Adapting to new technologies & tactics can make lead generation hard for B2B startup companies as they lack the budget. The companies have to come up with new ideas to grow their leads and this can be a complex process as quality leads are the soul of any B2B company. The limits on resources to splurge on marketing functions demands you be sharp about your lead generation strategies. To help you generate new lead generation ideas we have the 10 best lead generation practices for your B2B startup.
By consistently analyzing the lead generation practices you can easily stay at the top of the competition. With ever-changing technology, it is quite challenging for startups to acquire leads. But with regular hard work and effort, you can shoot up conversions and captivate more leads for your B2B startup.
B2B Lead Generation Practices #1 – Build a Successful Sales Team
In B2B startups the CEO is also the head marketer and the sales department to enterprise sales teams that demand multiple tiers of account planners and customer service reps. Prosperous B2B sales teams come in all shapes and sizes. Sales teams can play a crucial and active role in the lead generation task by using the brand new cold sales development approaches, known as the Lead Relationship Management methodology or Outbound Sales.
Working closely with the sales team can bring users to both the sales and marketing team, far beyond making a civil workplace. The sales team speaks with prospects and customers daily. They obtain a vast wealth of knowledge about the problems customers have now, and in the future. By meeting frequently in a collaborative and innovative atmosphere both teams can help each other reach their objectives.
#2 – Depict your Target Audience
Marketing and selling effectively in the B2B domain requires some of the same skills and words that help promote B2C success. You need a bond with your customer, a product that fits coherently within the customer’s process, and a message that answers the “why” of your suitability as a trading partner. Among the many methods, you can divide up a B2B target audience, and look to a collection of business demographics as a mode of parting the population.
You can segment your B2B customers using one of the following methods-
- Segmentation based on tiering
- Segmentation based on needs
- Segmenting customers based on firmographics
- Segmentation based on behavior
Depending on the products and brands your startup markets, one technique of customer segmentation might turn out to be more valid than another.
B2B Lead Generation Practices #3 – Display a toll-free phone number strikingly
Customers are more likely to contact you by phone if they know they can talk to someone either now or down the road if they need assistance with your product. Since more people are using their phones to search for things online and the explosion of call analytics companies, it’s now easier than ever to track and learn from your phone calls.
After you get a person to convert to your form, you can expand your likelihood of getting them on the phone by offering an extra incentive or an even superior offer if they call in.
You can also choose a lead generation company to automatically track, qualify, route, and record phone leads.
#4 – Boost your Customer Referral
Create an engaging B2B referral program regularly to captivate your customers.
Trust building is essential before customers share contact info with you. That means you need to be very clear with all the aspects of your referral campaign.
You should clearly explain to customers how the information they presented will be used, when, and how the referral process will function.
Once a customer gives you a referral, make sure the sales rep involves in person with them in the process. On your primary email outreach, refer to the referrer’s name and copy them.
Try to highlight some of the success they’ve had with your product. Your customer’s statement will be better than any marketing security you could send the lead.
Give them rewards for participating in your B2B referral program, they’re more likely to keep coming back. Request your customers to join a VIP program, and give them public identification by sharing their content on social media, this can turn them into lifelong brand promoters.
B2B Lead Generation Practices #5 – Build an Ultimate B2B Lead-generating Landing page
Lead-generating landing pages are perfect to capture personal information about a prospect such as an email address, phone number, company size, etc. And to support that prospect down your marketing funnel.
The content on the landing page is the key source that gives an asset to the reader. A swift, digestible summary of what they’ll learn if they download it is crucial. Your asset should be worth their time and contact information. Highlight all your key features and benefits in the landing page copy.
Consider the following tips to build the perfect lead-generating landing page-
- Use Security badges below the lead gen landing page form to let people know their personal information is secure.
- Keep your message under the CTA button clear-cut and let your audience know that your business values the privacy of its leads. This will make it all the more likely for them to feel comfortable handing over their information.
- Do not add images when it is of no value. Use images only if it boosts your conversions and enhances the page.
- Display testimonials only from reliable sources to build trust.
- Add a video at the bottom of the page to demonstrate how the product will entertainingly help your clients.
- Instead of just promoting your content, design your landing page to streamline the lead-capturing process. Apply the same logic for your copy of form fills and keep them simple and polished.
#6 – Optimize your Search Engine
Search Engine Optimization is very crucial because most of your website’s traffic starts with a search query. Writing SEO-optimized content is a bit complex process as it consists of numerous moves, it covers keyword research, writing content for your target-supported keywords, and then promoting the content to make it search engine beneficial.
