While we all want immediate results, a B2B campaign requires time and attention to connect with users and encourage them to progress down the lead generation funnel. That’s why it’s important to take the time to consider what you want to achieve from your B2B lead generation strategy before you decide on a method of implementation
Start by answering the following…
1. Who is your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) based on your audience personas?
2. Which digital channel do the majority of your leads currently come through?
3. What are your short-term and long-term business goals? Be specific!
4. Do you hope to achieve a set number of leads or is your aim to create an ongoing strategy?
5. Have you tried any lead generation strategies before, and if so, which were successful/unsuccessful?
Know who to target
While many B2C businesses will have the option of targeting an extremely broad audience demographic, for B2B companies, it’s vital you know exactly who your ideal customer is so you can apply more specific and effective targeting strategies to your lead generation campaigns. You can find out more about your current user demographic by analysing audience data collected in Google Analytics.
Optimise your website
As part of your lead generation strategy, you’ll want to make sure your website is engaging, informative and clear to navigate for users.
UX (User Experience)
As your website will likely be one of the first points of contact users have with your business, it’s vital the UX on your website is optimised to provide a positive first impression. From an organised navigation menu to the load speed of each page, your website needs to provide a seamless user experience to ensure you don’t lose leads to competitors.
Design
The design of your website needs to reflect your brand and be consistent across all pages to make it as memorable as possible for users landing on your site. To do so, we recommend establishing a style guide where you can decide on key elements of your site’s design, such as colour scheme, font type and image style. In doing so, your design is more likely to stay cohesive and in line with your brand’s style, making your brand and site recognisable to returning users.
Content
A great tip when constructing your content is to remove all of your body content and leave only the H (header) tags as a page skeleton – if you can understand what your page is about, then it’s a good sign that you have properly implemented your H tags.
Choose a digital channel
Businesses looking to reach new audiences are turning to a more digital lead strategy, and with an increase in online presence, it’s now the most effective way to target users. Yet, don’t feel you have to choose just one digital channel to focus your lead generation strategy on, as the more digital channels you use, the more users you’ll reach. Take a look at the different types of digital and direct marketing below.
Digital marketing
Content marketing
Creating content is a great way to establish your brand’s voice and authority within your industry and gain the confidence of new users on your site. From the content on your landing page to regular blog posts and infographics, creating content that is both informative and engaging not only helps to entice potential prospects but encourages them to stay on your site for longer. The subject of your content can vary from general industry news to niche information about your business’s processes and services, allowing you to target users throughout different stages of the lead generation funnel. Making a content plan will provide structure to your digital marketing strategy and enable you to carefully consider what topics you want to cover. For blog posts in particular, having a weekly or monthly plan will encourage you to upload content more frequently, building an authoritative voice for your business. Once you know what you want to write about and how often you want to upload, you will need to consider how best to distribute your content and market it to users. Whether you use your business’s homepage, social media accounts or industry specific forums, there are several ways you can use digital to share and promote your content and business.
SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is all about refining the content on your website to increase organic traffic. To improve your websites SEO, you first need to utilise keyword research which will later inform your on-page SEO. Keyword research works by identifying which terms users are most actively searching for, providing you with insight into what content users want to see on your website. A good place to start when researching for keywords is to analyse the keywords your website is currently ranking for. This will allow you to see which areas you are already succeeding in and where you can improve. Another tip is to have a look at what keywords your competitors are ranking for, providing you with insight into their performance and the interests of your audience. Though remember, your keywords need to be highly relevant to your business and your services, so don’t just replicate the keywords your competitors are using.
