Monthly Archives: October 2022

A lead may not always be a good lead at the beginning of the B2B journey. To convert leads into good leads and finally into sales, B2B marketers must focus on building trust and developing a strong relationship with the prospect. This requires a data-backed, personalized strategy.

Let us see a 3 step lead generation strategy that can help marketers convert leads into business in less time.

Step 1: Create the Ideal Customer Profile-

The first thing that every marketer must do is to create ideal customer profile (ICP). This is a critical part of every lead generation campaign. Ideal customer profile is the list of attributes that your buyers have in common in any specific buying group. You can define the buying group characteristics as per the data such as age, gender, geographical region, job, role, designation, company etc.

Apart from the above basic characteristics, you can also define the ICP based on the digital footprints of the buyers within the buyers groups, the type of content they are downloading or consuming etc. All this data can help you to create an ideal customer profile.

Step 2: Use intent data-

Do not stop at just any data. Use intent data to make sure that you have all the reliable and insightful information about your prospect. You can use intent data to create ideal customer profile to get the most accurate information about your prospect.

Use intent data to understand the customer and his business challenges. With intent data you can be very well aware of his buying intentions and inclinations and then plan a strategy that offers solutions that are aligned with his needs.

Step3:  Enhance personalization-

This is a time and age of personalization and your sales and marketing cannot be successful if you do not use personalization as a part of your strategy. It is the most important element of B2B as you are selling to leads who are people at the end of the day.

Every buyer or buyer group has its own unique characteristics and so it also has its unique needs and challenges. Personalization can help you strike a chord with the audience and thus win over more leads.

Conclusion-

B2B or Business to Business is all about Human to Human today! The lines between B2B and B2C have blurred as but both businesses essentially cater to humans. The strategies therefore must involve personalization with a strong emphasis on data and its quality. Ignoring intent data will not help B2B marketers in any way. In fact, it can only help enhance personalization and also help in creating the ideal customer profile.

ABM is the new-age solution for many B2B challenges today. It undoubtedly has offered the much needed relief to B2B markers in terms of focus, high value leads and the results that can actually drive revenue. It’s time to supercharge your ABM initiatives and enhance your business growth.

Here are some simple steps to streamline and boost your ABM initiatives-

Shift your focus –

Choosing the right account or to be able to sense that a particular lead is a good lead is not exactly rocket science. If B2B marketers pay close attention to details they can easily differentiate between good leads and bad leads. Similarly, once you are able to identify the high value accounts that are most likely to convert into business, you should shift your focus to these accounts rather than chasing other leads that may or may not convert.

Every lead is different and it may not want to engage with you. So shifting your focus to those prospects or accounts that are not just looking for similar services but have shown some interest in your services can put you in the right direction. This can save you a lot of time, efforts and money.

Who, why and how of ABM goals-

This may not seem like one of the most obvious ways to optimize ABM, but it all boils down to knowledge. Team’s knowledge about ABM, awareness about ABM within the organization and amid all those who will be directly or indirectly connected and impacted by ABM performance is necessary. What does this mean? It simply means that each one of the team members must be aware of many aspects such as the following-

• What is the role of ABM in the revenue cycle
• Who are the stake holders and their roles in ABM initiatives
• What are the ABM initiatives
• What are the campaign ideas and what is the implementation plan
• What is the approach towards each ABM account and why
• What are the expected results and who will be accountable the most
• What are the existing sales and marketing strategies
• Are the ABM goals aligned with the existing sales and marketing strategies

The alignment factor-

Probably one of the most important factors that you need to evaluate before you even embark on the ABM journey is whether or not there exists alignment between your sales and marketing teams.  Alignment ‘cannot be an issue’ if you are planning to implement ABM. So the number one question that you need to ask is about alignment. Make sure both sales and marketing teams are clear on the goals and are on the same page.

Conclusion-

When it comes to ABM it isn’t only about leads. ABM entails having a certain approach and a specific mindset that can identify these high value accounts and also be able to nurture them. It is also about having the right strategies to optimize these high value accounts so that you get the desired results. 

Today, without leads one cannot actually run a successful business. In spite of having all the resources lined up, having interesting products or spectacular services, if you do not have the right leads you cannot have a business running successfully. This is why lead generation is one of the most vital elements of any enterprise.

So how does one streamline this ultra-important sales and marketing technique to get in all those good leads and convert them into tangible sales numbers and revenue?

Here are some simple lessons to help you with lead generation-

Lesson #1 Know which leads are for your business

The most important lesson in lead generation is to know what kinds of leads you would need to make them work for you! Naturally, the first step is to know your own business goals and objectives so that you know what kind of leads will make a difference to your business. Each lead is unique and will come with its own needs. So be prepared to nurture and cater to each and every good lead before you can convert it into business.

Lesson # 2 Tread on new paths

Tread and explore new audiences to widen your reach! This is another lesson that every lead generation practitioner must adopt. We often stick to the same audience for years and rarely think that there could be an even bigger and more powerful target audience beyond our niche audience. This can take a bit of research, being active on social media and leveraging the power of other marketing techniques such as content syndication. But once you implement these things, you will see that you can pull in crowds from different markets and you can find more leads who would be interested in your services.

Lesson# 3 Know your audience well

The third and the most important lessons of all is never, ever under estimate the power of knowing your audience well. It is the most important aspect of lead generation.  This will enable personalization and help build strong relationships with your clients. Being fully aware of the needs of your target audience is a sure shot way to converting leads. Take help of authentic data and intent data to make sure you know whom you are talking to and align your messages accordingly.

Conclusion-

Even in 2022, lead generation continues to be one of the most challenging aspects of B2B. Exploring new techniques can help marketers get more leads and shorten the sales cycle. But before that, adopting some simple and basic steps like the ones mentioned in this blog can help you to keep converting leads consistently and in any given market situation.

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