4. Generating leads with PPC
The channels we’ve covered so far don’t require you to pay for ad space on third-party platforms. You own your site and all of the content on it, so the work you do on it is a long-term investment like improving a house.
B2B PPC advertising, on the other hand, does involve paying to advertise on other platforms – the most popular being Google AdWords.
But unlike most forms of paid advertising, Google Ads (and other search engine PPC platforms) let you reach your audience as they’re actively searching for information. You target users based on the specific keywords and phrases they search, so you can focus your budget on qualified leads by selecting keywords with clear purchasing intent.
Here’s what you’ll need to do to create lead-generating PPC campaigns for your business:
Target keywords with clear intent
In SEO, almost any keyword related to your products and services is a possibility for your site. You optimize your pages for the keywords your target audience is searching, even if they’re clearly informational searches, because it’s beneficial to rank well organically for as many searches as possible.
With PPC, this isn’t the case.
When you pay for each visitor to your site, you need to make sure that all of those visitors are interested in becoming leads. You can do this by selecting keywords with clear purchase intent, like “buy [your product]” or “[your service] free quote.” You can also add words like “cheap” or “worst” to your list of negative keywords so your ads don’t show up for searches that would reflect badly on your reputation.
You’ll need to conduct keyword research just like you do for your SEO strategy to select the best possible keywords for your campaign. But this time, keep the focus on users who have a clear intent to convert and buy.
Create specific landing pages
As we mentioned earlier, your PPC campaigns are only as effective as the landing pages you use. Each of your ads should send users to a landing page that provides exactly what the ad promises.
If you run an ad with the CTA, “Get a free quote,” for example, it should take users to a landing page with a quote request form. They should be able to get their free quote without clicking to another page.
Unfortunately, many businesses make the mistake of sending all of their PPC campaigns to the same generic landing page. But if the content on that page isn’t directly relevant to what your users searched, they’ll be unlikely to convert.
On top of that, Google (and other platforms) punish advertisers who show a different landing page from their ad since the practice seems deceptive. Google lowers an advertiser’s Quality Score, which makes you pay more for each ad. Other platforms could just ban your account.
Monitor your campaigns
Once you have a campaign up and running, it’s important to remember that PPC is not a “set-it-and-forget-it” channel. You’re constantly spending money on the platform, and you need to monitor your ads to make sure you’re making the most of your budget.
There are many things to watch, but you should primarily aim to:
- Improve your click-through rate (CTR)
- Improve your quality score (QS)
- Lower your cost per click (CPC)
The better you get at providing searchers with the information they want, the easier it will be to use PPC to generate leads for your business.
5. Generating leads with social media
Not long ago, many B2B marketers viewed social media as useless for their companies. It was seen as a platform that only truly helped B2C businesses.
Today, that’s no longer the case. Most B2B marketers use social media as part of their strategies and know that it’s a useful tool for driving qualified traffic to their sites.
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are three of the most effective social media networks to do that.
Facebook
Facebook has the largest active user base of any social media platform, so you’re almost guaranteed to have an audience there.
Plus, 43% of B2B marketers have acquired customers through Facebook – so there are plenty of people to vouch for its effectiveness as a lead generation tool.
You should primarily use the platform to share informative content, post company updates, and engage your audience. After all, social media is supposed to be less formal than other marketing channels, which makes it great for building relationships with your current and potential customers.
But when it comes to lead generation, Facebook’s main benefit is its advanced ad targeting options. Facebook has a PPC option, just like Google. You can run ads on it to earn likes on your page or posts, but you can also drive traffic to your site to get conversions.
These ads operate on a PPC model, but unlike search engine PPC platforms, you select your audience based on individual characteristics. These characteristics range from basic demographic information like age, gender, and location, to highly targeted details like:
- Interests
- Career
- Pages they’ve liked
You can also create “custom audiences” by uploading your email lists to Facebook and allowing it to match those email addresses with users’ accounts. Then, you can run ads to reach the leads who’ve already signed up for your email newsletter or provided their email address as part of another conversion.
All of these targeting options make it possible to focus your advertising budget on exactly who you want to reach. So even though they aren’t actively searching for information like search engine users, you can show your ads to the people who are interested.
LinkedIn
Considering that LinkedIn is the only social media platform designed specifically for professionals, it should come as no surprise that 62% of B2B marketers say it’s the most effective social media platform for their business.
You can use it to share company news and write blog posts that position you as a thought leader in your industry – but for our purposes, we’ll focus on their advertising options.
