The Best Lead Generation Strategies for B2B Companies

I’m sure that you know how important lead generation is for B2B companies. But, you also know how difficult it is to constantly be thinking about new lead generation strategies and tactics to drive more revenue. What makes it even worse is trying out a new tactic, and not seeing the results that you expected. Luckily, we have created this list of the best lead generation strategies for B2B companies. We’ve tested dozens of lead generation strategies, and these are the 11 best strategies that we have found to generate high quality leads. Keep reading for the best lead generation strategies for B2B companies.

Trade Shows

Trade shows are one of the best ways to generate high-quality B2B leads. You can get your company in front of thousands of potential leads who would otherwise not hear about your company. In addition, you can make a lasting impression on these leads with your booth design, trade show games, and giveaways. There are so many different ways that a trade show can help you generate leads. But, you have to keep your expenses in mind. The average cost per lead for trade shows is $811. So, you have to ensure that your return on investment will make the trade show worth the initial investment. For a complete trade show marketing guide, take a look at this article.

Gated Content

Gated content can be pretty diverse in terms of the different types of content that you can use, but the idea is generally the same. It can come in the form of an eBook, guides, videos, and other resources that the user can only access if they provide their contact information. The user is essentially exchanging their contact information for the valuable content and information that you have created. Then, you can use their information to reach out and try to sell them on a product. Or, even connect with them on LinkedIn and start social selling.

Since you are using your gated content as a form of lead generation, you want the content to be highly relevant to both your company and what your target audience wants to see. Otherwise, you may get a lot of leads, but they will not be interested in what your company has to offer. In your gated content, you should include a discount code or another type of promotion to try and drive sign ups, without being too direct with your promotions. 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great tool that B2B companies can use to generate leads, whether you plan to generate leads through paid advertising, social selling, reaching out to prospects, research, or one of the other ways that you can use LinkedIn for lead generation. If you’re planning to use LinkedIn paid ads, you have the ability to target very specific demographics. Because of this degree of specificity, the ads are often much more expensive than other social media platforms. But, it can be well worth the investment and if done right you can easily drive a positive ROI. LinkedIn is also one of the best platforms to gain company awareness. Facebook and other social media sites are continuously decreasing how visible company content is on the user’s newsfeed. Because of this, LinkedIn stands out from other channels and can ultimately drive more awareness.

Social Selling

I’ve mentioned social selling a few times already in this article. That’s because it’s quickly becoming an essential part of lead generation for B2B companies. If you’re not familiar with social selling, it’s the process of using social media to connect, engage, and eventually try to convert leads into paying customers. Social selling is most common on LinkedIn. This is because your company and salespeople can engage with prospects on a more personal level. But, you can use social selling on any platform. Your salespeople will need to change their tactics for each channel.

As an example, connecting with prospects on LinkedIn is very different from adding prospects as a friend on Facebook. Instead, you could try to create a user group on Facebook that is moderated by your sales or marketing team. Here, users and prospects can share tips and tricks, advice, and other information that can entice prospects or even old users who are no longer customers.

Quora

I often see that Quora is overlooked by marketing professionals. But, we have seen a lot of website traffic and in turn conversions from Quora marketing. There are a few different ways that you can take advantage of Quora marketing. The first and most obvious is with paid Quora ads. You can create traditional image ads, or what I like to do is create sponsored answers to relevant questions. This way, your ads seem organic to readers. On the other hand, you can answer organic questions and subtly plug your company or relevant blog articles that you have written that provide supporting information to the topic you’re discussing. It only takes a few minutes to answer these questions, and can drive a ton of traffic to your supporting articles and website.

Write a Blog

I will always advocate writing a blog to generate B2B leads. We have seen a lot of success throughout the years from our blog. Best of all, it’s free to maintain. When you write about topics that your target audience would be interested in, you’re able to get your company in front of a very wide audience. You’re also able to share your blog articles on social media, have others share your articles to gain even more awareness, link exchange to benefit your SEO, and so much more. Every company can benefit from well-written and articulate blog posts. When writing your blog articles, ensure they are written with SEO in mind. This means that you’re researching the right keywords to use, the article is a good length, optimized images, and other SEO requirements that will make your article more discoverable on search engines.

