What is a lead?
A potential customer is anyone who shows an interest in a company's product or service in some way, shape, or form.
Potential customers typically hear from a business or organization after they open the communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription)…rather than receiving a random cold call from someone who bought their contact information.
Let's say you take an online survey to learn more about taking care of your car. About a day later, you get an email from the car company that created the survey about how they could help you take care of your car. This process would be much less intrusive than if you were called out of the blue not knowing if you care about car maintenance, right? This is what it is to be a leader.
And from a business perspective, the information the auto company collects about you from your survey responses helps them tailor that opening communication to address your existing issues, and not waste time calling potential customers who aren't interested. at all in auto services.
There are many strategies that modern brands and marketers leverage in their combined lead generation efforts.
Email Marketing – Some people consider email newsletters and the like to be a thing of the past, however, some studies have found that email marketing is still up to 40% more effective than social media marketing.
Social Media Marketing – Many businesses find that social media marketing can help increase their sales over time, social media marketing is also very important when it comes to your brand awareness, something we will talk about later in this article.
Blogging: It is still a very effective way of generating leads. Blogging is a great help, it lets your prospective clients know that you have a great knowledge base when it comes to your chosen field. Blogging also helps when it comes to keywords and ranking on Google.
Networking – You may have heard the old adage “It's not what you know, it's who you know”. leading generation. One little fact to keep in mind is that about 80% of jobs are filled through networking, which is sobering.
Giveaways and Coupons: People love free stuff, so having giveaways is a great way to generate new leads. Coupons are also an effective way to attract new customers to your business.
Live Events and Webinars – A slight extension of the last point, here you would be hosting events, running live webinars, or possibly creating instructional content for YouTube. This will help your brand awareness and customer trust move forward.
This is a brief summary of the most common B2B marketing strategies that companies use to generate leads.
For our complete guide to lead generation, read this: The Ultimate Guide to Lead Generation
What is B2B lead generation?
B2B in B2B lead generation means business to business so essentially now when we talk about B2B2 lead generation we're just talking about lead generation that targets leads from other companies these can be for purposes profit or non-profit.
There are four different B2B marketplaces which are as follows:
Producers: Producers can be defined as a company that buys goods from other companies and, in turn, transforms those goods into other products. All food chains, car manufacturers, and many other industries can join the farmer's market.
Resellers: As the name suggests, this market is only for those who buy products to resell without changes or modifications. Stores like Tescos and Sainsburys can therefore be located in this market, because they bring together many products from separate producers and sell them, unchanged.
Institutions: These can mostly be summed up as non-profit organizations such as churches or charities. In general, they buy a large number of products/services.
Government: The government or B2G as it is sometimes called by those in the know. Governments as you can imagine are the world's biggest buyers of goods and services, if you can imagine they probably need it for anything from paper to nuclear missiles that governments are buying.
How is B2C lead generation different from B2B lead generation?
B2C stands for business to customer and a customer is defined as someone who is not affiliated with a specific company or brand. Essentially companies whose sole purpose is to sell products to client companies like Amazon, Tesco, eBay, and Netflix.
In general, the B2B market is more concerned with saving money, since its main objective is to make money; however, B2C customers are generally more open to spending large amounts of money. B2B models also have the added benefit of having fewer customers with more revenue. This also means that your sales cycle is longer in B2B transactions.
Another key difference between B2C and B2B marketplaces is that product presentation is generally more of a key buying factor for the B2C marketplace. Most B2B companies will look at the price and functionality of a product or service before the product or packaging is introduced.
However, product packaging and presentation are some of the key buying factors for those in the B2C market.
Some companies have strictly B2B business models, while others have A B2C, hybrid B2B, and B2C business models that are often seen today, especially with larger B2C companies having separate departments for B2B activities.
When it comes to your lead generation efforts, there are a few minor differences in the approach marketers will need to take. Many of these aspects are aesthetic choices or choices that are informed by prior knowledge you have about your "Target Audience" or "Perfect Customers".
When looking at the differences between B2C and B2B lead generation, another place where there is a big difference is the use of social media.
Many B2C leads are generated for companies' B2C efforts in contrast to B2B lead generation where the only real platform that has any use is Linkedin.
How does B2B lead generation work?
To boil things down to a simple process, there are four main steps to B2B lead generation. You may hear this called a "B2B sales funnel" and they work like this:
Find the prospects: The first step in B2B lead generation is finding the contact information of potential prospects. This information is obtained internally or by a third-party lead generation company.
First contact: Now that you have a database of high-quality leads to contact, it's time to start a cold contact. This can be an email or a social media post of some kind. The goal here is to get your business or product in front of the eyes of people who are likely to enjoy your product or service.
