What Are the Best Ways to Generate Quality B2B Leads?
B2B lead generation is all about inspiring trust in potential customers & showing them the value of your products or services to attract, engage, convert & retain them as customers. In a world driven by data, it becomes imperative for marketers to generate leads that are motivated by a higher intention to purchase.
Let’s look at the some of the best lead generation strategies for the year 2019 & beyond.
Landing Page Optimization:
Landing Pages also termed as “lead capture pages”, “static pages” or “destination pages” are the standalone pages designed to capture leads (often in the form of prospective customers who click on a Call to Action (CTA) button) or to promote products or services via specifically designed ads.
Optimized landing pages have a direct correlation with improved users’ experience (UX) which ultimately drives the marketers towards their ultimate goal of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
Display Advertising:
Display advertising can be a mystical practice for B2B companies as they are paying for impressions & clicks on other websites, that they don’t own.
According to a report by SEMrush top performing ad sizes identified by Google were also amongst the most frequently seen ad sizes so far in 2019, i.e. 728*90 & 300*250. Leaderboard ads (728*90) were the most popular ad size for advertisers in the shopping niche. The study established that the display network of Google reaches 90% of global internet users.
Personalized Email Marketing:
Email marketing encompasses the marketing tactics wherein commercialized messages are sent to a group of audiences using their email addresses. Emails are broadcasted from diverse motives such as advertising about specific products or services, to request businesses, to build brand loyalty, trust, reputation or brand awareness.
According to a report by Salesforce, 73% of senior-level marketers believe that email marketing is the core of their businesses as emails are critical points of communication along the customers’ journeys.
An Integrated Content Strategy:
2015-16 marked the arrival of a time which countersigned the idea of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), which along with omnichannel marketing encouraged a correlation of fragmented content strategy across omnichannel (The main pieces of content were on the primary domain & were to be discovered by the prospects on their preferred devise platforms, as well as the social media channels that they preferred for content consumption).
Influencer Marketing:
B2B industry has recently started implementing & experimenting with the expanding & increasing trajectory of ‘Influencer Marketing’, after comprehending its importance, particularly on social media platforms.
‘Influencer Marketing’ is the 4th most an important trend that B2B marketers are looking to opt for in 2019 & almost 48% of them plan to make it an integral part of their marketing strategy (Source: Marketingcharts.com).
Account-Based Marketing:
Account-Based Marketing is an approach wherein the B2B companies, particularly those seeking to reach the key decision-makers of specific accounts, prioritize and customize their marketing approaches for converting the most promising potential customers.
A research conducted by ITSMA & the ABM Leadership Alliance inferred that 77% of the respondents were achieving a 10% or higher return on investment from ABM compared to several other forms of marketing. Interestingly, close to half (45%) of respondents were “achieving more than double the ROI from ABM”. In the same report approximately, 67% of the respondents acceded that their ABM accounts have helped them achieve greater success than other accounts.
Search Marketing:
According to a study conducted by the Joal Group in 2019, the businesses that show up on the the first page of the search engines manage to amass about 90% of the relevant customer traffic & Google holds about 92.42% of the total share of the total search engine market as of April 2019.
Ranking high on Google for relevant keywords helps B2B brands get discovered by potential customers. The race for ranking high on Google though is fiercer than ever.
Social Media Marketing:
The importance of social media as effective referral channels for lead generation & nurturing have been undervalued by the marketers for a a long while, particularly due to the fact that the conventional analytical the method has neglected to align social media metrics with the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the businesses. The business KPIs have largely only been defined on the basis of website traffic & how they generate the conversions.
To build a strong & perennial sales pipeline, it is imperative for the marketers to leverage social media for various campaigns as well as to measure the success of their social endeavors, so as to align them with the the ultimate goal of Return on Investment (ROI).
Video Advertising & Visual Story-telling:
Visual storytelling or passing on a lot of information through visually appealing pieces of content, such as videos, webinars, images, infographics, photos & images, instigate customers to take actions to accelerate the sales’ conversions.
