Improve your B2B Lead Generation

Using inbound marketing to attract prospects to your products or services has proven to be both efficient and cost effective for organizations that take the time to utilize it. We live in a time where digital marketing must be customer-centric, dynamic, and readily available to your customers on the platforms they know and love. Fail at any one of these and you’re marketing efforts are destined to drain your resources, and end up in the land of forgotten campaigns where there is no return.

This is especially true when focusing on B2B lead generation, which can be considered the holy grail of business marketing. Creating quality leads means filtering out unfit prospects that wouldn’t be ideal customers, and utilizing strategies that target every stage of the sales funnel. Let’s take a look at some of the ways that inbound marketing techniques can make this process easier.

Personalization

The first step in creating personalized content is to know and understand your ideal customer base.  When was the last time you updated your buyer personas, or surveyed your current or past customers? If the answer is never, or back in 1995, than this would be the ideal place to start.

Knowing who your customers are and why they love your services is the first step to developing rich personalized content. Once you have developed that content, don’t forget to spend time distributing it. In fact, it’s always recommended you spend just as much time distributing and refurbishing your content as you did to create it.

Target the champions

Most marketers in the B2B space target c-suite and other high-level executives because they ultimately have the final say in purchasing decisions. Although this can be beneficial, it commonly leaves out the influencers and “champions” of your target demographic, and leaves out the 81% of non c-suite employees that have a high-level of buying influence.

In a recent study by Google it was discovered that 46% of researchers were ages 18-34. These are the analysts, managers, team leads and fulfillment specialists that do most of the research on products and services and are presenting their findings to the decision makers. Make sure you are also targeting this group in your marketing efforts.

Don’t forget about SEO

Optimizing your website and content for your specific services is the best way to generate quality leads that don’t waste your time and efforts. Each page should have a targeted keyword along with content that discusses pain points, benefits, and provides an easy to use interface that connects to contact forms. Go one step further by developing microdata for each page so search engines can easily crawl and recognize the subject matter.

Develop your brand presence

Becoming a thought leader in your industry makes B2B lead generation much easier for you and your marketing team. Utilizing social media, guest blogging, speaking engagements, webinars, and podcasts not only provide you with a way to get your company’s message out there, but also establishes your brand as one that customers know and trust. This will not only start to get the leads flowing, but will allow your salespeople to easily reference why these potential customers should choose your company over your competitors.

Optimize for mobile

It’s a common misconception that B2B leads don’t come from mobile. Although that may have been the case several years ago, it no longer holds true today. Mobile search accounts for more web traffic than desktop, and is projected to increase by 50%.  In fact,  26% of online users start their searches by using a branded mobile app. In addition to that, 91% of researchers will use a smartphone when researching potential buying decisions for their business. If you haven’t developed a mobile marketing strategy, you’re leaving leads on the table.

Much success,

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