Success in B2B marketing and sales boils down to relationships. The person or the people on the other side of the table from you need to feel confident that your company offers the right solution to help solve their problems.
Think about the classic IBM mantra from back in the day: you can’t get fired for hiring IBM. That captures B2B so well; the people you are trying to do business with have to make the right decision about how to address the challenges their company is facing. That decision could affect their job security, their future with the company, and their potential for advancement.
That’s why relationships are so important to build trust with the people you are targeting. The key is making sure you get in front of the right people at the beginning of the process to build those relationships. In today’s digital world, this requires a strong digital marketing strategy that will help you generate qualified leads that you can hand off to the sales team.
To make a strong handoff, you need to make sure you’re utilizing the best B2B lead generation tactics that support your digital marketing strategy. Let’s take a look at these tactics that are sure to help strengthen relationships with your target audience.
B2B Lead Generation Tactics Your Team Can Utilize
1. Leverage Your Foundational Content
Content. Content. Content. And more content. Your company should have a treasure trove of SEO-friendly website content speaking to your prospects’ pain points and the problems they are looking to solve. Start to build that trust with your target audience by speaking their language.
Blogs, landing pages, and website pages should address key challenges your prospects are facing and present clear solutions to show that you can help solve their problems. If you have the right message that connects to what your prospects are experiencing, then you’ll be able to generate the right types of leads.
2. Build Up Additional Content
Yes, more content! Take the next step developing whitepapers, case studies, and testimonial pieces that live on your website. As you know, building relationships in a B2B setting can take weeks, months, or even years. You need to serve prospects with additional pieces of content throughout their decision-making journey.
- Whitepapers show thought leadership and a deep understanding of what’s happening in their industry to solve complex problems they’re facing.
- Case Studies show the positive results of what happened when other customers worked with your company.
- Testimonials serve as strong social proof that your solution works to solve problems for similarly-positioned companies.
3. Utilize Social Media
LinkedIn is incredibly valuable to generate B2B leads, especially if you are resource-constrained since the pandemic. LinkedIn noted in recent research that B2B marketers are using LinkedIn more frequently for the tactical execution of their marketing campaigns following budget cuts. If you experienced budget cuts like 75% of the audience that LinkedIn surveyed, then you should leverage this B2B lead generation tactic to generate new leads.
Specifically, you can use the LinkedIn ad platform to run paid ads targeting specific roles in your industry. Utilize LinkedIn online advertising to send targeted messages to the right people at the right time to bring them into your sales funnel.
Plus, LinkedIn supports B2B relationship-building because your prospects are utilizing social media more frequently than before the pandemic. This is where your audience is hanging out. Instead of conversations happening at trade shows or conferences, they’re happening online on LinkedIn. Tap into this resource!
4. Optimize Email Communication
Email is still king, despite its misuse through the years. You should constantly be reviewing and refining your prospect list to make sure you have updated information about your prospects. Use LinkedIn to make sure that key prospects are still with their current company so that you’re not wasting time chasing down leads when employees have moved on to other companies.
Then, segment your list. You can segment so many different ways. By geography. By lead source. By event. Or, what I recommend is to segment by stages of the buyer’s journey.
When you segment by stages of the buyer’s journey, you know exactly what type of content and what message to send to each prospect via email. Someone early in the buying process doesn’t want to be sold to; they want to know more about who they might be doing business with. Let this audience know that you understand their challenges and that you’re ready to start talking about how to solve their problems. It’s a long journey, but taking the time to do this right will help you convert more B2B leads.
5. Find Ways to Show Your Personality
The perception of B2B marketing is that it’s stuffy, direct, and technical. But, people are still people. People want to know who they are doing business with, especially because B2B relationships are typically long-term engagements, so your prospects want to feel comfortable with you and your company before signing an agreement.
I’m not saying go off-brand posting random things on social media or trying to come across “different” for the sake of being different. Instead, focus on personalizing content and the messages that you send to prospects. Use the information you have gathered about your prospects to serve them tailored pieces of content that speak to their pain points at their current decision-making stage.
You can also take it a step further. Ask to set up a 30-meeting Zoom meeting once every few weeks – or whatever cadence makes sense for your relationships – so that you can meet face-to-face as your prospect goes through their decision-making journey. Let them see who you are to make them feel even more comfortable. This B2B lead generation tactic will go a long way toward converting a prospect to a customer.
6. Utilize Video Content
If your company has developed video content that shows how your solutions solve problems for customers, then leverage this content frequently. Find ways to serve this content to your target audience through blog posts, social media, and emails.
Video is powerful because it increases understanding about how your solution solves problems that your prospects are facing and will help you better answer questions that prospects might have. Consider these statistics from video marketing research outlet Wyzowl:
- 94% of video marketers say video has helped increase understanding of their product or service.
- 84% of video marketers say video has helped them generate leads.
- 78% of video marketers say video has directly helped increase sales.
There is a tremendous ROI opportunity from using video. Use video frequently to generate B2B leads!
7. Use Online Advertising
Throughout this blog, I have focused on organic growth opportunities to generate new leads. I also want to emphasize the importance of mixing in digital advertising tactics as part of your overall strategy.
This tactic is important for B2B marketing because you want to be able to narrow your focus to specific prospects that you want to target. You still need to follow the targeting policies on each platform to avoid violations, but doing this correctly will help you get in front of the right eyeballs to start building a relationship with potential customers.
Through a properly managed digital advertising program, you’ll be able to develop a campaign structure and create different ad groups that you want to target. Then, you can use your budget to convert new leads.
Contact Marketing Refresh for B2B Lead Generation Support
There are so many different ways to reach your target audience online. When supported by the right strategy, these B2B lead generation tactics will help you generate the results you are looking for.
This is where we can help. After developing a strategy that fits your company and your goals, we’ll execute the strategy to help generate leads. Our lead generation marketing programs are set up to serve your audience with the right message at the right stage of their buying journey to drive targeted leads to your business.
Need content? Need social media and email management? Need fresh video content? Need paid advertising management? We cover it all. Just check out the capabilities of our awesome team!
We have helped countless B2B companies strengthen their relationships with prospects and convert more leads into sales through our proven, strategic approach.
Let’s get to work developing a strategy for your business! Then, we can start utilizing some of these B2B lead generation tactics to support your efforts. Reach out to us today to discuss.
