Strategies used in B2B lead generation evolve as companies gain new insights into what does and doesn’t work to attract the most qualified leads. Keeping track of trends in this area will help your business stay at the top of the game in driving prospects who convert efficiently.
With the first quarter of the year now behind us, let’s look at some of the most prominent trends in B2B lead generation for 2017.
Reach Across the Channel
Generating leads doesn’t take place in a singular channel or device vacuum. Instead, you must get your message in front of prospects across multiple channels and devices. After all, B2B buyers typically conduct their buyer journey through various potential points of contact.
Cross-device retargeting, or lead generation campaigns targeting previous visitors on tools such as Google AdWords and BingAds, are standard approaches to reach out to prospects throughout their path.
But if you have many services you sell, make sure to use dynamic remarketing to ensure you are delivering the right message. Dynamic remarketing lets you show previous visitors ads based on products or services they viewed on your website.
Email remarketing is another great way to market new offers to prospects that have previously signed up for newsletters, webinars, product testing etc., but have yet to convert to a full-blown customer. You can do this across your choice of marketing channel such as Instagram, Facebook, AdWords, YouTube, Twitter.
Content Marketing Commitment Escalates
The commitment top marketers have made to content production and distribution has ramped up significantly in 2017. B2B buyers continue to turn to search engines like Google and Bing for information on resolving core business problems.
According to the 2017 Content Marketing Institute report (Full PDF), 61 percent of UK marketers are “extremely” committed to their content marketing strategy.
Competition has increased as well, as 60 percent reported finding more success with their strategies than they had the year before.
Facebook is the Social Media Giant
The most recent Pew Research report showed that Facebook remains the giant of social media, with its user base growing to 79 percent of all internet-using adults. Facebook also leads the way in terms of active monthly user engagement.
These data points indicate the capacity for a B2B provider to connect with valuable prospect accounts or decision-makers with regular, useful messages.
In addition to text-based posts, Facebook offers a lot of visual content options, including live streams, video posts, and images.
Landing Pages Seal the Deal
More B2B providers recognise that attracting interest from prospects is just one step toward effective lead generation. It takes a high-quality landing page with desired information and proof points to seal the deal.
Your landing page content needs to quickly and concisely address primary questions of your visitors, and then drive them toward the next step in their journey.
It’s not about clicks and conversions, it’s about getting the right conversions. Your landing pages need to be capturing leads that your sales team can close.
Outsourcing is a Popular Option
The CMI study revealed that a startling 74 percent of UK companies rely on one person or a small team of individuals for all content marketing activities. Optimum success is difficult to achieve with such little investment into this critical area.
However, the costs of building and maintain a larger internal team are challenging. Therefore, companies are looking more to outsourced partners to provide for their content marketing needs, including strategic planning, creation, and distribution.
Account Based Marketing
Finally, we can’t close out without mentioning the three little keywords dominating marketing circles – account-based marketing. According to a survey about ABM trends by Scratch Marketing and demandDrive, seventy-four percent of respondents are planning to invest in ABM this year.
However, it’s also worth noting that in a Chief Marketer survey on ABM the follow stats were revealed by B2B marketers:
- 43% of B2B marketers claimed to be using ABM
- 48% indicated that they were challenged with creating the right content
- 37% claimed their troubles resided in the inability to understand the buyer’s journey of their target accounts
- Only 21% of B2B marketers are concerned with the first click
- 49% of marketers indicated cost of conversion as the most important metric
- Time to conversion was rated as most important by 47% of respondents
Wrap Up
Keeping up with the factors that drive B2B marketing success sets your company up with the best opportunity to achieve its objectives. In 2017, top trends include an emphasis on a multi-faceted communication strategy fueled by lots of content and social media messaging. Outsourcing content creation and distribution to professional partners is also a popular trend.
However, account based marketing is the topic that everyone needs to keep one eye upon.
