B2B Lead-gen

Many companies have successfully used their websites as sales channel. A website also gives visitors the opportunity to get in touch with your organization. Your visitors look at which products or services you offer, read reviews or watch a video. But how do you get website visitors to buy your products and services? How do you generate more leads?

What is B2B lead generation?

Let’s start with the beginning. Before we dive deeper into generating B2B leads, we describe what a B2B lead is. A lead is someone who has shown interest in your product or service. Because a lead has shown a certain amount of interest, they are our potential customers. In this blog I am going to explain in 4 steps how to generate B2B leads.

1: Select your channels for B2B lead generation

Start generation leads by choosing your channels. Use data to determine on which channels your target group is active. Next step is selecting your channels based on this data. LinkedIn and Google Ads (before Google Adwords) are the best channels for generating B2B leads. However, it is always smart to search for new channels to reach your potential customers. Did you already installed Google Analytics on your website? See which channels provide the most visitors to your website (acquisition – all traffic – source). Use the channels with the most traffic or give attention to channels with less traffic instead.

2: Create content

Content is key. Write content based on subjects that keeps your target group awake at night. Offer free content (or ‘lead magnets’) to your target group. Put the download link for this content behind a webform where your target group needs to leave its data. This way you receive an email address. More about this email address in step 3.

To come up with content ideas, take a look at problems and issues within your niche. Grab this problems and issues to show your expertise. You can do this with a whitepaper or video. Giving industry specific data in an infographic or e-book really helps a lot. The possibilities are endless. A couple of ideas for your content:

• Whitepapers
• Case studies
• Infographics
• E-books
• Checklists
• How to videos
• Summary of an event
• Top 10 lists
• Step-by-step guide

Creating good content takes time and quality is very important. Everyone already produces content for the most diverse subjects. Due to this abundance of content you can not afford to produce poor quality content.

You also need to connect content to the channel you use. For example, an organization that focuses on Instagram will produce more photos and infographics than when Google Ads and SEO are used.

3: Make landing pages for B2B lead generation

The next step in generating leads is creating landing pages. The target group visits these pages when they click on an add or link. You send potential customers to a landing page instead of your homepage because these pages are designed with only one goal. A landing page has relevant information that is in line with the ads people clicked on. An increase in your conversions is the result. You can find an example of a landing page below:

Your landing page must be relevant for visitors in order to gain more email addresses. Therefore you create new landing pages for every piece of new content to increase relevance. More relevance means more conversion and more email addresses. A short, clear form will increase your conversion rate. Make sure you only ask your visitors for the necessary information. People are likely to not fill in your form when you ask to much information.

The perfect landing page does not exist

What works for you, could be a disaster for someone else. The perfect landing page does not exist. Get some inspiration from landing pages of organizations in your industry. This will give you a better idea of what a good landing page is. A good start is this Instapage post with 100 examples. Afterwards it is just a process of ‘trial and error’ to find out what works for your organization.

4: Online advertising

You choose your channels, created content and your landing pages are live. Only problem: a lot of people do not fill in their contact details when they get in touch with your brand for the first time. That is why you send them to a product page or blog with your ads. How to do this depends on the chosen channels.

Remarketing

If you have a lot of visitors on your product page or blog, you start with remarketing. This is a marketing method to re-activate visitors who have already been on your website. These visitors have already shown a certain amount of interest. The conversion rate, the percentage of visitors that become customers or leads, will therefore be many times higher than with a ‘normal’ marketing campaign. Make sure you use your specific ad platforms remarketing tag so that platforms like Facebook and Google Ads know who visit your website and allow you to use remarketing.

B2B Remarketing example

Eric clicks on an add about the benefits of using cloud storage. A day later he sees on add from the same organization about company X’s cloud storage case study. He needs to fill in his email address on the landing page to download the case study. This is how to generate leads using remarketing.

BONUS: use automated email campaigns to nurture your B2B leads

Before you deliver your leads to sales, it is important that your lead is ‘warm’ for your product or service. Marketing automation is the perfect solution for this. With marketing automation, leads only receive information that is important to them. The right content is offered at the right time by an automated buyer journey. Your conversion rate will therefore be higher because your leads are better nurtured.

Marketing automation example

Eric filled in his contact details on the cloud storage landing page. As a follow-up, company X sends emails with relevant extra information. Company X does this entirely automated and in multiple phases. Someone who opens and reads the first email, receives additional information, while someone who deletes the first email receives more broad information. Because your leads receive the content they want, you get more conversions.

Good luck!