Offline lead generation in B2B

Blog · Partner: POLISH YELLOW PAGES® · since 1991

A post from the POLISH YELLOW PAGES® blog (formerly DATABOT.PL), originally published on 09.11.2022. Some information (tools, prices, regulations) may have changed since then.

9 unbeatable tips for generating B2B leads

According to research, sales staff in B2B consider lead generation the biggest challenge in the entire sales process. In a survey by the CRM HubSpot CRM provider, 42 percent of sales managers surveyed said that acquiring leads, i.e. information about potential customers, is one of their most important tasks.

For this reason, in this article we take a closer look at how B2B lead generation works and show you 9 unbeatable methods for your marketing.

Source: www.hubspot.com

What are B2B leads?

The term “lead” comes from the English verb “to lead” and means a new contact generated by any kind of marketing activity. When we speak of a “B2B lead”, remember that this is not a private individual but someone acting on behalf of a company. The contact details that make up a B2B lead depend on the company’s own definition. For example, a B2B lead may consist of a first and last name, business email address, company name and/or phone number.

In addition to this data, a lead must have the potential to become a new customer . The best indicator of a promising lead is when someone, i.e. a company, shows interest in your product and content. Let’s say a visitor downloads a white paper from your website or asks about prices – this is a clear sign that the company has a need or a problem that the person interacting with you wants to solve with your product.

What are MQLs and SQLs?

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a leadthat has shown interest in your offer as a result of your marketing campaigns, or has a high probability of becoming a customer for other reasons. A good example of an MQL would be a lead who downloaded a form/list on your website.

An MQL is usually a very promising lead. This is because such a lead is probably readier for a sales conversation than a lead who has not voluntarily given their details by downloading something. With this type of lead you can be sure they are interested in what you have to offer.

By submitting their details, the MQL has taken the first step towards becoming a customer. However, there is no clear purchase intent yet. Before an MQL is handed over to sales, it must first become an SQL, a sales qualified lead.

An SQL is a prospect who has been contacted by a sales rep. A lead becomes an SQL either through lead nurturing or through a direct purchase intent (e.g. a request for a demo). With such leads, sales saves valuable time, because an SQL is regarded as a truly relevant prospect.

What makes B2B lead generation efficient?

Efficiency is the top priority of B2B sales. Complex, expensive offers that need explaining in particular involve a great deal of effort for your sales department. Generating qualified B2B leads is therefore the basis for later sales activities – and the most effective way to reduce effort, keep waste to a minimum and keep the cost of sales low.

Usually, gathering the most comprehensive company information on prospects is not a task for your sales team. It is rather the responsibility of your marketing department. Although in many B2B companies there are also ways of collecting leads to some extent in sales, it is primarily a marketing task as part of the company’s communication strategy.

How does B2B lead generation work?

Now that you know what a B2B lead is and that lead generation is essential for efficient sales, let’s get straight to the point: what exactly is B2B lead generation and how does it work?

B2B lead generation is the process of acquiring potential customers for a product or service. B2B leads are usually acquired through various marketing measures. Marketing measures include, for example, content marketing or advertising. You can include checklists and trial versions in free content, so that potential leads are generated directly, before readers even click on the product page.

The trick is that your readers don’t get these “extras” for free. If they want to download a checklist or test your product, they have to fill in a so-called contact form before receiving anything. This contact form is your gateway to the data needed for a B2B lead. When creating a contact form, you must be careful not to ask too much of the potential lead!

You should always ask yourself the following questions: What data do you absolutely need? What data can you later enrich with external data? How much data is a person willing to give in exchange for a white paper or a trial account?

In general you can say: the less data you ask for in the contact form, the higher the conversion. Only when the person has voluntarily given their details do they get access to the “extras”, and you have generated a B2B lead with the contact details provided. There are many ways to generate B2B leads. Are you ready to see what they are? Let’s go!

form under construction

Fresh B2B contacts at the push of a button

A modern alternative to buying addresses: get smart B2B lead lists quickly and easily with Echobot. Fully GDPR-compliant, with all the important company and contact information at a glance.

FIND OUT MORE

You can’t imagine efficient sales without technical tools, can you? There are helpful tools for every phase of the sales cycle. They can relieve you of time-consuming work and, thanks to modern technologies, deliver results that are almost impossible to achieve even with the greatest experience and knowledge. Today tools are also part of lead generation. They help make the most of the market’s potential. One such tool is DataBot TARGET, the largest B2B database of Polish Yellow Pages® containing current sales opportunities in Poland and English-speaking countries.

