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It’s never too early to plan your next lead generation strategy. Converting leads into business is the one goal of B2B. To make it easy and less challenging, marketers can plan ahead and create workable lead generation strategies by analyzing the past and present trends and also continuing with the strategies that have worked best so far.

Let us check some lead generation trends that will continue to prevail and drive more sales in 2023.

B2B marketers focus on MQLs and SQLs when it comes to converting leads. Marketing efforts drive MQLs and these leads are then passed on to Sales. SQLs are leads that have shown enough interest in your services and are ready to talk and engage in making a buying decision. Lead generation isn’t a one-size-fits-all process and it needs to be customized or tailored to suit the type of business. Here are some top techniques that will continue to reign in 2023 and can impact the goals of most B2B businesses.

Content

Content is the fuel for lead generation. Today, with the right messaging and content assets you can attract, delight and engage customers. It is one of the best tools you can use to build robust relationships with prospects.

B2B market has already seen the importance and critical role of content in the past few years and it continues to stay at the top of the list when it comes to attracting and nurturing leads into business.

Get the best resources onboard and create outstanding content that is relevant to your audience, Create meaningful and helpful content through e-books, white papers, infographics, email content and you can attract leads and generate demand too.

You can create content for each stage of the funnel as the interest level of the target audience in each stage of the funnel varies. Understand the prospect and generate content that will interest them and eventually drive them to making the buying decision.

Social media-

We have said this before and we are saying it again- Leverage the power of social media and optimize its use as per your target audience. When in B2B, enhance your presence and online interactions through LinkedIn. Make sure you are using the channel or platform that aligns with your business type and audience. You can continue to engage through social media posts, sharing insights, infographics, sharing downloadable assets and building effective social media communication skills and networking. It can have an impact on the long term business relations that you can develop through conversational marketing and influencing your target audience through insights. Have a comprehensive strategy that can work the best for your business.

Trade Shows-

It’s a comeback of sorts for trade shows and face to face interactions and it is already showing a positive impact on sales for B2B companies. Though trade shows are catching up slowly, this must definitely be on the top of the list of strategies for B2B sales and leads now and in the near future.

Before your competitors meet your target audience you need to grab the opportunity to be present in trade shows and interact face to face with your prospects to delight and engage them.

Conclusion

As we move on to the next half of 2022, it’s important to analyze and monitor the past and present outcomes of lead generation campaigns and also know the upcoming trends, the dynamics of the market and what your competitors are up to. These insights will help you carve a stronger and more result-oriented lead generation strategy for the coming year and more.

You have the vision, expected results, tools, resources everything in place to roll out that killer Demand Generation campaign. Now the big question is – Which steps do you need to strategize the actual campaign for best results? If you are at a similar junction wondering about how to create the best possible plan for your demand generation campaign so that you get the desired results, this blog is for you!

Turning your vision into action will activate your path towards results. Here are a few things you can do to get those results in Demand Generation-

Focus on Revenue-

The best way to work at times is to work backwards, that is focus on the end result. Revenue generation is one goal that is common to all the campaigns that are designed with different marketing techniques. Make sure everyone in the team and across relevant functions are focusing on the revenue model and that they are clear about the goals. Let each resource understand and assume responsibility on their part and their roles at different stages in the funnel.

When you work on the revenue-based plan for generating demand, you have better clarity on roles, the stages of the funnel, content requirement in each funnel, and in case one part of the funnel fails to deliver, you can always be prepared to compensate through the other parts of the funnel.

Set strategic goals-

• Use your account based knowledge and methodologies to execute Demand Generation plans
•  Know the prospects well, have as much knowledge as you can about these prospects or targets and then make the plan
• Select the best of leads and accounts to increase the probability of lead conversion
• Create customized messaging and email marketing campaigns to engage them for results
• Let sales and marketing be on the same page and hence work towards collaborating both the teams
• Analyze results each time

Monitor and analyze results-

After all the planning and execution, it’s important that you monitor and analyze results. This is not only to evaluate the strategy but also to know the performance metrics and where you can improvise. Results from reach campaign must be analyzed.

Conclusion-

Demand Generation is a complicated B2B process and it takes time before you see the results. Hence strategic planning and execution is critical to succeed in Demand Generation. You can focus on knowing the customer well, work with Account-based approach and evaluate results to improvise each time.

ABM (Account-based Marketing) can be a game-changer when it comes to B2B sales and marketing. It can give you long-term business outcomes with consistent revenue and strong customer relationships. If you want more results out of your existing accounts or if you are aiming at getting new accounts, you must review, analyze and fine-tune your strategy with some useful techniques.

