A study conducted by the B2B Technology Marketing Community has found that 61% of B2B marketers consider generating high-quality leads one of their biggest challenges. It’s consistent with findings from CSO insights that found that 68% of businesses struggle with lead generation. It’s funny when you realize that it’s easier than ever to buy a leads list off brokers on the Internet. The real rub is what percentage of these leads are actually worth the money you’re paying for them.
Many companies tend to settle for low-quality leads for one of two reasons. One, they think it’s as good as they’re going to get. Two, they shop based on volume with the assumption that there’s going to be gold somewhere in the lists they’ve purchased. Both are really problematic ways of thinking. Because the fact is that you can get high-quality B2B leads without spending too much money. From our experience, here are three tips worth considering.
1 – Adapt to modern, efficient lead generation methods.
Cold calling used to be the most efficient and effective way to generate leads. In many ways, it still has its place in the order of things. Nowadays, however, with more modern means to connect with or attract leads, it isn’t as cost-efficient. For one thing, it takes a lot of time. For another, many potential leads aren’t too keen on having their busy day disrupted by a cold call. Content marketing and email are fast becoming preferred methods because they’re not as intrusive and give a potential lead freedom to engage when they are ready.
Take content marketing. Studies have found that 87% of buying decisions begin with online research conducted by the buyer. With the average person bombarded by some 10,000 ads daily, we’ve become quite immune and wary about fluffy marketing speak and catchy sales blurbs. This means that B2B companies aren’t going to get away with just foisting their products and services on a pedestal. You need to provide quality content that answers key buyers’ questions and satisfies their curiosity.
Provided you give something worthwhile in return—like a white paper that addresses their specific pain points—your potential buyers and leads are more than happy to give you their contact details. These can then be further moved along the sales funnel with follow-up emails with further contact that satisfies their need to research answers on their own. Content syndication is also certainly worth a look here, especially if you have a lot of worthwhile material to push.
2 – Simplify your landing pages.
Speaking of gated content—where your potential buyers trade their precious contact details for your content—it also pays to make your landing pages a little less complicated. Too often, B2B businesses become over-eager to share information with what is essentially a captive audience that they go overboard with their landing pages. A cluttered, confusing landing page can overwhelm a potential lead and throw them off as quickly as they can get all that information loaded up.
Keep it simple, leaving in only the most important elements: a headline describing clearly what they’re in for, a brief blurb to elaborate, a catchy supporting image, a form to capture their information, and a very clear button offering what they came there for—most likely to download a piece of your content. The very best landing pages (and the most successful ones) have only these few elements and little else. They work because you make it very easy for your customers to get things done.
Now, if you feel that you’ve much more information to offer, then simply make a new landing page that targets a different aspect of your product or a different service altogether. The numbers back this up: Hubspot has found that companies see a 55% increase in leads when they increase the number of their landing pages. Have as many landing pages as you have B2B leads’ pain points your business can address and make sure each comes with the trade- off in unique, quality content that provides answers.
3 – Work with a lead generation specialist.
So now we come full circle. Perhaps you are too busy to undertake all these things on your own but still want high-quality leads, then make sure you are getting it from a reliable source. The best ones have their own existing B2B databases and constantly verify the contact details on these lists for accuracy. Better, they even segment them along demographic, firmographic, and even technographic lines so it becomes easier for you to narrow down what exactly you’re looking for in a leads list.
With quality lead generation specialists, you even enjoy the benefits of highly effective multi-channel content syndication campaigns. These are those that are targeted to those who are most likely to benefit from the content on-offer and come with key engagement statistics that allow you to gauge how relevant a piece of content is to the lead reading it. These numbers include how long they read the piece of content, what areas they focus on, and even whether they share it or not.
At Internal Results, we offer all these services and even offer up intent data into the mix. These are basically indicators that a particular lead is close to making a purchase. All these things taken together give you a leads list of much higher quality which—in turn—will ultimately make it easier for your marketing and sales teams to do their jobs efficiently and effectively. So, if you’re tired of poor-quality leads that waste your time and money, let’s see how we can improve your situation. Talk to us today.