Links that make up the peak and the right of organic search upshots in Google and other search engines. This is also known as CPC advertising. Here are a few ways to improve your website’s SEO immediately-
- Develop a few audience characters to create finer content for your audience.
- Research well to know the keywords. It is better to concentrate more on the number of keywords than on search volume. Several keywords with low search volume have all the abilities to generate leads more successfully than one keyword with a high search volume.
- Create quality content and strategically use your links. Always link beneficial websites that are useful to your customers and complement your business.
It is better to post new content frequently. Your content should be of good quality and it should also be unique. Add new content to your website regularly.
A search engine consists of billions of websites. With your hard work, you will see your results in months. It takes time, but it will help you stay on top of the competition.
B2B Lead Generation Practices #7 – Use LinkedIn Lead Gen Form
Lead Gen Form is a type of ad specifically outlined to accumulate leads, using pre-populated opt-in forms. By using LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms you can capture quality leads, by applying forms that are advanced and filled with LinkedIn profile data. You can use the Advanced People Search feature which filters people’s profiles by using particular keywords, job titles, contact information, department, and so on. For this reason, as a B2B marketer, Linkedin Lead Gen Forms are effective for your startup.
You can drive people to your Lead Gen Form on LinkedIn by promoting sponsored content with a useful link, an attractive image, and an update of your page.
#8 – Use offers as lead magnets
You can use attractive offers as a free resource to collect your lead’s data. This serves as a smart and inexpensive strategy. A free lead magnet could be anything from a small e-book to a small educational PDF. Always be alert to collect not only leads but generate market price from the exchange with the customer.
Providing a free product or service is a powerful marketing tool and it is also more reasonable than traditional sales teams or ad campaigns. As a B2B startup using a free trial or freemium offering will construct a massive user group and allows you to drive more traffic and virality.
Example- Groove offers its benefits for free with a time limit. The advantage of this time limit would be to weed out prospects who aren’t serious about taking the software for a test drive.
B2B Lead Generation Practices #9 – Use Facebook Ads
As a B2B startup, it is very crucial to proving that you know what you’re talking about before people might take a shot at your product. Get people to sign up, whether for a newsletter or email list, to show how well you know your capacity and assure people to try your product.
Use Facebook ads to offer up something valuable, for free, to showcase your unique insights and then the rest of the competition. B2B ads can generate awareness about your startup and attract people to try your product for the first time. You can aim for different audiences and objectives, from creating Awareness to Sales and Promotion, to Free Trials.
Example-Market researchers, news outlets, government agencies, and other organizations would quickly click on this. SurveyMonkey has let the image do the talking. The post lets you create a survey by creating an account for free.
#10 – Content marketing
It is eminent for both B2B and B2C startups to create original, generous, and keyword-optimized content. The true best content for a startup is to write what you know and target vertical audiences who will most probably use your product. Focus on one audience, it helps your product and builds your user base much faster. Later turn these articles into eBooks with an option, to run your Facebook Ads and Google AdWords to generate leads.
Here are a few key tips-
Tip #1-Differentiate yourself.
The content game is overpopulated, but there’s always more demand. Always provide worthy points to the user. Share your own experiences – hacks you’ve found, tricks that have worked for you, and even failures you’ve had. If you don’t have sufficient knowledge yet, you can utilize the experience of the industry influencers. Pick the most engaging topics and successful content, and make it even more valuable.
Tip #2-Apply elegant images and videos in your content.
Visual content must play an important role in all of your efforts. When you split up a text body with some fascinating images, people are more ready to finish reading what you’ve written. Prefer using original images or ones taken by you, to add a much-desired personal touch to your content. Also, a good video serves as an excellent platform for your content. It reveals that you’re prepared to go the extra mile for quality.
Tip #3-Use the Right Tools.
Emerging content marketing efforts can be complex if you don’t have the right tools in place to reach out. You can use the following tools to jumpstart your content marketing attempts-
Yoast
Bundlr
Wunderlist
Buffer
Pocket
Feedly
Top-achieving lead generation practices are strong to come by unless you’re endlessly researching and testing new methods to pull prospective customers. By implementing these strategies with time and work, you can eventually stick to the process. Also, you can see more leads tick up and higher conversion rates, which will significantly boost your profit.
We hope this post gets your head buzzing with ideas for things to generate more leads on your own for your startup. Let us know in the comments if you have any ideas that we overlooked!
