B2B LEAD GENERATION

As the name suggests, business-to-business marketing of products or services to other businesses and organizations. It holds several key distinctions from B2C marketing, which is oriented towards consumers. B2B is the process of identifying the ideal customers for your product or service, then attracting them to buy. It is an essential activity for B2B sales and marketing teams. It is fundamental to the success of a business. In B2B lead generation, B2B leads is the term given to those who would likely find value from your product or service. The success of B2B lead generation is dependent on the data that sales and marketing teams have. Without good-quality data, B2B lead generation cannot be conducted. For B2B lead generation to work most effectively, it is preferable for sales and marketing teams to be closely aligned.

B2B LEAD GENERATION COMPANIES

B2B LEAD GENERATION TOOLS

Some people believe that generation tools mean more leads = more money. These are often the same people who bring “Tofurkey” to Thanksgiving. The truth is that the lead generation is like a narcissist or not, you will want to listen to him again and again. This is for generating the leads. In fact, 73% of B2B companies are focusing on lead quality over lead quantity. Essentially, these tools are the equivalent of hugging a warm cup of tea ☕ in front of the fireplace for me. I hope you get the same feeling.

• Leadfeeder tells you what companies visit your website, even if they never fill out a form or contact you. Leadfeeder also finds contact information for employees at the company. This allows you to follow up with visitors who never inquired about your product or time your outreach to potential leads in your sales pipeline.

• Prospect.io is a modern-day sales Automation Platform that’s fully integrated with Salesforce, Pipedrive, Close.io, and HubSpot. The Prospect.io Chrome extension helps you find prospects in one click and launch cold email campaigns straight from your browser in mere seconds.

• Voila Norbert is a sales tool that can be used to find someone’s email address. Simply, you’d enter the name of the person you’d like to find an email for, along with the company they work for, and Voila Norbert will automatically find the email address.

• Hunter Like Voila Norbert, Hunter can be used to find emails by typing in the person’s name and their company. You can also browse for all emails at a specific company. You can use the tool for free for up to 100 requests (email searches).

• Skrapp is a tool specifically for finding someone’s LinkedIn email. Skrapp has Chrome Extension that, when enabled, will show a “Find Email” button on a person’s LinkedIn profile. You can then click this button and Skrapp will find that person’s email when possible.

• Hubspot Sales is a division of Hubspot’s complete marketing and sales platform. One of the best features of HubSpot Sales is the ability to track email opens. HubSpot Sales features a Gmail extension that will allow you to decide which emails to track. Then, when a prospect opens an email, you will receive an update.

• Global Database is a company data provider, that offers verified and up-to-date business information through an online platform with an advanced filtering system. You can get contact data of the companies matching your ideal lead profile, with a certain financial state, credit risk, position on the market, or digital presence. All you need is to pick various criteria according to your expectations or use one of the integrated workflow solutions provided by the company.

Why Generating Quality Leads Is Challenging for B2B Companies?

The answer is simple – lead generation is crucial and challenging to execute. However, one can’t merely overlook this strategy because of its challenges. A business has to continually generate leads if it wishes to stay ahead of the competition. Here are the top three reasons that make acquiring quality leads uphill.

• The Time and Effort

• The Cost

• The Emotions

Most Common B2B lead generation mistakes and their solutions

Now we know that lead generation is tricky. We know it’s hard to identify good leads to begin the marketing process, and the procedure of converting them sometimes seems more like luck than anything. Apart from this, there are some more obstacles in lead generation that can hurt your revenue growth. B2B companies commit a lot of B2B lead generation mistakes, further pulling themselves down the race. Fortunately, these problems can be fixed quickly. So, without any delay, let us face them head-on, discover the reasons behind them, and determine how to overcome them.

1. Sending Potential Leads to a Generic Page

You might have spent hours crafting a perfect ad or well-designed campaign message, but it doesn’t help your business if you direct potential leads to a web page with little interest for them. If you did not know, as per MECLABS recent survey report, over 44% of clicks generated by B2B companies directed users to the homepage rather than any particular landing page, this problem results in the increased bounce rate.

Homepages are usually confusing for new visitors as most of them consist of an array of navigations for services and content, most of which are unhelpful to a specific ad or campaign. Displaying the same standard content rather than presenting specific solutions to real problems is the quickest way to lose your leads to your competitors.

It will cost you that lead until the end of time. So, what’s the fix?

