Health pass in professional events, barrier gestures during physical meetings: it is in this uncertain context that a new year of prospecting begins. In addition to these constraints, there is the growing success of inbound marketing techniques, at the expense of more aggressive commercial strategies. To generate qualified leads, our B2B experience shows that traditional approaches still have a bright future ahead of them.
Here are the 10 techniques that we advise you to use from the start to continue generating leads:
- ABM, or Account-Based Marketing;
- hyper-segmented email marketing;
- community management, but on the right network;
- social selling on Linkedin;
- high value-added content marketing;
- short corporate videos;
- telemarketing, again and again;
- paid referencing, and in particular Google Ads;
- well-constructed landing pages;
- growth hacking.
How to generate qualified leads at the start of the 2021 school year?
Lead generation, literally “lead generation” embodies a priority for many companies. Each commercial re-entry brings new places of contact between brands and targets, and therefore new possibilities for interactions.
our daily lives push us to favor certain lead generation techniques, adapted to a B2B context. Here are the ones that we identify as particularly effective for getting off to a good start in September:
ABM, or Account-Based Marketing
“ Don’t count the people you reach, reach the people that count ”, or, literally, “Don’t count the number of people you reach, reach the people that matter”. This famous quote from David Ogilvy, a big name in copywriting design, embodies the full potential of ABM’s strategies.
ABM campaigns, or Account-Based Marketing, consist in concentrating its commercial efforts on the most strategic accounts for the company. They, therefore, involve setting up ultra-personalized prospecting tactics, based on a detailed analysis of relevant data and the definition of hyper-realistic buyer personas.
Under these conditions, ABM works very efficiently:
- 60% of companies improve their turnover by at least 10% over one year;
- 20% experience a turnover increase of 30% or more (Source: SuperOffice )
The implementation of an ABM strategy nevertheless requires a significant strike force. In particular, it is important to have adequate information on your leads, and therefore to have access to a large qualified database.
Hyper-personalized email marketing
According to a recent study by the Content Marketing Institute on B2B emailing, 70% of marketers believe they have succeeded in generating qualified leads through email. 68% also think that the technique also works to maintain the interest of the lead. 53% also say that marketing automation helps generate sales.
Still often underestimated because perceived as invasive, marketing emails suffer from an unjustified reputation. A prospect who receives useful content adapted to his problems becomes a loyal reader. The entire relevance of this technique, therefore, rests on your brand’s ability to build credibility around attractive and personalized content.
To make sure you hit the mark in your marketing automation campaigns, consider embodying the mailing trends for 2021:
- hyper-segmentation of content, and therefore of your contact base: we have 540,000 B2B emails from decision-makers, to be sure to reach the right people;
- sending the right format to the right stage of the conversion funnel;
- benevolent posture, to build a relationship of trust with the target.
Community management, but on the right network
The ability of social networks to generate qualified leads is well established. 25% of community managers use them primarily to find new customers, even to maintain brand awareness ( Moderator’s Blog ).
Which social network should you favor, in this case, to generate qualified leads? In a B2B context, Linkedin remains the reference:
- this network is the source of 80% of B2B leads generated on social media ( TextMaster );
- Twitter, for its part, is used particularly to reach decision-makers, given that it has a majority of CSP + profiles over 35 and higher education graduates, according to the typical profiles drawn up by SLNWeb ;
- Facebook and Instagram have a more B2C orientation, especially.
To reach your targets on Linkedin, there are different methods:
- publication of in-depth articles on B2B topics;
- construction of convincing storytelling as and when publications;
- pre-sales advice;
- downloadable content suggestions;
- sponsored publications;
- social selling.
- Social Selling on Linkedin
It is not enough to be visible to your targets on social networks, it is still necessary to know how to challenge them. A winning strategy, since 20% of B2B decision-makers buy after a solicitation on social media, according to the Intuiti & La Poste Solutions Business Social Selling Barometer. This solicitation embodies the basis of how social selling works.
How to define social selling? It is a process of detecting potential prospects on the networks, which then evolves into commercial interaction. The community manager is generally responsible for carrying out the monitoring work and looking for prospects. After inviting them to the brand’s “community”, the salesperson takes over to develop a BtoB relationship.
To find out more, read our article on social selling on Linkedin.
- Marketing of high added value content
Who says social media necessarily says marketers are happy to share. If it is possible and even recommended, to write your articles directly on the Linkedin editor, you can also share your content there. This method makes it possible to refer the visitor to a landing page of your website, and therefore to recover valuable data to qualify your leads.
