According to research from the Content Marketing Institute, 85% of B2B marketers say that generating leads is one of their top priorities. However, 44% say that their efforts aren’t very successful.
That doesn’t mean that content marketing isn’t a good strategy, because it is. But it’s not the only one available to B2B businesses.
Here, we’ll look at 10 B2B lead generation techniques, such as content marketing, to show you how you can add them to your marketing plan and make sure all your hard work pays off and doesn’t just go to waste.
Let's get started.
1. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a common idea, and it might even be worth its own post. Because, just like customers, businesses want to know as much as they can before making a big purchase.
“The Demand Gen Report, a B2B marketing publication, said that 47% of buyers read between three and five pieces of copy before talking to a sales rep, while Gartner said that more than 65% of buying decisions happen before a buyer ever talks to a supplier,” said Anu Ramani, founder and managing director of content marketing agency Isoline Communications.
So, Tony Mastri, who is in charge of digital marketing at the B2B agency Marion Integrated Marketing, said that an ongoing SEO campaign with help from B2B content marketing is the best way to get leads.
He suggests using a tool like SEMrush to find keywords and content length suggestions for your core product or service pages, and then building out those pages to fit what you think your users want. Mastri also says that your pages and blog posts should be as specific as possible.
“For example, if you’re a child support lawyer in Dallas, Texas, all of your long-form blog posts should be about child support issues in Texas or Dallas,” he said.
This can also help make up for the fact that CPC rates are high in some businesses.
contextual display fees
“In these industries, paid ads are often too expensive to get a good return on investment, so organic traffic with results that keep getting better is the clear choice,” he said.
The marketing manager for the office chat and messaging app Troop Messenger, Md. Mohsin Ansari, said that the company chose to focus on “Microsoft Teams vs. Slack” instead of broader keywords like “team chat apps,” “office chat,” or “business chat” because of the Ahrefs keyword planner tool.
Ansari said, “The fact that customers searched for ‘Microsoft Teams vs. Slack’ shows that they are aware of both products but can’t decide which one meets their needs best.” “So, it was high time for us to point out the problems with using them in our post with the keyword and introduce our product as an alternative.”
He didn’t give details, but he did say that this combination of keyword and post led to more brand recognition, traffic, SERP positions, and CTR.
Sneh Ratna Choudhary, a content marketer at B2B SaaS tech company MobStac, says that you shouldn’t forget platforms like Quora and Medium, which can also help drive traffic to high-intent landing pages and answer questions that potential customers might have.
“In places where Google is banned, we have gotten a few leads from the detailed answers we gave on these forums,” Choudhary said.
2. LinkedIn
Not surprisingly, LinkedIn, a business network, is also one of the best ways to get leads for B2B companies.
Zuza Witulska, a growth hacker at the company Netguru that makes software, says that Linkedin lead generation ads give people very specific ways to target their ads.
She said, “This gives our ads a chance to reach C-level decision-makers at companies we’re interested in, as well as possible leads.”
One of Netguru’s best lead generation efforts on the network was an ebook that was sent to fintech companies.
Witulska said, “We kept changing the ad copy (both the visuals and the words) to see which version the fintech community liked best and then changed the budget to match.” “To make a long story short, we got more than 240 high-quality leads, and the cost per lead was 78% less than in other lead-generation campaigns.”
Choudhary agreed that LinkedIn Ads can bring in leads with strong intentions.
LinkedIn ad to get leads
“We got information from [business information site] Crunchbase about the companies and industries we wanted to reach, and then we split up our ads on LinkedIn by industry and job title,” she said. “The ad ran on LinkedIn for two weeks, and we got good business leads that probably wouldn’t have found us otherwise.”
3.Google ads, especially when they are shown at the right time
After a competitor’s website went down, the Internet traffic optimisation company Constellix made a Google Ads campaign that used phrases from reviews and boards to reach people who were affected.
Blair McKee, digital marketing manager at Constellix, said, “We did notice that some of our ads weren’t as effective because they focused too much on the negative effects of outages instead of the desired benefits.” “So we switched gears and changed our ad copy to emphasise the benefits of moving providers. Both click-through rates and impressions went up right away. Our quality score also went up, which I think was because our ad writing was more like the landing page copy.
4. Ad efforts were led by Facebook
Don’t think that using Facebook in business is a waste of time. In fact, Rob Smith, a web developer at Web Design City, linked to a study from the marketing platform HubSpot that showed 74% of consumers also use Facebook for work.
Facebook ads bring people to an event
Alistair Dodds, the head of marketing at the digital marketing company Ever Increasing Circles Marketing, agreed that Facebook lead ads are his go-to way to get B2B leads.
The company starts by split-testing clients’ custom audiences to create lookalike audiences instead of audiences based on interests. It also tests a lead magnet offer to make sure it has the information prospects are looking for. Then, Dodds said that he split-tests the topic’s angle.
“So, for example, one campaign will focus on benefits while another will focus on a [fear of missing out (FOMO)]-play to see which speaks to our prospects the most,” he said. “Again, we’ll split-test the ad content to see which video or picture gets the most attention, and then we’ll use that to make creative assets. We’ll also split-test the copy to make sure it fits the way we’re going about it.”
