While planning various marketing campaigns, enterprises target both existing and new customers. However, businesses focus on promoting their products or services to new consumers while planning acquisition marketing campaigns. They promote a product or service to a new customer base through multiple customer acquisition channels.
However, they always target new customers who are either in the consideration or the decision stage in the buyer’s journey. While planning acquisition marketing strategies, decision-makers do not focus on making new customers aware of the brand, product, or service. Instead, they target customers who are considering the product/service or showing interest in the product/service.
The emphasis on a new customer base makes the acquisition marketing strategy different from other inbound and outbound marketing approaches. Also, businesses have to make the marketing team and customer support team work together to make the acquisition marketing campaigns successful.
Acquisition Marketing Channels
Like inbound marketing strategies, acquisition marketing strategies attract, engage, and convert new consumers through multiple marketing channels and platforms. However, marketers often select acquisition marketing channels according to the business type and target audience. Also, they boost the performance of acquisition marketing campaigns by combining multiple channels and platforms.
Blogs
While conducting pre-purchase research, consumers these days gather up-to-date information from various online sources. Many marketers provide relevant content to new consumers by publishing blogs regularly. In addition to educating and engaging consumers, blogs help brands showcase their knowledge, experience, and expertise. Also, businesses can use blogs as a tool to establish authority.
Visual Media
While planning acquisition marketing campaigns, many marketers these days prefer video blogs or vlogs to blogs. They showcase and promote products/services to new consumers by publishing a variety of visual content – images, infographics, and videos. The visual content conveys the desired message to the target audience in an interesting and engaging way. Also, the target audience can gather relevant information in seconds.
Search Engine
Both B2B and B2C consumers these days rely on search engines to gather relevant information about a product or service. Hence, enterprises attract and engage new consumers by running both search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search marketing campaigns.
SEO campaigns help businesses attract and influence customers organically by targeting different types of search queries. On the other hand, businesses have to incur additional expenses to influence new customers by running pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
Social Media
Many consumers these days prefer social networking platforms to search engines while selecting and comparing products/services. The massive popularity of social media creates both free and paid opportunities for businesses to attract and engage new customers.
Social media creates opportunities for businesses to showcase a product or service organically by sharing updated information, answering questions, organizing polls, and showcasing testimonials and reviews. At the same time, businesses can run acquisition marketing campaigns using paid social media advertising options.
Emails
Email remains one of the popular acquisition marketing channels despite the massive popularity of search engines and social networks. Many businesses still convey important information about a product/service to new consumers by sending emails.
In addition to sharing quality content and up-to-date information, emails seduce new customers through discounts and promotional offers. However, enterprises must adopt a slew of email marketing best practices to leverage this customer acquisition channel fully.
Premium Content
Many businesses these days boost acquisition marketing campaigns by complementing blogs and visual content with premium content. They deliver higher value to new consumers by allowing them to download a variety of premium or gated content – ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, and training resources. In addition to establishing authority and expertise, the premium content helps marketers draw new consumers into the sales funnel.
Acquisition Marketing Tactics and Best Practices
No business can make acquisition marketing strategies drive revenue growth only by defining the target audience and combining multiple channels. The decision-makers must keep the acquisition marketing flexible and sustainable. Also, they must make the strategies more effective by adopting a slew of acquisition marketing tactics and best practices.
Define the Target Audience
The acquisition marketing campaigns draw new consumers into the marketing funnel by delivering a variety of content. The content can attract, engage, and influence new customers only by meeting their desires, addressing their issues, and reducing their pain points. That is why; marketers must define the target audience by creating buyer personas. The buyer personas will help them deliver the right content through the right customer acquisition channel at the right time.
Leverage Customer Stories While Creating Content
Like digital marketing strategies, acquisition marketing strategies can leverage user-generated content and customer stories. While creating content, writers must explore ways to present new customers with reviews, testimonials, case studies, and customer stories. The customer stories will add credibility to the content as well as get new customers influenced by existing customers. Hence, customer stories must become an integral part of content delivered to new customers.
Monitor Changes in Consumer Behavior
In the digital age, customers’ preferences and behaviors change constantly. The acquisition marketing campaigns can achieve the preset goals only by meeting their changing behaviors. Marketers must keep their strategies flexible to accommodate changes and make adjustments proactively. Also, they must measure the performance of campaigns across acquisition marketing channels.
