B2B companies are constantly looking for new prospects that can benefit from their services. As a result, lead generation is one of the most critical and challenging B2B pursuits. BtoB Magazine surveyed US B2B marketers and found that in 2013, generating more leads remained their top challenge, cited by 60% of respondents. That was followed by the related challenge of successfully reaching their target audience. Here are some tips that will help your company drive more sales:
- Clearly define the target audience. Identify all the characteristics of a good lead – company, revenue, location, size, industry, and so on.
- Research. Do your homework and be relevant to your prospects. Learn about your prospects needs, research their online presence, and focus your lead generation campaign on highlighting solutions for your prospect’s issues.
- Personalize. Lead generation is not mass marketing. For higher response rates from lead generation campaigns you need to customize it to your particular target audience. Don’t try to reach all your prospects with the same message, they won’t respond to irrelevant campaigns.
- Simplicity. Ask simple questions, know simple facts, use clear call-to-actions, and perform simple actions, but with high impact. Use straight-forward and simple language on your call to actions
- Create Urgency. Encourage your prospects to act immediately, without misleading them in any way. You can provide incentives like discounts, entry into a competition, a free gift or other benefits that could motivate them.
- Highlight your experience. But make it relevant for your prospect. Use examples of your work, services or products that helped clients from its industry. Highlight your experience through relevant case studies.
- Manage leads effectively. Not having an internal infrastructure built to process and qualify leads is sometimes the biggest hurdle in driving sales. You need clear lead qualification procedures, correct client profiling, and follow-up procedures.
B2B lead generation means that you have to go after your customers and convince them that you are the best solution to their issues. If you want to increase your sales you have to be relevant and sometimes to invest in technology that can make your lead generation activities more efficient and contribute to overall higher quality leads.
How do you approach your prospects and how do you increase sales through lead generation?