2021/03/23 B2B Marketing Lead generation Lead Generation Steps for successful lead generation for B2B companies
Lead generation is the process of generating potential customers, and is the first phase of a company's new customer acquisition activities. Turning 0 into 1 requires considerable power.
With so many competitors, whether it's traditional sales (telemarketing) or cutting-edge digital marketing, it's not easy to make contact with unknown potential customers.
In recent years, due to the trend toward digital transformation and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, many B2B companies have begun to focus on online lead generation.
However, since the target audience for BtoB is much more limited than for BtoC, if you implement marketing measures with an ambiguous strategy, you may not get turkmenistan b2b leads results that are commensurate with your efforts.
In this article, we explain the steps B2B companies can take to successfully generate leads digitally.
What is lead generation?
Lead generation is "conducting sales and marketing activities to people with whom you have not had contact before, getting them interested in your products and services, and creating contact points."
In sales activities, lead generation corresponds to phases such as direct mail, telemarketing, and cold calling. It is the first step in the sales process.
Although it depends on the company, offline lead generation is often handled by the sales department, with the marketing department acting as sales support. Online lead generation is generally handled by the marketing department, and follows the following flow:
We disseminate information to potential customers who are interested in our products and services via advertising, owned media , social media, etc., and encourage them to visit our website.
Place content such as white papers and case studies that potential customers will find valuable on your website or landing pages , and make them available to download once they register their email address and personal information.
We regularly send information to potential customers (leads) who have provided us with their personal information to build trust, and then focus on leads who are interested in our products and services and turn them into opportunities ( lead nurturing ).
Once the prospect's interest is high and they are in the consideration stage, the product is handed over to the sales representative (sales negotiation).
This trend is very compatible with IT companies and SaaS companies, but it may be difficult for B2B companies that sell expensive products and services, or industries or business types that sell products that are easily commoditized . There are also cases where it is not suitable for reasons such as the lack of information available online and the extreme difficulty of differentiating information.
Lead generation is a key challenge for marketers, with 65% of companies saying "generating traffic and leads" is their biggest marketing challenge in a 2019 HubSpot report.
2019 US Marketing Agenda
(Source: TrueNorth )
This survey was conducted mainly among HubSpot customers, and the target companies do not include so-called large companies (I think). Most of the companies are companies with a few hundred employees or less, and the unit price of the product service is not extremely high, so it can be seen that it is not an exception to the above pattern.
Essential preparations for lead generation
If all you need to do is generate numbers of leads online, this can be done relatively easily with a certain amount of marketing budget.
However, in order for the marketing department to contribute to business growth, it is very important to consider how much it will contribute to sales, and it is most important to gather high-quality potential customers, not just increase the number. To do this, it is necessary to define a clear customer profile.
Here we will explain the essential preparations you need to make when it comes to lead generation.
Creating Personas
In order to generate high-quality leads, be sure to set up a persona . A persona is a semi-fictional image of an ideal customer.
It is created to clarify, "What kind of companies will find value in our products and services?" and "What kind of companies will be able to achieve results by using our products and services?"
Personas are created by the marketing department brainstorming and writing down attributes on a persona creation sheet.
In addition, by conducting customer interviews, customer questionnaire surveys, accompanying sales representatives, conducting SNS surveys, and interviewing salespeople, you can increase accuracy and mix in real information. Set up a hypothetical persona that is as realistic as possible.
Example persona profile items:
Company size
industry
Department
post
job description
Challenges you face at work
Career goals
Work stance and important values
Criteria for judging things
Personality, hobbies, etc.
Although discussed at length in many blog posts and on social media, personas and segmentation are distinctly different.
Segmentation refers to dividing up a specific group based on company attributes, demographic information, job title, industry, etc. On the other hand , persona originates from the meaning of the characteristics of a specific person as they are recognized by others or used to describe them in one word .
In this way, the most important thing when creating a persona is the characteristics that represent that person ( the persona ). By being clearly aware of this fact, it will be possible to create content that is easy for the persona to relate to and that will lead to successful lead generation .