Keep Strategies Sustainable
A business can adopt acquisition marketing to achieve long-term marketing goals. For instance, it has to publish multi-format content over a period of time to attract quality leads. Likewise, it can engage and influence more leads only by posting content on social networks regularly. Decision-makers must keep the acquisition marketing strategies sustainable to run campaigns successfully and get higher ROI.
Explore Partnership and Networking Opportunities
Many businesses these days drive acquisition marketing by collaborating with influencers and celebrities. Similarly, many businesses acquire new customers through customers and other businesses. Businesses acquire customers by requesting their customers and other influencers promote and recommend the product/service to new customers. Also, many businesses use affiliate marketing as one of the marketing tools to boost acquisition marketing strategies.
Acquisition Marketing KPIs and Metrics
Acquisition marketing strategies focus on attracting and engaging new consumers through multiple customer acquisition channels. Hence, decision-makers must monitor and measure the performance of individual campaigns to know which strategies are working and which are not.
Decision-makers often measure the performance of acquisition marketing campaigns using various customer acquisition metrics. However, many managers these days use specific acquisition marketing KPIs like prospects, visits, impressions, new sales/offers, revenue increase, visit rate, lead rate, and offer rate.
Conclusion
Many businesses these days adopt acquisition marketing to increase revenue by attracting and converting new consumers. However, decision-makers have to unify marketing and customer service activities to engage and convert new customers. Also, they must adopt a slew of best practices and use the right KPIs to boost the performance of acquisition marketing campaigns.
No business can achieve and sustain profitable growth without acquiring and retaining paying customers regularly. Most businesses these days implement B2B lead generation strategies to identify and cultivate potential customers for their products or services continuously.
According to the lead generation statistics compiled by Startup Bonsai,
“53% of marketers spend half or more of their entire budget on lead generation. But 61% of marketers consider generating traffic and leads to be their biggest challenge.”
Your business can simplify and streamline the process of finding potential customers in 2024 through automation of the lead generation process. There is a wide range of software and tools that facilitate lead generation automation. But they differ from each other in many aspects.
You need to use specific software solutions to automate different lead generation activities – lead capturing, email prospecting, content marketing, email marketing, landing page creation, contest organization, and scheduling meetings. That is why; your strategy must focus on comparing, selecting, and combining the right lead generation tools in 2024.
The comparison and combination will help your organization make lead generation an ongoing process without investing in extra resources. We are making it easier to choose the right software solutions by comparing some of the widely used lead generation tools by collecting information from diverse sources.
31+ Lead Generation Tools Your Business Should Consider and Leverage in 2024
Lead Capturing Tools
1. Poptin
Poptin facilitates lead generation through the creation of popups and forms. The customized popups display the right message to every website visitor at the right time, while you can create embedded forms to capture important information about website visitors. You can opt for this premium software to capture leads despite no coding knowledge. Poptin helps you capture and convert leads by offering personalized offers according to their behaviors. At the same time, you can impress email subscribers by sending welcome emails, coupons, or download links automatically.
2. Optinmonster
Optinmonster helps you to generate leads and monetize website traffic by providing a slew of templates. You can leverage these customizable templates to create visual offers and make the right offer to every website visitor at the right time. Also, you can conduct split testing to boost your lead generation strategy using real-time statistics. The onsite retargeting feature of Optinmonster facilitates lead nurturing activities by dividing website visitors into multiple segments – customers, new visitors, and returning visitors.
3. KyLeads
You can opt for KyLeads to make lead generation an ongoing process by creating smart popups and engaging quizzes. You can create quizzes to generate leads and divide them into relevant categories by gaining insights. At the same time, customizable popups help you generate leads by converting website visitors into subscribers. KyLeads facilitates personalized retargeting by generating forms with multiple opt-in options. You can easily monitor and evaluate your lead generation strategy by generating insightful reports based on real-time data.
4. LeadQuizzes
As the name suggests, this online tool converts website visitors into leads by accelerating the creation of quizzes and surveys. You can use LeadQuizzes to create a variety of quizzes and surveys without putting in extra time and effort. You can further promote the quizzes and surveys using the auto-generated URLs hosted on the provider’s survey. Also, you have the option to boost the performance of your website by embedding quizzes, surveys, CTAs, popups, and announcements.
5. Interact
Interact helps you generate leads and grow your email list by simplifying the creation of quizzes. You can leverage the customizable template provided by this online tool to generate and qualify leads using three different types of quizzes – scored, assessment, and personality. Also, you can customize every quiz according to your branding strategy by including logos, images, colors, fonts, and URLs. You also have the option to embed the quizzes on your website and various marketing platforms.
