There are many factors that come into play when it comes to customer acquisition and getting new b2b sales leads. There are also various approaches to consider that will help you win new customers who will buy your B2B product or service and become repeat customers.
Getting the attention of potential new b2b sales leads is not easy. Getting them interested in your business is even more challenging. You need to develop a proper sales and marketing strategy that includes the buyer journey and the customer personas that you are targeting, and how you plan to reach out to a constant stream of new customers by using various marketing tactics.
We know it’s a lot of work, time and effort. We can relate, we have to do it for ourselves and we help many companies be more effective and efficient in winning new b2b sales leads.
There are quite a few b2b sales leads marketing techniques that you can implement to acquire new customers, build loyal relationships with them and help you remain competitive.
A great place to start is with these four b2b sales leads customer acquisition techniques:
Develop your b2b sales leads buyer personas
The most important step is understanding key insights about the customers (buyer personas) that you are going after. More than likely, your product or service is the ideal solution to help solve some of the problems a certain type of customer group or industry is experiencing. You need to determine who these ideal b2b sales leads are? What do they like?
What are their pain points? What makes these customer personas unique? What is interesting or relevant about them? How can you help them? Why might they be interested in your product or service? And how do you connect with them and help them see the value your product or service offers? This journey of identifying your personas and how you will communicate with each one throughout the various phases of their buying journey is essential in your customer acquisition efforts.
You can’t avoid conducting research here. It’s necessary to figure out:
- Who you are talking to and who makes the decision
- How and through which channels you should be talking to these new customers
- How you should market your brand, product(s) and service(s) to win them over
There is no one-size-fits all in today’s world. Customers are expecting personalization and engagement. They want you to provide them with the right communication at the right time during their buying journey. If you’re not doing this, then you are limiting your efforts in attracting new b2b customers.
Pick your channels
The best channels to use when trying to communicate to potential b2b sales leads are your website, email, social media (think LinkedIn), direct mail, cold calling, web banners, organic SEO (online content), paid search, online display ads, web retargeting, mobile and web push notifications and mobile applications. When marketing to a new customer, any helpful content, campaign, or communication that you share in this early awareness stage of the buying process can be done through these channels.
Create some relatable and helpful content
Developing and sharing useful content is essential in attracting new B2B sales leads. You need to create content that is timely, relevant and useful to potential customers. A great way to create interest is speaking to their pain points (the problems they are experiencing) and how your product or service can resolve those challenges. It’s not about what you can sell here, it’s about how you can help. It’s also about getting your brand out there, as some of these potential customers might not even know that you exist.
Potential customers are always doing their homework when it comes to new products/services. Some examples of content or marketing assets that appeals to them in this evergreen stage are: website blogs, optimized landing pages, videos, e-books, research reports, white papers, case studies, social media content, customer testimonials, webinars, podcasts, articles in online industry publications and any type of how-to content that establishes trust between your company and the customer, and that showcases you as an expert in your industry. All of this wonderful content can be shared through your channels.
Videos are a great example of useful and popular content. As visual consumers, video marketing works well when trying to show how a product or service can help solve a real customer problem. It’s quite helpful to the customer to visually understand your offerings. Plus, it increases traffic to your website, with content that can be easily shared while helping with b2b sales lead generation.
Do your SEO
Now that you’ve identified the right buyers, created relevant content and picked the appropriate channels – it’s time to set up your search engine optimization (SEO).
Did you know that in 2019, websites earned 53 % of their traffic from organic search? Also 93 % of online experiences begin with a search engine query. With numbers like that you can’t afford not to do SEO. Internet users/customers trust organic search results more than paid search ads. This does not mean you should just be doing SEO; you should technically be doing both organic and paid search ads to rank harmoniously in the digital world. From an organic perspective though, SEO will assist in your overall online rankings on search engines. It will make your content more accessible to your customers and the potential ones that you want to acquire.
In the early awareness stage of your customer journey, making sure that your brand is ranking on top search engine ranking pages (SERPs) is essential. At this stage, this is when potential customers are searching for a solution to their problems, and you want to make sure that your solution comes up in their search results. You want your website and online content, such as blogs to be optimized with industry-related keywords, backlinks from authority sites, internal links to different pages on your site, and more. You want to maximize your website’s speed and performance. And you’ll want to make sure your website is optimized for mobile and other screen types, so that visitors can experience your site seamlessly from any device.
Key B2B sales leads payoff
A lot of testing is required throughout all stages of the sales and marketing funnel. There’s no set formula that is guaranteed to bring in new b2b sales leads for your company. However, if you consider and apply the four customer acquisition strategies we mention above, then you’re well on your way to getting your brand, product and services in front of the right people. Here are some other useful lead generation tips that can help you land that client or sales win.
