Lead generation is not the same as branding and it is not social media

Dear marketer,

Get as many prospects to say “yes” to your offer and acquire qualified leads.

What does “qualified lead” mean? Qualified lead is a potential buyer for our offer with the purchasing power and CNI (Challenges, Needs, interests). This buyer is able to authorize the purchase.

With lead generation like any other marketing process, we’ll have higher success rate in connecting with our audience if we start with the prospect in mind. 90% of B2B buyers are searching around for answers to their problems. In other words, 90% of B2B searches are problem/solution type queries.

B2B purchasing process

B2B buyers will not likely be instant buyers when it comes to high price products and services.

Typically, the product champion from the potential buying organization may be a manager of a group that will directly benefit from the use of our offer.

However, a purchase of this nature usually requires the top management’s buy-in as they authorize the purchase. For this reason, these leads will need nurturing, follow ups, and care to finalize.

Such purchase decision will very likely have a direct impact on the buyer company’s bottom line profits.

Let’s examine this process

Our lead generation content must address the prospect’s key concerns and how our solution will help resolve those key concerns.

How will this prospect know that our product will solve her challenges? She must first know of us and our offer.

This is where lead generation comes in to provide product information in a compelling way which will help the buyer visualize how our offer can resolve her challenges.

But something else has to happen before this champion approaches the higher management for approval. She has to be assured that our offer will deliver the promise. It’s only then that she’ll begin to trust our solution as an answer to her quest.

Our B2B champion will also consider her personal needs and challenges to ensure this purchase will not in some way tarnish her professional reputation. Thus, we need to carefully consider how our content engages, educates, and persuades.

So, how do we accomplish this Know, Like, and Trust marketing approach?

We accomplish this goal by establishing a relationship and by providing useful content that the prospect can use on regular basis.

 Create effective lead generation content and marketing

There is a lot of ineffective marketing out there. We see it all around us. Marketing that doesn’t resonate with the ideal audience.

We also know that no one likes to be sold. We prefer to make the buying choice at our own timing. As I mentioned earlier, this process can take longer with B2B buyers due to the nature and complexity of the needed products and services.

If done properly, content marketing is an effective approach to maintain a relationship until the buyer is reasonably assured to move ahead with the purchase process. In B2B, this process may involve multiple commitments and levels of authorization.

The following is a high level of lead generation funnel marketing that can increase opt-in and result in increase of the number of qualified leads:

• Set up a lead magnet— the offers may range from free eBooks to special reports to white papers for download
• Direct traffic to our lead magnet page with direct response lead generation copywriting
• Encourage prospects to download our lead magnet in exchange for their name and email address

What’s the point of opt-in and request for contact info?

The prospect raises her hand and gives us permission to communicate with her directly. This is the first step in our journey with the prospect. Our sincere effort starting at this point can result in gaining the trust of a future client.

A good percentage of these leads will eventually become clients if the lead generation funnel is designed and implemented properly. The ideal outcome is that the prospects decide they benefit from our information sharing and see our products and services as a potential resource for their organization.

Helping prospects to find us

Using the search engines is one of the effective ways for a B2B buyer who is looking for an answer to find us.

We can have a wonderful offer that can really make a difference in the success of businesses. We can also have a very effective website. But the prospects will never even know of our existence if we don’t show up where they’re looking.

The use of search engine optimization helps gain rankings while showcasing our services. Placement of benefit driven copy on search results will attract the prospects to click on our company link. This process will lead prospects to our lead magnet download and acquiring prospect’s contact information.

Additionally, using SEO copywriting on our company website helps our web pages to get picked up by Google’s organic search and move us up in search results.

This is where effective lead generation campaign combined with relevant prospect centric content help us stand out among the vast ocean of mediocre! And this is how businesses find star companies that are dedicated to provide great products and services.

By this point,

If we’ve done our job correctly, our prospects have agreed to receive content from us and find our information useful. I’d say we’re well on our way with effective lead generation marketing.

We have our email list. Now what?

We’re ready to start our conversation with a group of possibly high conversion qualified leads.

Our email marketing campaign will pick up the baton from this point in our marketing to help persuade prospects to say “yes” to our offers through a series of customized emails designed for our list and their key concerns.

Additional lead generation nuggets

Each lead generation piece should be written with the right prospect in mind.

Lead generation stresses the offer. The offer may be the download of a white paper for new technology.

All lead generation content must include a call to action to direct prospects in taking a specific action.

Additional response statistics

1. A lead magnet piece can increase the Regular Response Rate by factor of 2
2. Ask only for name and email, if doable, to maximize opt-ins— data shows that each additional request field reduces lead conversions by 10%. For example: adding a field for “Company name” and “Title” may reduce the opt-in by 20%.

In this post, I shared:

• A high level definition of B2B lead generation process
• The effective use of lead magnet for lead generation
• And bringing web traffic to build our internal lead generation list

Hope you found this content helpful. You’re welcome to share this blog post with a colleague or a friend who may benefit from this information.