ABM can help you sail into 2023 with high-value accounts and more conversions. However, poor alignment between sales and marketing is one of the top challenges of ABM in B2B. As per the Demand Gen Report; lack of resources could be the reason for this problem. While increasing your dollar-spend to hire more resources could resolve the issue; there are other solutions that marketers can try out in order to optimize ABM.

Here are some of the top techniques that you can use to make the best use of ABM for sales and marketing returns-

Intent-

Today Intent data can be the guiding light to B2B marketers as it can be a great tool to prepare and create insights for building solid strategies. Intent data can be used to fine-tune your existing or new ABM strategies. Monitor online intent signals and map the customer journey with the help of intent so that you can narrow down your focus on high-value accounts to succeed at ABM.

Tread new territories-

Most often than not sales and marketing teams may fail to experiment or explore new target audiences. This may stop them from exploring new markets; new audience and one might lose out on new sales opportunities of high value ABM accounts.

Another tip is to avoid repeating the same ways or methods to create new opportunities. For example you need not always go by the same old geographical territories. Sales teams must explore other avenues such as companies in different markets, industries etc.

It’s about breaking your comfort zone when it comes to targeting high value accounts and increasing your chances at success. So be open to new markets and find out if your existing market can be widened or may be it is time to break out of the primary market and explore more.

Review existing ABM accounts-

Sometimes you do not have to go too far to learn, all the learning material and education you need might be right there with you. All you have to do is simply review and analyze your existing accounts and you will know what’s working right for you. Use those insights to leverage and optimize new accounts and create innovative strategies to narrow down on your audience.

Conclusion-

You can stay ahead of the curve in the dynamic B2B market by being constantly aware of the changes in the market and grasping new techniques. For successful ABM, you should invest more time and efforts in research, keep learning new trends, review the existing accounts and make use of intent data.

Lead generation challenges can cost B2B marketers a lot of time and resources. These challenges also mean a loss of revenue and sales opportunities. While B2B companies are working in extremely complex structure and ambience, marketers are now shifting towards data-centric lead generation, Omni-channel marketing, ABM and intent data. These techniques can reduce the challenges of B2B marketers today.

Data-driven techniques or intent data can drive lead generation and demand generation and can lead to better engagement, more conversions and more revenue.

Let us see some common challenges of lead generation and their remedies-

Using data effectively-

Almost all B2B marketers go through the data drill and are aware of how important data is for B2B. But many people are still not aware of how to use or implement data for B2B sales. With the overwhelming amount of data being produced or being made available to marketers, processing it and breaking down its complexity is a big challenge for B2B companies. It’s a difficult task to collate data from different sources, verify it, cleanse it and use it for the benefit of sales.

The solution to this is the use of intent data. Intent data is information that is collected about a prospect’s interest, websites they have visited and which products or services they are currently in the market for.  Targeting prospects using the specific intent data, allows a company to reach their best prospects, shorten the sales cycle and increase ROI.

Validated and in ready to use form; if you know how to implement it, intent data can be your power-house tool. Data with great insights into buyer persona, buyer behaviour is what marketers need today. This can help them draw a strong demand generation strategy that is sustainable.

Need for quality MQLs:

Here’s another potential element of sales- MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). This is an important component of the funnel and can decide the future of your B2B sales and revenue. However, identifying the right MQL is a challenge for many marketers. And once you identify the right MQL, you can then transform them into SQLs.

Again, the solution here is intent data. Working with the right intent data vendor can reduce your MQL challenges. Select the right vendor who understands the value of data and how intent data can be put to use. The vendor should also be able to provide the right data as per the requirement. This data should be aligned with the goals and objectives of sales and marketing and lead generation. This will help you to find the right MQLs that are high potential and can easily convert into SQLs and into business.

Conclusion-

The information that one collects about a prospect and his interests such as mapping his digital footprints, websites they have visited, the products or services they are currently in the market for is called as Intent data.  Using specific intent for targeting prospects can allow a company to reach their best prospects, shorten the sales cycle and also increase ROI.

Intent data can be great solution to many B2B challenges today. As a B2B marketer of 2022, you must also know the buyer well, know the buyer’s journey and have the right insights that can help you to create a strong demand generation and lead generation strategy.

If you want to invest in ABM (Account-based marketing); you must stop thinking of ‘engagement’ as the objective or end-goal. ABM can bring value through strong relationship building and communication. This new-age technique is a clever tool that can get you value for money. Through ABM, you can influence and build relationships with high-value targeted accounts or organizations. Tailored content and exclusive strategies for these high-value accounts can bring great results.

