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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.

Check out our lead generation services here Lead Generation 

Having more leads isn’t always a good thing if those leads aren’t good leads! One of the most crucial things in B2B lead generation is to be able to tell a good lead from a bad lead. This is important because if you can distinguish between good and bad leads, it can save you a lot of time, efforts and costs.

So what are the advantages of identifying good leads?

• Utilize the time and efforts of resources in the right direction
• You can invest time in nurturing the good leads with good results
• It’s easier to convert good leads into business quickly
• You can shorten the sales cycle
• Utilize data to decide the strategy ahead
• You can achieve good and expected ROI as per your plan

How to tell the difference between good leads and bad leads?

Good leads are more prepared to buy from you or they at least have shown some interest in your services. If a prospect has downloaded a content asset and is further interested in contacting you, it could be a good lead. On the other hand if a prospect has only visited your website or only downloaded the content asset but hasn’t taken any further action or isn’t responding to your communication, it may be a bad lead.

Having more leads isn’t always the best thing to happen if the leads aren’t good leads or even worse, if the leads are bad leads. Getting those quality leads into the funnel is one of the biggest challenges of lead generation. If you get bad leads into the funnel, then you may end up spending millions of dollars on bad leads and waste your time and efforts in nurturing them with no results.

Here are some ways to get those good leads into the funnel-

Focus on the buyer persona-

You have to generate good leads and the first step is to know the prospect very well. You must create the ideal customer profile and focus on the buyer personas. This will help you to create the right messaging for your leads. If you send the right offers and messages to leads, you are actually generating good leads. If you offer them what they are looking for, you can then generate interest and these leads will then respond to you thus becoming the good leads.

Nurture leads-

Nurturing them with the right content assets and messaging is an important step in creating good leads and driving those leads into the sales funnel.

Nurture them with email marketing and initiate response to generate good leads. Generate demand for the leads which are not able to take a decision on their own. These leads need hand-holding and some help in identifying the best solutions for their challenges. Be their guide, advisor and problem solver.

The MQL factor-

MQLs or Marketing Qualified Leads are already qualified to be in the funnel and these are most definitely the good leads that are ready to be Sales Qualified Leads (SQL). MQLs need nurturing and even though they are likely to buy from you, eventually they may or may not. Hence one must also focus on SQLs as they are most likely to convert into business.

Conclusion-

It is not very difficult to tell the good leads from the bad ones and if you use the above techniques it will reduce your lead generation challenges. You can also assign values to leads; segment the audience, implement lead scoring to create more possibilities of lead conversion.

In today’s digitized world, buyers have multiple options to choose from when it comes to finding solutions and selecting vendors. They are ready to move on if they do not get the perfect solution to their problems and they also rely on their own research to reach a buying decision. In such a scenario, B2B marketers need to up their lead generation and demand generation game and make it more buyer-driven.

Orchestrating your multi-channel hustle could be a way to get those leads into the funnel. You can ramp up your ABM strategies, focusing on content syndication to amplify your chances to be a known brand to the niche` audience and other things could also pave way to more leads and conversions in B2B. But nothing will work at its best if it’s not buyer-driven.

Your leads are your customers who decide the fate of your business. So as a B2B marketer, aligning your solutions with customer needs and making all your marketing efforts buyer-driven can help you to create more sustainable results with long term benefits.

So how does one create buyer-driven strategies?

Data is the one thing that can help you to adopt a buyer-driven strategic approach for better results. Poor quality leads is the result of poor quality data!

Duplicate data, invalid formatting, lack of email validation, siloed data are some of the common factors that can affect lead generation and demand generation. Lead data management is the need of the time.

Data can help you to understand the prospect and his needs, where he comes from, what are his core pain-points and what kind of a solution he is looking for. Without this clarity it is difficult to feed good leads into the funnel.

With good and verified data it is easy for marketers to segment the leads. You can even implement BANT more effectively and categorize leads as per their budget, authority, need and timing. This is an important step in lead qualification.

Data can also help enhancing the quality of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL). If you hand over the right MQLs to the sales team, they can qualify to be the type of SQLs that can convert quickly into business. This has an impact over the sales cycle and over revenue generation.

Quality of data is the precursor on which you can build your successful lead generation and accelerate sales and revenue.

Conclusion-

Data verification, data management and data optimization are the three pillars of successful lead generation and demand generation in today’s crowded and digitized world. Better leads will make your customers happy and you can develop long term business relationships with them. In short, data can help you to create sustainable lead generation business which can ease the challenges of B2B marketers.

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.