B2B Lead Generation: 12 Proven Tactics for the B2B Market

Do you want to stay competitive in today’s rapidly-growing market? If so, you need to focus on generating high quality leads that you can nurture into clients for your business-to-business (B2B) company.

B2B lead generation is crucial for helping your business thrive and stay competitive with other businesses in your sector. But where do you start?

On this page, we’ll cover everything you need to know about B2B lead generation, including:

• What is B2B lead generation?
• Why is B2B lead generation important?
• 12 strategies for generating B2B leads
• 4 B2B lead gen tools you can use

Keep reading to learn more!

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What is B2B lead generation?

Business-to-business lead generation is a practice that generates leads for B2B companies. These leads, often called business buyers, will become a lead once they provide a company with their contact information, like their name, email, and job title. Tactics for B2B lead generation use various traditional and digital marketing channels, including print, search, and social.

On average, B2B lead generation costs $2500 to $12,000 per month.

Why is B2B lead generation important?

B2B lead generation is crucial for helping you grow your business. Here are three reasons you’ll want to invest in generating leads for your B2B company:

1. B2B lead generation helps you reach the right people

One of the biggest benefits of B2B lead generation is that it helps you reach the right people. Finding qualified leads is crucial if you want to earn more clients and boost your revenue. But you don’t want to waste your time engaging with people that aren’t interested in what you offer.

Creating a B2B lead generation plan helps you focus on reaching decision-makers that need what you offer. Creating a lead generation strategy enables you to identify who’s likely to have an interest in what you offer, so you can put your time and budget towards marketing to those leads.

2. B2B lead generation keeps your sales team busy

Investing in B2B lead generation keeps your sales team busy. If you don’t have a lead generation strategy in place, you don’t have an active way to continuously drive leads to your business. As a result, your sales team will rely on seeking people out without any idea as to whether they’re interested in what you offer.

With B2B lead generation, you use strategies that attract leads you know are interested in what you offer. It keeps your sales team busy and engaged with prospects that can turn into clients.

3. B2B lead generation helps you grow your business

The biggest benefit of B2B lead generation is that it helps you grow your business. For your B2B company to grow, you need qualified leads that turn into clients and ultimately boost your revenue.

With a lead generation strategy in place, you’ll drive qualified leads to your business that you can turn into clients. As you continue to earn more clients, you’ll boost your revenue and grow your business.

Which B2B lead generation tactics work best?

Every business is different — even those in the B2B market. That’s why it’s challenging to provide a definitive answer to which lead generation tactics work best. Research by HubSpot demonstrates how B2B companies get different results with different strategies. HubSpot, for example, found that most B2B leads come from other, undefined tactics.

Image from HubSpot

That’s why this post covers a few different approaches, some familiar and some new. All, however, offer universal value to B2B companies. Whether your business operates in the manufacturing, healthcare, or entertainment sector, you can use the following B2B lead generation ideas.

12 effective B2B lead generation ideas

When it comes to lead generation for B2B, the following tactics work extremely well:

1. Give your lead generation forms an overdue update

While some leads may call your company directly, many use your website to contact your team. That’s why contact forms across your site play a critical role in your B2B lead gen efforts. If those forms underperform, so does your lead generation strategy.

Companies, however, tend to overlook their contact forms when analyzing their lead generation process. Instead, they focus on their website traffic and conversion rates. While you want to monitor these metrics, you also want to determine what’s influencing their performance.

When it comes to your conversion rates, your contact forms carry significant influence. Poorly designed contact forms can cost companies valuable leads and revenue. If you ask the wrong questions, include a problematic design feature, or use a poor location for your contact form, it can result in low conversions.

Your company isn’t losing leads because of your product or service, but because of a contact form on your website. That’s why it’s essential to adopt this strategy for your lead gen campaigns: optimize your contact forms.

You can optimize or improve your contact forms for website visitors in a few ways. You can make global and local changes, like redesigning your contact form or modifying your form fields, for example. Depending on your site, you may require the help of your development team to update your website.

A few additional examples of ways you can optimize your contact forms to generate leads include:

• Increase or decrease the number of form fields
• Modify the number of required form fields
• Change the information requested from leads
• Update the contact form’s design
• Move the location of the contact form
• Add or improve the contact form’s value proposition
• Update the calls to action (CTAs) for viewing the contact form

If you decide to use this B2B lead generation tactic for your lead generation campaign, use multivariate or A/B testing to make changes. This approach allows your team to compare design differences and determine which one offers the most value when it comes to your lead generation goals.

2. Supercharge your email marketing campaigns for lead generation

Email is non-negotiable when it comes to B2B lead gen. It’s one of the most reliable strategies, which is why almost 90 percent of marketers say it’s their company’s primary strategy.

That, however, is the problem.

While companies recognize the value of email marketing, they fail to develop successful strategies for email. It’s a B2B lead generation tactic that doesn’t reach its full potential, which is why businesses need to reinvest in email marketing.

