Tag: leads

b2b-lead-generation

What is B2B lead generation?

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For What is B2B lead generation?

Lead generation is a vital aspect of any business that sells a product or service. In marketing terms, B2B lead generation involves the identification of potential customers and conducting marketing or sales activity to encourage their interest. The greater number of leads you bring in, the more revenue you can make.

As a company operating in the B2B sector, you will have a different set of criteria of what is classed as a qualified lead and requires the collaborative and strategic working of the marketing and sales functions within the company.

Historically, sales and marketing have been known to work in silos. As buyer behavior has changed, so has the way sales and marketing departments interact with potential clients. An aligned approach is vital. Marketing strategy is designed to attract potential leads, qualify them as relevant, and push them through the funnel to sales outreach. 

Why your business needed B2B lead generation

In times gone by, sales and marketing were more concerned about telling the client about the existence of your product. But the nature of buyer behavior has changed drastically due to the internet. Inbound marketing is designed to bring your leads to you rather than pursuing them.

How to define B2B leads

Technically, any business that could benefit from your product or service could be a lead, but this doesn’t help your sales team effectively target their efforts. Instead, they should be categorized by their level of interest. These are usually defined as either a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) or a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

MQLs 

When potential clients engage with your marketing campaigns, they will be identified as an MQL. This engagement could include downloading content, attending a webinar, interacting on social media.

High-quality MQLs are vital in providing the sales team with a solid pipeline of leads. This will also increase your chance of conversion and improve ROI.

SQLs 

The next stage of the marketing funnel involves moving MQLs to SQLs. When a lead is deemed an SQL, then this is the point where your sales team will usually reach out and initiate contact.

The move from MQL to SQL usually involves more signs of real intent. This can include emailing for more information, filling in an online form, or signing up for a free trial.   

Who is responsible for B2B lead generation? 

B2B lead generation strategies and lead management is usually the joint responsibility of the sales and marketing departments. Whereas it used to be common for sales teams to be solely responsible, that is no longer the case, and the sales and marketing departments must collaborate closely to achieve targets.

Modern sales departments are usually split into separate roles to create efficiencies and focus talent in the right areas. Sales development roles identify possible leads, conduct initial engagement, and set any calls or meetings.

Business development managers are those who work at a more strategic level with leads. They communicate with prospects, give presentations and demos, and close deals. 

By running the sales function in this way, you create a very efficient department where everyone’s roles are clearly defined.

Marketers also fall into different categories when it comes to their main roles. Growth marketers are becoming popular in start-ups where revenue is needed fast and with little budget. They tend to alter strategy quickly, trying new ideas and dropping others that aren’t getting quick results. This approach works well at the start-up stage but generally can’t scale effectively, where a more sophisticated marketing setup is needed.

Inbound and demand generation marketers focus on developing strategies to engage potential clients and fill up the marketing funnel.

Depending on the size of your company, you may use one or more agency partners to handle various parts of your B2B lead generation activity.

Larger marketing departments may consist of digital specialists, content marketers, lead generation, and growth hacking.

B2B lead generation activities  

Several different B2B lead generation strategies can be conducted to bring in new business. There is still a place for traditional sales cold calling when it is targeted to the right organizations.

These include:

Outreach – the traditional approach of calling relevant people and attempting to get them to agree to a meeting, demo, or receive more information.

Email – similar to telephone outreach, this involves emailing potential leads. This can be done via personal email or an email platform.

Social – targeting and developing contacts through social media platforms and LinkedIn.

Alongside traditional sales outreach, the main b2b lead gen strategy is run by the marketing department.

Content marketing – creating and publishing interesting and informative content on a range of channels. Lead capture then pulls leads into the marketing funnel, where they become an MQL. Content can include videos, podcasts, webinars. Ebooks and blogs.

Account marketing – the buyer personas at each company are identified, and campaigns are created to target them specifically.  

Technology in B2B lead generation  

Modern sales and marketing initiatives run on technology. Aside from the platforms you choose to run your campaigns on. Internal systems allow you to capture the campaign data.