Website Visitor Identification

With so many lead generation strategies for B2B companies including writing blog articles, Quora marketing, gated content, and even trade shows, you can expect an increase in your website’s traffic. But, Google Analytics will only tell you so much about your website visitors. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could see the companies that visit your website? Well, with Visitor Queue you can!

Visitor Queue is a B2B lead generation software that can identify the companies that visit your website. Along with their visit information like pages viewed, how they were acquired, and time spent on each page, we provide company history, GIC and NAICS industry information, and more to help you qualify them as a lead. In addition, we can provide you with their employee contact information like email addresses, phone numbers, and LinkedIn channels to help you reach out. With the company’s visit information, industry information, and employee contact information, you’re able to generate leads, qualify them, and reach out to close the deal. 98% of your website visitors leave your site without a trace, it’s time to change this. Start your 14-day free trial and stop losing qualified leads.

Host a Webinar

Usually a webinar is not the first marketing tactic that comes to mind when you think about B2B lead generation. But, it’s a great option for companies that have a limited budget, as they are very cheap to host. Similar to writing a blog article, you’ll want to think of a topic that is relevant to your target audience, but not solely focused on your company. You can of course plug your brand, but unless you’re hosting a company-focused Q&A or help tutorial, it’s best to not put all of the focus on your brand. To gain awareness and signups for your webinar, create some buzz beforehand by sharing it to your personal and company social media channels, create a website pop up, and send out an email newsletter focused on what the attendees can expect. If you record the webinar, you can use clips of it in future marketing initiatives and create even more great content.

After your webinar is complete, follow up with the attendees. You should thank them for attending, provide key points you discussed, any supporting content, and you can also include an exclusive discount code for first time clients. This will entice them to sign up for your product without being too promotional. 

Google Ads

Google Ads are a tried and true marketing technique for all industries. While bidding on relevant keywords and your own company name can be useful, bidding on your competitor’s brand name is one of the best ways to drive extremely relevant leads to your website. Don’t pretend to be that company, but use your Google Ad to explain how your company is better than theirs. Include headlines that talk about how your company differentiates from theirs. Pricing, exclusive features, and customer service are all great starting points. If you’re not sure what to include, check out your competitor’s bad reviews on G2. Take that information and incorporate it into your ads. 

Create an Affiliate Program

Offering your current clients the ability to invite others and receive a commission is a win-win tactic. You can generate clients that you know are qualified, and your loyal clients are rewarded for the referral. At Visitor Queue, we offer our affiliates a 25% recurring commission for referrals. We have found this is the best percentage to entice our clients to continuously refer others and stay happy. Creating an affiliate program may sound like a difficult process, but once you get started it’s very easy to maintain.

There are a ton of affiliate software tools out there that can help you manage affiliates. Before you start your affiliate program, I recommend checking if any of your competitors have an affiliate program. If they do, take the benefits one step further. As an example, if their commission is 20%, make yours 25%. This could be the deciding factor for prospects choosing your company over your competitor. If you’re interested in affiliate marketing but you’re not sure where to start, take a look at this guide.

Offer a Free Trial or Exclusive Promotion

The B2B industry is often very competitive. So, whether you want to convert competitor’s clients, target small businesses, or entice enterprise-sized companies, offering a free trial, discount code, or another exclusive promotion can help you greatly increase conversions.

Offering a free trial is a great way to help reduce your churn rate, as your clients can get a feel for the product before they commit to a paid plan. You can include your promotion in your Google Ads, social media ads, website copy, pop ups, and more. Offering a promotion will greatly increase your chance at converting your website visitors into paying customers.

Final Words

Lead generation strategies for B2B companies are very diverse. Because of this, it’s pretty easy to choose a technique that won’t drive the results that you’re looking for. However, we have personally seen results from all of the tactics listed in this article. If you’re not sure which lead generation strategy to try out for your own company, I would recommend starting small. Social selling, Quora marketing, and lead generation software are the easiest lead generation strategies for B2B companies mentioned on this list. These tactics require little marketing or sales experience to implement, and can drive a lot of highly qualified leads. If you have any questions about how Visitor Queue can help you identify your website visitors and generate leads, don’t hesitate to reach out.