In recent years, especially after the revolution brought about by the effects of Sars-Cov-2, the world of B2B has undergone significant changes. According to a McKinsey study, only 20% of B2B buyers believe that it japan telephone number data will be possible to return to face-to-face sales, even in sectors that have traditionally favored field sales models such as pharmaceuticals and medical. In this scenario, taking care of lead generation for B2B is essential to keep your business healthy.
In this guide, we'll break down everything you need to know about B2B lead generation and look at some practical tools to help you get the most out of your contacts.
Here's what you'll find inside:
Why Lead Generation is Important in Your B2B Business
B2B Lead Generation Channels
Lead Classification
What are the steps of the buying process?
Best B2B Lead Generation Tools
Lead generation in B2B: conclusions
Why Lead Generation is Important in Your B2B Business
A healthy business is one that is in motion, with a steady stream of leads for the sales team; yet, 68% of businesses report having trouble generating leads.
Many companies approach this topic with an antiquated perspective, still associating lead generation only with practices such as cold calls or cold emails. This type of strategy, combined with the distrust in reserving a respectable budget for adequate tools for lead generation, constitute the barrier that separates a mediocre company from a successful one.
If your company isn’t ready to invest and believe in itself, why should potential customers?
Remember that everything that has to do with your lead generation process is what potential customers first know about your company, and is the anchor through which they will form their opinion of it. A well-structured strategy through contact analysis software and supported by high-quality account-based actions and content marketing will have one effect, a call from a salesperson they have never met before that has all the flavor of interruption marketing will have another.
Lead generation is essential for your business, but it is equally essential that it consists of well-structured activities and inserted within a clear Customer Journey, otherwise it will not be able to bring any benefit.
B2B Lead Generation Channels
There are several channels that can be used for lead generation. Some of them are more important than others today, and they have a different magnitude that has been growing during the last few years.
Online Lead Generation: This channel includes content creation and distribution, social media marketing, email marketing, webinars, online marketing campaigns using platforms such as Google Ads and Linkedin Ads. Today, a large portion of B2B lead generation falls into this category. Content creation is probably one of the most important aspects in 2021, as it provides the solid foundation to build your company's authority in the industry and earn the trust needed to proceed with further interactions with contacts.
Outbound: When we talk about outbound we are referring to a rather traditional lead generation technique, where the brand and the products or services are at the centre of the sale and the interaction method is mostly one-way and deriving from an interruption (cold call, cold email).
Third-party lead generation services: These include all leads generated by third-party lead generation companies.
Events: Participation in events, trade shows, courses, online webinars and other forms of B2B networking fall into this category. The latter has probably been the one that has suffered the most due to the events caused by Covid-19 and the consequent transformations in the sales sector. The webinar, however, remains a useful tool that, together with online meetings, allows you to maintain a visual relationship with potential customers.
Email marketing : While it may not seem like an ideal choice for the B2C sector, for B2B companies a fundamental part of lead generation requires an exchange of emails. Although it is an important tool, however, it must be used with caution: it is very easy nowadays to appear as “spam” in the eyes of leads, and for this reason it is essential that the content proposed within the email is always valuable.
References: References from satisfied customers or “word of mouth” scenarios fall into this category. Ensuring that your customers have an excellent experience is essential for this to get going.
Other Media: The last type of lead generation is through media such as press releases, news reports, newspaper articles about your company, or general unpaid media attention.
Lead Classification
It is very important to understand what type of lead your sales area is dealing with: one of the biggest mistakes made by businesses is not doing a preliminary analysis of leads and wasting time, energy and resources with contacts that will not be transformed (or at least not immediately). In fact, only 56% of companies evaluate the validity of leads before getting in touch with them.
This operation can easily be done with an in-depth research on the company in question and tools such as lead scoring . This tool provides an exact evaluation of the leads by assigning them a total score by adding those obtained in the various categories analyzed.
Let's take a closer look at how leads are categorized based on their position with respect to your company.
Cold lead
So-called “cold leads” are companies that do not know your brand, and therefore have a lower conversion rate than other types of leads. Another example of a cold lead could also be a lead that knows you but is not interested in purchasing your product or service at the moment.
The overall goal with cold leads is definitely to understand if they actually reflect your company's buyer persona , and if so, try to attract their attention through content and strategies with a good level of customization.
