Selling to businesses is hard, and slow. When you have a B2B startup, you can pick from two models: hunting for sales or farming them. To farm is simply to handle the leads that come in via a well-built marketing funnel. We call it inbound marketing.
But how can you achieve a well-functioning lead generation funnel? Here are 5 lead generation lessons for your B2B startup.
Table of Contents
1. Content is your ultimate card
I know – you’ve heard this a billion times. But like it or not, without quality content, you’re dead. There are many lead generation examples and strategies for B2B, but to generate heavy organic traffic, you should focus on SEO-conscious content marketing. If you write one piece of high-quality keyword-optimized content every week and earn a couple of backlinks from high domain authority sites, you can expect thousands of organic visitors every month after 6-9 months, even in a competitive market.
2. Bring them back over and over
B2B funnels have several touchpoints where prospects can interact with your online presences. Split your marketing funnel into 3 different stages and use remarketing or email marketing to bring your users back. Your users should see content tailored to the stage they’re in. At first, in the awareness stage, show them basic-level content. At the consideration level, you can go into more detail, explain your product, and use social proof that builds trust. At the end (decision) you can try to convert your online prospects into leads via conversion pages or lead generation forms. Then your sales team takes over.
3. Linkedin is king
Since Microsoft bought Linkedin, it’s developed rapidly in terms of targeting options and useful features. Usually, if you’re selling to businesses, you know to whom you want to sell. You know which industry, which job role and which level of decision-making you need to target. That’s why Linkedin should be your first choice if you want to run campaigns. Lead generation cards and sponsored inMail (with its new analytics) are the tools that perform the best.
4. Online sales cycles are just as long
With a proper marketing funnel generating hot leads, it may be tempting to think that the sales cycle will move faster than if you started from scratch. This only seems to be true because most of the sales work is done by the clients themselves online. That’s the benefit of content marketing — your content is working for you. The sales cycle is the same; it’s just that marketing plays a greater role.
5. Measurement is crucial
In order to set up a funnel, you’ll need the right measurements behind it. Set up Google Analytics, a Facebook pixel, a Google Remarketing tag or Linkedin Insight tag, depending on your chosen marketing channel. In Analytics, be sure to specify your ‘goal’ and ‘event’ and build a customized dashboard for your funnel.
Summary
You deal with the same people online as you do in the real world. It’s just to you to make that funnel just as powerful.
About the Author Zsolt Farkas
CEO & Owner of Evolut, a growth marketing agency that focuses on DTC lifestyle branding for SMEs and mid-sized companies worldwide.
About Carson Derrow