For example, if you’re a company that sells financial services to mortgage brokers, you could give different levels of data analysis reports or white papers.
“In this market, where each broker is trying to get an edge over the others, we found the FOMO play to be especially effective,” he said. “The first 100 people who signed up were given both types of lead magnets. The data analysis reports did 3.2 times better than the white papers.
5. Chat live
Guillaume Moubeche, CEO of the automated outreach email tool Lemlist, said that the company gets most of its B2B leads through live chat, where customer service reps send more than 11,000 messages per month. This makes live chat the best way for the company to get leads. He also said that Lemlist converts about 30% of these site users by putting a lot of attention on the customer experience.
example of a live chat
Moubeche said, “To save money, we use the customer service and live chat Slack app Lemtalk live chat, which is fully integrated into Slack.” “So we’re getting all of our texts straight from Slack and answering them there. The best part is that we also get Facebook, SMS, and email messages on Slack. This means that we basically get all of our messages in one place.
6. Live video
Sirarpi Sahakyan, a digital marketing expert, said that live video is a good way to get leads because 87% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, which was found on the review site Techjury.
Live video ads can include webinars, product launches, Q&As, teasers, how-tos, events, and special guests. Platforms include LinkedIn, YouTube, and/or Facebook, but Sahakyan said that marketers can stream to more than one channel at the same time.
Sahakyan said, “At the end of the live video campaigns, we saw that more people were interested in the product than through our blog content.” “Restream analytics, which is a cloud-based multistreaming service, helped us figure out where we could improve by letting us look at our audience through the lens of multistreaming.”
7. ThruPlay on Facebook
Stacey Kehoe, who works for the digital marketing firm Brandlective Communications, said that brands with smaller budgets should try Facebook’s ThruPlay. It’s a new feature for video ads that lets you optimise them and pay-per-view them.
“Unlike the current formats, which are designed to get the lowest cost per three-second or 10-second video view, ThruPlay lets advertisers optimise and pay only for ads that are watched for at least 15 seconds,” she said. “This is a game-changer for people who don’t have a lot of money because it means they can be smart and make a marketing message that turns away people who don’t fit their “perfect picture” in the first 15 seconds.”
Advertisers can then put users who are interested into new lists and show them another ThruPlay ad that narrows the field even more.
Gifs of Facebook ads
“You can repeat this process to build a highly targeted, warm list of prospects while spending very little on Facebook ads,” she said.
8. Videos with restrictions
When most marketers think of closed content, guides and ebooks are the first thing that comes to mind. But video also works well. Phil Nottingham, a brand marketing strategist at video software company Wistia, says that films should have a way to collect email addresses and offer something in return.
video email marketing
“A discount offer is a good trade-off for signing up for that email list,” he said. The Santa Barbara Chicken Ranch, a local chicken restaurant in California, found that putting the email gate at the beginning of a movie with a strong incentive can increase email sign-ups by 400%. This client also didn’t see a big drop in content views because of this approach.
9. Personalised vids
Not surprisingly, Vito Santoro, who helped start Vaetas, a company that makes personalised call-to-action videos, likes personalised videos.
Vaetas records a short film that it sends to prospects via email, text, or social media before meeting with them.
Wista personalised video
These are what Wistia calls “videos that don’t scale.”
“We found that this approach increased our cold conversions by 38%,” said Santoro. “It’s amazing that 99% of warm follow-up emails and texts worked. The key is to be real and show that you understand what your prospect needs, instead of trying to sell your goods or services right away.
10. It’s free
Then there’s the tried-and-true method of giving something away for free as a lure.
In fact, Sam Orchard, who runs the web design business Edge of the Web, said it’s one of the most popular ways his company gets new clients. However, you have to give away something of real value, even if a competitor would charge for it.
Orchard said, “We’ve had a lot of success by letting people sign up for a free SEO audit of their site.” “It’s something that doesn’t take us too much time to do, but it’s important for the business. It’s been a very successful approach for us, with about 30% of people who signed up for a free SEO audit continuing to ask us for paid work.
HubSpot gives an example of a free offer
Here, HubSpot gives you a free “go-to-market” kit for marketing your goods.
In the same way, Choudhary said that MobStac made a free QR code creator after adding QR codes to its product line.
“This keyword is searched for 550,000 times per month,” she said. “Since the launch, our visitor-to-trial conversion rates have gone up and are now around 15.6%.”
Another way to do this is to give a closed beta to people who might buy your product.
Crowdy.ai’s CMO, Nadiia Shevelieva, said the company had 100 free test accounts, which Crowdy.ai advertised through ads and social media.
Shevelieva said, “Once someone joined the beta, they could use our app for free for three months instead of paying about $50 a month.” “In return, we asked for feedback on how well our app worked.”
As a result, 72 out of 100 users paid for the service, and 58 new users joined because of the test group’s suggestions.
“Overall, this strategy has worked great for us since we just launched our product,” Shevelieva said.
Try out these methods for getting B2B leads!
Here are ten things you can do to bring in more good B2B leads:
Content marketing
LinkedIn
Google Ads
Lead ads on Facebook
Live talk
Live stream
Facebook ThruPlay video was blocked.
Personalised video
Free things
Now, try them out to see what works best for your group, and get those leads!