Prioritizing qualified leads over other prospects can boost the ROI of your sales team. A qualified lead is a person who has indicated an interest in a product or an offer and who is potentially closer to making a purchase decision.
Focusing on qualified leads is a strategic decision that makes sense but generating these leads can be a challenge. The following lead generation strategies can help.
1- Generate Qualified Leads by Understanding the Customer Journey
As the customer journey continues to evolve, potential customers tend to spend a larger share of their time researching the decision independently. This trend leaves little room for B2B marketers to influence this decision since 27% of the customer journey consists of independent online research.
Leveraging Google Analytics and other tools to map this journey is an essential step. Once you have a good understanding of what this journey looks like, you can identify the key moments where you can generate leads.
Research suggests that approaching prospects early in their journey can yield better results, especially if you use a consultative sales strategy when presenting your product or service.
You’ll get more out of your marketing efforts if you use data to create a detailed customer journey map. You can also use data to pinpoint when and where you should generate leads, for instance, by using KPIs to compare the ROI of different groups of prospects that you approached at different moments in their journey.
Making data-driven decisions can boost sales numbers by 2 to 5%, making this first step essential for increasing revenues for your B2B company.
2- Build a Strong Marketers Plan Around Blogging
Blog posts should be the centerpiece of your B2B marketing strategy. The length of a blog post is ideal for addressing the pain points the reader is experiencing and presenting a solution. Blogging is also a great way to build trust and establish thought leadership.
You can get more out of blogging by integrating these efforts into a larger content marketing strategy. You can, for instance, share links to your most recent posts as part of your social media marketing efforts.
With budget cuts being the new normal for B2B marketers, there are a few B2B digital marketing strategies you can use to get more out of blogging:
- Make sure each blog post has a prominent call to action CTA at the end to generate leads.
- Use a strong internal linking structure to encourage readers to consume more content on your site.
- Leverage search insights and data to determine which topics decision makers are likely to find interesting.
- Try creating different types of blog posts. An informative blog post can help a prospect progress on their journey, but a case study can also show how you can help the prospect.
- Optimization is important. Make sure your blog posts are easy to access on mobile, and optimize this content with strong keywords to make it easier to find via search engines.
3- B2B Digital Marketing Strategies That Work: White Papers, e-books, and More
Long-form content can go further than blogging and provide prospects with the kind of in-depth information they need to make a purchase decision.
There are different formats to explore. An eBook can be a great way to provide your target audience with a guide to a complex topic. The white paper is a better format for complex buying decisions that require careful financial considerations.
You can also schedule webinars to give prospects an opportunity to interact with industry experts and ask questions. Record the sessions to create high-quality video content.
Because interacting with long-form content indicates that a prospect is getting closer to making a purchase decision, this type of content can become extremely valuable in the lead generation process.
You’ll get better results if you introduce the topic of a white paper or webinar in a short blog post. You can then introduce a CTA that encourages readers to take the next step and download the long-form content or sign up for the webinar.
You should ask prospects to share their contact information to access the download or register. It’s important to establish trust before this step and to show how the long-form content will deliver value.
With quality long-form content in place, you can use marketing automation to bring prospects to these pages and continuously get new qualified leads as people download this content. Once you have obtained an email address, you can start nurturing this lead by emailing them series that will pick up where the white paper left off.
4- Structure Your Website with Pillar Pages
Using pillar pages can deliver value, facilitate navigation on your site, and help you generate quality leads. The purpose of a pillar page is to educate readers about a topic. As the reader interacts with the page, they’ll see several links to other pages that explore related subtopics.
Pillar pages play an important role in the self-directed portion of the buying journey. They allow prospects to research a topic while choosing which subtopics they want to explore for a more personalized approach.
The different landing pages for the subtopics connected to the pillar page provide you with opportunities to generate marketing qualified leads.
Here’s how you can implement this digital marketing strategy:
- Make your pillar pages easy to browse and interact with. Use white space to draw attention to important information and links to subtopic pages.
- When a visitor decides to explore a subtopic, make sure the landing page features a CTA. As prospects explore subtopics and learn about the topic in more depth, they are likely to get closer to making a purchase decision, and the CTAs should reflect it.
- Personalize the subtopic pages for different target audiences. The subtopics a prospect decides to explore might reflect different pain points or priorities.
- Connect your pillar pages to different marketing channels. Users should have access to different options to stay in touch with your company, including social media, email, or in-person contact.
Conclusion
These different strategies will help you generate qualified leads. You’ll get better results if you use different KPIs to assess which leads are the most valuable and when you should approach prospects to boost your ROI, so you can tailor these strategies to your industry and target audience.