Finding and Qualifying Leads – This stage is all about research, does your customer know your brand? Do they trust your brand? Already considering making a purchase? These are the main contributing factors that many B2B customers will ask themselves before making a purchase.
Close the lead: buy! Success! Triumph! Victory! Hasta la vista baby! The potential customer chose your brand and made the purchase.
There are many different strategies that businesses use for B2B lead generation, don't worry, we'll cover them in more depth later in this article when we cover the best B2B lead generation strategies for beginners.
Why is B2B lead generation important to my business?
When it comes to business, being static is not a good thing. A day without growth is essentially a day wasted. I think essentially what I'm having a hard time saying here is that B2B lead generation is important because it will grow your business.
Knowing your target audience is key so you don't waste your efforts advertising to those who wouldn't be interested in your brand in the first place. However, advertising or creating content for your target demographic will help increase your brand awareness, which in turn will have a knock-on effect on your lead generation capabilities.
Without B2B, lead generation companies would have a hard time making sales and expanding. Having an enthusiastic B2B lead generation strategy is key to being successful in every growing business.
In today's internet-centric society, B2B lead generation has become increasingly important as lead generation drives traffic to company websites where they can convert those leads into sales.
Having a well-designed and attractive website that is mobile-ready for your leads to land on has also become increasingly important and this is an aspect of lead generation that is also very important. The look and feel of your website will set the tone for how your potential customer feels about your brand.
If the website is slow and clunky, chances are potential B2B or B2C customers are getting thinner and thinner.
What are the different types of B2B lead generation?
Now let's break down the three main types of B2B leads. Every lead is a new paying lead, but unfortunately, not all leads are created equal.
Cold leads
A cold lead is essentially a company that has been considered a good fit for your brand, either through the purchase of a third-party lead from a lead generation company or a lead that you have generated yourself internally. Generally speaking, these have a lower conversion rate than the other B2B lead generation methods, mainly because the prospective lead has no prior knowledge of the brand. The general goal with cold leads is to cast a large net, as this method doesn't generate many leads.
Warm leads
Warm leads are essentially businesses that have interacted with your brand before, whether it's by filling out an email form, visiting a website multiple times, or viewing or downloading some type of free content you have available online.
These actions indicate that the prospective customer is interested in your business, making them more likely to want to interact with your site and make a purchase.
Hot leads
As you might have guessed, an attractive lead or qualified lead is a business that has shown that they have a strong intent to make a purchase and are already interested in your company or brand. They may have come to your website from targeted advertising or as a result of following up with a warm lead, in either case, warm leads are ready to make a purchase.
What are the different types of B2B lead generation?
There are eight main categories when it comes to lead generation strategies, which are as follows:
Outbound – With outbound efforts, you will use prospecting tools and databases, outbound emails, phone prospecting, and nurturing leads. The goal here is to convince your cold leads to become warm, hot leads.
Online – This category includes content creation and distribution, web design, lead capture, social media marketing, email marketing, webinars, PPC advertising efforts. A large portion of B2B lead generation falls into this category. Content creation alone takes time; this means that you will have to outsource some aspects of the operation to other experts in that area.
Paid: Includes all leads generated by third-party lead generation companies.
Events: This category includes attending trade shows, conducting online webinars, and other forms of B2B networking.
Branding and Advertising: Use of sponsorships or general advertising to increase awareness of your brand.
Direct Mail – Not such a great option for those in the B2C space, but for B2B businesses, good old-fashioned mail is another great way to get your brand in front of their eyes.
Referrals: Referrals from previous satisfied customers or general "word of mouth" scenarios in this category. Making sure your customers have a great customer experience on your website or in-store is vital for referrals to occur.
PR: The last type of lead generation is doing press releases, being in the news, or generally getting some sort of media attention that you didn't 'pay' for. A great example would be holding some kind of charity auction and the local news turning up to report on the event.
What are the 6 stages of the B2B buying process?
We are now going to describe the 6 stages of the B2B buying process to help you understand your customer's steps from knowledge to final purchase.
1. Awareness
The first stage of the B2B buying process is when the customer realizes that he needs a product or service to solve a problem or satisfy a need that your company has. To make an example that is relevant to this situation, if there were a CMO who realized that in order to get the market recognition the company needs, they would need to hire a third party to generate leads for them.
2. Commitment to solving the problem
The next stage of the B2B buying process is for the customer to commit to solving the problem or satisfying the need. It will be at this point that the potential customer will begin to address their budget and assess how their purchase may affect the overall business.
3. Consideration of purchase options
At this point, the leader will begin to investigate what solutions are available in the market. Making sure your website stands out from the rest will be key at this stage.
4. Commitment to the solution
After considering all the options available in the market, or not, of course, the leader decides which is the best solution for his business.
5. Decision
Now, at this point, the leader will have decided what the purchase will be and now needs to justify that decision to any member of management who needs input. This will be the stage in which all the final questions will be addressed and the details will be finalized.
