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Generating leads is crucial for B2B companies, but many struggle to produce high-quality leads. According to one report, only 18% of marketers felt outbound lead generation provided valuable leads. 

There are a lot of reasons for this, including:

1. Competition: With the increase of B2B businesses, the competition for leads is high and getting attention from your target audience is becoming more challenging.
2. Evolving buyer behavior: B2B buyers are more informed and are constantly evolving, which means marketers need to adapt their lead generation strategies accordingly.
3. Increased expectations: B2B buyers expect a personalized and seamless experience, which can be difficult for marketers to achieve in a scalable way.
4. Data privacy: With data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, it is becoming more difficult for marketers to access and use data to generate leads.
5. Limited resources: B2B marketers often have limited resources, including time, budget, and manpower, which can make it challenging to execute effective lead generation campaigns.
6. Complex buying process: B2B purchases often involve multiple stakeholders and a longer buying cycle, making it difficult for marketers to reach the right decision-makers and keep them engaged.

These are just a few of the challenges that B2B marketers face when it comes to lead generation. However, with the right strategies and tactics, these challenges can be overcome, and lead generation can become a more manageable and successful aspect of B2B marketing.

In this guide, we’ll dive into how B2B marketers can overcome these challenges with 6 winning lead generation strategies that can help you build marketing campaigns that capture leads and fuel your sales pipeline. 

But first, let’s take a look at how we define lead generation and it’s benefits.

The Benefits of Effective B2B Lead Generation

B2B lead generation, also known as lead gen, refers to the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business-to-business company.

It involves the use of various marketing strategies to attract potential leads, such as email campaigns, search engine optimization (SEO), and more.

The goal of any good marketer for their company is to generate a steady stream of qualified leads, also known as marketing qualified leads or MQLs, that can be converted into paying customers.

When done right, implementing lead generation tactics in your business can present several notable benefits, such as:

Improved selectiveness and control

Old marketing strategies are known to be quite passive. Salespeople or sales reps weren’t necessarily knowledgeable about their product’s ideal customer persona or buyer personas, which made it difficult to target their pain points.

Thanks to technology, such as marketing automation and digital marketing–think online ad campaigns–the B2B sales process has become much smoother, more active, and certainly more selective.

Lead generation processes of today can give B2B businesses the ability to control who to target in their marketing efforts. This improves their conversion rate while keeping costs low.

Better business relationships

B2B businesses need other businesses in order to thrive.

Just like how B2C companies nurture relationships with potential customers, B2B businesses, whether they be startups or enterprise, should also think about how their marketing teams can improve their relationships with other businesses before sending their sales teams to close the deal.

This is why effective B2B lead generation includes lead nurturing, the process of establishing relationships with potential customers and partners, creating trust and loyalty, as well as building a strong rapport between the two of you.

Increased sales and revenue

Focusing on the wrong market can waste precious dollars.

An effective lead generation campaign allows businesses to target prospects more accurately, identify the most interested ones, and create tailored marketing campaigns that encourage conversions, subscribers, or buyers.

By identifying and retargeting qualifying companies, brands have a higher probability of increasing their B2B sales.

6 Effective B2B Lead Generation Strategies

Now that we’ve touched on the benefits of effective lead generation, and now it’s time to dig into how to actually implement the right lead generation channels and marketing strategies for your business. Here’s 6 we love and use daily.

Content marketing

In the digital information age, content is king. Almost everything has something written on it on the internet, and you can use this fact to search for new leads for your business.

Content marketing is the strategy of creating and distributing engaging, relevant, and consistent content to attract a clearly defined audience.

This can include:

• Blog posts/Articles
• Infographics
• Videos
• White papers
• Webinars
• eBooks
• Case studies

Many of these, such as free downloadable eBooks and case studies, can also be used as lead magnets to gain more subscribers and inbound traffic.

Not only does content marketing increase brand awareness, but it can also increase your website visitors, which can lead to more conversions, higher search engine rankings, and a greater return on investment.

