Online 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.

Why successful companies rely on online lead generation in B2B

Leads, or prospects, are one of the most important elements of running a business. No matter how good your product or service is, lead generation is a key factor in your company’s long-term success.

Online lead generation in B2B: what is it, actually?

Online lead generation covers strategies that lead to obtaining contact details from people interested in your product, services and brand. This happens when they visit your website or company blog. Your prospects learn about you through an interesting blog article you have published or through your enticing landing page. On one of these pages you can have a form where they can fill in their business contact information so that you can present your product .

Online lead generation is about attracting your target audience’s attention. Design your website or blog so that it speaks to your desired customers and offers them added value in the form of content . When you get everything right, your prospects stay long enough to book a product demo or download something. In return, they leave you their business email address.

Once you have successfully generated leads online, you can enrich and qualify the B2B leads obtained and hand them over to your sales team!

Source: www.firstpagesage.com

Online versus offline lead generation

We can’t talk about online lead generation without briefly talking about offline lead generation. In addition to online marketing and inbound sales, there are other ways of generating leads offline in B2B

Trade shows

Before Covid-19, trade fairs were a popular way of generating leads offline. You could exchange ideas with other experts in your field and address your target group directly. It was a great place to make contacts, because you were already in an environment full of ideal prospects. Lots of business cards were handed out, so if you connected well, they turned into leads.

Events

Events are another great way to exchange information and nurture relationships. Inviting contacts and decision-makers is an excellent opportunity for you to demonstrate your industry knowledge. Organise training sessions or workshops focused on your specialism. Even an after-work party is a great way to “talk shop” in a more relaxed atmosphere.

Cold calling

Ah, cold calling, the old classic when it comes to B2B lead generation. Whether by phone, knocking on doors or by post, it all depends on the right sales pitch, and sometimes on the prospect’s mood. Although there is a lot of room for rejection with cold calls, you also get direct feedback on whether your offer hit the mark or not.

The benefits of B2B online lead generation

Over the last few years customer expectations have changed. A key driver of this change is our ability to access huge amounts of information quickly and easily at any time. Many decision-makers in their companies start the buying process with a search engine query on Google.

These changes may be a little frightening, but they also bring opportunities! Many organisations have begun to realise that online lead generation in B2B can be a key driver of success, but what does it actually mean for you?

Sell more

With online lead generation, your prospects become aware of you and your company through various online marketing activities. They engage with your content even before any personal interaction takes place. Through online lead generation you make life easier for your sales department and provide prospects with information before the first sales contact.

At this point you can assume they have a need. Your prospects want to learn more and download a white paper or book a demo of your product, so they have to fill in an online form with their business information. The information collected can now be passed to sales as a lead.

Saving resources

Searching for the right target companies and contacts usually takes a lot of time, especially in B2B sales. This means your sales team spends time elsewhere instead of on the actual work of talking to prospects. Research time can be drastically shortened or even eliminated through online lead generation, because the preselection of relevant contacts has already taken place.

Tip: there are several useful digital tools that can help with online lead generation in B2B! From prospecting software to list generation and data management — for every process there is a tool to ease the workload. But more on that later.

Data-driven B2B sales

Don’t base sales in B2B on assumptions or hunches. A smoothly running sales process is based on data, because only then can you be sure you are hitting targets and scaling your activities.

Better alignment between sales and marketing

Online lead generation is an important element in aligning the tasks of sales and marketing teams. The customer journey is becoming ever more complex, and it is all the more important to provide structure across all activities.

B2B marketing handles lead generation (e.g. via the website) and improving lead quality. For this to happen, your marketing team can use various measures and strategies, such as account-based marketing (ABM). These measures can take the form of precisely targeted ads, newsletters, white papers, webinars and more.

It then becomes the pre-sales team’s job to screen the incoming B2B leads , enrich them and pass them on to sales. These leads have passed a critical stage and can be handed to the sales team as Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).

Online lead generation strategies in B2B

Generating B2B leads online has advantages that outweigh purely offline activities. Adapting digital marketing processes for companies in B2B is an essential part of creating future success. There are several strategies you can use to make your online lead generation effective.

Content marketing

Content marketing is a very popular way to support online visibility and provide entry points for lead generation. In content B2B marketing you publish high-quality content in the form of landing pages or a company blog. The content is usually optimised for search engines using SEO keywords.

