The 5 Best B2B Lead Generation Strategies For Startup

Lead generation is a big deal for modern and online businesses. This occurs between businesses (B2B), as well as between businesses and consumers (B2C). In fact, b2b lead generation strategies are considered both the present and future of digital marketing for startup businesses. The reason behind this is really simple. Digital marketers often focus more on acquiring traffic to a website or online business platform. They spend almost all their marketing budget trying to do this. However, it is not just about acquiring traffic to your website or related platforms.

It is about making the smartest of the traffic you have gathered. This can only be achieved with clear-cut marketing strategies that will remove the wheat from the shaft, and sometimes polish the shaft to become useful eventually. This is exactly what lead generation does. Therefore, we wish to share with you the five best b2b lead generation strategies for startup to improve the effectiveness of their business marketing. But first;

What is lead generation?

In marketing, lead generation refers to a process of initiating a consumer’s interest or inquiry into a business’s products or services. It is a coordinated stream of technical marketing activities that aim to attract your potential customers into a contact management or marketing software system with the hope of nurturing them through to buying. Lead generation uses a number of tools including funnels and emails for example to share valuable information and convince prospects with offers in order to convert them into paying customers.

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In digital marketing, leads can be generated in two major ways; between businesses that sell products and services to themselves, and between businesses and customers. When leads are generated between businesses, this is called business-to-business (B2B) lead generation. Meanwhile, when leads are generated between businesses and customers, it is called business-to-customers (B2C) lead generation.

Whichever way and directions this follows, one thing is exactly very sure. Investing in lead generation and lead nurturing allows you to understand your traffic and target audience better. This helps to accumulate your own data which in turn helps your marketing strategy in the long run.

The best 5 B2B lead generation strategies for startup

The following are the top of the carefully selected B2B lead generation strategies for your startup business.

1. Email marketing

We do not think that anyone could actually contest the place of email campaigns in digital marketing. It is perhaps the most effective, most cost-effective with massive ROI, and in fact, one of the easiest campaign tools anyone could depend on for marketing. In fact, it should be the cornerstone of your b2b lead generation strategies for startup.

Successful lead generation strategies include a good bond and working relationship with your customers, website visitors, and prospects. These people need to hear from you to familiarize themselves with your brand and have clear-cut ideas about your business offerings. Emails should therefore be one of the most important tools in your outbound lead generation strategies’ armory.

What do we mean? Email is primarily used in B2B businesses as a lead generation tool. It is good for this purpose because outbound emails are not used to contact just anyone that comes your way. Rather, it is used to reach out to people who have at one time or another other shown interest in your business by submitting their email contacts for special offerings, promotions, newsletters, and similar offers.

Aside from these, email marketing is useful to reach a selected group of potential customers who although may not have heard anything about your company, think that they can achieve greater success with your offering. This means that they fit your ideal customer profile and you would love to work with them. However, you must be very careful here not to sell over your first email. Your first email should rather be a “cold email”. This means that it is unsolicited and sent to someone you do not have a prior relationship. The first email should rather focus on establishing a relationship rather than selling. Subsequently, you can focus more on sales leads and whatever offers you wish to share.

2. Content Marketing/Blogging

One of the best ways to generate b2b leads for your business is via the use of focused content and blog articles. Content creation tailored towards marketing purposes this way is called content marketing. Blogging is however the most popular type of content marketing. It is not unusual to find companies that have blogs on their websites. This is usually used to serve their audiences with relevant information regarding their products and services. Most readers that have an interest in these things are usually allowed to sign up for newsletters, join forums or perform any other action as deemed fit for lead generation purposes. For search engine optimization reasons, content marketing should be an essential part of your organic lead generation strategies for startup.

Search engine optimization means that your content and articles are optimized and targeted toward specific kinds of audiences. Content meant for search engine optimizations is usually keyworded for this purpose. Keywords as used here referred to certain phrases and terms commonly search for on the internet as related to your offer or business as a whole. They are usually included organically in articles meant for marketing such that when such queries are put up on search engines, your audiences would get to see your articles. Such articles could then contain elements that will lead readers to submit certain personal information or perform other actions that will make you categorize them as leads. From this point, you can continue to nurture and monitor your leads until they become buyer persona.

According to a specialized marketing study, about 70 percent of internet users have confirmed that they have learned via content before purchasing a product as against traditional advertisement. 53 percent of marketers have also said that blogging is the top of their content marketing strategy. These and many more confirmations count content marketing worthy and important organic lead generation strategies that are well non-intrusive.

3. Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing means that you are combining search engine optimization with sponsored online keywords in search engine ads especially. SEO in this case is key to attracting audiences and customers to your website. A further goal of SEO is to convince search engines that your webpage is the most relevant for a given searched keyword. You should consider search engine marketing as an important part of your successful B2B lead generation strategies for a startup for a number of reasons.

It is one of the most scalable, flexible, and cost-effective lead techniques. This means that you can trace how much is being spent on lead generation in reference to the results achieved. SEM ensures that your ads appear above search results. You should consider search engine marketing as a part of your best lead generation strategies because of;

• The unpredictability of SEO. SEO function is more of site ranking rather than marketing which search engine marketing does.
• It could be very hard and take time as well to qualify for search engine optimization as it is organic, but search engine marketing will push you up above even the best-optimized webpage on the search engine ranking page.
• The best ads and best bids have the opportunity to win

Just assume for a second that your lead campaign has all of these benefits. Now tell us why you should not consider search engine marketing in your b2b lead generation strategies.

4. PPC Marketing

PPC refers to pay-per-click. It is a digital marketing model used to drive leads to a website in which an online advertiser pays a publisher when an ad is clicked. It is usually associated with front-tier search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This marketing technique is highly effective for eCommerce websites and companies that do online lead generation. One of the most important goals of lead generation is to get prospects into the lead tracking system; usually the funnel.

Once here, the company will usually learn more about the qualification of the leads so as to realize if they are best for their products and services or otherwise. PPC marketing is actually good because it won’t take you time before you realize the drawn leads are good for your business. PPC can be accomplished via a number of options that include blogging, emails, social media, and in fact organic search.

Apart from the fact that PPC marketing for lead generation attracts visitors who are looking for what you have to offer to them, you can achieve immediate keyword ranking via it. You can place different bids on various stages of your funnel and control the messages for each. You can as well see what people are searching for and craft messages to their needs. It will be easy to know more about your leads and track your ROI. Best of all, you will be able to grow your database significantly through this method.

5. Chatbot and Artificial Intelligence

People love to deal with interactive interfaces when reading or shopping online. You have to put this into consideration while designing your website. Some of the strategies you need to put in place to ensure leads are generated via this means are the use of chatbots and AI. Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool when it is to facilitating realistic conversations with prospects. This will surely broaden your marketing reach and generate new leads.

This basically creates customer experiences that are predictive, optimized, and personalized. It will also mean a more tailored experience for your prospects and customers as well as a streamlined lead-generation process for your brand. You must be harnessing the power of chatbots and AI for your brand if you are thinking of the best lead-generation strategies for startups.

Conclusion: There are also many more lead-generation strategies. Examples of direct marketing, print media marketing, Influencer marketing, cold calling, hosting an event, etc. We hope these 5 strategies best and perfect for b2b lead generation strategies for startups.