Best B2B Lead Generation Strategies with Case Studies

This list of the best B2B lead generating strategies with examples can help you get the most out of every dollar you spend and generate a ton of high-quality leads.

What is B2B Lead Generation, and Why is it Different?

B2B lead generation differs from traditional lead generation since it targets businesses rather than consumers.
For firms that sell largely to other businesses, B2B lead generation is the term used.

A single step can lead to a thousand kilometers of travel. B2B lead generation is the first stage in a normal marketing funnel or sales process.

When it comes to lead generation, you gather personal information about a possible client, such as his or her name, email, business name, and job title, and then use that information to tailor your sales presentations and advertising campaigns to them.

Unlike B2C lead generation, which sells products and services directly to customers, B2B lead creation is aimed at businesses.

If you’re trying to attract clients using the same tactics as a B2C e firm, you’ll fail. Additionally, B2C and B2B companies obtain leads in different areas.

Seo (14 percent), email marketing (13 percent), and social networking are the three most effective ways for B2B firms to generate leads, according to Hubspot (12 percent ).

B2C, on the other hand, receives a greater number of leads through traditional methods such as print, television, radio, and the internet.

In addition to where the leads originate from, the nurturing process differs greatly between B2B and B2C, so marketers must get off to a good start.

The B2B Lead Generation Process

The first step is to understand how to generate leads.

Increasing sales requires an aggressive lead-generating strategy if you want to succeed. Sales representatives have an established foundation to follow when following processes that link marketing and sales teams.

B2B lead generation, as far as we know, refers to the strategy employed by sales and marketing departments to convert leads into actual customers. But what are the requirements of these steps?

Step 1: Identify potential B2B clients and customers.

You must first locate the contact information of prospective buyers before attempting to generate B2B leads.

Contact information can be obtained from a variety of sources, including internal sources, third-party “lead gen” companies, or a database of pre-qualified leads

Step 2: Contacting potential customers and business partners

Reps contact prospects via cold outreach, social networks, or by responding to queries with a list of high-quality leads.

Step 3: Identify and qualify high-quality prospects for your business.

While interacting with prospects, representatives gauge the likelihood that they will make a purchase.

They’ll accomplish this by determining where a lead is in the purchase process before reaching a decision. These are the phases that are involved:

• Customer research and awareness: The consumer is aware of a solution they require or an issue they are currently facing, and they start to learn more about it. During the awareness stage, they’ll read blogs, publications, and case studies to become familiar with the topic.
• Consideration: The lead is well-versed in the specific service or product required. Before doing any investigation or “opening up” to potential providers, they’ll go over their unique requirements in depth.
• Decision: As the buyer narrows the field of potential vendors to those that best match their requirements, they will meet with other key decision-makers and finalize their purchase. According to where a lead is in the pipeline, representatives would start nurturing campaigns or try to arrange a call or a demo with them.

Step 4: Make a sale to close the lead.

Success! The prospect meets with many suppliers before settling on you, and the sale is finalized. Their onboarding will now be handled by customer success.

B2B Lead Generation Strategies with Examples

What are the options for a marketing team? We’ve included several B2B lead generation techniques as well as some new lead generation tactics. As an added bonus, we’ve included recommended examples for each step to make sure everything goes well.

Create Compelling Content

Businesses with engaging stuff to share, like blogs, videos, and so on would love this choice. If you want it to work, you’ll need to do a lot of studies to figure out what sort of language to use, what kind of material to offer, and so on.

Find out who your intended audience is, and then produce high-quality text for them. This will help your website rank well in search engine results. Increasing the number of page views on your webpage through search engines is the goal of search engine optimization (SEO).

When it comes to online marketing, search engines are among the most effective resources. When it comes to SEO, success means more clients faster and for free. Having a solid content marketing strategy that offers useful information to your target audience is essential if you want to win the SEO game.

Plan your approach such that it benefits your customers as well as your staff, and that approach should be one that everyone can follow consistently.

Example; LeadPages

LeadPages is a company that creates landing page layouts and conducts A/B testing on them.

The Strategy:

The following marketing elements were prioritized by LeadPages in order to compete with other key players like HubSpot:

• An experienced marketing blog on generating leads and A/B testing with a new method to content production, from social media cross-promotions to preventing lead leaks
• Adding free educational marketing materials like webinars, eBooks, visualizations, and case studies to their existing content.
• Using a world-class podcast host, Tim Paige, to produce “ConversionCast,” one of the most popular advertising podcasts.
• The launch of weekly webinars to sustain and expand their educational marketing

The Results:

• Clay Collins, the company’s founder, and CEO claims that in less than three years, they recruited 35,000 clients and generated over $16 million in sales.

Social Media Marketing

Because social media provides for a more focused approach, it helps you to fine-tune your lead-generating process. LinkedIn, according to 62 percent of marketers, is an excellent lead generation tool. Brands and companies may interact with potential customers on this platform.

