If you are in the business to business sphere, you might have one thing on mind most of the time. It’s generating leads. There are loads of books, seminars, blog posts that promise to teach you business lead generation, but – at the end of the day – you will have to tailor the strategy to your business goals and your market’s behaviour. And that’s where it gets tricky.
Looking to boost your lead generation efforts quickly? This article will provide you with ten easy-to-implement tactics that can yield results in just four weeks or less.
1. Define Your Target Audience and Ideal Customer Profile
To improve your business lead generation, start by clearly defining your target audience and ideal customer profile. Understanding who your potential customers are and what they need will help you tailor your marketing efforts to effectively reach and engage with them. Consider factors such as demographics, interests, pain points, and buying behaviours. In particular, you will need to understand their pain points and buying triggers.
2. Optimise Your Website for Business Lead Generation
Your website is a powerful tool for capturing and qualifying business leads. Optimise it by implementing the following strategies:
- Create innovative, user-friendly, engaging, and valuable landing pages with clear calls-to-action (CTAs) to encourage visitors to take action.
- Use lead capture forms throughout every page to collect visitor information. That’s the only way you will be able to get in touch with them again.
- Make your website mobile-friendly and fast loading to ensure a seamless user experience across devices. You can disable some graphics or videos on mobile devices or create a separate mobile version of each page.
- Leverage website analytics to gain insights into user behaviour and optimise your site accordingly. You can install Google Analytics and Search console by adding a plugin or a code. You will gain valuable information. As an example: we believed initially that LMNts Marketing would attract female executives. Now we know that over two thirds of the audience is male aged 30-40.
The most important question you should be asking yourself is:
“Is this an irresistible offer they can’t refuse?
If the answer is no, chances are that you will have o go back to the drawing board. After all, if you don’t think it’s worth to exchange your email address to get the offer, why would anyone think that?
Don’t stop by offering a free consultation or an eBook/report. And certainly don’t try to list the features. Tell them straight: what’s in it form them and why should they care?
3. Develop High-Quality Content
Content is King when working on attracting and engaging potential leads. Consider the following content creation strategies:
- Produce informative blog posts, articles, and guides that address your target audience’s pain points and provide valuable solutions.
- Create engaging videos that showcase your expertise and offer educational or entertaining content related to your industry.
- Develop downloadable resources such as e-books, whitepapers, or case studies that provide in-depth information and require visitors to provide their contact details to access.
- Create downloadable presentations on LinkedIn with your logo and contact information. LinkedIn presentations are great to attract people and create reciprocity.
4. Essential: Email Marketing for Business Lead Generation
Email marketing remains a powerful tool for lead generation. You can also use follow up emails to qualify and nurture leads. Remember in B2B, decisions are made over a longer period of time so you need to invest in the relationship.
Maximise your business lead generation potential by:
- Building a targeted email list by offering valuable content, tools, or tips
- Segmenting your email list based on demographics, interests, or past interactions, current engagement (how far they are into their buyers’ journey). ActiveCampaign allows you to do this and more!
- Crafting compelling email subject lines and content (mix it up with valuable blog posts, video messages for maximum impact) to get them to open, read, and take action.
You need to have one core offer that you promote for your list, or they will be confused.
And a confused mind always says NO!
5. Find Your Home: Leverage Social Media Platforms for Visibility and Lead Generation
Social media platforms provide great tools for lead generation. Consider the following strategy:
- Identify the social media platforms where your target audience is most active and establish a strong presence on those platforms. Make it your home. Don’t spread yourself too thin.
- Share valuable content regularly (Schedule posts ahead) to engage your audience and encourage them to share it with their networks.
- Engage with other people’s posts and comment on relevant debates.
- Find your home by joining relevant groups and sharing tips/valuable information and inspiring posts/case studies to establish yourself as an expert.
If you are a business selling to other business clients, LinkedIn might be your best place to look for connections, partnerships, and groups.
6. The Power of Retargeting in Business Lead Generation
In case you are wondering whether retargeting works, the answer is yes. As we have discussed earlier, the lead time (time it takes for a customer to make a decision) can be quite lengthy in B2B niches. Not to mention that you will have to stay in front of them and remind them, as there’s a lot of distraction out there.
Retargeting ads can be paid ads on social media, or you can use email marketing to deliver them. For example, on ActiveCampaign, you can send a specific email to people who have already visited the sales page or checkout page, but didn’t complete the action. This can literally 10x your business development lead generation.
7. Offer Valuable Incentives and Promotions
While most business coaches will say that discounting doesn’t work, it does sometimes. However, this should be only applied when you are trying to push your prospect down the very end of the funnel.
Consider the following ideas:
- Offer exclusive discounts or promotions to leads who provide their contact information.
- Provide something valuable, such as a free report, or an entry level service and give people a discount for an upgrade.
- Provide free trials or demos to potential leads.
- When launching your new service or offer, you can release it to people who are already engaged with you first. This way, you will get great feedback, and collect testimonials before scaling up. They will also feel valued if you give them something exclusive.
8. Collaborate with Influencers and Industry Experts
You might think that you are just too small to work with big brands and be mentioned on the same page as some of the industry leaders in your niche. However, you never know who will notice the value you provide.
- You can leverage other people’s audience ethically, by reaching out to popular websites and offering a guest post that will provide value to their readers.
You could also interview experts on your YouTube channel or podcast, so you can be associated with what they offer. You will not only tap into your existing audience, but also people who are already engaged with the expert.
Collaborate on co-branded content or joint marketing campaigns, bundle up services with other providers, so you can solve more problems for your ideal clients and provide more value together.
9. Qualify Your Leads Throughout the Funnel
Lead generation is not only about numbers. It’s also about quality. We see so many entrepreneurs focus solely on the quantity of leads, not the quality. That’s why we have recently introduced our quiz funnel service. It’s like a quality improvement of your business lead generation. Like getting out of a 20-year old VW Polo and getting into a brand new Maserati!
When you qualify your leads in the beginning of the funnel, you will be able to segment your market and focus your energy on people who are most likely to become a client.
You need to make sure that you are talking to the right people and not just barking up the wrong tree. Otherwise, you will be wasting your time and resources, and your conversions will suffer.
10. Ongoing Business Development Lead Generation Task: Analyse, Optimise, and Scale
Continuously monitoring and analysing your lead generation results is something you should never ignore. Use analytics tools (any decent CRM system will do this) to track the conversions of different lead sources. However, you will also have to ensure that you are checking the lead time, the quality of prospects, final conversions, and return on investment.
Once you have the numbers at hand, you can move on by applying a simple process: “Lose the Losers and Keep the Winners”. Sadly (and fortunately at the same time) not all business lead generation methods will work equally well. If they did, you would have to focus on all of them, which would be hard work. Pick the most effective ones, and apply the 80/20 principle.
Conclusion:
Implementing effective business lead generation strategies doesn’t have to be complex or time-consuming. By following these ten easy-to-implement tactics, you can improve your business’s lead generation results in just four weeks or less. Remember to review and tweak your strategies based on your specific audience and industry, and always prioritise providing value to your potential leads.
Do you need help with your B2B Lead Generation? Get in touch to find out how we can help.
Sources:
https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/8157/25-ways-to-increase-sales-and-lead-generation.aspx
https://www.salesforce.com/products/sales-cloud/resources/improving-sales-lead-generation/
https://keap.com/business-success-blog/sales/sales-process/21-tips-to-increase-lead-generation
https://neilpatel.com/blog/instantly-gain-more-leads/
For more information on 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Business Lead Generation in 4 Weeks or Less talk to LMNts Marketing