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is vital to tracking and recording potential client data and your interaction with them.

Another invaluable platform is marketing automation. Save time and money by automating your entire inbound marketing strategy rather than manually handling all aspects of the funnel.  

Conclusion 

B2B lead generation is an important part of any business. Generating these leads needs strong business direction and an aligned sales and marketing department. By deploying a range of strategies across targeted marketing channels, you’re increasing your chances of attracting and converting more leads through your funnel.

Each lead generation strategy will be slightly different, and you’ll be competing with others in your industry for the attention of your target market. By defining your buyer personas and targeting your campaigns precisely, you’ll improve your ROI as wells as your conversion rate.  

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5 Ways to Generate Leads with Your Website

Posted on | by devops
Expert Tips For 5 Ways to Generate Leads with Your Website

If you market using pay-per-click, social media, and many other online methods, your website is the backbone of your business. Your website is the destination you redirect every ad and potential customer to.

Online marketing strategies work best when paired with an appealing website with clear and preferably concise guidance on what action you want visitors of your site to take. The clearer you make your desired action, the more likely visitors are to convert.

In this article, we will discuss five ways to generate leads using your website.

  1. Create a welcoming homepage

Just as you would into your home, you should welcome visitors to your website – both new and repeat visitors alike.

Your homepage is often a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s one of your most frequented pages. On the other hand, it’s also one of the easiest places to lose visitors.

The homepage is your first impression. It’s a good rule of thumb to keep content and information on this page concise, clean, and compact.

Consider creating a welcome gate. To keep things welcoming yet clean and compact, it should slide out of the way after a few seconds, and there should be a way for users to dismiss it if they would like to.

You can use your welcome gate to tell users about your services and other offerings. You can also use it to point them in the direction of other informative pages and/or ask them questions and provide them with actionable options based on their response.

At Agency Partner, we use our homepage to tell visitors about our business, provide a little background info, and advertise our services.

  1. Keep your messaging fresh

Businesses are multifaceted. Rarely if ever, does a business offer one singular service. If this applies to you, then rotating your messaging regularly is absolutely crucial.

You want visitors to know about all the services you offer but putting mountains and mountains of text on pages isn’t the most effective way to get your message across.

Try an interactive, changing banner. This often displays as the main tagline with one or two words switching in rotation.

You can use an interactive changing banner to touch on the ways your services help the audience(s) you serve.

For example, Agency Partner helps businesses with digital marketing services, strategy and consulting, app and web design, search engine optimization (SEO), and much more.

  1. Offer a lead incentive.

Visitors to your website have no real reason to give you their email or any other contact info. Offering a lead incentive, otherwise known as a lead magnet, gives visitors a tangible reason to share their information.

Lead incentives are usually digital products like e-books, worksheets, tip lists, checklists, free trials, etc.

Once you provide visitors with something of value, they are usually more than happy to give you their information in return. When they do, you can keep in touch with them and begin the process of nurturing them as leads.

  1. Incorporate live chat

In today’s society, people like things to be quick, but we still enjoy genuine interaction with another person; using live chat software on your website provides a good mix of both.

Live chat allows you to talk to visitors and address their concerns before they have the chance to click away. And it’s a proven way to keep customers happy and increase conversion rates.

If you can’t be online 24/7, you can connect with customers by using chatbots that respond instantly and take care of the inquiries that come up regularly.

  1. Grab visitor’s attention before they go

When people are about to leave your website, you’ve got a short window of time to grab their attention and keep them engaged.

While regular pop-ups should be kept simple, you can use more detailed exit pop-ups to promote a specific part of your service and/or products to convince people to stay on your site or at least to share their email addresses with you.

Bonus

Let Agency Partner help you.

If you need help generating more leads from your website, drop us a line and let Agency Partner help you, your website, and your business all reach their full potential.

Whether you want a simple consultation to discuss ways to improve your marketing efforts or you would like a full analysis and overhaul of your marketing strategies, we are here to serve you.

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