B2B lead generation refers to gaining the attention of your business’s ideal customer base and encouraging them to interact with your website. For B2B companies, a high-quality lead would be a business that is already interested in your products or services, as they are more likely to engage with your website upon landing.
Why invest in digital marketing?
If you’re attracting a high volume of traffic to your website but are receiving few enquiries, there are some effective ways in which you can improve your conversion rate. Maybe the leads you do get are of a low quality or the users accessing your website can’t find relevant information for their business. Luckily, this is where lead generation steps in to save the day.
B2B lead generation helps control the quality of the traffic being driven to your website, meaning the users landing on your website are more likely to interact with your business and access your services that are relevant to them. And, with a higher volume of quality leads accessing your business’s website, you’ll likely see an increase in conversions and a decrease in bounce rates, improving the overall performance of your website and business.
The B2B lead generation funnel
While B2C lead generation can see users making an immediate purchase of a product, B2B lead generation usually requires user trust to be established before a lead can progress to a conversion. This strategic process, of turning a user into a customer, is best presented as a lead generation funnel. Much like the funnel you would find in your kitchen cupboard, the lead generation funnel shows the gradual progression of leads, from initial traffic through to final conversions. By breaking down the funnel into four sections, we can see the key stages a business will go through when transforming a user into a customer.
- Attention – Your first task is to gain the attention of users and encourage them to access your website to increase traffic. One way you could do this is through an eye-catching awareness campaign.
- Engage – Once you’ve caught the attention of users, you’ll want to keep them interested to avoid increasing your bounce rate. By directing them to an appropriate landing page, you can encourage users to continue exploring your website and services.
- Decision – Having landed on your website and developed an interest in your business, it’s time to encourage users to interact with your services. This can be achieved through a promotional campaign.
- Action – Finally, it’s time for a prospect to become a customer and complete a conversion through your website. Though remember not to neglect your users once they have converted to leads. By tracking your leads, you can continue to reach out and remind users of your services, encouraging them to return to your website and services in the future.
Types of B2B lead generation
Lead generation can be split into two categories, allowing you to efficiently categorise and track the progress of your B2B leads.
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
A Marketing Qualified Lead or MQL is a user who has displayed an interest in your business’s services or products but is not quite ready to make a commitment. Whether a user has downloaded a guide on your website or input their details to sign up to your newsletter, the exact requirements your company will need to decide the requirements for categorising an MQL. However, you decide to categorise your MQLs, these leads are the first step towards identifying the success of your lead generation techniques.
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
Sales Qualified Leads or SQLs are what you want your MQLs to eventually develop in to. A SQL is when a user has progressed down the lead generation funnel and is ready to make an enquiry, request information or make a sale through your business’s website.
Now you have a better understanding of what a B2B lead generation is, if you’d like to speak to a Spindogs expert about how we can help boost your digital marketing, get in touch below. We’d love to hear from you!