6. Privy
This online software boosts lead generation by growing your email and SMS lists. You can use Privy to get more subscribers using customizable popups, fly-outs, and displays. You can persuade first-time visitors to share their email addresses or phone numbers using welcome discount play. Likewise, you can run exit-intent campaigns to make the visitors return. Privy helps you generate more leads by creating simple landing pages. But you must remember that Privy is used widely by eCommerce websites.
7. Adoric
Adoric boosts lead generation activities through personalized product recommendations and user experience gamification. You can customize the templates provided by Adoric according to your branding strategy by applying the appropriate color and font. Also, you can set the display rules to ensure that the right popup ad is displayed to every website visitor according to location and time. At the same time, Adoric helps you influence the visitors to abandon shopping carts by recommending the appropriate products based on their exit intent.
8. Hello Bar
Hello Bar helps you generate leads regularly using a variety of popups – header bars, footer bars, alerts, sliders, modals, and page takeovers. You can customize these popups effortlessly by combining the right theme and styling elements. Also, you can display the right message to every website visitor based on her location, ad campaign source, and time of visit. Hello Bar makes it easier for you to track and measure the performance of your lead generation campaigns by featuring analytics, generating custom reports, and supporting A/B testing.
Website Visitor Identification Tools
9. Overloop
Overloop boosts lead generation activities by providing several options, including web forms and email finders. You can customizable web forms to capture leads directly through your website. At the same time, the email finder tool helps you uncover important prospect information. You can further collect lead information through your website by chatting with visitors using the live chat widget provided by this sales automation platform. You also have the option to integrate Overloop with your mobile app and other enterprise applications as a customer relationship management (CRM) system.
10. Leadfeeder
Leadfeeder helps your organization generate and identify leads by capturing important information like who visited your website, how they found your website, and what they are interested in. B2B marketers use this web app to identify the companies that visit the website as well as understand their exact behavior. Also, you can use the tool provided by Leadfeeder to identify the decision-maker to contact from the company. You can integrate the lead identification solution with many CRM systems and marketing automation platforms.
11. AeroLeads
Your business can adopt AeroLeads to build an email list based on real-time contact information. You can use the email finder tool provided by the software to find emails based on names. Likewise, you can use a dedicated email finder to find email addresses from LinkedIn. AeroLeads further validated the email addresses to ensure that only authentic contact information is stored in your CRM system. You have the option to use AeroLeads as a Chrome extension or Firefox extension.
12. Datanyze
Datanyze comes with features to help businesses find and connect with B2B leads. You can use this lead identification tool to gather information about decision-makers while researching on LinkedIn or business websites. Also, you can connect with the decision-makers by understanding their activities and behavior across social networking platforms and local news publications. Hence, it becomes easier for you to nurture leads based on recent and real-time data connected from various sources.
13. Hunter.io
Hunter.io makes it easier for you to find and identify leads by providing two robust tools – email finder and email verifier. You can use the email finder to collect the professional email addresses of multiple leads simply by entering the domain name. At the same time, the email verifier helps you ensure that the email id is accurate. Hence, you can use Hunter.io to send emails to professionals confidently. Hunter.io provides a variety of cold email templates that you can leverage to connect with the leads as well as set up lead nurturing campaigns.
14. Reply
The sales engagement platform enables you to find leads on LinkedIn using a Chrome Extension. You can use Reply as a Chrome extension to find verified email addresses of professionals on LinkedIn. Also, you can create email lists simply by saving the email addresses. Reply allows you to connect with prospects through multiple channels – phone calls, emails, SMS, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp. The AI-powered tool provided by Reply makes it easier for you to make emails more impactful and identify the hottest leads.
15. Anymail Finder
You can leverage Anymail Finder to find the email addresses of professionals and businesses. Also, you can use this lead identification tool to ensure that the email address is real and accurate. Anymail Finder ensures the accuracy of email addresses by searching billions of web pages and conducting server validation. The effectiveness of this lead generation tool can be determined by the fact that the providers require you to pay only for verified email addresses.
Landing Page Creation and Optimization Tools
Here are some important tools that can help in the creation and optimization of landing pages.
16. Leadpages
Leadpages facilitates on-page lead generation by providing customizable templates for creating landing pages and pop-up forms. It allows you to choose from over 100 landing page templates. You can increase your email list consistently using various options provided by the premium tool – giving opt-in offers, delivering digital files, and showing conversion-friendly content. Likewise, you can engage and influence website visitors by delivering the right content through popups based on clicks and exit intent. You also have the option to optimize the landing pages using analytics and performing A/B testing.