SOLUTION:

Start designing a specific landing page for different products or services. Make sure these pages are optimized with tailored messages and the right call to action (CTA). You can also create the pages segmented for a different audience. So, the user directed to this page knows what to click next. Consider this landing page by HubSpot.  Here, rather than getting into greater detail for each segment, the company has created one short landing page that directs the target group into their personalized demo.

2. Not Delivering Value with Your Content

Content keeps on presenting a challenge for B2B lead generation systems. Acing the specialty of creating profoundly applicable and engaging content is hard for marketers. And, this problem is consistent as user’s needs are ever-changing. Most of the businesses that rely on content make the mistake of not ensuring that it resonates well with the readers. Most often, marketers fail to check their campaign’s performance before sending out a similar piece of content. Due to this sloppiness, imminent clients won’t ever try your brand, making leads drop out instead of moving ahead in the channel.

SOLUTION:

The two simplest ways to do this are:

• Use measuring tools that can be integrated directly into your pipeline process. With such tools, marketers can produce high quality content that is more powerful at converting potential leads.

• Utilize programming tools that offer insight into your existing customer base. With this information, you can understand which content converts your reader, what pain-points have to be addressed, and what can entice them.

3. Ineffective Call to Action

Now you have excellent content and a landing page, but it takes you nowhere if you fail to include a compelling CTA. You are not the only one attempting to catch the eye of a possible lead, many organizations are competing for the same.

Therefore, it’s crucial to include an appealing CTA along with your content, such as blog posts, paid advertising, newsletters, and landing pages. With this strategy, people don’t have to dance around the web to get in touch with you. An elegantly composed CTA tells the clients what action they need to take next, such as downloading an eBook or filling out the sign-up form.

However, according to Small Business Trends, almost 70% of B2B websites lack a strong call to action. This further pushes the potential buyers into the arms of a competitor.

SOLUTION:

It is pretty simple. Include a CTA button in every piece of content you create for your team. It’s also important to note that one can’t simply display a “click here” or “submit” button. CTAs need to be attractive and engaging.

Follow these rules to make hard-to-resist CTAs:

• Include an enticing copy to convince visitors to click. The words you include must create a sense of urgency, value, and trust. As per Unbounce data, using ‘submit’ as your CTA anchor text is proven to reduce conversion rate by 3%.

• Personalize the CTA to outperform other campaigns. According to HubSpot, personalizing your CTA will convert your leads 202% better than different versions.

4. Not Enough Brand Credibility

Trust is an essential thing for B2B buyers. Therefore, B2B companies should strike a balance between the lead generation process and brand credibility actions.  If not, you might scare off leads with your sales tactics or inadequate brand presence. It could be any company; if it’s unknown in the market and has a limited track record, it will undoubtedly have a hard time growing.

SOLUTION:

Too much lead generation without any brand-building tactics will result in a loss of money and time. The following are a few moves B2B experts must make to set up a reliable reputation in the market:

• Prioritize building business relationships. An email updating the user on products or services, or even a 5-minute call can keep the relationship strong and build a level of admiration, appreciation, and commitment.

• Be available to customers on every possible platform.  They need to know that you are accessible whenever a problem arises.

• Establish a sense of trust with other B2B companies around you. With this method, business owners and decision-makers will be drawn to your organization.

5. Inadequate Following Up

Most B2B companies fall into making this mistake. B2B marketers are regularly centered on acquiring new leads that they disregard the prospective clients who have already advanced through the pipeline. This inadequate or slow follow-up worked fine a decade ago. Responding to a lead in 3 or 4 days and taking a week to prepare a quote was acceptable earlier.

But those days are long gone. Today’s B2B companies are much more responsive. This has raised customer expectations. Consequently, even old-school B2B professionals have to evolve and start getting back to leads as soon as possible. Otherwise, they will lose qualified leads who were ready to convert.

SOLUTION:

Train your team to follow-up on every lead consistently. Get in touch with the leads routinely to keep the line of communication open all through, and ensure your brand remains at the forefront of their minds. Marketing and sales tools can help automate follow-up reminders whenever leads move down the tunnel for further actions. This way, you’ll never miss a potential sale.

Experts reveal that businesses following up within 5 minutes of receiving a lead are the most successful.

Fix these B2B lead generation mistakes today:-

Lead generation is too high a priority for B2B industries. It represents a significant chunk of their marketing budget for it to underperform. Unfortunately, the challenges are plenty in this area, but the companies can meet them head-on by following the best practices shown above. With this approach, you’ll watch the number of quality leads soar up and reap the rewards of high conversions.

We are here for you, and we are wearing our thinking caps