Maximize the performance of your email marketing campaign with an in-depth audit of your strategy. Look at your different audiences, segmentation strategies, automated journeys, and more to assess the performance of your plan and opportunities for improvement.

3. Create a dedicated SEO strategy for generating B2B leads

According to a recent study by HubSpot, search is one of the best channels when it comes to B2B lead generation strategies. For reference, search describes the organic traffic that search engines, like Google or Bing, drive to your site.

While many B2B companies use search engine optimization (SEO), which focuses on improving your visibility in relevant search results to drive organic traffic to your website, it’s common for businesses to abandon SEO as a marketing channel.

That’s because companies expect immediate results from this B2B lead generation tactic. SEO, however, is an ongoing, long-term strategy. It can take up to six months for SEO to show results, but many businesses expect results sooner, whether in-house or from their dedicated B2B SEO agency.

If you want to take full advantage of SEO for lead generation, you need to educate everyone involved in your B2B lead generation efforts. For example, you may need to provide company decision-makers with additional information about SEO to earn their support when it comes to SEO.

Then, you can start the process of creating a dedicated B2B SEO strategy for connecting with potential customers. For the best results, your team can breakdown this strategy to include the different parts of the digital marketing buying funnel.

For example, you may target select keywords for reaching users in the early and late stages of the buying funnel. A dedicated SEO strategy can have a tremendous impact on your business-to-business lead generation plan.

Reynolds Building Solutions, a WebFX client, provides a perfect example of the power of SEO. With a custom SEO strategy from our team, Reynolds Building Solutions saw not only a 43 percent year-over-year increase in their organic traffic but also a 71 percent year-over-year increase in organic contact form submissions.

4. Get innovative (and creative) with content marketing

Content marketing is another area of opportunity when it comes to lead generation for B2B. In fact, 88% of industrial marketers claimed that they used content marketing to create brand awareness. With content marketing, your business focuses on developing relevant and useful content, like infographics and blog posts, for your target buyer.

Since content marketing is a popular B2B lead generation tactic, however, your company needs to get creative and innovative when it comes to this online marketing channel. You need to move ahead of your competitors, rather than follow their lead.

For example, around 80 percent of B2B companies use blogs as a part of their content strategy. In comparison, less than 50 percent use microsites, highlighting a potential opportunity for your organization’s content marketing strategy. Your company can also leverage technology to help your content marketing strategy succeed when it comes to lead generation.

ContentAnalyticsFX and PredictionGeniusFX, for example, use machine learning to assess the value of current and future content topics when it comes to your overall goals. With this kind of technology, which WebFX provides to clients for free, your company can gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

This edge is significant, as almost 50 percent of business buyers read three to five pieces of content before speaking with a sales representative. Compelling content can help your company become a critical touchpoint for those buyers.

5. Rethink the design of your website’s landing pages

Like contact forms, companies tend to overlook the role of their B2B paid advertising landing pages on website visitors. From poor design to slow speed, landing pages can impact potential leads in multiple ways. They can make or break your B2B lead gen efforts, which is why landing page design is critical. Your landing page can deliver on your lead gen campaigns when it’s:

• Fast
• Intuitive
• Relevant
• SEO-friendly
• User-friendly

If you’re ready to generate more leads from your landing page, you can approach it a few ways:

• In-house
• Freelance
• Agency

Depending on your company, you may not have a dedicated team for web design and development. While you can partner with a freelancer, it often results in your business partnering with someone with minimal industry experience, which can impact the design and performance of your landing page. That’s why a web design agency offers the most value. A web design agency connects your business with a professional group of designers and developers.

Plus, full-service agencies, like WebFX, can optimize your landing page design for users and according to SEO best practices because they offer web design and digital marketing services. With a professional landing page design, your company can improve not only your organic conversion rates but also your paid ones.

York Saw and Knife, an industrial blade manufacturer, is an example of what can happen when you redesign a landing page. A redesigned website, plus a performance-driven PPC campaign generated tremendous results for York Saw and Knife. The company’s cost-per-conversion decreased by 20 percent while its conversion rate increased by 108 percent. Its year-over-year organic session traffic also increased by 138 percent.

Put your website (and landing pages) to work by investing in the design of your landing pages.

6. Earn social proof to boost confidence

Another one of the best B2B lead generation tactics is to earn social proof. When someone’s deciding on what company to choose, they often turn to reviews to help them find the right company. You want to have social proof that indicates you do great work for your clients.

So, how do you earn social proof?

Look for third-party platforms that collect unbiased reviews and integrate them into your website. G2, for example, is a great platform for getting unbiased reviews about software companies.

In addition to third-party reviews, you can also collect reviews from your current clients to share on your website. The combination of collected reviews and third-party reviews helps build trust with your audience.

7. Create dynamic web pages to boost engagement

Another one of the top B2B lead generation strategies to use is to create dynamic web pages. Dynamic web pages are pages that personalize the browser’s experience by adding touches unique to that user.