17. SeedProd
If your website is developed using WordPress, you can create landing pages using SeedProd as a drag-and-drop tool. SeedProd makes it easier for you to create a variety of landing pages by providing an array of landing page templates. Also, it has been adding new landing pages regularly. The leads and customers can access the responsive landing pages seamlessly on mobile devices and computers. You can integrate SeedProd with widely used email services to expand your email list consistently.
18. Landigi
Landigi helps you to generate leads regularly by providing two useful tools – landing page builder and popup builder. You can use the landing page builder to create and publish landing pages with no coding using over 300 templates. Likewise, you can create customized popups to keep the website visitors engaged by delivering the appropriate message. In addition to being an easy-to-use on-page lead generation tool, Landigi enables you to evaluate and optimize the landing pages before publication by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI).
19. WPForms
This drag-and-drop form builder for WordPress enables you to create a variety of forms without writing longer lines of code. You can use over 300 templates provided by WPForms to boost lead generation by creating contact forms, registration forms, survey forms, and newsletter forms. In addition to being mobile-friendly, the forms created using WPForms make it easier for you to respond to leads by featuring instant form notifications. Also, you can streamline lead qualification and nurturing activities by seeing all leads on a single page.
20. Instapage
It is one of the landing page platforms that have been evolving consistently. Instapage facilitates on-page lead generation by providing over 500 layouts. You can leverage these customizable layouts to create landing pages without putting in extra time and effort. Also, Instapage boosts the landing page’s user experience with native AMP support. You also have the option to deliver personalized landing pages to every website visitor based on her clicks by creating and testing the audience experience.
21. Lander
Lander boosts on-page lead generation by helping you create and test landing pages. You can create new landing pages in minutes simply by dragging and dropping various elements. Likewise, you can customize an existing landing page simply by making changes to the template. At the same time, you have the option to compare and optimize the landing page by performing A/B testing. Lander supports both email marketing integration and Facebook fan page integration.
Live Chat Tools
22. PureChat
The live chat software helps you provide website visitors with the right information at the right time. Your organization can use PureChat to generate leads as well as deliver customer support. The software keeps visitors engaged by initiating conversations based on contact history and using customer analytics. In addition to identifying hot leads, you can use PureChat to get insights into user experience, marketing campaign performance, and website traffic trends. You also have the option to customize the software to make it act as your brand extension.
23. Freshdesk Messaging
The dynamic live chat software developed by Freshworks facilitates lead generation by helping website visitors find answers quickly and accurately. Freshdesk Messaging keeps website visitors engaged by delivering conversational messages using AI-powered chatbots. It stores all messages received from customers in a centralized location. Hence, you can qualify and segregate leads by accessing conversations without putting in extra time and effort. Also, your organization can leverage Freshdesk Messaging to automate lead generation and facilitate customer self-service.
24. Drift Live Chat Software
You can access the live chat software as a part of the Drift Revenue Acceleration Platform. Drift Live Chat Software helps your business generate leads by improving customer experience and buying experience simultaneously. In addition to answering questions asked by website visitors quickly, this software comes with advanced features like Chat to Call and Chat to Zoom. Hence, website visitors have the option to communicate with an account executive through phone calls. You can further use the live chat software to schedule a meeting with prospects.
25. Alive Chat
The customizable live chat software helps you generate leads regularly by providing a slew of options – chat buttons, links to chat, proactive popups, and embedded icons. You can convey important information to website visitors by making popups appear automatically based on preset rules. Likewise, you can enable prospects and customers to get desired information instantly by sending the link to chat through emails and social media messages. Alive Chat comes with features to help your agents convert website visitors into leads.
26. ProProfs Chat
ProProfs Chat boosts lead generation activities by engaging website visitors proactively. The premium live chat software keeps website visitors engaged by providing instant assistance. It further allows website visitors to access self-help articles as well as interact with agents. The operators can leverage the software’s canned response feature to answer questions asked by customers in real-time. You can customize the software to engage website visitors by delivering personalized greetings, making product announcements, and giving product tours.
Social Media Lead Generation Tool
27. Quora
Before making a purchase decision, B2B leads these days gather a variety of information and ask a slew of questions. Many decision-makers leverage Quora as a hugely popular question-and-answer website to gain actionable insights. You can leverage Quora as a powerful lead generation tool to find prospects by answering relevant and helpful answers. In addition to helping prospects solve specific problems, your answers will create awareness of your organization, product, or service. Your answers will further influence B2B leads looking for similar solutions in the long run.
