Good marketing makes a company look smart. Good marketing makes customers feel smarter.” — Joe Chernoff
The past year has been tough for everyone, especially small businesses. You may be asking yourself how to get the team back to the top. Here are 6 B2B lead generation tips to help you turn cold leads into warm leads.
Okay, this isn't actually true. But in order to attract prospects, good microcopies are paramount to business expansion. Visuals are more effective at getting people's attention, but the words written underneath will convince readers that you have the answers to their challenges.
If you capture someone's brief concentration to read your copy, you'd be better off. Since someone seldom reads an entire page on a website or blog, simply prepare a few phrases to persuade them to buy your services or products. For many people who don't think a pen is stronger than a sword, this might be scary. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.
The good thing about copying is that you can easily create variant versions and experiment. Think about the buyer persona and what they want to read. Are they aware of the issues they are facing and want quick solutions, or are they making a shortlist of B2B companies they are likely to get in touch with? It all depends on where you are in the buyer journey.
For example, the copy at the beginning of a lead generation funnel is different from the last copy. By rotating and analyzing calls to action, you can see which copy is more appealing to readers by comparing conversion data. I hope that by rewriting and rewriting, the honed copy will shine through and turn anonymous website users into suitable opportunities for marketing. Consider these two calls to action:
Number one isn't all that appealing, right? If you have contrasting colors and proper placement, second, you're likely to get quality clicks.
If there's very little consumable content on the platform, a potential business opportunity is thinking you don't know what you're talking about. A vendor's website is a great place to find content, and a vendor's social media platform can also be a factor.
But what kind of content doesn't take hours? Writing case studies takes too long, and not everyone has the technical expertise to create demo videos. White papers are a treasure trove of knowledge. However, they are more technical, unappealing to top funnel leaders, and take quite a bit of time to prepare.
Blogging is an obvious choice. By writing about your industry, you can build readers' trust, incorporate a few beautiful images, and promote yourself on social channels. But just writing new content about a new service or product isn't enough. More than a stylish call to action, you need to provide your readers with something truly valuable. What should buyer personas learn?
Infographics are also great for telling stories visually. Graphic design isn't for everyone, but if supporting data is shown in a way that provides valuable insight, someone will want to read it. Content creation tools such as Visme and Infogram provide a solution for quickly creating infographics online.
Of course, not every team has the time to do full-time social media B2B lead generation campaigns. Many small businesses hire inbound marketing experts to develop basic content production strategies and strive to target leads at every stage of the buyer journey.
Not all leads are created equal. Some are spam, others are curious skimmers, and others have little chance of becoming sales qualified leads. If you're wondering how to start a B2B lead generation campaign, one of the first steps is to think about the types of leads you're tracking.
One option is to create an Excel spreadsheet summarizing all the characteristics of the lead you're looking for. Collaborate with sales and marketing teams to gather information about current customers and expand the information. Ask yourself what kind of prospects would be targets for growth engagements. Here are a few examples of questions to help you get started.
Use long-tail keywords to attract highly motivated users and increase sales. Overall, there is almost no need for SEO measures, but 100% buyer research is required.
Did you know that over 70% of B2B researchers agree that the buying process starts with a generic search? An easy-to-find site usually means a lot of effort has gone into UI design and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. A surefire way to lose potential prospects to your competitors is that they have to visit your website and dig up what they've been looking for.
The best way to get prospects is to make the online experience quick and painless, and make them feel like they've got the answers they need. This is linked to SEO, which has been around since 1997. Almost every industry is saturated with content , so you need to do keyword research to target buyer personas. It's important for businesses to focus on generating relevant content and creating links to get recognized by search engines.
One reason why common outbound ad campaigns fail is that users are being bombarded with ads. The average user receives 4,000-10,000 ads per day. If you see ads while watching YouTube videos, it's frustrating until you hit the skip button. To get people to pay attention to your brand, you need to build trust. To do that, you need to make it look like your ideal customer persona exists online and isn't trying to sell anything.
Because you aren't. You're providing them with the valuable information they need.
Facebook has a huge ad network for businesses, but first we'll brainstorm whether there's a B2B target audience there. YouTube is great for watching content, yet 20% of people leave videos within 10 seconds. Twitter is useful for networking and customer support requests, but it's not focused on ads. Instagram is the third-largest platform, yet 90% of users are under 35.
Now LinkedIn is here to stay. It's the perfect platform for building thought leadership and delivering insightful content in pay per click campaigns. But there's a trick to attracting real people to your brand. Instead of directing users to your website or buying products or services directly, try to get them to convert with content offers. This content could be anything from an e-book to a white paper (remember the second point?).
Be sure to A/B test between linking to your own landing page and using the LinkedIn form. After gathering a few weeks' worth of data, it's time to determine what would be the best implementation performance. LinkedIn makes it easier for prospects to enter information and it's easier to track specific campaigns. I've found that LinkedIn forms are often better than links to your own company's landing page. Probably because LinkedIn has a trustworthy reputation.
There isn't enough time in a day to manually go through the data collected for each lead. That's where marketing automation software comes in. A good marketing automation tool streamlines email and other marketing workflows. All it takes is a one-time setup to deliver personalized messages that engage prospects through email, social platforms, and the internet.
That's why you adopt this software (we love HubSpot! ) This helps generate contacts and makes you feel pretty confident. Suddenly, we're getting 30 leads a month, and we're inundated with appointments, account statuses, and unprocessed customer service requests. I can't keep up, and I'm starting to feel that my important contacts are being ignored, so I'm missing out on revenue.
I need a lifeguard to help me dive and lift weights. Integrating CRM with marketing automation software can save many conversion lives. The most useful thing is that it makes marketing and sales workflows easier. And increasing the efficiency of the sales pipeline will only bring good things.
These [CRM] software solutions often have tools for tracking customer activity, monitoring interactions, and recording contact information, which can significantly improve customer retention and lead generation.” — Finances Online
There are hundreds of CRM and marketing automation software on the market, so be sure to research and test which software best fits your business needs.
Once you've tested your call to action with newly written, industry-specific content, you should be able to get leads looking for knowledge. Don't forget to catalog them so your team can determine which leads are golden and which are sad brown. Review your website's SEO strategy and try out a new LinkedIn ad campaign that brings new potential opportunities. And finally, integrate your marketing software with your CRM so you can save time (and money) on acquiring new leads.
Overall, a great B2B marketing strategy doesn't come out of nowhere, but it's worth the effort.
This lead generation guide is far from capturing the full picture of marketing, but it can help you get started on the right path towards building B2B revenue in 2022. If you're feeling overwhelmed by the lead creation process, Aspire's free 26-page ebook shows you the right tools, strategies, and more.