Beyond the detection of prospects, content marketing also allows you to stand out as a benchmark in your professional sector. With this in mind, it is advisable to offer relevant publications for your targets: blog articles, infographics, white papers, models, business cases, and videos., we get great results editing ebooks for our clients. For example, this Air Liquide white paper has been downloaded 1200 times.
- Short corporate videos
Why choose a video to generate qualified leads? Of all the web media that attracts leads, videos stand out – along with articles – as the most-selling:
- Almost 42% of decision-makers who purchased a media post were influenced by a video.
- Videos are the online content that decision-makers admit to watching most often.
- Their visualization is the source of nearly 15% of B2B contacts started on social media. ( Social Selling Barometer 2020 Intuiti / La Poste )
To get to the point and keep the viewer interested, we advise our clients to bet on videos of 2 to 3 minutes maximum. The objective remains, of course, to show the added value of your offer around a few key themes. To make the corporate video for the startup Digispin, for example, we focused the topic around 4 main activities, captured in a single filming location.
- Telemarketing, over and over again
Telemarketing is to detect projects, make qualified appointments and sell your services to your prospects by phone. This lead generation technique, which is particularly effective in B2B, nevertheless suffers from the bad reputation of often poorly calibrated B2C “canvassing” calls.
Telephone prospecting is also experiencing a certain disenchantment due to the trend towards inbound marketing, which assumes that the first step goes to the lead, and not to the brand.
When looking at the most effective prospecting channels, however, 14% of companies put telemarketing first. Many structures continue to train their salespeople in this area.
there are several reasons why we trust telemarketing and cold calling to generate leads for our clients:
- telephone prospecting does not require any specific sales support;
- you can therefore start it very quickly;
- you control the identity and needs of the people you are addressing, much more than with inbound marketing;
- ROI can be measured in the short term.
- SEA and in particular Google Ads
Paid referencing (SEA), particularly in its Google Ads format – ex-Google Adwords – also represents many advantages over inbound marketing:
- you are addressing Internet users who have already shown their interest in your offer or your services;
- you can determine the stage of the buying cycle at which you want to use paid listing;
- with a system like Google Ads, you only spend what you budget;
- you assess your results in real-time and adapt your strategy accordingly.
SEA campaigns, and in particular Google Ads, can nevertheless generate budget leaks in the event of a configuration error. Be careful, therefore, to be well informed, or to surround yourself well.
- Well-constructed landing pages
Landing pages – or landing pages – are at the heart of inbound marketing strategies, but also of B2B growth hacking. Growth hacking, which involves generating as many leads as possible in a very short period, needs powerful sales support. The website, but also the landing pages, must therefore be particularly impactful.
Here are some essential rules for landing pages serving lead generation :
- display a single CTA (Call-to-action) button, preferably above the waterline;
- only offer one clickable area, to avoid losing the reader;
- summarize the offer;
- offer reassuring “social proof”: customer reviews, ratings, label, etc. ;
- if you are using a form, place it at the top of the page so that it is visible.
- Growth hacking to generate qualified leads
As explained above, growth hacking, which means “growth hacking,” is all about growing the business quickly with the help of scarce, but sharp marketing resources.
Contrary to what one might think, this strategy calls for important upstream thinking. To find out more, we advise you to consult these 4 key questions to ask yourself before launching a growth hacking process.
The growth hacking B2B is based on the principle of “hack”: find an effective pass-pass marketing trick to attract leads. The approach, therefore, requires mastering many marketing techniques, trying multiple ideas, and failing regularly before finding the effective path.
This path must generate massive traffic on your site, which must then be activated around interesting content. After the first acquisition period, your customers become spokespersons for the brand with your targets.
To know more
Do you want to understand the so-called “BANT” and “GPCT” lead qualification techniques?
FAQ: generate qualified leads
What is a qualified lead – definition?
A Qualified Lead or Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a contact who has shown an interest in your insurance business and who has provided enough information for your sales team to determine if they match one of your targets. The qualified lead is considered to be in the middle of the conversion funnel.
What is a lead magnet?
Lead magnets are content intended to attract prospects and collect their personal information to qualify them. These include content marketing.
How to qualify leads?
For a lead to be qualified, you must have gathered a lot of information about him. This data can be compiled using inbound marketing and outbound prospecting methods.