28. Buffer
Buffer helps your business generate more leads by connecting and engaging with a larger audience on social media. You can leverage the online tools provided by this lead generation software to plan, schedule, and publish content on multiple social networking platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. At the same time, Buffer makes it easier for you to track and measure the performance of social media campaigns using built-in analytics. You can engage with leads proactively by responding to their comments.
29. SentiOne
SentiOne accelerates the lead generation process by increasing brand awareness consistently. You can leverage the tools and solutions provided by the software to increase brand awareness, find social media influencers, and automate customer service delivery. Buffer facilitates social listening to boost lead generation by diverting more visitors to your website and conducting social media surveys. Also, you can understand the sentiment about your brand based on information gathered from multiple online sources.
30. TalkWalker
You can opt for TalkWalker to boost lead generation by leveraging customer intelligence, market intelligence, and social intelligence. The social intelligence solution helps you connect with and influence prospects on social networking platforms through hashtag campaigns. Also, you can use this solution to monitor your brand across social media, blogs, online forums, and news sites. The dashboard makes it easier for you to engage with prospects by responding to their comments proactively. At the same time, you have the option to integrate TalkWalker with leading social media management platforms.
31. Rafflecopter
Rafflecopter helps businesses to generate leads by creating and managing giveaways efficiently. You can leverage the software to launch giveaways in minutes without writing lengthy code. Rafflecopter allows you to scale up the giveaways by attracting thousands of entries on a daily basis. It further supports content entry through emails and popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. You can use the themes provided by this widely used lead generation tool to customize the giveaways according to your brand.
32. Gleam
This widely used marketing app boosts lead generation by simplifying the process of planning and running campaigns. Your business can use Gleam to create contests in minutes using four useful apps. You can use the specific app to run competitions, reward winners, create user-driven content, and generate email capture forms. The email capture forms engage participants and persuade them to submit email addresses by displaying the right opt-in form or targeted message to each participant at the right time.
You cannot automate the lead generation process effectively in 2024 without using and combining the right lead generation tools. But you must remember that these widely used lead generation tools differ from each other in many aspects – features, usability, implementation, integration options, and cost.
That is why; your lead generation strategy must focus on comparing these software solutions using the right parameters. At the same time, you must keep in mind the lead generation activities to be automated to choose and combine the best-suited lead generation software for your business in 2024.
This blog was re-published in April 2024.
As an integrated marketing approach, demand generation campaigns help you create a need or demand for B2B products/services. While planning B2B demand generation campaign campaigns, you need to focus on finding and capturing corporate customers currently at the top of the B2B sales funnel.
Hence, your strategy must focus on making more corporate customers interested in a B2B solution by delivering the right content to the right people. You should initiate the process by identifying the corporate customers who need your solution and understanding their demographics and behavior.
Hence, you can make demand-generation campaigns successful only by leveraging real-time customer and marketing data. At the same time, you need to create brand awareness and increase lead generation by running multichannel campaigns. We are making it easier for you to plan B2B demand generation campaigns by discussing several tried-and-tested tactics.
7 Tactics You Should Combine While Planning B2B Demand Generation Campaigns
Targeted Content Marketing
In addition to showcasing your B2B solution, content marketing helps you create a buzz about it. You can create and distribute targeted content to introduce your product to the target audience and explain how it will benefit them.
Your strategy should focus on creating and distributing various forms of content – articles, blogs, tutorials, whitepapers, podcasts, videos, and infographics. At the same time, you need to ensure that the content prepares the target audience to pay for your B2B solution by creating the perfect first impression.
However, you need to ensure the content is delivered to the target audience across marketing and communication channels. Also, the message delivered to prospective corporate customers remains consistent across channels.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) drives your B2B lead generation campaigns by creating brand awareness and increasing brand recognition. You can run targeted SEO campaigns to divert searchers to your website organically.
The increase in website traffic will create opportunities for you to impress potential B2B customers by showcasing your knowledge, skills, and expertise. While optimizing your website for search engines, you must focus on on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.
At the same time, your SEO strategy should focus on providing educational and informative content to the visitors. The educational content will impress the B2B prospect by establishing your expertise in solving problems and erasing pain points.