Many marketers have already embraced ABM and yet it needs to be fully explored for maximum benefits. Let us discover some simple steps to enhance ABM results through this blog.

Here are some steps that can help you to unlock the true potential of ABM-

Identify high-value accounts-

While you aim at ABM as a mainstream marketing activity, the types of accounts you select matters a lot.  It involves communicating with the customers and analyzing if their present and future needs are aligned with your business proposition.

ABM is also for existing accounts. You can determine the scope of growth of the current accounts that you have and identify them as high-value accounts. You can then plan exclusive strategies that can focus on long term relationship building and revenue generation.

ABM can be for existing accounts but it is also for new revenue generation. You can focus on relationship building and management, and target new ABM accounts for more business.

Know these accounts thoroughly-

Your selection should be based on deep insights that you need to gather about the accounts or organizations you want to target. And once you have made your selection of particular accounts, you need to find out more about them and get more insights about these accounts for successful implementation of ABM strategies.

How to collect insights for the accounts you want to target?

• Conduct primary and secondary research to know deep insights for relationship building
• Interview account directors and other stake holders to identify the right accounts
• Use intent data to gather intelligent data and action-oriented insights to for successful implementation

Focus on content and messaging-

Once you have done the ground-work, it is time to communicate your value proposition. This is the most critical part for both conversions and relationship building. What you say and how you say it will stay with the prospects or people involved in the target accounts. Make sure your messages are specially crafted for these high-value accounts. Include empathy and demonstrate it through your exclusive messaging that addresses their challenges while offering customized solutions.

Conclusion-

There can be more number of ways to build a smart and workable ABM strategy, but for success you need to do the ground work well. Therefore, the accounts that you select, the knowledge that you gather about these accounts and the tailor-made messaging you select can determine the success of ABM accounts in today’s B2B market.

High impact B2B sales and marketing activities can be demanding and can get very expensive. Since B2B today focuses a lot on personalization, marketers need to find the best possible method to enhance personalization and also make B2B cost-effective. ABM (Account Based Marketing) can be a great option if you want conversions and higher ROI. ABM can drive personalization and can be quite cost-effective bringing the desired results.

The very reason why B2B marketers should use this technique is because ABM leads you to focus exclusively on high-value accounts, and high return accounts that can bring a lot of B2B success. With account-based marketing, you can scale personalization and create opportunities for converting more leads.

According to a survey conducted by Gartner, the best way to engage buyers is to personalize communication. Relevance matters a lot in B2B and account-based marketing can help marketers address business challenges of the customers and build long term relationships. This is possible because of the high level of focus that ABM facilitates and marketers can therefore make the best out of this exclusivity.

Here are some benefits of ABM at a glance-

• ABM is result-oriented
• It allows marketers to scale personalization
• Helps build long term business relationships
• Creates highest possibilities of ROI

Account-based marketing is a high-priority marketing technique. One can leverage ABM by taking the following steps-

Identify high priority accounts

The first rule of ABM is that sales and marketing should work in collaboration for best results. Marketing team should work closely with sales team. The next thing is to identify ideal customer profiles, based on high-value data. Data plays an extremely crucial role in ABM as it does in other sales and marketing activities.

Identify needs of the target accounts

Data plays a vital role in ABM because marketers need to collect insights about the needs of the target accounts. Without data it can get very challenging to know what the customer wants. As an ABM expert you must be able to understand each account and tis challenges well. You must be aware of a lot of insights about the buyer’s journey, the budgets, decision-makers in the account or organization, stake-holders, roles and responsibilities and more.

Create personalized content

B2B thrives on personalization! Messaging plays a key role in ABM and other main-stream sales and marketing activities. Email marketing can enhance personalization in ABM. Create relevant messaging that can help the customer to identify the solution. With relevant and personalized content and messaging, the customer is most likely to buy from you. This helps in high-value accounts as ABM is about focus and exclusivity.

Conclusion-

ABM is a cost-effective and result-oriented marketing technique. With ABM you can reach the target audience at a relevant time to convert more leads quickly. Leverage personalization to cater to high-value ABM accounts and increase your revenue successfully.

The pattern in which B2B buyers are evaluating and purchasing products and services has changed drastically over the past two years.  With digital-first B2B buyers, customer-focused data and data-driven decision-making is becoming crucial. In today’s digital context, data means knowledge and knowledge is power! Therefore, insights-driven campaigns are getting popular amid B2B bringing the spotlight on to the powerful tool of today’s B2B market called intent data.

