By Doug Brown 
A lead is not a random potential client. It is a potential lead that is only a step away from purchasing your products or services. All you need is to grab their attention, provide value and prove that your products or services will solve their problem.
Generating quality leads is the backbone of an excellent B2B marketing strategy. Establishing a strong pipeline will help ensure that you maintain a steady growth rate.
There is a large difference between lead generation and demand generation. Experts say that using a combination of demand and lead generation is generally the best way for developing a marketing strategy.
Lead generation is a more immediate way of connecting with leads. Also, you can use demand generation to establish your credibility, resulting in more qualified leads coming to you.
Here are tips for more effective demand generation and lead generation in B2B marketing.
1. Content Marketing
This is a fantastic option for companies with exciting content to share: articles, videos, etc. To make it work, you should do profound research to know what kind of language you should use. Also, study what content your clients would enjoy, whom they listen to, etc.
Learn more about your target audience and provide them with high-quality content. Content marketing is about using online materials to let potential leads know about your business and the services you offer. These materials include blogs, videos, and social media posts.
Content marketing is one of the best tools for marketing any business. If you succeed with it, you will gain new customers faster.
The goal is to run an effective demand generation and lead generation campaign. To do so, you should have a strong content marketing strategy that provides information your target audience will find valuable.
Make sure to have a strategy that is best for your customers and something your team can keep up with consistently.
2. Social Media Marketing
Social media lets you refine your demand and lead generation process as it allows for a more targeted approach. 62% of marketers believe that social networks such as LinkedIn are proven to be effective in generating leads.
It gives brands and businesses a platform where they can engage with potential customers. Also, social media advertising is very effective, especially nowadays. It is very rare to meet someone who does not have a Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram account.
Ads placed on these social media platforms are highly targeted. You can set up the location, gender, age, and interests, among many others.
You can generate a huge amount of leads through social media, but it is not that easy and takes a well-thought-out strategy.
3. PPC – Pay-Per-Click
SEO and content marketing takes time. PPC is the easiest and fastest way to get results. It can be very effective if you know who your target audience is. However, it can also be costly, depending on your industry.
Also, it is important to remember that many people are using Adblock (or other programs) nowadays. So there is a possibility that they will not even see your ad banners or other clickable ads. Or, because of the GDPR laws, they might opt out of your advertising altogether.
You can post adverts in various ways online. The most used is Google Adwords – this platform allows you to post ads across the Google Network.
4. Use the Godfather Strategy to Build Your Email List
Which sounds more appealing to you: “Sign up for the newsletter” or “Join our tribe of 3500+ world-class marketers and salespeople.”
Most viewers will agree that the second sentence sounds way more appealing. It is the same offer, but with some added social proof.
Old pitches like “Sign up for our newsletter” do not work anymore because nobody reads newsletters anymore. They want content personalized to them. Laser-focused, specific, problem-solving content that meets their interests and needs.
And that certainly proves true even today with social media ads, content marketing, and conversion-based copy.
5. Using FOMO to Increase Your Conversion Rate
Applying scarcity, or Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), is one of the few tactics that can instantly increase your conversion rate. Here’s a real-life example:
In a study conducted by social psychologists Jessica Parker and Melissa Burkley, they showed women a photograph of their potential dream man. Half of the women were told the guy was single, and the other half were told he was already in a relationship.
The results might surprise you. 59% said they would be interested in pursuing a single guy when they thought he was single. But that number jumped to 90% when they thought the guy was taken!
We want what we cannot have; it is just how we are wired. But you should not just throw a countdown on all your pages.
Your visitors are not stupid. They will spot fraudulent offers quickly, and those who do not will feel deceived if they find out your offer continues to run after they have purchased.
So, make sure you use it sparingly. Here are some of the situations where you can use it:
- When you have a limited offer
- When there are few seats left for your webinar
- When a product is running out of stock
6. Use Intent Popups or Slide-in Opt-ins on Key Pages
People either love them or hate them. But whether you like it or not, popups work, especially personalized intent popups.
First, words of caution: your customers like to be shown where to go, not blocked from reading your content.
Many websites out there will block their customers from seeing their content to gain an opt-in. Many websites out there have more than one popup on their site; whether that is on purpose or accidental, that is not how you gain loyal customers.
When a business builds a relationship with its customers, it will see an increase in sign-ups. More importantly, this will also lead to more conversions and sales of their product.
Also, you can try using exit-intent popups on your website; just remember exit popups are your BACKUP to your web pages.
Finally, you could take a more middle ground and go with a slide-in opt-in. This usually will not be as effective as a popup, but it works well and is easy to configure so that it does not annoy your readers.
7. Asking Questions to Get a 50% Conversion Rate
Besides Facebook Messenger, quizzes are the latest fad in lead generation strategies. And the best part is that it is not yet a mainstream strategy.
Surveys are inexpensive to run and are very flexible when it comes to the types of questions you ask. Also, surveys are more dependable thanks to anonymity!
You can create survey forms using Google Forms. You can easily embed Google forms into your WordPress site, contact form plugin, or send them via email.
Remember to make the quiz engaging, fun, and, most importantly, easy to use.
We recommend that you set up easy-to-use multiple choice-based questions. This will not only make it easy for your customer to fill out but will also take the guesswork out of the equation.
8. Gain Trusted Backlinks
We all know word of mouth referrals are the best customer! When you have someone raving about your business, you will gain immediate trust and confidence in your product.
The second-best referral is when a trusted website sends its clients your way. This is called a backlink – when a trusted website refers customers to your website.
There are lots of different ways to build backlinks and gain trust from other websites. You can:
- Write blogs for other companies.
- Have other websites share your content.
- Get on a website’s resource page.
- Provide infographics other businesses will share.
- Get free backlinks if people copy or share your images.
- Write exceptional content that people want to link to (This is the one you should focus on. Backlinks will start to come naturally with the more high-quality content you have).
There are many ways to generate backlinks; we recommend never purchasing them and always doing your research before sharing on another site. Your website could be negatively impacted if you receive do-follow backlinks from untrusted sources.
9. Get Creative with Cold Emails
Cold emailing is hard because you have no prior relationship with the company or person you are sending it to. So, you must make an excellent first impression to get results. Here are a few things you need to do to get more leads from cold emails:
- Be creative to stand out from the crowd. Include things like animated GIFs or memes to catch people’s attention.
- Be funny! Life is boring enough as it is. Sometimes humor can go a long way.
- Get straight to the point, and do not spam people with marketing jargon. Many simply ignore this.
- Send at least two follow-up emails. Like social media, things get lost in people’s inboxes. Sending at least two emails gives you a better chance of getting seen.
Conclusion
B2B demand generation and lead generation are complex because you cannot just copy and paste a strategy that works for someone else. Stuff that works like crazy for one business might fall entirely on its face in another business.
The key is finding a strategy that works for your business, and in most cases, the foundation of effective demand and lead generation is some form of content. It all comes down to knowing your audience and how they interact with your business.
SME Paid Under
Sitetrail Research Team