Dustin DeTorres is the Founder & CEO of DeTorres Group, the world’s leading B2B lead generation firm.
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According to the Content Marketing Institute, improving the quality and conversion of audiences is the top priority for B2B businesses in 2020. There are lots of steps to achieving this goal, and I consider effective lead generation to be one of the most important.
This is especially true given the current economic climate. You don’t want to waste precious marketing budget nurturing leads that aren’t going to convert, no matter the scenario. Instead, you want to invest in attracting more high-quality leads who can make next year better for their business with the help of your products or services.
Here are five B2B lead generation tactics that can help you attract the right leads to drive sales for your B2B business in 2020 and 2021:
1. Educate your audience.
Especially now, people are looking to broaden their knowledge and skills. Quarantine has given people the time to invest in personal growth by learning new skills and broadening their knowledge base. This is also a key strategy to stay relevant and perform well in the business world. So why not cater to this need with your marketing content?
Create online courses or webinars to educate your audience and capture new B2B leads in the process. Focus on topics related to your niche that your target audience would be interested in learning.
Lots of B2B businesses already employ this strategy with a lot of success. One example is Consulting.com, a business that is built around offering freemium course content to teach people how to succeed at consulting.
2. Create an online hub.
There are few SEO strategies that deliver results in the short run. Creating an online content hub is one exception I’ve had success with for both local and enterprise-level businesses.
A content hub is essentially a collection of site content about a single broad topic. It includes a hub page (pillar content about a broad topic) and subpages (long-form content about specific aspects of the broad topic). The hub page and subpages are then linked to and from each other.
Online content hubs are good for SEO because the internal links help Google understand what your content is about semantically. Having a healthy number of internal links is also an important rank factor. Lastly, making connections between related content helps guide visitors through your site, encouraging more engagement and nurturing them as leads in the process. This engagement, in turn, sends positive signals to Google that your content is valuable and high quality.
3. Utilize intent data to identify new leads.
Intent data includes a combination of online behavioral signals that tell if a person or company is in the market for a product or service. Any B2B business that isn’t already using intent data should start, and those that do use it should expand its applications.
One way to do this is by purchasing intent data from third-party sources to help you identify and target new leads. There are also numerous software tools businesses can utilize to automatically target ads to in-market audiences based on the latest intent data insights. Features like Facebook Lookalike Audiences and Google Similar Audiences also rely on intent data to help businesses identify new leads.
Intent data is incredibly valuable because it helps B2B companies expand their potential leads beyond their site visitors and social media interactions. It’s also an essential strategy because it helps you target people and companies that have already expressed interest in what your business has to offer before making a purchase decision.
4. Invest in interactive content.
According to Marketing Charts, personalization is the top marketing and sales strategy for B2B businesses in 2020, with 47% of businesses prioritizing it over all other strategies. Personalized marketing content has been a key strategy for several years now, but why not take engagement to the next level by making your content interactive?
Creating interactive content is a valuable way to stand out in a crowded B2B market. And as more people use mobile to browse the web, they want to experience engaging content beyond what a simple blog post provides.
Some examples of interactive content include quizzes, polls, calculators, interactive ebooks, brackets, infographics and more. Interactive content isn’t expensive to make and can help you collect information about leads to personalize future content and move them down the sales funnel.
5. Use lead ads on social.
LinkedIn Ads and Facebook Ads are often underutilized for lead generation. They’re now more valuable than ever, as people are spending more time on social media than ever before.
Social media platforms offer lots of ad types and targeting options to help B2B businesses generate leads. Facebook’s Lead Generation Ads and LinkedIn Conversation Ads are good examples of this. Conversation Ads just came out recently, allowing businesses to target leads with personalized messages in their LinkedIn inboxes for the first time. Experimenting with different kinds of ads and audience targeting can help you bring in lots of high-value leads that are likely to convert.
These are some of the strategies I think are most valuable for B2B businesses to generate leads in 2020 that they can nurture and convert this year and next. Even though a lot of businesses are putting new investments on hold, now is still a great opportunity to capture and nurture leads for the future. Instead of focusing on short-term economic issues, smart business leaders should put a plan in action to generate more leads now, so they can continue to prosper in the future.
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Author: Dustin DeTorres, Forbes Councils Member