The most popular types of ads are “Sponsored Updates,” which allow you to reach users based on career-specific information like:
- Industry
- Company name
- Job title
- Skills
This is extremely valuable if want to target key decision-makers at specific companies. Instead of spending your advertising budget on lower-level employees who are unlikely to have a say in whether they work with you, you focus on reaching the people who can take action after seeing your ad.
Twitter
Twitter is a useful platform for sharing information from both your own site and other industry blogs.
You can use it to share all of the new content you publish, and in some cases, this is enough to send visitors to your site for the first time and get them interested in your products.
But much like Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter is most effective for lead generation when used to run paid advertisements. These advertisements appear as promoted tweets in users’ timelines, just like regular tweets.
The unique advantage of Twitter is that you can target users based on their own previous tweets. So if you offer accounting software, for example, you could target your ads specifically to users who have tweeted about “accounting” or have “accountant” in their bio.
Plus, you can search for words and phrases you’re considering and see all of the previous tweets that include them to get a sense of how they’re being discussed. When you write your ads in a similar style and tone to how your target audience discusses a topic, you increase the chances that they’ll be interested enough to click on your ad.
6. Nurturing leads with email
Email is the best way to stay in contact with your leads and move them through your sales funnel.
When your company appears in a lead’s inbox on a regular basis, you can be sure that they won’t forget about you or the services you offer. But your emails need to be just as helpful as the rest of your content –it only takes one bad email for a user to unsubscribe and leave your list permanently.
Here’s how to use email to communicate with your leads and to convert them.
Write useful newsletters
The most basic form of email marketing is a weekly or monthly newsletter. These newsletters generally go to all of the subscribers on your list and contain both company news and tips related to your industry.
At the very least, sending a newsletter keeps ensures that your target audience hears from your company on a regular basis. And beyond that, it positions your brand as a helpful resource.
Send personalized emails
One of the most effective ways to keep your leads engaged is through lead nurture email campaigns. These campaigns automatically send your leads relevant emails based on the actions they take on your site or in response to your other marketing campaigns.
For example, if a visitor signs up for an email newsletter on their first visit, they become a lead. If they later return to your site and visit a pricing page for a specific service, you can automatically send them an email with more information related to that service.
Unlike your main newsletters, which need to cater to all of your potential clients, the emails in your lead nurture campaigns are highly specific to different segments of your target audience. This makes your emails more relevant and effective at providing the information your leads want.
Create drip campaigns
Drip email campaigns are another effective way to reach your leads with relevant information. You can add your leads to one of these campaigns like any other campaign and send them pre-written follow-up emails at regular intervals.
For example, if a lead downloads a guide on your site, you can follow up the same day asking if they have any questions. Then, you can email them again one week later with additional resources they might find useful, and two weeks later asking if they’d like to speak to a member of your sales team.
Though not as personalized as lead nurture campaigns, drip email campaigns still provide your leads with relevant information. And if you create them based on your typical sales cycle, you can time each email based on where your leads are likely to be in the buying process.
Write strong calls to action
All of your emails should include clear calls to action that tell your subscribers what they should do after reading. These calls to action should directly relate to each email’s content.
In your general newsletter, for example, you can encourage subscribers to visit your site and read your latest blog post or another resource.
In your personalized emails and drip campaigns, on the other hand, you can direct your leads to specific pages on your site that will help them learn more about the services they want.
Regardless of the email, your goal should be to drive readers back to your site, where they can further interact with your company.
For more information, check out our Beginner’s Guide to Effective Email Marketing.
7. Managing your leads
As you generate leads for your company, you need a strategy to manage and move them through your sales funnel.
A staggering 79% of marketing leads don’t convert into sales because of a lack of lead management. So if your company doesn’t currently have a lead management strategy, creating one could potentially increase your sales by 80%.
A lead management strategy helps you accomplish a few key goals.
Monitor and track your leads
Most businesses use marketing automation software to manage their leads. At WebFX, we use MarketingCloudFX on all of our clients’ sites.
Our lead management tool collects basic information like names and email address via contact forms, then tracks each lead’s actions on a site, from the pages they visit to the conversions they make. Unlike standard analytics tools, which group all of your visitors into broad groups, MarketingCloudFX helps you understand the individual needs of each of your leads.
Identify your best sources of qualified leads
MarketingCloudFX also tracks the source of each lead and whether they arrived on your site from organic search, social media, a paid ad campaign, or a referral. This lets you pinpoint the best channels for generating qualified leads and focus your marketing efforts on those channels moving forward.