B2B digital marketing – Lead generation guide
Everything you need to know about lead generation
Digital marketing offers many opportunities to generate traffic to your website organically or through advertising, and convert visitors into leads.
According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report 2021, the top priority for business and marketing leaders is to generate more leads and convert them into customers. In B2B marketing, lead generation is the most important step in the sales and marketing process.
The focus of marketing activities for B2B industry players is on generating quality leads, and the sales team can then convert these leads into customers.
What is the secret to successful B2B digital marketing?
Planning and executing B2B digital marketing campaigns typically requires much more complex preparation than launching a typical B2C marketing campaign.B2B digital marketing activities are complex and diverse, ranging from creating a professional lead generation website to B2B online advertising and an effective B2B social media presence.
68% of B2B companies are still struggling with lead generation, and for 61% of marketers, generating quality leads is the biggest challenge.
- Have a strategy that you can translate into a proper action plan.
- Have an effective B2B lead generation website.
- Run PPC campaigns.
- Use the potential of social media.
The success and return on investment of your lead generation campaign depends on a number of critical factors, which can be attributed to either the right strategy or the right execution. How will the return on investment be positive? Here are the key considerations or you can read more about them in this earlier blog post.
- You need to get the right amount of website visitors
- You need to get the best conversion rate – from visitor to interested
- You need to find a professionally competent implementation team
- You need to secure the necessary resources
- You need to produce the right content
Characteristics of B2B lead generation
B2B lead generation is increasingly moving digital due to certain socio-economic events and processes, as well as technological advances. The good news is that many traditional B2B companies are still not exploiting the potential of digital marketing, so if you act early, you can gain a significant competitive advantage over your competitors.
- The B2B target market is generally about higher value deals, higher value purchases compared to the B2C market and a lead represents a much higher value, a much higher advertising budget can be spent on acquiring a quality B2B lead with a positive return on investment.
- The B2B sales process is typically much longer than the B2C sales process
- When generating leads digital, it is particularly important to move away from a cost-based approach and look at your online advertising from a return-on-investment perspective.
You can read more about what else you need to know about the above in our article below.
One of the most important things, however, is to find the right digital marketing agency to help you as a strategic partner, an expert in the world of online advertising, and one that can help you build, optimise and monitor the right online lead generation campaigns.
How does a B2B buyer behave?
In the B2B segment, many businesses are convinced that paid advertising has no role in the buying process and that their prospective customers do not even encounter online advertising. Yet these buyers all start the decision making process online, with searches. But how can you influence the customer’s journey?
- First, learn about the 3 stages of the customer journey.
- Identify the purpose of communicating with your prospective customers in these stages.
- Create content that rhymes with them.
If you need help, you can find more information in this article or feel free to contact us.
What do you need to know about the B2B sales funnel?
Today, the B2B sales funnel has undergone significant changes and is likely to continue to do so. The key for advertisers in this segment is how to adapt to the changing customer journey and sales funnel, and how to choose the right advertising channels and content.
A typical B2B funnel can be broken down into three main parts, which can be complemented by a fourth part, the customer management section. The targeting and associated channels for each section must be chosen appropriately to effectively support the conversion of leads into customers and buyers.
1. Top of funnel – TOFU – Awareness (information gathering section)
2. Middle of funnel – MOFU – Engagement stage
3. Bottom of funnel – BOFU – Conversion
Source: Figure-2.jpg – https://www.business2community.com/b2b-marketing/how-to-build-a-b2b-marketing-funnel-02428922
- B2B buyers/market players already carry out a research and pre-education process themselves.
- For this reason, you need to deliver personalised content at each stage of the buying process, depending on the stage the potential customer/buyer is at, so you need the right value proposition.
- This requires effective mapping of the customer’s journey to payment.
- You need to target the different stages of the sales funnel with the right B2B ads and content.
Although it is not an easy task, knowing your prospective customers/clients and the mechanisms behind them will help you to develop an effective B2B sales funnel for your business. You can find more useful information on this in this article.
How can you measure the success of your lead generation campaigns?
Data is the foundation of digital marketing success, but data alone is worthless if we can’t turn it into actionable information. It’s easy, for example, to use so-called vanity metrics such as skyrocketing website traffic, a social media following growing by the thousands, or hundreds of thousands of video views. But what should you look out for?
- Get your goals right and measure them – SMART goals.
- Always evaluate the results achieved together with other indicators.
- Measure actual KPIs and take into account other decision-support indicators.
- Measure your offline conversions too, as this will give you useful information to target your future ads.
- ROI should be the cornerstone of your success.
- Check our online calculator to get a clearer picture of the return on your advertising.
Find out about lead generation statistics for the B2B industry
Did you know that…
- Did companies with a conscious lead generation strategy achieve 174% better results against their plan than those without such a strategy? (Intellistart,2021)
- 61% of marketers see lead generation as the number one challenge in 2023? (HubSpot)
- 85% of B2B companies say lead generation is the top marketing goal in 2023? (Content Marketing Institute)
More interesting facts and statistics are collected here.
Have more questions about lead generation?
If you still feel that you need more information, you can find a number of articles on the topic on WebMa’s Lead Generation tagged blog page, or you can contact us in person or by phone. With over 17 years of experience and countless successful projects, our professional team can help you achieve your goals.