Content marketing

“93% of B2B buying processes start with an online search” (source: www.ecommerce-platforms.com). Content marketing as a communication discipline is therefore at the heart of digital lead generation. In recent years the most effective, and therefore most popular, source of leads has proved to be creating content aimed at target audiences and distributing it through the right communication channels.

In content marketing, the company’s own website is particularly important. Individual pages, so-called landing pages, give prospects valuable content and the information they want about the company and its product. That is why you should pay special attention to optimising your landing pages.

On the one hand, landing pages must meet the highest usability standards, and on the other they should be SEO-optimised. If prospects need a solution to their problem and your article or landing page can help them, ideally you will have achieved a good ranking. The better the findability of your content offer and the easier it is to access, the more likely you are to reach your target customer.

Some formats have proved particularly effective in content marketing:

Source:  www.toprankblog.com

All the formats have basic features in common: they offer comprehensive, topical information that gives consumers recognisable benefits and added value.

White paper

In B2B spontaneous purchasing decisions are rare. Instead, interested parties first gather comprehensive information before even considering a product. That is why whitepapers are a proven method of generating B2B leads. With white papers you can support the research process and demonstrate professional expertise. Give your target customer relevant information that justifies receiving a business email address in return.

You should include some reference to your product in the content offered, because this is the first and basic step of lead qualification: the interested reader automatically comes into contact with your product, even if it is not at the centre of your white paper.

Webinars

In B2B products or services usually need more advice than in B2C. Before buying, prospects like to compare several suppliers and products. They want to check whether or not they are investing in the right tool.

If as a supplier you use a webinar to generate leads, you can show your product to several people at once, highlight its benefits and areas of application, and answer questions. It’s your chance to shed light on the best sides of your product and all the benefits customers get from it! Don’t waste that opportunity. Attending a webinar usually doesn’t take much effort, and people sign up for them more easily than for an online demo – higher conversion rates guaranteed! Lead generation takes place when the prospect registers and, in return, can attend the webinar free of charge.

Blog

A blog is an excellent way to generate B2B leads. Try not to focus too much on marketing your product or service; instead help your target audience with relevant content. Position yourself as an expert in your subject and build prospects’ trust. When it comes to making a purchasing decision, they will already know your product and be more willing to buy it. It is important to provide content that your target audience also searches for on Google or other search engines. Optimising articles based on keywords or search queries is key here if you don’t want the competition to lead. Improve your rankings on Google, and you will get more visibility in your target group, more views and, as you can guess, more leads. In the articles themselves you can offer checklists, plans or anything else to download and generate B2B leads with so-called lead magnets.

Visitor identification

If you have the contact details of a person who has expressed a need for your product or service, they are regarded as a B2B lead. Every day visitors come to your website – unfortunately not every one of them downloads your white paper, asks about prices or books a demo. That person is, however, still of interest to you! They have already shown interest in your product – they just haven’t engaged yet. In the next step you need to find out how to make contact with them.

The question is: how do you find out who has visited your website? The solution is visitor identification! There are tools that reveal the IP address of your website visitors and thus tell you which companies have a need for your product. This gives you B2B leadsthat you might otherwise have missed.

In addition, these tools often display other relevant company data, such as employees and contact details. What is particularly exciting: IP identification and visitor tracking tell you exactly which of your pages were visited and how often. This makes it easy to prioritise next steps and the sales approach with each visitor.

Social selling

LinkedIn is an absolute must-have, especially in B2B. You will find not only lots of useful content here, but you can also become active yourself.

On the one hand, you can build a network by providing relevant content and seeking exchange with your target audience. With a little diligence you can become an expert on your specific topic. The goal is for interested parties to approach you, or for someone to recommend you because they have seen you several times in connection with a particular topic.

On the other hand, you can still post about other relevant content such as webinars, other exciting insights on your blog or topics on your company page. In this way the perception of your company will grow – and help you collect more leads!

Social media is becoming ever more important for B2B lead generation – don’t miss this trend!

Source: www.themarketingscope.com

Advertising / traffic generation

Effective lead generation with content marketing follows clear steps. First, you need to attract the attention of your target customers: a detailed, carefully planned target group analysis provides the necessary information.

Then you will see which media are suitable for a particular target group. You should find out which channels certain groups use most: touchpoints include social media and search engines. If you know which touchpoints are particularly important to your prospects, you can place the relevant ads accordingly and direct traffic.

Google Ads

As a supplement to the general optimisation of your own content for search engines, the strategic use of Google Ads has proved effective. If your target customers search for specific topics or problems, they will automatically find ads for your content, which in return generate leads. When you run search engine marketing, there is always a link leading to your landing page.