6. Final sale
At this stage, the potential customer has received the go-ahead to buy the product or service and does so. Making sure they have a great customer experience on your store or website will ensure they use your brand the next time they need to buy a similar item. This is also great when it comes to increasing the number of referrals you get overtime.
These are the six stages of the B2B buying process, depending on exactly what service or product your business offers, you may be able to skip a step or two here and there.
The overall goal is to create satisfied customers, satisfied customers talk about good experiences that will lead to referrals. One point to remember is that this road goes both ways, bad customers talk too. Customer service should be at the top of your priority list.
Can I generate B2B leads myself?
As you may have deduced from the two thousand strange words that I have already written today, B2B lead generation is actually quite a complex topic. It's easy enough to say 'well, write some blogs, make some videos, open a website and you'll have clients before you know it', but it's not as simple as that, if it was, everyone would be doing it. right?
The simple answer is, yes, you can do B2B lead generation yourself, BUT you have to do all of that yourself. You may find it more profitable to outsource this activity to an outside company that can generate leads on your behalf.
However, if you still want to start learning how to generate leads yourself, we'll cover that in the next chapter.
How to get started with B2B lead generation?
Okay, now we're going to break down how to get started with your own B2B lead generation.
Create a website/storefront – Before you start thinking about increasing your sales, you need to have a place for your sales to happen, this will be a website or a storefront, or both! Having a well-designed website is certainly one of the main things that you need to make sure you have if you are running your business online, you need to have a great and attractive website that works on all platforms.
Identify prospects – Now you need to start doing some research, find companies that might need the product or service you provide, build a database that you can refer back to overtime.
Set up an automated email list – The B2B market is still very active when it comes to email lists and the like, setting up an automated email list can help you stand out from the crowd if you're saying something interesting.
Cold Prospecting – Now you can use your database to start cold prospecting your leads. This can be accomplished by calling the company or sending them an email.
Create Content – So creating content is one of the key elements of generating leads, content lets your leads know that you have a great knowledge base and the better you are, the higher you will rank. This will give your brand better recognition and make potential customers more likely to choose you over your competitor.
Host Events or Webinars – We've already mentioned this, but hosting events or webinars is a great way to drive potential customers to your website, and by getting your content out to your peaceful audience, they'll be more likely to get there once they see it. do. You are there. They will make a purchase.
Offer free content – Offering a free download or coupon can help drive more potential customers to your website. Once again, the main key here is to make sure you offer something that is applicable to your key demographic.
Use Linkedin – As we mentioned earlier, Linkedin is the only social platform that is truly relevant to B2B lead generation. Ultimately, Linkedin is a networking website and many generations of prospects connect with other businesses.
Be prepared to spend time – One of the biggest costs when it comes to B2B lead generation is the amount of time it takes to start generating quality leads. Be prepared to spend a lot of time organizing all the separate gears that go with the world of lead generation.
What are the best B2B lead generation strategies for beginners?
So, are you ready to start your new journey into the world of B2B lead generation, but don't know where to start? Don't worry, the Lead Generating team has come together and come up with some of the best-proven strategies to improve your B2B lead generation skills for beginners.
Free gifts/private content
Many businesses and online retailers often host free giveaways or contests to generate leads. Free software, video tutorials in general, the idea would be to offer a product that is applicable to your brand, in the same way, that you would direct your advertising and content creation efforts to a target audience. group too.
A gift also gives you the opportunity to add new contacts to your email list, as they can request an email to receive the free product. As an alternative or addition to your cold contact efforts, creating private content is a fantastic idea that has been shown to help drive lead generation across multiple platforms.
Automate lead generation and email campaigns
Marketing software can be used to automate your email campaigns and lead generation efforts. (Don't worry, we'll go over some of the more common tools marketers use in the next chapter.) Essentially, this saves you time and is a great way to build relationships by drip emailing your subscribers over a period of time with useful, helpful, and engaging blogs. These days, email automation is pretty sophisticated and there are actually many ways to personalize the automated email experience.
call to action
A call to action is essentially when the brand asks the potential customer to contact them using language like 'Visit today' or 'Click here for more information. These days on the internet, these phrases usually come bundled with some sort of button or widget that is easily accessible to potential customers and will redirect them to your landing page. Another common type of call-to-action that you see regularly and is commonly used to generate potential B2B leads are limited-time CTAs, such as "While supplies last" or "Limited time only." This type of language lets the prospect know that this offer is time-sensitive and they should act now if they want to take advantage of the offer.
Finally, the last type of CTAs is the ones with a real-time restriction, like "Order before 2am and get a FREE gift." Ultimately, there is one goal here: to get new leads for your website or store.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the comment writers alone and does not reflect or represent the views of U-Educate
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