Because so many people these days have a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account, social media advertising has become extremely successful. As a result, the ads you see on these sites are extremely relevant to your interests and demographics.

It is possible to create a large number of prospects through social media, but it is time-consuming and needs careful planning.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook is a wonderful resource for learning what works best for you. According to the book, engagement on Social Media networks should be approached with the mindset that “Jabs” are interesting material for your target audience, not sales pitches. A “Right Hook” is a marketing/sales campaign that includes a call to action, such as “fill out this form, buy this product, or share this offer. For every right hook, throw three jabs.

Example; Nissan

Even though automakers frequently utilize Facebook lead advertisements to boost the number of test drive reservations, Nissan has a technique that works for every brand.

The Strategy:

• The business utilizes Facebook to generate buzz around the debut of a new product:
• As a result, Nissan does more than just announce a new car model and tell customers to “stay tuned.” This launch will be announced only by email.
• Nissan uses this method to gather the email addresses of prospects who are particularly interested in their new product, so they can follow up with them both during and after the launch.
• Plus, this technique works for any product or service you want to market.
• Lead advertisements on Facebook may help you build excitement and collect targeted email addresses whether you’re introducing new-season clothing or adding a new brand to your collection.
• Add a little mystery to your content and creativity to keep your lead advertisements more enticing.

The Results:

• Nissan comes out on top by a wide margin. More people have liked and commented on the Japanese automaker’s post than any other brand in our study.
• With 15.7 million Facebook friends, Nissan is merely the sixth most popular auto brand.
• Nissan’s Twitter account, @NissanNews, now has 57,794 followers, up from the previous total of 11,310. This is a rise of 510 percent in just one year. The fan base was not built via the use of sponsored media.

PPC – Pay-Per-Click

It takes time to build a successful SEO and content marketing strategy. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is one of the most straightforward methods for rapidly seeing results. If you understand who you’re trying to reach, it may be a powerful tool. However, depending on your sector, it may be too expensive.

In addition, keep in mind that many individuals these days use Adblock (or other similar applications), so banners and other clickable advertisements may not even be visible to them. Or, as a result of the GDPR regulations, they may choose to stop receiving your advertisements entirely.

There are several ways to advertise online. One of the most popular options is Google Adwords, which lets you place adverts throughout the whole Google Network.

Example; Veeam

Veeam’s digital advertising generates leads from all around the world because of the company’s worldwide reach. Veeam, on the other hand, discovered that the quality of the lead varied greatly from area to region. For Effective Spend, the objective was to increase overall lead volume while reducing the average cost per lead by generating more high-quality leads via top revenue marketplaces.

The Strategy:

• Due to the full-funnel digital approach, Veeam increased engagement, leads, and product purchases with their paid advertising program.
• As a result, Veeam has adopted Google Smart Display ads in order to maintain the total lead volume high while also optimizing the cost per lead. In order to optimize lead generation at the lowest feasible acquisition cost, Google’s machine learning is used in Smart Display campaigns.
• Smart Display initiatives are a highly effective approach to increase overall leads, however, smart bidding cannot optimize for the quality of leads.
• Veeam redesigned the campaigns to put more money into high-revenue sales areas in order to retain quality.
• Pay-per-click social media advertising on Linkedin and Facebook has been part of Veeam’s digital strategy. They’re great for generating B2B leads since they provide specific targeting choices such as skills-based targeting and innovative ad formats such as lead form advertisements.
• According to Veeam, their social approach focused on increasing asset downloads to develop a strong following that could feed remarketing efforts in the market.
• Using display and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Veeam saw an increase in traffic and engagement.
• However, Veeam set up retargeting campaigns on different ad networks, including Google, Bing, Facebook, and LinkedIn, to assist cultivate those leads deeper down the buying funnel.
• It was important for the company’s remarketing campaigns to reach consumers who had previously interacted with Veeam’s content in some way, whether it was through paid advertising or simply browsing the site.
• For cross-channel remarketing, the ads made use of Veeam’s CRM customer data as well.
• Using Veeam’s client touchpoints as a guide, the remarketing ads pushed free product trials, moving potential customers one step closer to completing a purchase of Veeam’s products.

The Results:

• Downloads of Veeam’s software have grown by 80% in only one quarter.
• Veeam was able to increase worldwide leads while also enhancing lead quality by combining Google’s intelligent automation with localized budget limitations and rigorous ad testing and adjustments.
• After the complete execution of the digital ad plan, results improved even further.
• It is safe to say that Veeam has outperformed its expectations in terms of performance.

Cold E-mailing

Cold e-mailing is a difficult task to accomplish.

It’s difficult to stand out amid all the other noise. We get an average of 147 emails every day, but only respond to around 12 of them in-depth, and then delete the remaining 71 in less than 3.2 seconds.

