A lead is not just a random potential client. It’s the one that is only a step away from you. All you need is to grab their attention, provide value and prove that your service will solve their problem.

Generating quality leads is the backbone of a good B2B marketing strategy, and establishing a strong pipeline will ensure you maintain a steady growth rate. And B2B marketing is a lot different compared to B2C.

We’ve found that using a combination of inbound and outbound is generally the best way to go about establishing this pipeline – while outbound is a more immediate way of connecting with leads, your inbound can be used to establish your credibility, resulting in more qualified leads coming to you. Here are the most effective lead generation strategies in B2B marketing.

Search engines can be one of the best tools for marketing any business. If you have success with SEO, you’ll gain new customers faster and essentially for free. To win the SEO game, you should have a strong content marketing strategy that provides information that your target audience will find value in.

1. Content Marketing

This is an amazing option for companies that have interesting content to share: articles, videos and so on. To make it work you should do very profound research to know what kind of language you should use; what content your clients would enjoy; whom they listen to etc.

2. Social Media Marketing

Social media lets you refine your lead generation process as it allows for a more targeted approach. 62% of marketers believe that social networks like LinkedIn are proven to be effective in generating leads. It gives businesses and brands a platform where they can engage with potential customers.

Also, social media advertising is very effective, especially nowadays that it’s very rare to meet someone who doesn’t have a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account. Ads placed on these sites are highly targeted because you can set up the location, age, gender, and interests among many others.

You can generate lots of leads through social media but it’s not easy and takes a well thought out strategy.

3. PPC – Pay-Per-Click

SEO and content marketing definitely takes time. PPC is of the easiest ways to get results quickly. It can be super effective if you know who your target audience is. However, it can also be very expensive depending on the industry you’re in.

It’s also important to remember that a lot of people are using Adblock (or other programs) nowadays, so there is a possibility that they won’t even see banners or other clickable ads. Or because of the GDPR laws, they might simply opt-out of your advertising altogether.

4. Build Your Email List

Old pitches like “Sign up for our newsletter” just don’t work anymore because the truth is that nobody reads newsletters anymore. They want content personalized to them. Laser-focused, point-solving, specific content that meets their interests and needs.

Cold emailing is hard because you have no prior relationship with the company or person you’re sending it to. So you have to make a good first impression to get results. Here are a few things we recommend to see more leads from cold emails:

• Be creative to stand out from the crowd. Include things like animated GIFs or memes to catch people’s attention.
• Be funny! Life is boring enough as it is. Sometimes humor can go a long way.
• Get straight to the point and don’t spam people with marketing lingo. Many simply ignore this.
• Send at least 2 follow-up emails. Just like social media, things tend to get lost in people’s inboxes. Sending two or three emails gives you a better chance of getting seen.

5. Asking Questions to Get a 50% Conversion Rate

Except for Facebook Messenger, quizzes are the latest fad in lead generation strategies. And the best part is that it’s not a mainstream strategy – yet.

Surveys are inexpensive to run, are flexible when it comes to the types of questions you ask and are more dependable thanks to anonymity and your customers like them!

We recommend setting up easy to use multiple choice based questions, this will not only make it easy for the customer to fill out but will also take the guesswork out of the equation.

6. Gain Trusted Backlinks

We all know a word of mouth referrals are the best customer! When you have someone raving about your business you’ll gain immediate trust and confidence in your product.

The second best referral is a trusted website sending their clients your way. This is called a backlink – when a trusted website is referring customers back to your website.

There are numerous ways to build backlinks and gain trust from other websites. You can:

• Write blogs for other companies.
• Have other websites share your content.
• Get on a websites resource page.
• Provide infographics other businesses will share.
• Get free backlinks if people copy your images.
• Write amazing content that people actually want to link to.

Summary

B2B lead generation is hard because you can’t just copy and paste a strategy that works for someone else. Stuff that works like crazy for one business might fall completely on its face in another business.

The key is finding a strategy that works for you, and in most cases, the foundation of effective lead generation is some form of content. It all comes down to knowing your audience and how they interact with your business.