Many businesses find that lead generation is one of the most challenging activities when trying to promote their brand. In many cases, companies lack the resources and marketing team to generate the type of quality B2B leads they require. Essentially, your marketing budget and the quality of your sales pipeline will directly affect your lead generation capabilities.

When it comes to finding new business, you need to understand and implement certain lead generation strategies and using your website effectively is paramount. Generating leads and converting them into loyal customers is the name of the game and this article will help get the most out of your B2B lead generation strategy. But first, here’s a quick recap on what lead generation entails and the different types of leads.

What Is Lead Generation?

It may seem like a simple concept to the experienced marketer but not everyone knows what lead generation is. In reality, many people don’t really understand what a lead is or how to implement a strategy to find new business.

Lead generation is a popular term especially in the online sales and digital marketing world. At the fundamental level, lead generation can be defined as a way to attract people to your brand and encourage them to provide their contact information to find out more. It is essentially the beginning of a sales funnel where visitors show interest in your brand and become prospective customers.

What Is A Lead Or Prospect?

A lead is a visitor who shows any sort of interest in a brand’s products or services. These leads would typically find out about a company after receiving email communication from completing an online form or survey. In many instances, leads are also visitors who found a company’s website using a search engine and completing the contact us form, for example.

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)

Once a visitor engages with your marketing materials, this contact becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). These are people who have engaged with your brand but may not be ready to purchase anything yet. Once they show a particular interest, they are either classified as Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) or Product Qualified Leads (PQL).

Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)

Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) are people who perform a specific action indicating that they are ready to purchase. A prime example of an SQL is someone who completes a website form asking for more information about your brand.

Product Qualified Lead (PQL)

A Product Qualified Lead (PQL) is someone who has already used your product or service. These particular leads are generally associated with companies offering a product trial or free version of their software with an option to upgrade. Once they are at this point, your sales team steps in to close the deal.

Using Your Website For B2B Lead Generation

A well-designed, mobile-friendly website with quality content following Google’s SEO best practices is an immensely powerful marketing tool. Your home page is like a receptionist or restaurant host being the first point of contact for potential customers. Just as friendly and well-trained staff play a major role in business success, so does a good quality website.

There are three important aspects of a good home page to help maximise lead generation:

• A clear description of who you are and what you offer
• Interesting and eye-catching content
• Clearly represent your company values, culture and brand identity

Squeeze Pages And Dedicated Landing Pages

The golden rule in online marketing is to never use your Home page as a landing page. Rather use squeeze pages or landing pages when setting up marketing campaigns, products or service offerings. The main idea is to engage visitors with a special offer which usually involves them completing a short enquiry form, newsletter signup or similar content.

Many brands also prefer using a dedicated landing page for each niche or campaign which is a great way to show visitors that you are a specialist in the field they are interested in. When someone completes a form, they are a lead and not a customer (at least not yet). At this point, they are ready to enter the lead nurturing process.

Recommended Read: ‘How To Create High-Converting Landing Pages’

Did You Know?

Landing pages with video content generally show a much higher conversion rate by up to 86% (Source: WordStream). And companies with more than 40 landing pages generated 12 times more leads than those with 1-5 landing pages.

Customer Research And Engagement

In today’s tech-savvy world, we sometimes forget how important it is to listen to our customers. This includes interacting with them on social media, emails or calls. Don’t shout about your business, rather ask them how your business can help and what content they want.

Customers are undoubtedly your biggest critics whether it’s good or bad and technology alone won’t bring you success. Knowing your customers’ wants and needs are important if you aim to meet and exceed their expectations.

Attracting visitors to your website is only the beginning as you also need to apply smart lead generation tactics to convert visitors into leads. Pre-qualifying your web visitors with ad targeting will give you the best chance of turning a visitor into a lead and, ultimately, into a new customer.

Related Article: ‘4 Good Reasons To Consider Remarketing’

Good Content Trumps All Else

When Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, first said “Content Is King”, who knew just how relevant it would become. Content marketing has evolved considerably over the last few years and now plays an even bigger role in Search Engine Optimisation and lead generation.

The idea behind good online content is to rank as high as possible on search engines. Not only for the sake of better customer experience but also to give your brand credibility. It’s this sort of online reputation with quality content that can help convince decision-makers to choose you.

Remember, content marketing success comes from talking to people and not at them. The best way to implement quality content is by actually writing for your audience without advertising anything. It all comes down to content creation to help them solve problems.

Email Marketing And B2B Lead Generation

Contrary to what some may believe, email marketing is still one of the most effective lead generation tactics. Of course, it does require a fair amount of finesse and attention to detail. However, modern technology enables brands to easily implement a targeted email marketing strategy to improve their performance.

Compared to a few years ago, email marketing is even more powerful in conjunction with marketing automation. Email, marketing automation and lead generation tools give brands the ability to generate and nurture leads through highly-targeted and personalised content. This helps minimise the risk of sending irrelevant content and receiving spam complaints.

Targeted email campaigns deliver higher open and click rates as it delivers the right message to the right people at the right time. The associated website and email analytics make this a highly-effective B2B lead generation tool.

Brand Consistency

The general concept behind congruent branding is that all of your marketing materials, website and social media match what your brand promises. You need a harmonious lead generation strategy instead of relying solely on singular tactics for Google, search marketing, social media or internet marketing as a whole.

Congruent marketing can strengthen your brand as you rely less on one source of website traffic or revenue. Before any B2B buyers choose your products or services, they first need to identify with your brand. For best results, they usually need to see your brand between 7 and 14 times and that includes your logo, brand colours, fonts, language use and brand voice among others.

These elements must appear consistently throughout your website, landing pages, email communications and social media platforms. Congruent branding will help you gain credibility which will attract B2B buyers resulting in quality leadgen and a much better ROI.

Shareable Content For Social Media

Making online content shareable on social media is the precursor to B2B lead generation success. Good content can quickly go viral and that is exactly what you want as it’s one of the most effective marketing tools. If you create a shareable video with interesting and relevant content and post it across all your social media channels, your followers can relate to it and do their part by sharing it on their social media accounts.

Not only will this create a buzz around your brand but it also gives your business more reach. If you do consistent branding, your business gets a window seat to the top as it’s easier for B2B buyers to find your business. They can also relate more to your brand values while getting actionable information which means better B2B lead generation results from your website.

Conclusion

Lead generation for B2B companies involves more than just an attractive website with a contact us form. Truth is, it requires a complete lead generation strategy and that includes identifying your ideal customer. This process involves knowing where to find them, creating quality content, social media management, email marketing, PPC and remarketing.

B2B lead generation from your website will take much longer without the right information. If you can identify visitors in real-time, you can determine their interests more accurately and create a unique approach for better conversions. With information from this article and reputable lead generation software, you can take your B2B lead generation efforts to the next level. Some lead generation tools include:

• LeadGrabber
• Uplead
• Dynamic Leads
• LeadForensics

Need Better Performance From Your Lead Generation Strategy?

Working with a reputable digital marketing agency can help grow your business significantly and stand out from the rest. If you want to see improvements to your online B2B lead generation activities, get in touch with WSI eMarketing.

WSI eMarketing is part of a global team with local and international marketing experience. We specialise in several areas including PPC, content marketing, SEO, social media marketing and marketing automation among others. Our team can help you build a successful lead generation and lead nurturing strategy.