Everyone wants the same thing — to get their products and services in front of buyers. That holds true in B2C just as much as in B2B. So marketing departments work feverishly on ideas for turning prospects into customers. It's nothing new, but in the age of digitalization it offers fresh opportunities, especially in the B2B space. In the analog world, it's mainly trade fair visits that are used to initiate business. That still holds true — around 60 percent of companies still rely on this form of lead generation and lead qualification. Yet even the analog trade fair scene is unthinkable today without accompanying online measures. Digital lead management is therefore becoming increasingly important.
Understanding the Lead Generation Process
Lead generation: Digital touchpoints such as signing up for a newsletter or registering for a webinar deliver initial data and create a new contact.
Lead nurturing: Sales reps can't do much with the initial data from so-called cold leads. With further marketing measures, the data base is qualified — a cold lead becomes a warm lead.
Lead scoring: A warm lead provides a broad data base, but that says nothing yet about actual purchase intent. In lead scoring, behavior is evaluated and prioritized.
Lead handoff to sales: The highest-priority leads are handed over to sales, and the actual sales process begins. Studies show that at this point there is already a 60% probability of purchase intent.
Leads in B2B
In business practice, the distinction between cold lead and warm lead is based on the degree of maturity. From this follows the responsibility within the company and the lead management measures to be applied. Based on their maturity, leads in B2B lead generation are divided into three categories:
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): An MQL is the entry point into lead generation and is usually a cold lead. Only a little data is available about the prospect, such as name and email address or other contact options. Thematic interests may already be known as well.
Sales Accepted Lead (SAL): Once the MQL has been qualified through further measures and a basic purchase interest is already discernible, the lead can already be of interest for the sales process. With initial sales activities, the purchase interest can be qualified further. An SAL is already a solid foundation for sales.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): This refers to the highest level of lead qualification. The lead has already signaled a clear purchase interest. An SQL, at the latest, is handed over to sales and processed further by them.
The Customer Journey Shows the Way
Marketing has to start where potential customers are — including on the internet and on a company's website. Once marketing knows these touchpoints, lead generation begins at those points. The prerequisite is always a solid analysis of a website's activities. Then the customer journey reveals at which touchpoint a company can step in to generate leads and where lead qualification is possible.
Content, Content, Content
The bait has to appeal to the fish, not the angler — an old piece of wisdom in marketing and corporate communications, and one that applies especially to the design of a company website. For lead management, this means delivering exactly the content that potential customers expect. To do that, companies should know their customers and their needs precisely. High-quality content must therefore provide the right answers to customers' questions at every point of the customer journey. Ideally, it even offers surprising answers to questions the customer hadn't yet considered. This conveys competence and builds trust — the most important currency in the B2B business.
In the first step, it doesn't matter whether the content is offered in the form of a webinar, a whitepaper, or a blog post. The only thing that counts is relevance. Concentrating on the core competencies of your own product and your own company can be considered critical to success. The information offered should therefore not be created at random, but follow a clearly defined strategy.
A promising content strategy should take these three points into account:
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The content must be relevant and answer the website visitor's questions.
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Website visitors must find the content at the right touchpoint in the right format.
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Content with added value should be noticed by the target audience.
Studies on current marketing trends confirm this approach. Content is therefore considered the most important measure for establishing contact between a company and its target audience. The top priority here is relevance.
Buyer Persona – The Composite Sketch of the Unknown Customer
Every company should know its target audience in order to succeed in the market. What initially sounds simple and logical is, on closer inspection, quite complicated. It's not enough to simply define an industry or certain professional groups as the target audience. Being very clear on this point has always been the recipe for successful marketing work. For lead management, it is one of the basic prerequisites for ultimately winning qualified sales leads.
The buyer persona concept is well suited for this. In companies, the unknown customer is often referred to as "John Doe." That's not enough, because a John Doe is a person without characteristics. The buyer persona concept goes a step further. It's about defining the profile of one or more ideal customers. A buyer persona thus characterizes the image of the prototypical customer. To do this, profile data is created as precisely as possible, ranging from industry affiliation to company size, while also naming contacts and decision-makers within the company. For buyer personas in the B2B space, specific aspects such as typical or possible budgets, internal decision-making processes, and expected problem areas should also be added. The more detailed the buyer personas are built, the more concretely the required content can be created. This content should, for example, also provide answers to the problem areas mentioned. If customers feel that their problem is understood at this point, the path to becoming a sales lead is no longer far. In collaboration with sales, creating buyer personas is an ongoing process that is continually enriched with new insights.
Social Media – The Underrated Channel
Social networks are now used by most companies, including in the B2B space, to increase website traffic. Most social media offerings can also be used directly for lead generation. One advantage: when people react to posts, the first data is already available — especially on career networks like LinkedIn or Xing. But Facebook and Twitter also provide initial clues about the person on the other side and their interests.
With interesting posts — for example about a new whitepaper or a webinar on offer — combined with a call to action, you can guide users to a landing page. A first step in lead generation. YouTube is also suitable for lead generation, for instance by publishing short videos about specific aspects of the products on offer. The less promotional these are and the greater the added value they provide, the more successful the lead generation.
To be noticed on social networks, regular publishing of posts is essential. With a small budget, however, awareness can be boosted significantly through targeted paid posts. Current studies confirm the growing relevance of social media channels for lead generation. Alongside Facebook, Xing and LinkedIn in particular are of interest for the B2B space. Twitter is also used for lead generation, but usually run by corporate communications rather than marketing.
Optimizing Landing Pages and Forms
For lead generation, most companies use specially designed landing pages. These should be the focal point of the accompanying measures and serve, for example, as the destination for visitors from social networks. That's why a landing page must be optimized for lead generation. This means a clear structure with a focus on the advertised product or service. The visitors' most important questions must be answered. A call to action delivers the desired leads.
For this, you need a form where visitors can leave their data. Because the customer journey begins on a landing page and primarily marketing qualified leads are generated, the form should not be a hurdle. Less is more is the guiding principle here. Only the information that is absolutely necessary should be requested — for example to subscribe to the newsletter or download a whitepaper. Name, email, and perhaps the company name should suffice at this point. Otherwise you risk the visit being abandoned and lead generation failing.
The Little Helpers
B2B lead generation on the internet is a demanding task with numerous steps. Wherever possible, these should be automated. First and foremost, analytics tools come into play here, which allow you to capture the customer journey and make the success of marketing measures visible. In addition, a CRM system is part of the basic toolkit of professional lead management, where all information converges and where qualified leads can be handed over to sales.
In Summary:
B2B lead generation on the internet is a central task of marketing.
The customer journey provides insight into the right measures.
Needs-based content is the prerequisite for successful lead generation.
Buyer personas help you understand customer needs.
Social media channels must not be neglected in lead generation.
Landing pages and forms must be optimized for lead generation.
Software can effectively support lead management.