’s backlinks and keyword/ competitor researchers. The company witnessed a 571 percent growth in organic traffic, leading to a remarkable rise in quality leads.

The company generated high-quality content that targeted clients consistently. The targeted clients responded positively to the company because the marketed content was useful and valuable for solving problems.

Tip: Personalize the content to address the needs of the targeted group, ensuring that you’re adding value that’s irresistible to readers.

Unlocking the Potential of Social Media Advertising

One of the most effective strategies is to desist from selling the brand or your product directly or aggressively. Focus on the core concern of the targeted audience. Once you’ve grabbed the user’s attention, you place a killer ‘Hook’ in the blog page explaining what you’re offering. Such an approach is guaranteed to generate quality leads.

It’s a two-stage process with content highlighting the concerns of the audience, and the hook is an affirmative call to action in the landing page.

There are very few people without a social media account; there are a lot more that use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This eclectic combination of social media real estate offers premium advertising space, enabling you to target your most responsive audience segmented right down to their age, gender, interests, and geographical location. To get an advantage over your competition you can use real estate flyers to run your campaign on social media platforms.

Tip: Boost engagement by providing what the targeted audience craves, and pack a punch with an offer they can’t refuse.

Spurring Conversions through Pay-Per-Clicks (PPC), Staying within your Budget

PPC is an El Dorado that businesses chase, attracted by more significant exposure and faster conversions at a nominal cost. But, it’s useful only if you’re pretty sure of your target audience. A misguided campaign could cost you a fortune depending on the industry and niche that you operate.

PPC is increasingly facing stiff resistance from regulatory frameworks such as the GDPR that allow greater control to web users to opt-out of advertising campaigns by controlling cookies. This means there’s less likelihood of people seeing your ads.

Fortunately, there are ways to get around the PPC execution hurdle:

Increasing visibility in the search results page: If people are searching for key phrases like “Top CRM software,” it’s a fair indication that users are migrating from researching to buying. You get a better shot at converting these consumers by positioning your ad at the top of the Google search results, highlighting the keywords specific to your niche.

Using the Google automated visual advertising generator: This tool allows you to design neat visuals that can be placed in websites that permit Google advertising. This method is hassle-free but is a notch below our first suggestion in terms of conversions and lead quality.

Reminding the people that visited you: Many visitors briefly scan your website before pogo-sticking elsewhere. Targeting visitors that have moved on from your site is called retargeting because you are basically reminding such people that you are available.

Retargeting is impactful the second time around because you’re better prepared. The retargeted ad can address the specific pain points of the customer, but more explicitly. The user has already seen you and knows you, and is in the purchasing mode, so there’s a higher likelihood of conversion.

Tip: Before launching the PPC campaign, know your targeted audience and where they are located, be it in the terrestrial sphere or the cyber universe.

Making the Most of Viral Marketing Trends

Many people get the impression that a topic trending virally is like a beast running in the wild; something you have no control over. What we fail to understand is that issues go viral only because people in large numbers decide to share content, they consider share-worthy socially.

You can engineer a viral trend by asking people to share your what you offer. If, for example, you’re promoting WordPress hacks, your Twitter feed may read “In our blog we feature “17 ways to build your WordPress website from scratch…Would love a share!” 🙂

For a quiet start, you could request all your existing clients and opt-ins to lend you a helping hand by sharing your content with their circle of well-wishers.

You could also incentivize sharing by prompting clients to “Unlock three attractive bonuses by sharing this post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.” You get word-of-mouth marketing referrals at little extra cost.

Tip: Customers are more likely to opt for click-and-share content than spend time writing lengthy testimonials praising your service, and conversions are faster.

Promoting a Newsletter like you’re Enriching a Legacy

Trite expressions like “Sign up for our latest Newsletter” drive users away because no one bothers for what they can’t make sense of. You need to weaken the grip of standardized copywriting and sweeten the deal with something more appealing.

Your message needs to be focused on the customer’s pain points to the exclusion of all other fluff.

Try substituting the usual “Newsletter” spiel with something like “Join our growing community of 40,000+ WordPress bloggers, and unleash your talent.” It’s the same thing but stated differently by drawing on the power of social proof marketing.

We give you another example of a conversion-oriented copy. Try saying, “We’ll show you how we grew our traffic 1,783% using advanced CRM software. Join the community of 20,000+ members receiving weekly insider tips.”

Tip: If you’re building email listings meticulously and effectively, pause and rewrite the copy using the approach we’ve outlined. Watch the metrics and measure customer response.

Convincing Consumers what they can’t have is within their Reach

Ever wondered why humankind is genetically wired to covet what is beyond one’s grasp? Psychologists put it down to the FOMO syndrome. The “Fear of missing out” describes the gnawing apprehension that something worthwhile or rewarding may be slipping out of our grasp.

Big business has been consistent in leveraging the power of FOMO to strengthen conversion rate optimization. And it’s mostly done through influencers, movers and shakers, and celebrities who endorse products.

Users searching for specific products see famous people using and talking about products. This generates the feeling that the product is a worthwhile alternative that should be tried before offer lapses.

FOMO is doubly useful when you reshare the positive feedback that users generate. Resharing done selectively through influencers drives massive conversions in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

If the social share button plays a vital role in spurring conversions, you could introduce more zing by adding social share numbers to the button. A social share button displaying 1000+ shares is more likely to encourage larger shares.

Tip: Leverage the FOMO effect sparingly when you have something unique to offer when stock is depleting, or you wish to highlight celebrities exclusively promoting the product.

Strengthening Your Reservoir of Trusted Backlinks

One way of building your trust quotient is to get customers to rave about your service, and you may get many word-of-mouth referrals that boost conversions and sales. Another equally important strategy is to get reputed websites to send their customers your way.

We call them backlinks. Naturally, the more backlinks you have come towards you, the more popular or trustworthy you’re deemed to be, and this brings a more appreciative audience looking for you.

Avoid buying backlinks in bulk as it negatively impacts your reputation and standing vis a vis the search engines.

The best approach to building good backlinks is to:

Contribute blog articles that benefit other companies.
Persuade other websites (through high-quality content) to share what you’re offering.
Angle for a mention in the resource pages of websites enjoying high domain authority.
Create handy infographics other businesses and web communities will want to share.

Tip: To attract a constant stream of good backlinks, churn out high-quality content regularly to motivate people to share what you want to highlight.

Conclusion

The essence of a lead generation strategy lies in creating a compelling offer supported by vibrant landing pages and contact forms. You’d be reaching out to consumers populating diverse media, pinging you through multiple channels.

You have in place a highly motivated and focused sales team processing high quality leads coming through the sales funnel regularly.

Last but not least, you’re on your toes, testing and validating every component of the lead generation journey if only to boost the quantity and quality of the leads.