Businesses can only survive with a steady pipeline of leads. In the B2B sector, a few long-term contracts and a healthy lead pipeline can go a long way toward keeping your business afloat and growing.
All lead generation tactics work to an extent, but they need to be refined based on:
- What works well in your industry
- What you’re selling
- Who you’re selling to
If you don’t know what lead generation tactics work best for you, here are 25 ways to generate more B2B sales leads. But we’ll be going through some of the best opportunities that you can use today to start generating leads for your business.
5 Proven Ways to Generate B2B Leads
1. Add Chatbots to Your Site
Customer service and experience are paramount in today’s business world. Businesses expect rapid replies and top-of-the-line customer service. If a potential lead is on your site and doesn’t find answers to their questions, they’ll go to a competitor.
One method of boosting customer service without having to hire a 24/7 team is to use chatbots.
A chatbot answers customer questions, improves satisfaction and works around the clock. You can even use a chatbot to capture email addresses.
2. Ask Customers for a Genuine Review
Reviews build credibility and trustworthiness. In fact, buyers and decision-makers base a lot of their purchasing decisions on the reviews that are left by past customers and clients. You cannot ask for a good review or incentivize reviews because it’s unethical.
Instead, what you can do is:
- Send out emails after an order and ask for the client to leave a review
- Ask a client to kindly leave a review after a business deal
A review provides you with valuable feedback of how you’re doing as well as helps you generate more leads. With 92% of decision makers buying based on reviews, reviews are one of the key ways to generate new leads.
3. Buy PPC or Regular Ads
Every marketing budget should have some room set aside for ad buys. PPC is a great way to generate high-quality leads and can help jumpstart business overnight. You can purchase ads on:
Buying ads should be only a small part of your lead generation strategy. Organic leads are best, but search engine optimization takes a lot of time to reach fruition. If you need new leads and have the budget for it, you can lure in highly targeted leads with PPC.
4. Send Follow-ups When Cold Emailing
Did you know that only 24% of cold emails are opened up? And an even smaller percentage of these mails actually result in a lead being followed. Sending out follow-up emails can increase your open rate and also reduce the amount of time and resources spent on cold emailing.
Ideally, you’ll:
- Send your first follow-up email three days after you send the first cold mail
- Send up to 5 follow up emails over time
Monday and Friday are bad days to send cold emails because you’ll receive a far lower response rate. People are just getting into the office on Monday and dealing with important matters sent over the weekend. Friday is the day that people are clamoring to end the week right and trying to push last minute deals through.
Tuesday and Thursday provide the highest response rate and are good days to send original and follow-up emails.
5. Create Webinars to Boost Credibility
Webinars and live videos are a few of the top ways to boost engagement and build credibility. Whether you use a webinar platform or decide to live stream on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram, you can do so while generating leads for your business.
The use of webinars allows you to:
- Capture email addresses through sign-up forms
- Educate viewers
- Display your expertise
- Demonstrate your product or service
You can use live video or webinars to reach key influencers in a business. With the right material and personality, a single webinar can generate leads and be used as an additional content asset for future use.
Increasing B2B sales leads is an art, and it’s something that you should routinely test, change and adapt based on how potential leads respond. Certain lead generation tactics work better than others depending on your niche, so experiment and leverage what works today because audience behavior can change tomorrow.
What is your business doing to increase your B2B sales leads in 2021?
