To start with, let’s acknowledge two cold facts about B2B lead generation:
No one actually knows where these leads come from:
No matter how bizarre it might sound, but it is the truth. There are multiple channels for generating leads for the business. Channels such as social media, PPC, email marketing, advertising among others, but a significant amount of leads are being generated from a source none of us are actually aware of. These leads are a result of consistent marketing efforts, a persistent cultivation of relationships in the industry, and an organic blend of all sorts of efforts, interactions, behaviours, and activities. Thus, it is safe to say that B2B lead generation is a mix of behaviours and unquantifiable activities that tend to work
The digital revolution has mixed up the overall B2B lead generation market:
With the advent of technology, there has been a flood of new marketing strategies, subsequent death of old techniques, and finally a complete reorganization of overall marketing strategies concerning B2B lead generation. This has led to a lot of confusion about channel’s supremacy and performance.
There are many B2B marketers who spend good chunk of their time filling up a leaky bucket. Instead of organising the marketing funnel, they put more traffic to generate leads. It certainly gives results, but then it is actually inflating the overall cost of acquisition and the results are also below average.
So where are your leads coming from?
Well there are some established channels which give you your potential leads and thus help in building your business. There are tried and tested strategies that do provide a right blend of leads as well as help you create ample demand in the market. However, which strategy is perfect for lead generation is completely dependent on the industry you are working in. Multiple surveys carried out by different companies such as Hubspot and Chief Marketer show it is hard to pinpoint a single channel as the best for lead generation. For some it can be SEO, for some it can be email marketing, and for some it might be content marketing or social media marketing.
Leaving inconsistencies aside, the online marketing strategies that consistently produce results are:
- Social Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Search Marketing
As mentioned before, the success of these channels depend upon the industry that you work in. Moreover, it is extremely important to know that for right lead generation, it doesn’t matter WHICH marketing channel you use, but HOW you use it.
So this brings us to our core subject – how to generate right leads for business?
Let us try to break it down to into smaller questions:
What is a lead?
A lead can be either an individual or an organization that you want to secure as your client in future for the sale of your business product(s) or service(s). Depending upon the interest shown by the entity, we can differentiate a lead into categories of hot, warm, and cold.
How do you qualify a sales lead?
Generally, a ‘perfect client’ has multiple key features or characteristics that will affect their possibility of buying your services or products. Usually it could be annual sales of the company, number of employees, their geography, industry vertical, their job designation, technologies used for website and marketing, and existing use of services or products of your market rival.
Anuprit Orse
COO & Co-Founder @ TechConnectr
Anuprit brings a vast experience across functions viz. business management, key account management, and sales operations & has a keen eye for identifying, nurturing and developing new opportunities and has proven record of connecting businesses. Being a focused entrepreneur, Anuprit also offers his edge as an influencer and seed funder to budding enterprises. Over the last 15 years’, he has helped set up several ventures - Prolific Sales Pvt. Ltd., SG Cubes Pvt. Ltd., Business Morphosis, and Creazione IT Solutions. All these have gone on to deliver ample success in the subsequent years. Anuprit has also worked as an independent consultant to a number of companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 1000 assisting them close deals with companies like HP, Xerox, AWS, Microsoft, Air Canada, Northrop Grumman, Cisco, SAP, Adobe & Honeywell Automation. Here, he assisted them in devising precise strategies to identify customer segments for their respective products and services. He also has a strong knack of devising successful marketing campaigns resulting into a distinct growth of businesses.
Article credits:
https://www.ventureharbour.com/b2b-lead-generation-strategies/
https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/b2b-lead-gen/
https://business.linkedin.com/en-uk/marketing-solutions/blog/posts/B2B-Marketing/2017/Demand-generation-vs-lead-generation-for-B2B-marketing
https://www.b2bmarketing.net/en-gb/resources/blog/10-top-tips-how-generate-sales-leads
http://channel-technologies.com/2017/05/04/b2b-lead-gen-getting-it-right/
https://blog.optimizely.com/2015/09/09/b2b-lead-generation-ideas/