If you want to maximize your content marketing, you can use templates and formats to create a consistent style for your brand, as well as cut down on the time needed to create content. You can also customize them to fit the needs of specific audiences, goals, or even web pages, making it easier to target certain demographics.

Learn more about how to implement a content marketing program here.

Social Media Marketing

The opportunities are endless with social media, which can serve as a free tool for marketers. Whether you use it for personal or professional reasons, there’s no denying its power and reach, especially in particular niches.

Because of this, B2B marketers should learn how to utilize powerful features of social media to generate leads. Data from the IDC concluded that 75% of surveyed B2B businesses were influenced by social media in making their purchase decisions.

B2B businesses can use social media to create and share valuable content, such as text posts, reels, and short videos, with the overall goal of attracting potential customers to their company website. 

It also allows them to interact with their audience, answer questions, and improve their relationship with existing partners.

Here are some of the most popular social media platforms today.

• LinkedIn
• Facebook 
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Quora

Email Marketing

Email marketing gives B2B businesses a price-efficient and highly effective way of seeking, nurturing, and making follow-ups on high-value business relationships.

Since most, if not all, email subscriptions are opt-in, its major benefit remains its ability to deliver hyper-personalized content to people who are already open to receiving email offers from your company.

Once an email list has been established, B2B businesses can send regular emails with information about new products, services, or promotions.

Email marketing also allows brands to cultivate leads by sending relevant content to people at different stages of the sales funnel. For example, you can send educational content to first-time audiences, discounts and bundle deals to repeat customers, and more.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, known simply as SEO, is the process of making your online content visible to search engines and improving its ranking on their results pages. 

80% of B2B marketers use SEO to generate new leads.

This includes optimizing the content for specific keywords, building outbound links, and ensuring that the website is properly indexed by search engines. SEO also involves creating content that is relevant, valuable, and useful to your target audience. SEO can drive traffic to a website by leveraging social media platforms. 

The goal of search engine optimization is to build brand credibility and encourage audiences to become paying customers.

Networking and Referrals

Networking is an age-old tradition, one of the few to survive to this day. Despite taking on a more modern appearance and methodology, the basic principle of networking and building referrals is the same: building relationships with high-value connections through interactions.

Here are some ways that you can network in today’s modern world:

• Networking events. In-person networking events such as conferences and gatherings provide an opportunity to outreach, build relationships, and share information about your products or services.
• Online networking groups. Online message boards, websites, and forums are typically formed around a specific industry or topic, and they provide an exchange of contact information and ask questions.
• Social media interactions. By connecting with other businesses, industry experts, and potential customers on the social network, you can build relationships and share information about your products or services.
• Implementing referral systems. Referrals are one of the best ways that you can market your business, so make sure to encourage it by offering incentives for customers who refer new business to you.

Although it has changed significantly, the power of human connection is still a valuable tool for businesses to generate new leads and grow their business.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click advertising, or PPC, is a form of digital marketing that lets businesses advertise their offerings on search engines and websites. Advertisers pay each time a user clicks on their ad.

PPC campaigns increase website traffic and conversions by targeting users who have shown interest in the advertiser’s product or service. Your business can use PPC to further connect with customers at any part of the customer funnel.

Since you only pay if someone clicks on your ad, PPC is cost-efficient even for small businesses.

For best results, you can display pop-up ads or image ads that capture the audience’s attention, and then direct them to a landing page on your website so that they can see your offer.

How Interrupt Media Can Help With B2B Lead Generation

Knowing the right lead-generation strategies for your businesses is critical if you want to grow your customer base and stay ahead of the competition. 

Beyond that, understanding which strategies you can mix, match, and modify is essential in your planning and execution journey. The reality is, you may not have the bandwidth or resources to execute these programs.

If that’s the case, we can help!

Our nimble lead generation performance marketing services encourage CEOs, VPs, and Directors of Marketing to act more nimbly and stand toe-to-toe against their competition. We customize our approach for each client based on their goals and systems.

We can help strategize, plan, and execute the right mix of lead generation strategies for your target audience. If you’re ready, let’s chat more about how we can work together.