Source: www.firstpagesage.com

These changes may be a little frightening, but they also bring opportunities! Many organisations have begun to realise that online lead generation in B2B can be a key driver of success, but what does it actually mean for you?

Sell more

With online lead generation, your prospects become aware of you and your company through various online marketing activities. They engage with your content even before any personal interaction takes place. Through online lead generation you make life easier for your sales department and provide prospects with information before the first sales contact.

At this point you can assume they have a need. Your prospects want to learn more and download a white paper or book a demo of your product, so they have to fill in an online form with their business information. The information collected can now be passed to sales as a lead.

Saving resources

Searching for the right target companies and contacts usually takes a lot of time, especially in B2B sales. This means your sales team spends time elsewhere instead of on the actual work of talking to prospects. Research time can be drastically shortened or even eliminated through online lead generation, because the preselection of relevant contacts has already taken place.

Tip: there are several useful digital tools that can help with online lead generation in B2B! From prospecting software to list generation and data management — for every process there is a tool to ease the workload. But more on that later.

Data-driven B2B sales

Don’t base sales in B2B on assumptions or hunches. A smoothly running sales process is based on data, because only then can you be sure you are hitting targets and scaling your activities.

Better alignment between sales and marketing

Online lead generation is an important element in aligning the tasks of sales and marketing teams. The customer journey is becoming ever more complex, and it is all the more important to provide structure across all activities.

B2B marketing handles lead generation (e.g. via the website) and improving lead quality. For this to happen, your marketing team can use various measures and strategies, such as account-based marketing (ABM). These measures can take the form of precisely targeted ads, newsletters, white papers, webinars and more.

It then becomes the pre-sales team’s job to screen the incoming B2B leads, enrich them and pass them on to sales. These leads have passed a critical stage and can be handed to the sales team as Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL).

Online lead generation strategies in B2B

Generating B2B leads online has advantages that outweigh purely offline activities. Adapting digital marketing processes for companies in B2B is an essential part of creating future success. There are several strategies you can use to make your online lead generation effective.

Content marketing

Content marketing is a very popular way to support online visibility and provide entry points for lead generation. In B2B content marketing you publish high-quality content in the form of landing pages or a company blog. The content is usually optimised for search engines using SEO keywords.

Having a good ranking that catapults your company to the top of the search results helps raise awareness of your organisation.

Did you know? SEO and lead generation

If you want to appear in search engines, you need an SEO strategy. SEO stands for search engine optimisation and covers all activities that lead to a higher position for your website in search results. This can include content optimisation, technical optimisation or link building.

The goal is to increase your visibility in organic search results. So if someone searches for “best marketing tools for a software company” and your page appears, that person is more likely to engage with your solution and want to take a closer look.

An engaging call to action (CTA) encourages visitors to leave their email addresses so the product can be presented, which ultimately brings you a lead. [/box]

You can even collect B2B leads through your blog! You will often find more relevant content that is available only when you submit your contact details. This may include, for example, case studies, white papers, checklists and other things that are more valuable to readers.

Email marketing

Email remains one of the most important channels of B2B communication. With email marketing you can reach and maintain relationships with prospects. One of the most common ways is to create a newsletter. Online lead generation is not the only place where email marketing plays an important role; it also matters in lead qualification.

Did you know? Data-protection-compliant marketing

Remember that mass emails are neither pleasing to the eye nor compliant with the GDPR or the UWG. There is a risk of being penalised if you don’t provide a double opt-in option. This means someone must first reconfirm their email address after signing up for the newsletter.

By analysing user behaviour on your website, you will be better able to estimate which users urgently need your product or service. This is something you need to deal with at the next stage of sales. Other prospects may simply be in the discovery phase and only want to look at your solution.

Social media marketing

In the context of B2B, the business network LinkedIn has become an important player. Your target audience, especially important decision-makers and contacts, look for information and inspiration on LinkedIn. By working on your own brand’s presence on LinkedIn, you will optimise online lead generation and make exciting contacts.

On the one hand, you can create a company profile to draw attention to you and your products. On the other, you can use LinkedIn to build a personal brand, making social media an important instrument for sustainably strengthening your company’s online lead generation.

6 tips for getting started with online lead generation

As you now know, there are many ways online lead generation can help increase your organisation’s sales success. Here are 6 valuable tips to help you start on the right path:

Tip 1: know your audience

Getting to know your target group before you start is crucial. Find out what their most pressing challenges are and ask yourself how you and your product or service can solve them.