This includes information like:

• Name
• Location
• Industry
• Company

So, for example, let’s say you work for a company called The Supplier Company. You’re looking at software for managing your orders. When you enter the software’s website, it might say something like “Making Managing Orders Easy for The Supplier Company.”

In this case, the software company is using a dynamic page to create a personalized experience for the website visitor. Instead of it saying, “Making Managing Orders Easy for You.”

Dynamic pages are a great way to create a more personalized and engaging web experience for potential clients.

8. Develop lead magnets to capture more leads

If you want to know how to generate B2B leads, try developing lead magnets to help you capture more qualified leads. Lead magnets are something valuable you offer to your audience in exchange for their contact information.

Lead magnets are a great tool to help you capture leads. You know the people taking advantage of your lead magnet have an interest because they want information related to what you offer.

So, what can you use as a lead magnet? Some great lead magnet ideas include:

• Ebooks
• White papers
• Templates
• Product samples
• Trials
• Quizzes
• Toolkits

Make sure that, when you offer lead magnet information, you get the information you need from your leads. It’s best to ask for simple information, like their name and email, and then you can follow up to get more information later.

9. Create informative videos

Another way to do B2B lead generation is to create informative videos. Videos are an engaging medium for helping you share information with your audience, as well as repurpose your content.

Videos are a great medium to share a lot of information in a short period of time. You don’t have to create elaborate, over-the-top videos to garner attention –– a simple video can boost engagement and interactions with your business.

When you create videos, you can use them in different marketing strategies to help boost engagement and capture leads. You can post videos on social media, use them in emails, and integrate them into content posts.

Videos are a great way for you to boost engagement to capture more leads for your B2B company.

10. Take advantage of the world’s biggest B2B social platform –– LinkedIn

Want to find qualified leads or connect with prospective clients? LinkedIn is the place to be. This lead generation strategy enables you to connect with prospects on this professional social media platform.

LinkedIn provides you with the opportunity to connect with professionals and make connections. You can learn more about prospective clients and the decision-makers at their company.

Additionally, LinkedIn is a great platform to advertise your business to prospective clients. You can put your ads in front of decision-makers to keep them thinking about your business.

11. Run webinars to capture new leads

Another B2B lead generation strategy you can use is webinars.  These online seminars are a great way for you to share your knowledge with your audience, while capturing valuable leads that may need your products or services.

Your webinar should focus on a topic that’s interesting to your audience, so they’ll attend. You want to be clear about what information you’ll cover and the goal of your webinar. Make sure you promote your webinar to your audience, so they can put it on their calendar.

These webinars are great for understanding your audience better. Since they offer an open dialogue where you can interact with your audience, you can learn your audiences’ pain points, what interests them, and more.

So not only do webinars help you attract qualified leads, but they also help you better understand your leads so you can deliver more relevant marketing materials to them.

12. Run A/B test to improve lead generation performance

To wrap up this list of B2B lead generation tactics, let’s look at doing A/B testing. Whether you create a landing page, a social media ad, or a form on your website, you may not put out the most effective version the first time.

With A/B testing, you can find the best version of your marketing materials to help you produce more qualified leads and better results.

When you conduct A/B testing, make sure you only test one element at a time. If you try to test too many elements at once, you won’t get clear results and know what’s positively impacting your marketing materials.

By testing your marketing materials, you’ll continually improve your promotional materials to drive better results.

4 B2B lead generation tools you can use

When you create your lead generation strategy for B2B, you don’t have to do it alone. There are numerous B2B lead gen tools that can help you manage your campaigns and simplify your to-do list.

Here’s a short-list of tools you’ll want to check out:

• MarketingCloudFX: This digital marketing tool is a great option for B2B businesses that want to manage their SEO, email marketing, and lead generation strategies. MarketingCloudFX can help you find opportunities to improve your SEO, automate emails, track phone calls, and more.
• Nutshell: If you need help managing your client data, Nutshell is the tool for you. This customer relationship management (CRM) platform helps you track crucial data about your audience and use it to personalize the marketing experience.
• LeadPages: This B2B lead generation tool helps you create custom landing pages for specific members of your audience. It makes it easy for you to deliver more tailored experiences to your audience.
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator: If you opt to connect with people on LinkedIn, the LinkedIn Sales Navigator tool will be a big help to you. This tool helps you target your ads towards specific decision-makers and companies, track engagement, and more.

Make lead generation for your B2B company a success

B2B lead generation is crucial if you want to help your business continue to grow and thrive in today’s competitive market. But if you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start with B2B lead generation, WebFX can help.

We have a team of over 500 digital marketing experts that will help you create the best B2B lead generation strategy for your business. We know what it takes to drive results –– we’ve driven over $6 billion in revenue and over 24 million leads for our clients.

Ready to start generating more qualified leads for your B2B business? Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our lead generation services!