B2B Lead Generation – How To Get Started [GUIDE]

How To Get Started With B2B Lead Generation

When talking to software companies, CPA firms, or conventional service and manufacturing companies, the shared frustration is often “How to get started”.

Whether you are approached by B2B marketing agencies, or reaching out themselves, you quickly get overwhelmed with “strategies” and “approaches”, and the inevitable feeling that there is more they need to know in order to get a simple and clear view of “How To Get Started” in order to learn and avoid paralysis.

Step #1 – Know Your Ideal Client Profile

Looking at your current base of customers, which ONE type of customer is it that you would select to focus on, if you could?

• What industry they are in?
• What is their revenue level, amount of employees?
• How many of your services do they buy from you?
• What is their lifetime-value to your business (order size, purchase frequency, length of relationship)?
• What is your cost of servicing them?

Step #2 – Understand their 5 biggest struggles

Understand their biggest struggles, and what makes them look for a solution that can help reduce or eliminate their struggles. Sales will know all or part of the answer that are crucial to understanding what answers they are searching so you can create the content.

Are your audience engaging on this topic in online fora like LinkedIn groups or Facebook groups?

You have to have an intimate understanding of your ideal customer profile, and once you have you will realize how much easier it is to create content, lead magnets and campaigns that “teach to solve” their struggles and build their trust in your ability to help them.

Setp #3 – Create Content That “Teach to Solve”

Now that you know who your ideal customer is, and their 4-5 biggest struggles, you can start to create content (blog posts / landing pages) that

(1) describes the struggles the client experience and the consequence,

(2) offers alternative ways to solve the problem(s), and

(3) perhaps a downloadable “guide” or “description”, which they can use for reference and sharing.

Step #4 – Create a lead magnet and email follow up flow

You want the visitors to download the valuable, well-designed, glossy lead magnet you have designed to help them solve their struggle, but you want a name and email address in exchange so you can identify, track and keep your prospects engaged.

The purpose of the lead magnet and email follow-up flow is not to sell your service, but to keep adding value and “educate” the visitor on how to solve their struggle.

NB: Remember to include links, contact details, and tracking in downloadable content so the prospect can find their way back, engage and click on additional info, and you can track the effect of lead magnets.

TOOLS:

To capture name and email address, is a basic Form-7 on a WordPress site or maybe you use a free Hubspot CRM tool connected with a MailChimp account that can help you send follow up emails and track if the prospect is engaged.

Step #5 – Increase website traffic with paid ads

Based on your ideal client profile you will have a good understanding of where they consume content on professional topics and where they engage and network online. This will help you understand where to engage with your paid ads campaigns to test the campaigns ability to generate leads.

Once you know which ads are working and generate leads, you can build search engine optimized content a scale up your inbound marketing efforts. For now you just want to test what works and what doesn’t

Always set up re-marketing Ads to re-engage visitors

A visitor will most likely not convert on their first visit. The prospect’s buying cycle usually starts with building an understanding of what to search for, awareness of the problem and alternative solutions, level of investment etc. This means research and visiting different alternatives. Make sure you have remarketing pizels from the marketing channels required to reach your audience, installed on your website.

Step #6 – Tracking & Reporting

“If you are not measuring and keeping track, you are only practicing” – Peter Drucker.

To get started with B2B lead generation, let’s keep the tool selection simple and low cost. The tools that you will need to support your lead generation process in the beginning are simple but key to knowing whether your are generating traffic and what content successfully converts anonymous visitors to identified leads.

1. Marketing Automation

We are big fans of Hubspot and the free version of Hubspot CRM is good enough to get you started. The tool provides the forms, and basic automation you need to send a visitor a confirmation email after a download. If you add the Hubspot “Starter Growth Suite” you will be able to send 3 automated emails in sequence to a lead, after filling out a form. This covers the basic need for nurturing leads who have engaged with you online.

2. CRM

In B2B lead generation a CRM is critical, and Hubspot’s Free CRM provides a single view of each lead which shows the engagement on your website, the ability to make custom lists of leads that have completed specific actions and qualifies as e.g. “validated leads” (MQL Marketing Qualified Lead).

Now It’s Your Turn

Commit to getting started with your B2B lead generation, find out which type of customers you want more of (Ideal Customer Profile), understand their 5 biggest struggles, and create your first valuable piece of content that “Teach-To-Solve” their first struggle.

Got a question or need som basic guidance? Send us a message or schedule a call, we would be happy to help you out.