Once you have completed your keyword research, you can begin to improve your on-page SEO, which is key to driving more organic traffic and leads to your website. On-page SEO refers to optimising the content on your website, including the page titles, headings and meta descriptions. For each page of your website, you will need to identify a main keyword and embed it within the page title, heading 1, meta description and first 100 words of content. It’s important you try not to use the same keyword across multiple pages as this can cause your pages to rank against each other and would impact the results of your lead generation.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a way of reconnecting with users who have shown an interest in your website and business yet haven’t reached out or made a purchase yet. So, why wait for them to make the next move? With remarketing, you can use digital marketing services to advertise the products and services that users have recently paid attention to, encouraging them to take another look and (fingers crossed) make a conversion. Remarketing is an effective method to use when trying to build a connection with users and entice them down the lead generation funnel.
Whitepapers
Whitepapers, just like this one you’re reading, are a great way of encouraging users to interact with your business. Why not add a gated form to your whitepaper content? This is used when something of value is offered to users in exchange for contact details, a whitepaper can be used to progress users down the lead generation funnel and gain their trust in your business by displaying your industry knowledge. So, how do you go about choosing a topic to write about? One way to brainstorm whitepaper topics is by reviewing the queries sent into your business by users and customers. This way, you can create a whitepaper dedicated to the pain points of your audience and the topics you know your users want more information on. As with other forms of content marketing, it’s important you share your whitepaper once its completed, using digital platforms and targeted campaigns to reach new and existing users.
Paid social ads
Paid social media advertising puts your business right in front of your users. With everyone using social media in some form, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, you have the ability to analyse which platform your audience uses most and focus your ads there. For B2B companies looking to connect with businesses that align with their ICP (ideal customer profile), LinkedIn is the place to be. LinkedIn’s paid ads make use of demographic data such as industry type, job title and seniority to match you with high quality leads for your business to target. Once you have your ads set up, you’ll be able to track conversions and optimise your campaigns using built-in analytics, tailoring your LinkedIn lead generation strategy around the data collected.
PPC
PPC or Pay-Per-Click is a method of digital advertising where you implement an ad on a digital platform, such as Google or Facebook, and pay the host platform each time your ad is clicked on. The most common form of PPC is paid search advertising, which is the perfect solution if you want your website to appear at the top of relevant search engine results. To determine which results your ads will appear with, you’ll need to bid on keywords that best resonate with your business, website and content. Doing so will mean your ads are more likely to reach users looking for your services or products. PPC can also be used as a form of social media advertising or digital remarketing, allowing you to target certain users and demographics to achieve a high click-through-rate.
Direct marketing
Email marketing allows you to reach out to users who have either signed up to your mailing list or previously made a purchase. Whether you use email marketing to send out your latest newsletter, promotional updates or a curated email drip campaign, this form of direct communication can be highly effective for lead generation. By utilising analytics alongside email marketing, you can monitor user interaction to find out which users open and interact with your emails the most. From this data, you can begin to create audience segmentations to target those most interested in your services with exclusive offers and promotions.
Segmentation
Segmentation is simply the process of organising your leads into groups to create a more refined and personalised user experience. Segmentation can be split into two categories: characteristic segmentation and behavioural segmentation. Characteristic segments could include geographic location, occupation sector and company size. Whereas behavioural segments could include homepage visitors, product page visitors and email subscribers. By separating your leads into segments, you can tailor your digital marketing messages to meet their individual needs and their current position within your lead generation funnel.
A/B testing
Also known as split testing, A/B testing allows you to trial elements of your digital marketing on test audiences before releasing it to users. This will help you to decide which designs and messages will be most effective in generating leads and producing conversions. For example, if you were producing an email campaign but weren’t sure how to phrase your CTA, you could create two versions of the same email with different CTAs at the bottom. A section of your contact list would then be split in half and sent one of the two email versions. After a certain amount of time, the responses received from your test audiences would then be compared to determine which CTA generated more leads and therefore should be used in your email campaign going forward. A/B testing can be used to finalise the design of your web pages, landing pages and email campaigns.
If you’d like to speak to a Spindogs expert about how we can help you with your B2B lead generation strategy, get in touch below. We’d love to hear from you!