Bad B2B Lead Generation Strategies
Setting up an effective B2B lead generation strategy is harder than it looks. Here are the top 5 B2B lead generation strategies for 2023:
1. Content Marketing
2. Google Ads
3. LinkedIn Ads
4. Email Marketing
5. SEO
Content Marketing:
We started with content marketing because just a few good pieces of content can fuel your email, ppc, social and SEO campaigns. You can find them on our website, 9 Google Ads Mistakes to Avoid. We use this one piece of content in our SEO, Google Ads campaigns, LinkedIn social post and ads, cold email outreach and our newsletter.
There's already too much mediocre content online. Most of it was put there to game SEO algorithms or it's just company sales copy that drones on but doesn't educate.
Good content inspires and educates. It answers the question you were asking when you typed your query into Google in the first place. We are big fans of Marcus Sheridan's book: They Ask, You Answer. It will help you step up your content game and in turn, convert prospects to new customers.
https://www.amazon.com/They-Ask-You-Answer-Revolutionary/dp/8126568062/
B2B Lead Generation Strategies: Google Ads:
I always say Google Ads is like New York City: If you can make it here you can make it anywhere. Google ads is a competitive, expensive, fluid marketplace and it is essential to any business that wants to do business online.
If you are struggling to make it on Google ads then you have a problem. Either with your messaging, content, offer, pricing, the list goes on. It's a problem you need to solve. Google ads gives you almost immediate feedback on how your offer is working and whether or not it resonates with your target audience. It can be struggle to get that right. It can be expensive. However, once you do begin to see success you will have take the first step in truly communicating with your prospects.
To learn more about B2B Google Ads campaign strategies and tactics, click here.
LinkedIn Ads:
LinkedIn has become the social media channel of choice for targeting prospects. It can also be hard to make work because at this point, it's over saturated. It's as if every business targeting a B2B audience woke up one day and said, "Hey, we should run ads on LinkedIn!"
If you run ads on LinkedIn with a image ad and some sales copy tied to a form fill chances are you will fail. When you are going to advertise on LinkedIn think audiences first, then your offer. Start here, make sure your website has the LinkedIn Insight tag set up for remarketing. Already done that? Great, now create a few more Insight and segment them based on the content or offers they've engaged with.
You can also upload your own audience to engage with them via Linkedin. There are many ways to make LinkedIn work. Running a basic ad to a couple of audience segments may be the hardest way.
Email Marketing:
Study after study shows that email marketing has the highest ROI of any of the B2B lead generation strategies we've outlined here. This makes sense as the cost of developing an email and sending it is relatively low compared to paid ads and SEO.
The problem is you need to have an engaged list. The only way to do that is to create a steady stream of new content that people actually want to consume.
Email for B2B works best when it's part of a lead nurture strategy whereby you get your prospect to engage with one of your pieces of content and then move them along the buyer's journey with additional content.
We love HubSpot for this. It has a powerful workflow system that can branch and offer different content based on the prospects interaction (or lack thereof) with your website.
B2B Lead Generation Strategies: SEO
SEO is the only way to go! Or, if you want to have to pay for almost every visitor that comes your website, don't do SEO!
SEO is a must. There are some upfront costs in getting your content together and making sure it appeals to Google. Long term, SEO still ranks up there with email in terms of having the best ROI.
When we do an SEO audit for a new client these are the mistakes we find most often:
- Content not optimized for Google. Even a basic SEO tool like Yoast for wordpress is better than nothing.
- "Salesy" that doesn't answer any of your prospect's questions, it just goes on and on about what you have to offer.
- Bad website architecture which makes it hard to navigate your website. Google's best practices state that your main content should never be more that 2-3 clicks away from any page on your website.
We use SEMrush. It's a powerful tool for B2B SEO.
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