Before we talk more about the advantages and benefits of intent data, let us see some common data challenges that B2B marketers face today—

Data challenges faced by B2B marketers

• Lack of a unified database
• Lack of efficient data management and organization
• Unable to gain knowledge about the customers due to scattered data
• No value from data and lack of predictive intelligence
• Absence of intelligent insights due to poor data
• No scope to prioritize or segment leads for better B2B conversions and results

Intent data offers incredible benefits of timely engagement and hyper personalization making B2B sales and marketing more effective.

Here are some more benefits of intent data-

• Customer-centric engagement
• Helps in identifying precise solutions for specific target audience
• Provides customer-focused data and insights
• Enables data-driven decision making
• Shortens sales cycle
• Helps in ABM planning and implementation
• Provides behavioral data that indicates prospects’ interest
• Timed action can be taken due to intent signals

Things you achieve with intent data

Improved conversion rate-

Intent data signals can tell a lot about your customers. It can highlight where the customer is in the buying cycle and most importantly it can reveal insights about when the customer is most likely to make a buying decision.

These insights can help marketers stay prepared and be present in front of the customer before he takes the buying decision or approaches any competitor. It can also help marketers to create customized solutions as per the customer’s needs and challenges. This increases the conversion rate and ROI.

Increased sales velocity-

Intent data can help B2B marketers accelerate sales. It can help vendors to enhance lead scoring and identify high-value leads that can easily convert into business. This shortens the sales cycle and marketers can accelerate lead conversions and sales.

Increased data efficiencies:

Inefficient data handling, management and organization leaves a room for a lot of errors and this can lead to slowing down of the lead conversion process.  Data is very critical in B2B sales and marketing and intent data is the best tool to help you to accelerate sales. It can help organizations to carry out effective sales and marketing.  

Conclusion-

Intent data can offer a cohesive and structured data for B2B enterprises; the kind of data that actually works. Without data it is challenging to run successful lead generation, demand generation or any other B2B activities today. You can accelerate sales, get to know buyer personas and increase lead conversions with intent data.

We partner with Bombora, the leader in intent data that collects B2B intent, demographic and firmographic data at scale and thus can help you enhance lead conversions and sales.

Today’s customers are everywhere on the web. In order to attract customers, marketers need to be present on different channels and platforms. Multi-channel marketing is therefore gaining popularity, as it is proving to be helpful in widening the reach of b2b vendors in the market and enhancing lead generation and conversions.

This blog highlights different aspects of multi-channel marketing, its various challenges, some necessary strategic elements to make it effective and its impact on lead generation and sales.

To begin with, let us take a quick look at some statistics about the current state of multi-channel marketing—

As per the research report by Ascend2, almost 67% of marketing professionals feel that multi-channel marketing strategy is somewhat successful in helping them achieve their business goals, whereas, 23% marketers feel that multi-channel marketing is very successful or outstanding compared to their competitors.

The fact about multi-channel marketing is that it is a strategic marketing activity and it needs to have some essential elements to make it really successful.

Let us see some strategic elements necessary for the success of multi-channel marketing. But before that, lets us deep dive into some of the major challenges of multi-channel marketing.

Challenges of multi-channel marketing

The market is buzzing with new ideas when it comes to b2b sales and marketing. But not all techniques succeed at all times. There are many challenges that marketers have to face when it comes to implementing activities such as multi-channel marketing.

So, what are some of the most critical challenges?

Other than the above, there are some more challenges that marketers have to face such as conflicting data, disconnected technology stack etc.

Analysis of results is important in multi-channel marketing

Strategic elements matter a lot in multi-channel marketing- the most essential being the accurate measurement of performance. The reason why many marketers aren’t getting the desired success in multi-channel marketing is because they lack in strategic positioning and implementation of this versatile marketing activity.

Therefore, if you want to implement a multi-channel marketing campaign your strategy must include the critical element of measurement of results. You simply cannot carry out this dynamic activity without knowing the response, and without the knowledge of how the current strategy is performing.

Although there are multiple challenges in implementing multi-channel marketing, things are changing in this realm. As per research conducted by Ascend2, almost 86% marketers feel that multi-channel marketing is effective and over 68% say that the change in effectiveness is moderate, while 18% report a significant change.

Although multi-channel marketing is a promising activity in the b2b industry, it needs to have a strategic foundation and marketers need to be willing to address the challenges and fix them in order to fully optimize the potential of multi-channel marketing. The types of channels and the quality of those channels also play a crucial role in increasing the effectiveness of the multi-channel marketing.

Conclusion-

Multi-channel marketing is a complex activity, but it is the need of the time, as users are all over the place on the web. If you want to attract leads and convert them into business, think of using strategic multi-channel marketing that can widen your reach and can give you the desired results.

