Gone are the days when B2B companies used to focus only on their products and ignore everything else. Today every B2B company needs quality leads to sustain itself in the market.
As a B2B business marketer, your job isn’t only to build awareness about your company but also to generate high-quality leads for your sales team.
Let’s know further – What is B2B lead generation, and how does it work?
What is B2B lead generation?
B2B lead generation is a process practiced by B2B marketers to identify and capture the information of prospects interested in your business offerings. This practice is done through various online and offline channels such as email marketing, social media posts, and SEO.
B2B lead generation is the first step in any organization’s sales journey. It starts with getting the prospect’s name and contact information and feeding it into the sales funnel.
The goal is to narrow general leads into more qualified ones to make a sale.
What are the benefits of B2B lead generation?
Implementing a B2B lead generation strategy in your business has many benefits because traditional marketing doesn’t work these days.
- Helps build brand awareness
High-quality B2B leads to increased revenue and helps you grow as a brand. For that, you need to establish yourself in the market as an authority and build trust among your customers by providing them with useful content upfront.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 83% of B2B marketers use social media and blog content for lead generation.
- Help know target customers better.
With a B2B lead generation campaign, you gather a lot of information about your target audience, which is not possible with traditional means of marketing. For instance, you get to know common questions people have, related to a particular product or service. You can then create blogs and social media posts to answer those questions.
- It is cost-efficient
In lead generation, marketing efforts are cost-efficient. Once created, content lives on the website forever.
Content marketing is a big part of lead generation. In addition, it costs 62% less than traditional marketing practices, as stated on demandmetric.com.
How does B2B lead generation work?
Now let’s know how B2B lead generation works.
- Start with the end in mind.
It’s wise to start planning with the end goal in mind. First, decide what you want to achieve with your marketing campaign, whether it’s more traffic, conversion, or something else.
- Who is your ideal customer?
You can not sell everything to everyone. Likewise, you’ll have difficulty selling if you don’t know your target customers. Knowing your target audience helps you identify their pain points and craft a product according to their needs.
- Create content for your target audience.
Create content that caters to the needs of your target audience at different stages.
For example, create informational blogs at the top of the funnel to inform people about your products. For middle funnel content, create buying guides, how-to guides, and listicles. Finally, at the end of the funnel, provide them with demos, customer reviews, and case studies.
- Consistency is the key.
Be regular with your content production. The average time span of a person on the internet is around 3-7 seconds. To imprint a permanent brand image in people’s heads, you must get in front of them regularly through your social media posts and informational blog content. Use every platform where your audience is hanging out.
- Analyze your content.
Analyze your content to see whether your campaigns are working towards your goal or not. This will give insights and tell you whether to continue, expand or discontinue the ongoing campaign.
Once people show interest in your product, retarget them with more personalized content.
- Provide them a call to action
Provide them with a proper call to action at the end of every content, whether an article or social media post. After giving the solution to their problem, provide them with a direction to get that solution. Get their email and contact information and send them to the sales page.
Summary
B2B lead is the term used for people/businesses interested in your product or service and likely to make a purchase.
As a business marketer, it is your work to find these leads regularly to convert them into sales. With furious competition and increasing market shares of big corporations, B2B lead generation methods are proven to be cost-efficient and effective for your business.