According to research published in Epsilon, it was deduced that 80% of the customers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences. Humans are visual beings and if they can see themselves as a part of a story, it helps the marketers’ purpose of optimizing the sales.
YouTube Marketing:
85% of internet users in the United States watch video monthly on any of their devices. And, YouTube is the second most popular search engine after Google. Engaging users on YouTube help marketers boost their organic SEO rankings.
YouTube Analytics can be used to measure the total number of conversions and leads generated via YouTube advertising.
Audience Segmentation:
Potential leads can be segmented into different clusters based on demography, geography, intent signaling, psychographic data, and past purchase behavior. Segmenting the target audience based on their current and past research methodologies and leveraging cookie-based data, not only facilitates targeted advertising across several clusters but also facilitates retargeting.
Real-Time Marketing:
Real-Time Marketing (RTM) is a marketing approach that analyses customer data in real-time & allows B2B marketers to engage with potential buyers based on that real-time information, including the behavior & action of the buyer persona & their engagement with news or events (related to the product or services at disposal) that are being conducted, globally.
Real-time marketing, if applied appropriately in B2B, assures that it captivates the target audience & engages them in a a manner that leads to the increase in revenue for the B2B marketer.
Contextual Marketing:
Contextual marketing matches customer preferences & focuses on delighting those using personalized experiences, to finally convert them to buyers. Clearly, focusing on real-time marketing data is imperative for marketers to attract customers & convert them to sales in lesser time. This is done by feeding them personalized & tailored solutions to their problems.
Chatbots:
“The chatbots are taking over the human race!” is not a statement you will be hearing as chatbots have not been built to replace humans but to do the same job in a better manner that is fast and effective with the help of existing tools. This will leave humans to take care of more important tasks.
In the B2B marketing & sales context, ‘Conversational Commerce’ is an emerging term which brings together the 3C’s of a sales and marketing chatbot; Content, Conversation & Context and in order to truly utilize chatbots to their full potential, leverage these3Cs.
Intent Data:
Analyzing intent data helps B2B companies in identifying & engaging the potential clients, long before their competitors can even figure them out. Sales conversion even witnesses a lot of improvement due to the shortening of the buyers’ cycle, more targeted advertising & by engaging potential clients across multiple channels.
Split-Testing:
A/B Testing or Split Testing is a great method for optimizing your email marketing campaigns in order to experience success, you so crave. Among a previously chosen a small group of subscribers, 2 different versions of your email are sent and based on which one does better, that version gets chosen as the winner.
Automated Social Media Sharing:
In a dynamic B2B industry, content needs to be showcased and promoted across multiple social media channels. Yet the various platforms have different times that are ideal to reach your audience and generate leads. You can use third-party posting and scheduling tools such as Sprout Social, Hootsuite and Buffer to streamline and automate your social posting calendar.
Social Listening:
Looking at these situations on a case-by-case basis, you might write them off as one time issues. You solve the problems as soon as it arrives. That’s social monitoring.
The more content you create the more people will get attracted to it and the higher the lead conversion rate. But for effective communication to take place and a long-lasting and fruitful relationship to be made with the customer, it is equally – or more – important to listen.
Reputation Building & Management:
Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) plays a prominent role in shaping brand trust & reputation. Having a strong brand resonance sets the pace up for improved sales revenue. People value the experiences of people; they trust & know well over any form of digital advertisement.
Event Marketing:
Events can be included in an overall marketing strategy in a myriad of ways, the implementation of which will depend on the stage of your company along with the desired outcomes. Generally, there are 2 main ways you can practice event marketing – hosting or attending.
According to the Marketing Charts 2018 study, the average spend by B2B companies that are sponsoring an event is $20,000. This is over 21% of the marketing budget, as per a Bizzabo 2018 research.
Content Syndication:
Content syndication happens when an electronic piece of content is re-distributed by a third-party website. Content can be syndicated in diverse forms including blog articles, articles, infographics, recordings & even the webinars & guest blogs (with the permission of the writer).