An effective cold e-mail campaign takes a significant amount of effort. If you want to succeed, you must:

• comprehensively investigate the topic to ensure that you’re not simply sending out generic templates
• ensure that your communications are tailored to the recipients you intend to reach
• control the entry of data for your prospects
• send out a large number of messages to see what happens.

And the reality is that your customers will evaluate your abilities to close sales. The consequences of not obtaining any conversions and acquiring a bad reputation from your prospects are both real if you have a bad day.

Knowing what other people are doing to evaluate your figures may assist you to know if your cold e-mail campaign is on the correct track while you’re designing it.

Example: LeadFuze

Salespeople may use LeadFuze to rapidly acquire contact information from prospects and then send tailored emails on their behalf. Companies such as Bidsketch and CrazyEgg have made use of them.

The Strategy:

• LeadFuze’s creator, Justin McGill, grew his company’s income from $10k/month to $30k/month using cold e-mail.
• To begin, he found prospects by using his software and then created an outbound campaign around them. Using LeadFuze’s search tool, he discovered the email addresses of his target market like this:

• After that, he was able to see a list of possible new clients to add to his portfolio. The program drew data on the prospects once they had been added as relevant.
• The next step is to compose a high-quality cold email after you have your leads. Justin uses a cold email method he calls the “QVC Formula” for composing (Question, Value prop, and CTA). This is how everything fits together:
• Question. The opening sentence of an e-mail is critical. As a glimpse in their email, they will see a version of this statement. A self-introduction is a bad idea, according to Justin, because it informs your prospects that you’re unknowledgeable.
• Prop of value. Avoids gushing about how wonderful your service is and what a wonderful company you are. Focus on what sets you apart from the competition by getting to the heart of your message immediately.
• CTA. Most salesmen conclude their e-mails in a generic, lackluster fashion (typically something like “I look forward to hearing from you”). Asking for a call or asking a particular question is the greatest approach to finish an email.
• Here’s an example of a cold email Justin by LeadFuze;

• When sending an e-mail blast, be sure to include an opt-out option so that your prospects may decide whether or not they want to receive future correspondence from you. To opt-out of receiving future emails from you, include a “unsubscribe” link in every email you send.
• Below his signature, Justin adds the following phrase to chilly e-mails:

• He makes it clear that if the prospect tells him to stop following up, that’s acceptable.
• A follow-up email should be prepared once the original e-mail has been written and sent. The magic, as previously demonstrated, is in the follow-up. Most salesmen don’t follow up at all, or they follow up only once or twice before giving up.
• You shouldn’t merely “check-in” or repeat the same message you delivered the first time in follow-up e-mails. Instead, make use of this chance to offer your prospect additional, useful information that will bring the decision-making process forward faster. Use a relevant case analysis or outcomes you obtained for someone else as an example.

The Results:

• LeadFuze was able to reach $30k/month in revenue in only one year by following this easy method.

Engaging CEOs of Ideal Target Companies

When it comes to activities like keyword research, on-page SEO, sponsored search, and content marketing, there was an obvious disconnect between what was being done and the results that could be measured.

The actual execution of digital marketing collaborators focused on “procedures and reports rather than outcomes,” digital has always been a component of a winning B2B lead generation marketing plan.

It is difficult to access Executives of mid-market Australian technology firms with revenues between $5 million and $50 million because they are famously busy and difficult to reach.

Example: Technoledge

In the disciplines of software, security, biotechnology, and green technology, Technoledge is a specialized advertising agency for Australian rising firms.

Technoledge’s value proposition is quite clear: “Technoledge assists Australian high-tech firms uncomplicate their solutions so customers understand the advantages and open their wallets.”

The Strategy:

• Align all digital marketing efforts with the client’s overall value proposition.
• Attract the appropriate kind of prospects who have the potential to become customers by driving targeted traffic from your website.
• Proactively optimize KPIs throughout the whole marketing funnel with relevant data and optimization suggestions.
• Using a combination of Google Ads, Facebook Advertising, and LinkedIn to get highly focused visitors.
• In order to increase lead flow, do conversion optimization and A/B split analysis on important landing pages as well as in messaging.
• Adjusting plans and tactics as new data and analytics come in.
• Keep digital marketing efforts aligned with the broader company direction through proactive reporting, re-alignment, and implementation.

The Results:

• An increase in focused, economically meaningful keyword traffic has been demonstrated in as little as 90 days.
• Major expansion of prospects’ e-mail databases from properly sized target organizations.
• CEOs of mid-market tech firms with $5 million to $50 million in annual revenue have expressed renewed interest and sales discussion.
• In less than ninety days, significant new contracts were obtained.

Final Thoughts

It’s difficult to generate B2B leads since you can’t just copy and paste a successful strategy from another company. The same thing that works like crazy in one industry may be a total failure in a different one.

Discovering a plan that works for you is critical, and in most situations, content serves as the basis for effective lead creation. Realizing your market and how they behave is critical to your company’s success.

Is there another way you generate B2B leads that has been effective? If you have any, please share them with us in the comments section.