Here the content – for example a white paper – is described in more detail. In the next step you have to “lure” the interested party to gated content, e.g. to fill in a lead magnet (e.g. a checklist) or a contact form (e.g. price lists).

As already mentioned, in most cases a business email address in the contact form is enough. Of course, it is always worth having as much information from the prospect as possible. But there remains the danger that your target customer will be put off by a contact form that asks for too much information and then abandon the registration.

LinkedIn Ads

B2B lead generation through social media is different. Above all, LinkedIn is enormously important in B2B, although Facebook and Instagram offer comparable options you might consider in B2C. You can send your target customer to an external landing page via a link on social media. However, these platforms save time and money, and thus significantly increase the effectiveness of your marketing activities.

Source:  www.linkedin.com

LinkedIn has so-called Lead Gen forms, with which you can create ads, sponsored content or sponsored InMail messages with a call to action. With one click, the user’s profile data – name, contact details, company, job title, position and location – is transferred to the form, and, for example, a linked e-book is made available for download. The most important piece of information for lead qualification is the company name. Regardless of who fills in the registration form, it forms the basis for further research.

Data collected through Lead Gen Forms can be downloaded directly from your LinkedIn account, or even sent directly to your preferred CRM system 

Native advertising

In recent years advertising has been viewed rather negatively, especially in B2B. Even the largest advertising budgets no longer achieve the response advertisers were used to. Many experts even predict the end of classic advertising. At the same time, trust in independent content is growing. Editorially prepared information about companies, products and services attracts the attention that advertising is often denied today.

Native advertising, for example the service offered by the American company Taboola , combines advertising goals with the basic principles and possibilities of editorial reporting.

Nowadays ads can be found as native ads, in particular on blogs, in newsletters or on news websites and on social media. Of course they are adapted visually and stylistically to editorial formats. As teasery they consist only of excerpts and links to customers’ landing pages.

With advertorials you can build trust, which can be put to use on the landing page through clever design. If advertoriale are attractively designed, they attract attention and help generate new leads.

B2B lookalikes: generating leads from existing customers

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you no longer had to wait for leads? If you could simply approach companies similar to your existing customers? We have news for you: it’s possible! With artificial intelligence you can upload a customer list, and the AI will give you a list of similar companies. These companies are also called B2B lookalikes . Lookalikes have some or the same characteristics as the companies you entered as a basis.

You can use B2B lookalikes for cold calls and even for advertising. You often already have relevant sales stories or use cases that make it easier to convince the prospect of your product. You will find more information, advantages and best practices for B2B lookalikes in our article “Find similar companies: how to generate relevant leads with lookalikes”.

More tips for strong B2B lead generation:

What is a lead to you? What data do you need from the start, and which can you enrich with external data? Define your B2B lead and ask only for the data that is absolutely necessary. Put yourself in your target audience’s shoes and give them relevant content that offers value. Then your content will succeed. Not every lead is equal. Your sales team’s time is valuable. So check whether you can use lead nurturing for further qualification of leads, e.g. a white paper. You can use lead scoring to assess your lead’s maturity . Pass leads to your sales department only once they reach a certain score. Time is money – in marketing and sales too. Use tools that simplify and automate your processes . That way you and your sales department can focus on the really important tasks!

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Form under construction

Fresh B2B contacts at the push of a button

A modern alternative to buying addresses: get smart B2B lead lists quickly and easily with Echobot. Fully GDPR-compliant, with all the important company and contact information at a glance.

FIND OUT MORE

Leads are the foundation of every business success in B2B. Without reliable information about prospects you are literally fishing in the dark and leaving results largely to chance. With strategic planning it is possible to gather information about potential prospects and generate leads.

Define your target group, analyse the customer journey and identify touchpoints – then you will understand when you attract a prospect’s attention and how you can turn them into leads through clever advertising and strategic content marketing.

Your goal should be to use existing aids and tools in such a way that lead generation delivers optimal results in terms of quality and quantity. In addition to continuously generating new leads, you should also include lead enrichment and qualification in your lead process.

Tags: B2B, B2B-Leads, Lead generation, Leadgenerierung, Marketing, Marketing Vertrieb, Sales, Sales strategies

Mariusz Biniak – creator of the POLISH YELLOW PAGES® brand (formerly DATABOT.PL) and author of a blog on B2B sales. Disclosure: the author is connected with the publisher of THE BUSINESS TIME.

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Source

• POLISH YELLOW PAGES® (databot.pl) – original blog post

© POLISH YELLOW PAGES® / Argonauts Media Group Limited. Copying, downloading and distribution without the publisher’s written consent are prohibited. Illustrative photo: Pexels.