Remember to define your ICP and buyer persona and audit them regularly to make sure they are still current. Don’t forget to document your processes – it would be a shame to miss out on a learning experience! Documenting will also help you fine-tune more precisely in future. The more precisely you know how to help your target group, the more success you will have with B2B online lead generation.

Tip 2: quality over quantity

Success is often measured by the number of contacts and leads generated. But do you also measure quality? Qualifying lead quality matters so much because, if those leads better match your requirements, you have a greater chance of converting them. Losing prospects because they are unsuitable doesn’t have to happen!

Suppose your landing page attracts about 100 B2B leads a week. Your marketing and pre-sales team has checked them and decided that only 60 of them are qualified. These leads are then passed to your sales team, which reaches 48 of them. If all goes smoothly, you may end up with 15 prospects who result in a closed deal.

Is that a good result? It depends entirely on your prices, margins and much more.

The point is that the outcome should be contracts. There is no point in marketing generating a million leads if none of them signs up with you. So the better your B2B leads, the greater your sales success!

Tip 3: aligned sales and marketing goals in B2B

Measuring success by the number of leads is usually justified by sales and marketing working towards different goals. Put simply, marketing wants to generate a certain number of leads, and sales wants to win customers. Developing and aligning shared goals will make your lead campaigns much more effective in the long run. The key here is aligning sales and marketing!

Tip 4: give more than you take

When it comes to generating online leads in B2B, you should aim to deliver value. When you focus on giving more than you take, you lay the foundations for long-term customer relationships. Put your customers first!

Tip 5: focus on analysis and optimisation

Online lead generation is a continuous process that must be optimised regularly. It is important to use the data you have to keep refining and improving your methods and strategies.

Tip 6: be creative, even in B2B

In fast and complicated times, organisations need creativity to generate leads online effectively. Offering relevant, high-quality content helps and will ensure long-term sales and marketing success.

The 5 best tools for online lead generation in B2B

Online lead generation in B2B reaches its full superpowers only when you automate as much as possible. Processes such as data maintenance, lead qualification and even address acquisition can be automated, or at least simplified, with practical digital tools.

Here are some tools to help you get there!

DataBot

With DataBot you have 200 filter options at your fingertips to fine-tune searches and find your ideal customers. This means your marketing or pre-sales team can pass better-quality leads to sales.

Sales trigger events mean you will be able to find the ideal time to make contact, and you even get a conversation starter! Best of all, DataBot is the number one solution for GDPR-compliant online lead generation in B2B.

Leadfeeder

Remember how we mentioned earlier that an effective website is essential for online lead generation in B2B? Well, Leadfeeder is the cherry on top of your website as a lead generation machine. Why? Leadfeeder shows not only which companies visit your website, but also which pages they visited and for how long. It then prioritises these leads for you accordingly. Integrate Leadfeeder with your existing sales tools or CRM to get new sales opportunities!

Leadquizzes

Their name is quite self-explanatory. Leadquizzes creates quizzes to engage your target group in a fun way and obtain targeted information about prospects. Depending on the questions you ask, you can also collect business email addresses (i.e. B2B leads) while essentially gamifying your online lead generation.

Unbounce

With Unbounce you can create high-converting landing pages in no time! With the drag-and-drop feature you can build a landing page to suit you and your product. A/B testing and pop-ups are also included. This way you boost your online lead generation!

Hunter

Hunter helps you find email addresses by entering a person’s name and company. The basic level allows up to 25 email searches and 50 email verifications a month. Paid plans start at USD 49 a month for 500 searches and 1,000 verifications.

Conclusion

Successful companies take advantage of the benefits and opportunities offered by online lead generation. Develop scalable processes and connect your sales and B2B marketingteams. There are many different ways to generate prospects, leads and contact details.

The point is that your online presence in the form of a website, blog or social media is the key to online lead generation in B2B. Before you test other methods, optimise these parameters, and then deal with the details.

From content marketing and email marketing to social media marketing, you will have the opportunity to generate new and, most importantly, high-quality leads . Remember to give prospective leads value, so that it is worth their time to fill in the contact form. Show them how you can solve their problems, and your B2B online lead generation will grow !

Tags: B2B-Leads, Lead Gen, Lead generation, Online lead generation, B2B leads, New-generation leads, B2B leads

What do you think?

Which ways of winning customers work in your business? Tell us in the comments below the post.

Source

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

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