Customer Case Studies
While making purchase decisions, most B2B customers compare case studies published by vendors. Some decision-makers read textual case studies, while others watch video case studies. You can create case studies to explain how your B2B solution has helped a company similar to your target audience.
Hence, potential corporate customers will consider your B2B product, service, or solution while looking for solutions to similar products. Also, you can make the case studies more impactful by involving happy customers who are already using your B2B solution.
Your strategy should deliver case studies to the target audience in a variety of ways – publishing on your own website, posting on social media, and sending emails. In addition to boosting demand generation campaigns, case study distribution will result in the generation of high-quality leads.
User-Generated Content Creation
Both B2B and B2C customers these days trust user-generated content (UGC) more than brand-generated content. The positive reviews posted by existing customers persuade B2B prospects to opt for a specific brand.
At the same time, corporate customers abandon a brand due to negative reviews posted by customers who use its products or services. You can boost B2B demand generation campaigns using customer reviews as a powerful marketing tool. You should request your existing customers to post reviews on social networks and online forums.
Also, you must appreciate and incentivize the customers who post positive reviews. You can add a testimonial page to your website by gathering online reviews. Also, you can win the trust of corporate customers by using testimonials in various forms of content.
Retargeting Ad Campaigns
While planning demand generation campaigns, you target corporate customers who are at the top of the B2B sales funnel. Such B2B prospects visit your website but they are not yet ready to place an order. Your strategy should focus on increasing brand awareness by reminding B2B prospects about your brand after they leave your website.
Remarketing or retargeting ads create opportunities for you to remind prospective customers about your B2B solution after they leave your website. The B2B prospects will see textual or visual retargeting ads when they visit other websites or access social networks.
You can run retargeted ad campaigns to keep reminding potential customers about your B2B solution across the sales funnel. The visibility and reminders will make them consider your B2B solution while making the purchase decision.
Webinar Hosting
B2B marketers rate webinars or online events as one of the top strategies to engage corporate prospects in the early stages of the sales cycle. The engagement helps them generate high-quality leads and shorten sales cycles.
While planning B2B demand generation campaigns, you can showcase your brand’s expertise by hosting webinars. The webinar will create opportunities for you to promote the B2B solution while discussing an industry-related topic or answering frequently asked questions.
However, you can add credibility to the webinar by inviting industry leaders and influencers to join the discussion. Likewise, you can join webinars or live events hosted by others to establish yourself as an industry thought leader and promote the B2B solution.
Here are some webinar promotion strategies for interested readers.
Live Chat
Decision-makers ask a variety of questions to understand important aspects of a B2B solution. You can impress and engage the B2B prospects visiting your website by answering their questions and clearing their doubts by facilitating live chat. There are many love chat solutions that communicate with website visitors in real time.
You can embed AI-powered chatbots that function just like live agents. Website visitors can interact with the chatbot to understand how your B2B solution will benefit their company. However, you must enable website visitors to talk to someone in your lead generation or sales team to convert them into leads more effectively.
Conclusion
You can run B2B demand generation campaigns to accomplish multiple marketing goals – generate high-quality leads, enhance brand awareness, and drive sales conversions. However, you can make the campaigns successful only by identifying and understanding the corporate customers who need the B2B solution provided by your company or startups.
Hence, you must leverage demographic and behavioral data to understand how your target audiences look and behave. At the same time, you should combine multiple marketing tactics to increase brand awareness, trust, and authority. However, it is also important to measure and monitor the performance of each B2B demand generation campaign using the appropriate marketing metrics.
Businesses and startups these days generate leads using inbound and outbound marketing campaigns. Inbound lead generation strategies focus on attracting more visitors to the business website and converting them into leads. But outbound lead generation strategies require marketers to approach leads that match the business’s ideal customer profile and engage with them actively by initiating the first interaction.
The overall quality of leads varies across inbound and outbound marketing tactics.
According to the B2B lead generation statistics compiled by The Pipeline, “16% of marketers say outbound practices provide the highest quality leads for sales.”
Your marketing team can generate high-quality leads using outbound marketing tactics only by approaching them directly and appropriately. That is why; your organization must implement some of the proven outbound lead generation strategies to drive B2B sales.
8 Tried and Tested Outbound Lead Generation Strategies to Drive B2B Sales
1. Personalized and Targeted Cold Mails
Outbound marketers often initiate first interaction with potential leads by sending cold emails. But the open rate and response rate of cold emails depict their effectiveness in connecting and approaching B2B leads who are decision-makers. Your outbound lead generation strategies must focus on keeping the email list up-to-date.
