Photo Credit: verchmarco Flickr via Compfight cc
Are you an entrepreneur, marketer or sales active in B2B? Then an important part of your job without any doubt is lead generation. No business without leads, right?
Of course, you also want your product, service, and organization to be known to your potential customer and to know what you stand for. But for many B2B companies, lead generation is priority number 1.
However, generating valuable B2B leads is not easy in this world of ‘information obesity’. Or is it?
With the 7 powerful B2B lead generation tips in this blog, you at least significantly increase your chances.
1. Make personal contact as much as possible
2. Harness the power of live chat
3. Use marketing automation
4. Convert your website visitors into leads
5. Start giving
6. Make your best customers your best ambassadors
7. Get more online reviews
1. Make personal contact as much as possible
Of course, it is easy to send an email or app with questions from potential customers. But it is also an opportunity to make better and more personal contact.
If a physical appointment takes too much time or is not yet opportune, you can also opt for a video call, web demo or telephone introduction.
2. Harness the power of live chat
Even though you have done everything to make your proposition as clear as possible on your website. Some visitors may not be able to find what they are looking for.
Many customers prefer to live chat for support questions and are often more satisfied with the result.
“Can I help you with something?”
Also, experiment with starting the chat yourself. Proactive. Some websites already do this if you sit on their homepage for 1 second, but there are also plenty of opportunities to adjust both the moment and the message to the visitor on your site.
Think for example of:
● on which page (on the price page or on a vacancy)?
● how long (just loaded or been reading for 2 minutes)?
● where do they come from (both internal links and external ones)?
Tip: If you run an online advertising campaign, you often know even better the background of both the target group and the trigger to click. Make use of that in both your reactive and proactive chat!
If you want to be able to follow up on a chat, don’t hesitate to ask for an e-mail address!
3. Use marketing automation
Are you already collecting e-mail addresses correctly? If not already, try to do it as soon as possible.
Once you have obtained an email address, you can use marketing automation to maintain those leads and collect more data. Use the available data to send specific messages to different groups.
Let your message depend on your data and, for example, the phase in the customer journey of this specific prospect.
4. Convert your website visitors into leads
Did you know that on average only 2% of website visitors contact the company in question? It is therefore high time to also map out the other 98%.
There are so many tools that can be used for the same and you will be able to see which company has visited your website, which pages they have visited, how long etc. From the app you can put them directly in your CRM and create an activity for sales.
Mapping your website visitors is an important part of any online lead generation strategy. This way you can also keep a close eye on how effective your online advertising campaign really is.
5. Start giving
An effective way to generate leads through your website is by giving away valuable content. Think of best practices, benchmarks, special data or a handy tool.
Make sure you actually create value. E.g. If you are selling online gifts then you should always write about new & trending gifts.
6. Make your best customers your best ambassadors
Leads supplied by existing customers are often of high quality. Do you already have an approach to convert your good customers into ambassadors?
A common way to find out who the best ambassadors are is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Provide this group with the right ideas and ways to promote your product.
You will be surprised how often they will do this!
7. Provide more online reviews
Positive reviews increase the reliability of any product or service. B2B decision-makers orient themselves online before making a purchase.
They will look for honest reviews to support their decision. Provide good and real reviews about your service/product that should be available online.
Never buy reviews! For example, if you only have one customer, make sure he or she writes a review.
Honest reviews generate leads. Fake reviews can damage your SEO and, worse, damage reputation. Don’t take the risk.
Make sure your prospects see good reviews. You can use the NPS tool from tip 6 to find the right customers for a review.
+1 Lead generation through search engines, advertising & retargeting
Although it is an open door, it cannot be missed. Make sure that your SEO is in good condition so that you are found well. It is important to have a number of good backlinks and to understand which keywords are important.
Generating extra website visits via Google Ad, for example, is easy, but you don’t just want a visitor. Make sure you put serious time into setting up campaigns that generate sales leads and not just increase your website visits.
Writing a guest blog can also help improve your SEO. Do not use remarketing for all your users, but create campaigns based on the behavior of your visitors and use targeted advertisements to get them back.
Contributed by Vikram Rana, Marketing Manager at LiftnGift and has served as the Head of Conversion Marketing at Planet Web Solution. He’s an expert in inbound marketing and lead generation.
