Generating leads requires a plethora of effort. That’s why it’s important to make sure that all those efforts go into generating high-quality leads that are relevant for your company. The “quality over quantity” rule applies here especially. Concentrated lead generation makes it easier to manage the whole process, by reducing the time necessary to weed out non-relevant leads.
In this article, we’ll go over principles and methods that will help your company generate more high-quality leads. We’ll cover how segmentation, content marketing, and investing in the right digital platforms can help you convert leads more often.
Target Correctly
One of the main reasons that lead gen efforts fail is incorrect targeting. If you cast your net too wide, you’re going to end up attracting irrelevant inquiries. In other words, your lead gen money will become a waste on generating interest that isn’t going to turn into profit.
To refine your targeting, make sure to invest time in researching your target audience. “Research” is underlined because many companies skip this step and build their buyer personas on assumptions and incorrect generalizations. Building your understanding of your audience based on one or two people you know in real life that fit your criteria, isn’t going to help you build effective campaigns.
If your company has been in the business for a while and you already have customers, then starting there is a good idea. You can survey them to understand their interests and behavior. Look for general patterns for online targeting. Where they spend time online, how they learned about your company, etc. If this method isn’t an option for you, here’s an alternative method.
Research your competition’s customers. You can do so by going to their social media pages and checking their followers to see what kind of people are interested in receiving updates from the company. Look for general-interest patterns that you can use in your targeting. With LinkedIn, for example, keep an eye on the profession and the hierarchical position of the followers, are the followers mostly managers, decision-makers, or base-level employees.
Use the findings that applied to most people during your research to create a buyer persona. You might not find the right targeting strategy from the first try, so experiment and find the most effective formula for your company that helps you convert leads.
Create Relevant, Genuine, and Valuable Content
To attract and convert your prospects you’re going to need good content. Nowadays, every company produces digital content to promote their company. As a result, the internet is filled with inauthentic, repetitive, and truly unhelpful content. Don’t save money when it comes to hiring content writers, otherwise, your marketing materials won’t be any different.
Regardless of the format, whether it’s a landing page, an article, a social media post, or an email newsletter, aim to give a value that isn’t already on every other competitor’s website. Share stories and lessons learned from your company’s experience, publish anonymized case studies, interview your management or team for your articles to add that genuinely valuable, expert element to your content. The latter example also is a great way to market your team and show thought leadership in your niche.
For some industries, where digital platforms haven’t been adopted that much, it’s easy to stand out and provide content that people haven’t already seen somewhere else. For others, every aspect of the industry has already been covered in several blogs. It doesn’t mean that you should avoid it if that’s the case. Just try to take a different angle or add something that hasn’t been said. The more authentic your content sounds, the more effectively it converts leads.
Experiment with Small Niche Platforms
Building up on your target audience research, understand where your potential prospects spend the most time online, and meet them halfway by presenting your company there. Facebook is great, but maybe your target audience isn’t receptive to B2B content on that platform, instead, LinkedIn might be the better choice, or how about Goodreads, a social network for booklovers that is surely also used by publishing industry decision-makers?
We’re of course not saying you should completely abandon popular social networks like Facebook and Instagram, but do go beyond the popular sites and experiment with relevant niche platforms for your industry, if there are any.
Groups are also a great strategy for generating B2B leads. We’re talking about niche-oriented groups that are on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Keep in mind though, that they usually have a strict “no advertising” rule, so your marketing team should promote your company following the inbound marketing principles. You can always prepare exclusive content that might be valuable and relevant to the members of the group and share it with them. This is a great way to get noticed by highly relevant prospects.
Nurture Your Leads
If a person takes the time to provide you their email address then it means they have some kind of interest in your offering, even if they are not ready to commit right now. You should of course prioritize hot leads over cold leads, but never ignore cold leads! A good lead nurturing strategy can be just as effective in converting leads for B2B as all the other lead generation strategies. And there are many ways you can do this, both organically, and via paid campaigns.
Use email sequences to nurture cold leads and keep them in touch with your company. Do this wisely and carefully, otherwise, you risk irritating them, which will ultimately result in unsubscribers and a negative association with your brand.
To be more specific, you can use email newsletters, follow-up sequences, and special deals to convert leads via email. An attractive deal with no strings attached is a great tool to allure your cold leads to giving your product or service a try.
Additionally, aim to create several email sequences personalized for several interest groups. You can do so by sending an email to your leads and asking them to answer a couple of questions. Based on the answers you can categorize them in the appropriate group. Keep the survey short and on point by asking questions such as: what kind of content they prefer to receive from you (industry news, exclusive subscriber deals, company updates, etc), how often they want to receive emails from your company, and so on.
Need More Help Getting High-Quality Leads?
If you want more help with your lead generation feel free to contact us at PMG360 and let’s talk about how we can help generate more sales for your B2B company through online media. For our lead generation services, we follow our four-step process that ensures accuracy, intel, intent, and quality every time. The process consists of the following steps:
- Audience Segmentation
- Content Creation
- Marketing Outreach
- Leads Generation
Learn more and contact us here.
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