Also, your marketing team can increase both open rates and response rates by sending personalized and targeted cold emails to the potential leads. However, they must focus on keeping both the email content and subject line short, along with deciding the best time to send.
2. Cold Calling
Many bloggers these days describe cold calling as one of the outdated outbound lead generation strategies. But many buyers these days accept phone calls from vendors. Cold calling is one of the outbound marketing tactics that enables marketers to talk to decision-makers directly and build initial rapport.
You can make this outbound lead generation strategy more effective by providing the marketers with polished cold call scripts. However, the effectiveness of this strategy will be directly impacted by the accuracy of the B2B contact data. Hence, you must focus on ensuring the accuracy of the contact information of leads.
3. Content Syndication
Content syndication can be described as the process of republishing your digital content on third-party platforms. In addition to making your online content accessible to a wider audience, content syndication acts as a powerful tool to initiate conversations with B2B leads.
Many organizations these days leverage inbound and outbound marketing tactics through content syndication. You can republish the content created for inbound marketing campaigns as an outbound marketing tactic. For instance, you can impress the prospective B2B lead by republishing an in-depth whitepaper created by your team.
4. Mobile Optimization
According to BBC,
“People are spending an average of 4.8 hours a day on their mobile phones, according to app monitoring firm App Annie.”
Most people these days prefer mobile devices to computers while accessing websites, consuming content, and conducting research. You can easily boost your outbound lead generation strategies by optimizing your website and blog for mobile devices.
In addition to keeping your website responsive, you need to ensure that the website delivers a superior mobile experience along with interactive content. You can make the website effective in generating outbound leads by adding interactive content like quizzes, contests, and surveys. Mobile optimization will make your strategies more effective in increasing website traffic and lead flow.
5. Professional Social Networks
In a short time span, professional social networks like LinkedIn have become an effective alternative to conventional networking events. Marketers these days leverage multiple social networking platforms to find and approach leads matching the ideal customer profiles. But business-focused social networks do not allow marketers to promote and sell their offerings explicitly.
Your strategy must encourage outbound marketers to leverage LinkedIn and Twitter as a digital form of outreach. They should use these social networks to connect with targeted leads. The connection will create opportunities for them to approach the lead and initiate interaction gradually.
6. Referral Programs
Decision-makers from a single industry often look for options to solve similar problems and reduce similar pain points. Hence, you can easily increase the quality and quantity of B2B leads using customer referral as an effective outbound lead generation strategy. You can implement this conventional tactic by launching multiple referral programs according to your offerings.
For instance, you can encourage existing customers to give new referrals by giving a commission on services. But you need to offer free upgrades or credit to make existing customers refer to your SaaS product. However, it is also important to ask the customers to write testimonials for your website and post positive reviews on reputable directory sites.
7. Multichannel Outreach
While implementing lead generation strategies, businesses often focus on identifying the primary communication channels. You must remember that leads these days to interact with brands and vendors through multiple channels. Most decision-makers these days accept meeting with salespeople after a series of contacts through multiple channels.
Your outbound lead generation strategies can increase the number and quality of leads when you adopt a multichannel outreach. In addition to approaching more leads, the approach will help your team spread company awareness and continue interactions.
8. Marketing Automation
Multiple and continuous interactions are a key feature of the outbound lead generation process. Your marketing team needs to interact with B2B leads and decision-makers multiple times to initiate the first interaction. You can make it easier for marketers to record and track interactions with individual leads by facilitating marketing automation.
Your outbound lead generation strategies must automate marketing activities by investing in a customer relationship management (CRM) system. The CRM software will enable marketers to record, access, and track every interaction with a lead. Also, it will make it easier for them to generate more leads by accelerating the follow-up process.
While implementing outbound lead generation strategies, you must focus on combining traditional and new-age outbound marketing tactics. The integration will help you increase the number and quality of leads consistently. However, it is also important to monitor and boost the performance of individual outbound lead generation strategies to get the desired results.
Digital marketing campaigns help your business generate open leads regularly from multiple communication channels. But every open lead may fit your ideal customer profile or become a paying customer. You must filter and evaluate open leads based on their purchasing potential. The lead qualification process helps you identify leads that will make an actual purchase by evaluating open leads using a slew of frameworks and parameters.
According to Business News Daily,
“Only 1 in 5 leads ultimately becomes a customer. This means that for every new customer you get, there are four who were not persuaded to use your products or services. That’s a lot of time and money lost, but smart lead qualification can minimize this concern.”