Did you know that almost 91% of marketers consider lead generation as their most important goal and that content marketing generated three times as many leads compared to outbound marketing also costing less than half? Research says, that the most commonly used b2b lead generation strategies are content marketing which is 67% and email marketing which is nearly 78%.

B2B lead generation is not a simple or straight-forward process. Hence, marketers should avoid repeating the same strategy each time. For best results, one should invest time and efforts in analyzing each stage of the funnel and adopt some unique methods to ease some of the challenges in lead generation.

B2B involves a lot of decision-makers at various stages. Therefore, one needs to deploy variety of methods to nurture leads at different stages of the sales funnel in order to finally convert leads into business. In such a scenario its best that marketers get to know the buyer persona and then customize solutions as per the need of the customer.

Communication is the key-

Communication is important with the customers and with internally too with the team. Cross-functional communication is also important in lead generation. It may not be a technique, but it can help on a certain level.

Once you know the objectives, processes and strategies and the plan, there will be more clarity within the organization. You can then study, compare and analyze the campaigns, resources and later on the results too. For all this to happen smoothly, communication within the organization is critical for success of any campaign.

Right lead information-

Before one proceeds to establish contact or communicate with the prospect, a thorough study of the prospect is necessary. Capturing the right information of the lead can help you to convert that lead easily. Lead-forms play a significant role in conversions too.  How you build the form can impact your results and the information you get at the end of the day from the lead.

Analyzing the funnel-

Analysis of the funnel is a significant process in lead generation.

Lead generation processes involve different stages and the funnel plays an important role in determining how quickly the leads are likely to get converted and to know what the status of the lead is at each stage of the funnel.

In order to get best results, marketers must analyze the funnel performance from time to time. Each resource who is involved at different stages of the funnel must monitor and analyze the results and be very vigilant so that there is a record of which leads are performing as per expectations and which stage of the funnel has maximum loss of leads. After this analysis, steps should be taken to rectify mistakes and create solutions that will reduce the loss in the number of leads at that particular stage of the funnel.

Conclusion-

More techniques and processes can be deployed to make sure each stage of the funnel is optimized so that leads don’t drop out. Lead forms should also be built smartly so that you get the right data. Lead generation is not a simple process, so a combination of techniques and methods can help marketers to accelerate lead conversion.

(Statistics source- Rule analytics, Pipeline, Startup Bonsai)

ABM (Account Based Marketing) has become one of the main-stream activities of B2B. However, many marketers still want to know why they should invest in ABM and how will it benefit their business.

This blog talks about some of the top reasons as to why b2b marketers should invest in ABM.

1) Sales and marketing alignment:

One of the major reasons why you must adopt ABM is because it requires you to align sales and marketing. ABM cannot work if sales and marketing are not on the same page. It’s nearly impossible to achieve results. It’s best that sales and marketing work in collaboration to identify and nurture the high-value ABM accounts. This helps in streamlining sales and marketing for any b2b company.

2) Shortening of sales cycle:

With ABM there is no beating around the bush. Since ABM is a highly focused marketing activity, you can reduce the usual lead chasing activities and concentrate only those high-value accounts that can be easily converted. This helps to shorten the sales cycle and these leads quickly move from one stage of the funnel to another.

3) More revenue:

When you work with a targeted approach with both the sales and marketing teams aligned, the results are bound to be seen. ABM campaigns require high level expertise and resources that can focus exclusively on these accounts. This exclusivity helps to give better results and thus more conversions and revenue. ABM activity is indeed a good investment as it has high returns.

4) Exclusive account management:

In general, lead generation and conversion can get very challenging as there is tough competition in the market. Customers have plenty of choice and if marketers don’t focus on leads they might just go away to their competitors. This is where ABM becomes extremely supportive and helpful in conversions. ABM being an exclusive, high-value account activity it can help marketers to focus on specific accounts. When vendors have dedicated resources and a targeted approach they can get the desired results.

5) Effective use of data:

In ABM, b2b marketers can make use of intent data to get to know the prospect really well. Data is critical, but since ABM is a focused activity why not narrow down the data too. Intent data is predictive intelligence for any b2b marketer. Intent data will save your time and efforts by bringing you the best and the most relevant insights of the prospect or account you are targeting. It can also help you to identify the best accounts and lead to more conversions.

Conclusion:

The popularity of ABM is rising day by day and the reason being that marketers are getting incredible results out of ABM. B2B is a challenging market; hence, ABM is being embraced by marketers for its great results. Adopt ABM today or partner with an ABM expert to get started off. For more information, email us at contact@intellitechsoln.com