Syndication is about accentuating your content marketing strategies.
According to Zachary Weiner, CEO of Emerging Insider, content syndication is of exceptional value when it comes to B2B organizations that aim at advertising educational content.
Competitive Benchmarking:
Competitive benchmarking helps marketers delve into the vital KPIs of their competitors which eventually improves their data-driven decision making significantly. This helps them achieve their business objectives & optimize their Return on Investment (ROI).
Competitive benchmarking is business-oriented & allows social interactions.
Multichannel Content Strategy:
Architecting multichannel content strategies & designing campaigns according to the users’ psychographic habits utilizes the intent signals from the prospects to prepare an invisible armory to attract, engage, convert & retain them.
Matt Roberts, Digital Marketing & Predictive Analytics Expert at Argos quoted the imperativeness of multi-channel marketing as follows:
“We have enough customer behavior signals (in the way they interact with our website and also, off-site channels) to paint enough of a picture to give strong results and conversion metrics.”
Artificial Intelligence:
A study by Salesforce depicts that the probability of using Artificial Intelligence is more than twice as high for high-performing B2B companies than the underperforming ones.
According to a study published by Demandbase, 80% of the B2B marketers (at managerial level & above) believe that artificial intelligence will revolutionize the marketing industry over the next 5 years, starting from the current year.
Retargeting:
Retargeting potential buyers across multiple channels can help accelerate conversions and generate new leads. You can retarget customers via native ad campaigns, email campaigns, and social media.
Retargeting is an excellent way to reach out to potential buyers who have already expressed interest in your business by visiting your website.
Employing Local SEO:
While the B2B marketers don’t essentially need to prioritize every marketing endeavor to optimize their local visibility, they must focus on three strategies to improve their local SEO rankings.
According to a report by Google in 2018, local searches lead to 50% of mobile users to visit stores within one day. Another report by Search Engine Land implies that 82% of the smartphone shoppers conducted the ‘near me’ searches.
An Amalgamation of Neuromarketing & Inbound Marketing:
B2B marketing is gradually adapting to customers’ behavioral insights and applying the personas’ sub-conscious choices along with the underlying brain activities & integrating it with data generated from inbound marketing endeavors which help marketers achieve their ultimate goal of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).
In the words of neuromarketing expert Jill Quick, the customer empathy map traces the employment of neuromarketing practices that can help in optimizing users experiences (UX), which, in turn, can help marketers in hyper-targeting their personas.
LinkedIn Advertising:
The B2B marketers need to have a comprehensive B2B marketing strategy particularly when it comes to content. An effective advertising strategy revolves around pieces of content that are highly beneficial as well as relevant to the taste of the end-users.
LinkedIn happens to be the world’s largest social website for professionals to network & is used by approximately 600 million active users who use the platform for networking, publishing & sharing pieces of content & for active learning.
Content Marketing:
In the fiercely competitive modern B2B landscape, lead generation strategies have evolved to target the most relevant people showing the willingness to buy, to improve their experiences through omnichannel marketing & to expedite their journeys through the sales funnel, which ultimately results in optimized sales revenues for the brands. However, to build an effective lead generation strategy, one needs to start from the basics.
Content marketing is associated with the on & off-page optimization of a business’ website, with diverse Email Marketing Campaigns for reputation building & enhancing brand resonance.
Predictive Content Analysis:
Predictive content is a newbie in the field of content marketing. It’s a radical approach towards content creation & execution. It requires the internal processes within a B2B company to be changed to synchronize the sales & marketing teams which helps them work cumulatively towards the ultimate goal of optimizing Return on Investment (ROI).
Above are some of the most popular technics for generating high-quality leads. Though, we at Valasys Media, understand that every business is different & so are lead generation strategies. We catapult hyper-targeted campaigns so that our clients can optimize their marketing endeavors by attracting, engaging & converting quality prospects as well can engage with them for optimal retention.