B2B lead generation is the method of matching user intent by targeting buyer interest with the right information and offer at the right time on the right marketing channel.
From a conversion and lead generation perspective, you will be collecting requests for more information from potential buyers, via form fills or phone calls. This in turn will be populating your CRM with names and contact information for sales and further nurturing.
Your website and nurture efforts are meant to inform and convert, quickly and efficiently, in a plausible progression.
Corporate Executive Board did a study of over 1,400 B2B customers across industries showing 57% of purchase decisions are made before a buyer even talks to your company.
Your website should inform and convert users friction free.
1) Do you have deep, authoritative content for all parts of the sales cycle?
Ensure your content is the right type for the marketing channel that it’s used in for your customer’s journey. Visitors to your site should go through a logical process. Product information, how to’s, and customer FAQ’s are core content types expressed by videos, PDF and webinar asset types.
Be cognizant of the many steps in your customer’s journey. Awareness types of content are used in social media marketing channels and consideration content types used for paid search targeted audience buys.
Mapping content to buyer personas and buyer journeys, then delivering it to the right prospect, is what drives effective B2B lead generation campaigns.
2) Are Sales and Marketing B2B lead generation expectations closely aligned?
Analyze sales team feedback and lead data to determine what content is working where, and what’s not. [Optimize] Revisit your buyer personas and ensure that they’re still aligned with your business goals.
Understand differences between marketing qualified leads (MQL) and sales qualified leads (SQL). Generating lots of leads from your eBook download means nothing if the quality of the leads are poor and never get to a SQL stage.
Consider revising offers to match SQL goals better, based on MQL to SQL conversion rates and sales department feedback. Continually test and analyze your content [Optimize].
3) Are you helping users make the right decision about which content to consume and when?
Knowing what your site visitors want boils down to two options for the users when faced with choosing from many organic search and paid results on a Search Engine Results Page
1) Understanding what options are available
2) Making trade-offs between the available options
When people face a myriad of choices, they typically do one of two things to deal with their feeling of being overwhelmed:
1) They either decide not to choose, perhaps surrendering the decision to someone else.
2) They adopt strategies that simplify the decision-making process.
Help reduce that onset of confusion and narrow down the user’s abundant choice set by baking in a benefit, offer and call-to-action in all your metadata for organic search and similarly for paid search ad haiku.
Datasheets are great for the engineers in your target group but does the CTO need to pour over every last detail in the product descriptions and benchmark reports? Focus on who sees what content when and where in the sales and marketing funnel.
4) Is the user clear in your expectations?
Include a strong call to action. Marketing fails when CTA messaging isn’t clear or too many conversion options are present on a page.
Too many calls-to-action on a page confuse the user and induce a high friction environment. What do you want the user to do?
Do you want them to share something? Submit their contact information? Be clear in expectations and spell it all out. Have a “low friction” call-to-action that is highly visible.
5) Automate to generate
Marketing automation software helps you track and analyze your prospect’s online behavior. Analyze their content engagement and consumption of content on your website.
Trigger an email marketing event based on a page the users lands on. Create email drip and nurture campaigns to guide the user through your sales funnel.
When a buyer returns and visits a ‘high value’ page or takes an action, their ‘lead score’ will change, potentially indicating a change in sales tactic. A “high value” area of the website might include pricing pages; ‘request for demos’ section, or a “request a consultation” website page.
Effective B2B lead generation requires you to establish your goals and set your funnels. Measure who came in to what website pages and how. Understand who left and why.
[Drive traffic] ->[Capture NAP] -> [Convert] ->[Optimize]