You can implement a lead qualification strategy to identify the open leads who match the buyer persona created by your business. Also, you can differentiate sales qualified leads (SQL) from marketing qualified leads (MQL). But you can identify MQLs and SQLs accurately only by making a lead qualification checklist. In addition to making lead qualification a multistep process, the checklist will make your salespeople ask the right questions at the right time.
Lead Qualification Checklist for Identifying Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
Buyer Persona/Ideal Customer Profile
Salespeople identify the target audience for a product/service based on the buyer persona or ideal customer profile created by your business. The buyer personas are created by combining real and market research data.
Hence, salespeople can use buyer personals as a powerful tool to qualify leads using a slew of parameters – business type, business location, business size, annual revenue, and job role. They can disqualify leads who do not match the ideal customer profile easily and early.
Intent and Interests
Salespeople can identify MQL only by understanding the intent and interests of a lead who matches the ideal customer profile. While understanding the lead’s intent, they must check if the lead has visited your website multiple times.
Likewise, they understand the lead’s interests based on the information collected by her about the product/service and the case studies and tutorials accessed by her while visiting the website. The MQL must be interested in your product/service, along with matching the ideal customer profile.
Lead Qualification Checklist for Identifying Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
Needs, Issues, Concerns, or Pain Points
The sales qualification process often starts with the identification of problems, issues, concerns, or pain points. The salespeople must ask relevant questions to understand the lead’s concerns or needs clearly. The understanding helps them recommend the appropriate product/service. Also, they can leverage the information to customize the solution according to the lead’s precise needs.
Long-Term and Short-Term Goals
B2B leads always look for products or services to meet specific goals. But your product or service may meet the lead’s short-term goals, long-term goals, or both. Salespeople must ask several questions to understand the lead’s short-term and long-term goals. The answers will help them to customize or extend your solution according to the lead’s goals by adding the relevant features.
Trials and Experience
Many leads these days look for alternative or new solutions after using a solution or investing in resources. The salespeople can influence the lead only when they measure the time, effort, and resources spent by the lead in solving the issue. They must ask questions to identify the pros and cons of the solutions used by the lead. Also, they can leverage the information to provide different and superior alternatives to the lead.
Expectations
B2B leads often look for solutions to beat the competition or outperform competitors. Salespeople must ask specific questions to understand what makes competitors score over the lead. Likewise, they need to understand the expectations of the lead from a brand or business. They can leverage the information to present your product or service as a superior alternative to overcome the lead’s shortcomings and surpass competitors.
Brand Perception
As the lead has collected a variety of information from your website, she must have formed a perception about your product, service, or brand. She may like some features of your brand and may not like specific features. Salespeople can influence the lead’s brand perception by focusing on the positive features. Also, they must change the brand perception by clearing misconceptions and doubts. Salespeople must ask specific questions to know what the lead thinks of the brand.
Budget
Unlike large companies, small businesses and startups often lack the budget required to avail of cutting-edge solutions. The salespeople must know the lead’s budget by asking relevant questions. They further need to know the lead’s budget in the early stages of the sales qualification process. You can make it easier for salespeople to close the deal by adjusting the price according to the lead’s budget.
Decision Making Process
In most organizations, B2B purchase decisions are made by a committee of decision-makers. The salespeople cannot close sales deals without establishing relationships with multiple decision-makers. While qualifying leads, they must ask specific questions to understand the decision-making process and know the number of decision-makers involved in the process. The information will help them to build relationships with the right managers.
Timeframe
Some leads look for quick solutions, while others look for long-term solutions. Hence, the timeframe for closing sales deals varies across organizations. Salespeople must ask relevant questions to the lead to know when she is planning to place the order. The information is crucial for salespeople to plan lead nurturing activities and decide the lead qualification time.
Solution
After understanding the lead’s needs, expectations, and goals, it is time for salespeople to present your brand as a solution. However, they must ask questions to know what prevents the lead from completing the deal or placing an order. The lead may not close the deal due to a variety of reasons – inadequate budget or lack of authority to close the deal. Salespeople must ask specific questions to identify why SQL is not closing the deal. Also, they must work on the issues to convert the SQL into a customer
You can make a lead qualification checklist to make your business’s lead generation and lead nurturing strategies more impactful. But you must focus on using the checklist as a tool to make lead qualification a multi-step process. However, it is also important to keep the lead qualification checklist flexible enough to include new points and criteria.
