Lead Generation B2B Strategies

Like What Your Reading? Please Share

In B2B Lead Generation the Customer finds the VendorLead generation B2B strategies vary from business to business and have always been challenging, even in good economic times. The increase in competition, changes in buyer behaviour and the availability of information have shifted power from businesses to clients.
B2B lead generation has become more complex with more people involved in the buying process and a shift in buying habits. Read on for full post. Comments very welcome at the bottom.

Inbound Marketing allows for lower cost, more effective and efficient lead generation strategies. The focus is putting the correct content in front of the correct person at the correct time in the correct form which they want. This is asking a lot for businesses, but, also offers a huge opportunity for smart, creative and creative marketeers.

Prospects don’t go looking for a new vendor when you happen to have a product launch or upgrade…prospects go looking for vendors when they are ready to and they look for as long as they feel they need to. That unpredictable window of opportunity is always opening somewhere in your target market….you just don’t know where. B-to-B Lead Generation Handbook, Marketing Sherpa

Your Target Market distilled into Marketing Personas

The world is not your target market. Even Coca-Cola and Pepsi realize every person on earth is not part of their market segment. A narrow market segment is the beginning of a successful marketing strategy and therefore successful lead generation.

Create Marketing Personas for your top three market segments. This allows you to focus and tailor you content generation efforts for a specific audience. This specific audience is your ideal client.

Create Content targeting your Ideal Client

Marketers have different beliefs on what content is interesting. I favour listening to customers views.

This Content Consumption Infographic help us to understand that content is consumption varies from person to person and varies on the time of day.

So inventory your existing content. Map your content against your Marketing Personas and their pain points. From this map, you can see what content is missing and then generate a content strategy and an editorial calendar.

With So Much Content which Lead generation b2b strategies do we use?

Lead generation differs from market to market, therefore, testing which channel works most effectively for your business and your target market is a must.  Your results will vary as it’s said. So test and retest.

These are known and effective B2B channels:

• Company Blog – your blog is the most powerful, useful marketing channel you will ever use, and it’s free. Publish and promote your blog on email messages, social networks channels and RSS feeds.  This post discusses the ways blogging is the most powerful marketing tool.
• LinkedIn – 3 possible ways for lead generation.
  • Company page – ask for subscribers and publish your blog posts.
  • Q&A – 100’s of question get asked daily. This is a great way to develop brand awareness and give thought leadership.
  • Connect the Slideshare app to the employee’s profile – increasing the visibility and exposure of your company’s presentation.
• Google+ Page. Yep, it’s full of early adopters and tech-savvy business. And content published/shared with links are immediately indexed by Google. very useful.
  
• Slideshare – a public presentation hosting website that can generate huge volumes of web traffic to your website.
• Social Bookmarking sites. delicious, StumbleUpon, both drive huge traffic to web sites.
  
• Twitter – yep lead generation, keep in touch, share content, put a personality on your business.
• Email Marketing – extremely powerful lead nurturing and lead generation channel.
• Podcasting – serious potential in podcasting.
• YouTube – 2^nd largest search engine on the planet. enough said
  

Remember it’s about putting the correct content in front of the correct person at the correct time in the correct form which they want. These marketing channel options present are only major channels. There are many niche social networks and forms that are worth exploring and with a large amount of patience’s and some determination finding an effective and efficient lead generation channel is possible.

Lead Generation is like a marketing strategy it’s a long-term play, not quick wins for this months numbers.

Landing Pages to Capture those Leads

Generating remarkable content and sharing it socially is only the beginning of the lead generation process.

Once these leads arrive on your website you need to capture them as a lead. The easiest way of doing this? It’s with landing pages.

Landing Pages are the Marketing Glue that binds all your marketing activates together.  Oli Gardner unbounce.com

Landing pages sit between many marketing and sales funnels and they do a great task of focusing your potential customers on what they should be done. Examples are signing up for the webinar, and downloading white-paper etc.

Landing pages are not always needed; however, they contribute to improving your lead conversion.

Marketing Takeaway

Business to business lead generation is difficult. With multiple persons in the buying cycle each with different and divergent content needs and channels, it’s not surprising that B2B lead generation is challenging.

Use of Marketing Personas,  quality content, finding effective marketing channels, and coupled with landing pages will help you meet your lead generation goals.

If you like this post please share the love with a Tweet, +1, or like.
IF you have a comment or query please in the comments section below.

Get a weekly blog post, click this orange button.

 

Like What Your Reading? Please Share