How to effectively generate quality B2B leads online?
Lead generation tips and statistics for B2B companies
Effective lead generation is the engine of all growth. Without it, it’s almost impossible for a company to succeed in the long term, yet most companies struggle to reach and effectively engage with the right quality and quantity of prospects. According to CSO Insights research, more than two-thirds of companies struggle with this problem!
Not surprisingly, generating quality leads is the biggest challenge for 61% of B2B businesses.
While it is not easy to acquire the right quantity of leads, it is more difficult to get high-quality leads. Generating truly valuable leads, as several major international studies on a large sample have shown, is a great challenge.
The process of lead generation is a bit like a phone number or email address – misspell a letter or number and it won’t work… Some typical examples:
- The company might be able to get some quality inquiries relatively easily but cannot scale up in volume.
- After scaling up the volume, the quality drops dramatically, and the higher number of prospects doesn’t actually result in increased revenue. While the overall cost and the cost per lead increase.
- After successfully reaching the target audience with a relevant message, the company website doesn’t have the right amount and quality of segmented content, and can’t convert them into leads.
- Not having an elaborate lead generation process. We get to the first contact – let’s say we get to the point where they download our ebook, but from there we don’t have the next steps – 65-70% of B2B companies are not ready to buy at this stage of education.
- Everything seems to work, but not knowing why – an algorithm change or a change in market conditions can cause the system to crash overnight – not having the data and measurements to investigate and fix the problem.
- Even if all the pitfalls above are avoided and you actually deliver relevant, high-quality contacts to sales, closing the deal is still up to them…but at least you’ve done everything you can from an online marketing perspective to ensure success.
According to the previously cited Demand Generation Benchmark Survey 2022 report, the top priorities for businesses in the B2B market are to increase conversion rates, improve lead quality and ensure sufficient lead volumes.
How to be successful and avoid the biggest pitfalls in B2B online marketing?
- Not having an adequate complex business strategy
- This covers many areas from defining the right business objectives, to defining our relevant buyer personas and value proposition, but in a nutshell, it means knowing how to:
- What are we trying to achieve?
- Who is our main target audience? What are their needs?
- How can we support them – help them achieve their goals and/or solve their problems?
- How do we measure success?
- This covers many areas from defining the right business objectives, to defining our relevant buyer personas and value proposition, but in a nutshell, it means knowing how to:
- Having a marketing strategy, but can’t translate it into a proper action plan
- Not knowing which channel, message, or targeting is the most effective way to reach our target group
- Cannot produce the right quantity and quality of content, which is crucial for education and the long sales cycle, especially in B2B marketing.
- Having a marketing tactical plan, but can’t put it into practice – not having the right internal resources or background knowledge to find the right supplier – only after several unnecessary rounds and having a substantial amount of learning curve cost.
Positive ROI – how to make a B2B marketing campaign profitable?
What many people forget is that an online marketing campaign is a traffic-generating tool in itself. Yes, a badly set up, poorly targeted advertising strategy is already enough to fail the campaign, but even if all the execution is professional, there is no guarantee of success if a good foundation is missing.
A digital marketing agency can essentially translate a client’s business objectives and market knowledge into the online space. If the input is incomplete, or poor quality, it will be reflected in the results – it’s like cooking your favourite dish from an incomplete/bad recipe – it just won’t work.
The success and ROI of a lead generation campaign depend on a number of critical factors, which can be attributed to either the right strategy or the right execution. How will our return on investment be positive?
- Sufficient number of website visitors
- It’s fundamentally a question of budget, obviously, we can attract more visitors with more resources, whether we count on classic PPC ads, organic traffic (SEO + content production), PR, or other tools.
- Conversion rate – from visitor to potential prospect
- The conversion rate will have the biggest impact on the ROI in the first place, as it makes a difference whether we convert 1 out of 100 visitors or 5 or 6 out of 100. However, the conversion rate is a very tricky indicator, as it depends on a number of factors.
- Without doing the strategic tasks listed earlier – knowing who you want to reach with what message, who should choose your service, how much a lead is really worth to you, etc. – there is no chance of giving the right input to the implementation team.
- Also need to ensure to have the right resources and professional background for successful delivery at the implementation stage:
- Resources
- If you don’t have the necessary basic infrastructure to generate leads (landing pages, content, campaign budget and service fees, graphic elements, etc.) – it’s obviously difficult to get started…
- Know-how
- Digital marketing is one of the fastest-changing fields, where up-to-date knowledge is essential. B2B marketing is a highly competitive field, where you really only stand a chance if you have a team with the necessary knowledge and, preferably, industry experience.
- Without being exhaustive, we need to cover the following areas of competence, both in-house and with an external partner:
- Strategy
- Goals
- Audiences – Buyer personas
- Customer journey – Funnel
- Content Strategy
- Social Media marketing strategy
- SEO strategy
- Content creation
- PPC – strategy and implementation
- Google Ads / Linkedin ads / Facebook ads
- Other channels depending on the target market – for example Twitter
- Conversion optimisation
- Web- and landing pages
- A/B testing – UX optimisation
- Analytics and data collection
- Measurements, databases, data interpretation, reporting
- Marketing automation
- Extensive lead generation process
- Strategy
- Resources
This topic alone could be discussed in several articles, but as the Content Marketing Institute survey shows, the most critical factor for successful B2B marketing is
- Strategy
- Content production
- Content distribution – i.e. traffic generation
- This goes beyond tactical campaign management, as proper targeting is not only, or even primarily, a PPC/campaign setup issue, but also a strategic one.
To summarise – quality before quantity!
As we have written in several of our articles, one of the most characteristic features of B2B marketing is that the sales cycle is long, complex, involves multiple decision-makers and therefore requires much more preparation than a B2C marketing campaign.
In many cases, we have to compete against international competitors, which also means higher CPC (click costs), but what is more threatening from a marketing point of view is that the competition with more resources can be much more prepared.
The situation is not simple, but the good news is that with the right quantity and especially the right quality of leads, we can achieve a massive return on investment (obviously, it makes a difference whether a deal is worth $100-200, a few thousand or even a few tens of thousands – calculated on a lifetime value base. The higher the value of a realized lead, the higher the return we can expect.
What many people forget is that yes, the conversion rate on the landing page is very important, as there can be a huge difference (from a few tenths of a percent to around 10%, which is a drastic difference), but perhaps most importantly, the quality of the conversions.
Even if we get 10-20 inquiries a day, if they are not the right quality – meaning they are not from our targeted audiences, therefore we can’t or won’t serve them.
We are just generating unnecessary work for ourselves instead of real potential prospects and revenue. This is why the role of preparation and strategy in successful lead generation cannot be overemphasized because the presence or absence of this will affect the way our entire process works.
There is no growth without traffic, but quality is more important than quantity! There are many insightful quotes on this, and we share our two favourites: