Lead generation in the B2B niche: how to implement the work correctly

Stable development of any business is the result of effectively attracting the target audience and holding its attention over a long period of time. This is relevant for absolutely any interaction models, although there are a number of fundamental differences. In particular, if we talk about large-scale categories, then all companies represented on the market can be divided into 2 separate categories: B2C, that is, business-to-consumer and B2B, respectively, business-to-business. So, B2C involves direct interaction with the end consumer, i.e. an individual, and the B2B option involves the sale of goods by one business to another company, organization, i.e. a legal entity.

Working with B2B business is more complicated, requires more time, a more comprehensive and professional approach. The fact is that here the decision to purchase is mostly made collectively, preliminary negotiations and approvals are required. As a result, the transaction cycle can take months, and the decision to purchase itself takes a very long time. In most cases, we are talking about expensive goods that require comprehensive technical consultation, relevant calculations, specifications. And here, classic advertising and other methods of attracting an audience, typical for B2C business, will be irrelevant. In the B2B niche, companies need to focus on more advanced performance marketing. Here you need to develop a personal solution that will be relevant specifically to your situation and will ensure a stable influx of the target audience into the business.

Today we will dwell in detail on what B2B sales are and why they require a completely different approach. We will provide 3 main challenges that are relevant for this market niche. We will talk about who can be classified as leads in B2B business. We will consider the main lead generation channels and suggest ways to get potential buyers here. We will provide a number of recommendations that will help you develop the most effective lead generation strategy in the B2B niche. We will describe sequentially all the work that needs to be done in this case. We will provide a number of the most common mistakes that prevent B2B businesses from actively attracting an audience. The information provided will allow you to gain a deeper understanding of this issue and ensure excellent lead generation even in such a rather complex market niche.

Specifics of B2B sales: what is important to know

The B2B market is not just a different sales format, but also a completely different approach to work, including attracting the target audience. If we talk about classic e-commerce, then the key task here will be to interest a potential buyer, transfer him to the official website of the business, and then systematically carry him along the sales funnel until the purchase is made. In the B2B sphere, everything works completely differently. And here are some characteristic moments:

• the decision to purchase is made more rationally, the emotional component is minimized here;
• any product will require deeper expertise;
• a large number of people are involved in the sales process itself, here one manager is no longer enough;
• the sales funnel is longer, complex in its majority taking several months;
• the key task of the business is not to ensure instant sales, but to attract as much attention to the business as possible from potential clients, to emphasize its expertise, to distinguish it from competitors.

It is this specificity that has a serious impact on the development of the company as a whole, and on attracting leads, in particular.

What problems does B2B business face in practice?

Working in a fairly complex B2B niche market is mostly associated with a number of specific challenges and problems. In particular, here it is worth highlighting 3 main aspects:

1. Targeting a fairly narrow audience. And the difficulty here is that your potential buyers can literally be counted on your fingers. These are not thousands of clients who will line up for your must-have products. Ideally, if you can collect a dozen good contacts in a month. But in the end, each such client can bring your business thousands of dollars. And this means that all important advertising campaigns should be as precise and narrow as possible. Such that they could attract really good contacts. To implement such ideas, performance campaigns are mostly used, focused on a narrow segment of the target audience. In some cases, it would be useful to additionally segment the audience by geolocation, type of company, as well as the roles they will play in the future project. It's one thing if you are targeting the head of the organization to which you want to sell your product and quite another if you are contacting an ordinary manager.
2. Incorrect choice of tone of voice. A similar problem often arises in practice when B2B companies use the same style of communication with the audience as the mass B2C segment. As a result, such advertising looks too flashy and unnatural. Agree, the phrase "Buy one pack of tea and get the second one for free" will be absolutely irrelevant if your company sells commercial real estate. Here, a more reliable and proven option would be to develop a solid portfolio indicating the variety of the products themselves, the features of their application, and their main advantages. It would not be superfluous to add implemented cases, visual 3D models that literally create the effect of presence. To emphasize your professionalism, it is also worth using technical language. One that will be understandable to professionals in your niche. Understand that here you are not targeting an audience from Instagram, but respectable business people. And the style of communication with them should be appropriate.
3. Advertising your product, your company. When working in the B2B niche, first of all, it is necessary to demonstrate the benefits that the client receives when interacting with you. If we return to the example with commercial real estate, then here you can show the thoughtfulness of the interior space, providing maximum comfort and convenience of the future office, emphasize good natural lighting of the premises, energy efficiency of double-glazed windows, etc. In this case, you initially show that in the future the owner will not have to spend a lot of effort and energy on re-equipping the office space, paying bills for heating or air conditioning of rooms. That is, focus on what problems and pains of the client your product solves.

If you take these 3 points into account, then you will minimize problems in the subsequent promotion of your business and in attracting the target audience to it. Now let's move on to getting to know what B2B leads are and how to direct them to your business.

B2B leads: who are they?

By what term, B2B leads, we mean potential clients of a company who have shown interest in a particular commercial offer. Unlike B2C leads, here we are not talking directly about consumers, but about business representatives. That is, these will be people who represent a particular company and want to discuss your offer. This also includes those who leave their contact information for communication or fill out an application.

But here it is also important to understand that we are not talking about business clients. That is, B2B leads can potentially become them, since we are talking about people who have shown interest in your offer. And the more effectively you engage in lead generation, the more potential clients you will attract to your business. In essence, B2B power generation works approximately as follows:

• You work through the channels where your audience is present, launch the appropriate advertising in them.
• A group of potential customers is gathered, who may be interested in your products. It is important to involve people here.
• Some potential buyers are eliminated, but the rest become your customers.

To transform a lead into a client, a B2B business will need to prepare an offer that will contain real value for both the legal entity and its target audience. And if your advertising turns out to be irrelevant, if it sounds unconvincing, then, alas, you will not be able to transform the lead into a real client.

But to organize the most effective work, it is important to understand what are the advantages and disadvantages of working in the B2B niche in principle and, accordingly, in attracting an audience to the business.

Advantages and disadvantages of B2B business in terms of attracting leads

Absolutely any business model, regardless of the direction of activity, volumes, has both strengths and weaknesses. Among other things, this is also true for B2B business. In particular, the main advantages of this direction are:

• the ability to receive quite an impressive profit even when working with several clients: let us repeat that you can earn tens of thousands of dollars on one contract;
• lower competition rates compared to the same B2C segment, or even its complete absence in the case of a unique business niche;
• a fairly high interest of a potential client in buying: your offer will mainly be responded to by people who are really interested in the company's products;
• wide geography of business, often covering more than one region and even more than one country: there are practically no local brands in this segment.

Along with these advantages, we can also highlight disadvantages. In particular, the effective operation of a B2B business, the stability of attracting a target audience will directly depend on how qualified your staff is. A priori, professionals in their field should work here. It is also important to understand that the stability of income in this case will directly depend on how things are going with potential clients. If your customers face financial problems, then your business will also suffer, as it will lose a large customer.

That is, it is important for you to understand that well-implemented lead generation in the B2B segment will allow you to get excellent income from just a couple of clients. But if it turns out that one of them leaves for a number of reasons, then your company's income will decrease significantly. And this means that your key task is to organize subsequent work to attract the target audience as effectively as possible.

The main channels of lead generation in the B2B business niche

By and large, lead generation as such can be limited only by the imagination of marketers who will be engaged in the implementation of this task. You can experiment with different methods, use all sorts of tools, ultimately comparing key indicators and highlighting the options that will be the most effective. But still, it is important to understand that we are talking about B2B business, which has its own clearly defined specifics, which we have already mentioned above. Therefore, it is better to rely on truly reliable and proven solutions, namely:

1. Contextual advertising using Google Ads.
2. Working with the LinkedIn social network.
3. Classic SEO promotion.
4. Promotion in social networks (SMM).
5. Targeted advertising.
6. Seminars, webinars and other similar events.

We will now consider each of these lead generation channels in more detail so that you can navigate the available solutions and ultimately choose the options that will be most effective in your B2B business.

Contextual advertising using Google Ads

Due to the rather bright specifics of the B2B business, contextual advertising is not used here as often as when working in the B2C niche. But still, in some cases it is worth using. And here it is important to understand that the frequency of requests in the B2B segment will be noticeably lower, while the cost per click, on the contrary, will be higher. In addition, in practice, you may encounter certain difficulties when compiling a semantic core. But if you approach the implementation of this idea as professionally as possible, then contextual advertising is guaranteed to provide excellent results in lead generation. In particular, this solution should be used in practice by businesses that have been operating on the market for a long time and have a good, well-deserved reputation. The result of the work in this case can be the following:

• increase in the number of real clients;
• maintaining stable interest in the business from regular customers, returning old buyers;
• minimizing the dependence of the general marketing strategy of the company's development on organic traffic.

In principle, contextual advertising can be tried to launch various IT projects and startups. But the goals here will be somewhat different. As an option, it will be possible to test marketing hypotheses as quickly as possible, determine the priority direction in the promotion of your product, estimate the approximate cost of the client depending on the volume of traffic.

But still, practice shows that contextual advertising gives the best results for local companies, for those who sell their professional services (marketing, consulting agencies, website development, software, etc.). It can also be used when working with some online stores. But Google Ads will be a great assistant in implementing this strategy, will help optimize work and get the maximum result.

Using the LinkedIn social network

LinkedIn is a fairly specific social network, which can rightfully be called one of the most effective tools in attracting leads to B2B business. If you analyze the general statistics for this market segment, you can see that over 80% of all potential customers generated through social networks are directly LinkedIn users.

Moreover, in this case you attract high-quality leads. These are those who are highly likely to enter into subsequent interaction with the business, become regular customers. Mostly, about 85% of all LinkedIn users are leading company managers, CEOs and even business owners. That is why B2B companies should rely on this platform during lead generation.

Classic SEO promotion

SEO promotion can rightfully be called one of the best options when working in the B2B business niche, as it allows you to attract the attention of not only an interested audience, but also all those who can be classified as "cold clients". Here, the main emphasis is on the expert work of specialists, as well as on the use of modern tools that allow the official representative of the company to be at the top of search results.

Of course, in this case, it will be necessary to organize quite a massive work, and the results will have to wait for most of the months, but they will be as stable and long-term as possible. In addition, the presence of a site at the top of the search results is something that in itself indicates the reliability of the company, its stability, professionalism, and expertise.

SMM, i.e. promotion in social networks

Every modern business has probably already appreciated in practice the advantages that work in social networks provides. This is a truly unique opportunity to introduce potential clients in detail to the company itself, its products, services. And it is noteworthy that promotion in social networks will be a universal solution for absolutely any business, including the B2B segment. Among the main advantages of SMM it is worth highlighting:

• a huge variety of methods and analytical tools that allow you to automatically collect all the necessary data, structure and analyze it, evaluating the results of launched campaigns;
• ensuring effective promotion of goods, services, the ability to target exactly those sites where your target audience is widely represented;
• the ability to use the most accurate targeting, taking into account interests, demographic indicators, positions and many other parameters;
• ensuring the most simple and convenient communication with the target audience, providing quick answers to questions, smoothing out conflict situations;
• the ability to show yourself as an expert in a particular market niche, provide the audience with useful information for them, consult, introduce the product;

That is, we can confidently say that social networks, including in B2B business, will be an excellent solution in order to really tell about yourself, your product, present it from the best side, and not just launch a banal advertisement.

Targeted advertising in social networks

Launching targeted advertising in social networks is another fairly effective way of lead generation, including in B2B business. But here you also need to attract a good specialist. As a result of correctly performed work, you will be able to:

• find your target audience in social networks and attract their attention to your products, services and brand as a whole;
• increase recognition of your company on the Internet, improve loyalty from potential customers;
• speed up the process of recruiting leads and increase the percentage of their conversion into buyers;
• improve conversion rates, get a lot of tools for generating detailed and visual analytical reports;
• provide maximum control over the spending of the advertising budget, its quick optimization, the ability to redirect it to a new channel.

Targeted advertising gives excellent results when working with a new business, sector. It allows you to select a "cold" audience and gradually warm up its interest in your products, services and the company as a whole. It is convenient that it can also be used when working in a fairly narrow specialization, getting a good effect at the end.

Webinars, seminars

Webinars, seminars and other similar events will help to introduce your target audience to the products in the most visual and comprehensive way. In this format, you can not only present the product, but also focus on its distinctive features, specifics of application, show what problems and pains the client can solve.

Also, experts attribute the most significant advantages of this option for attracting leads to B2B business to the ability to create a large-scale database or expand the existing one. It is convenient that here you can hold both online and offline events. Alternatively, you can provide access to the seminar only to those people who first fill out the appropriate form, indicating their contact information in it. This is true for both formats (online and offline), with the difference that in the first case it will be a standard form on the website, and in the second, most likely, a paper version.

Purchase of B2B leads: possible options

Above, we have considered the channels that can be used to naturally attract potential buyers to your business. But, along with them, there is also the possibility of directly purchasing leads. Here we are talking about the possibility of attracting an audience of potential customers. This is a completely legal event that is quite actively used in practice by representatives of B2B businesses. In particular, in this case, you can use the following services and platforms:

1. CPA exchanges. We are talking about platforms on which webmasters attract traffic to target business sites, ultimately receiving either a percentage of sales or a commission for each attracted lead. But here we would like to draw attention to the fact that such a scheme in practice gives higher results when working in the B2C segment, but still, in practice, there have been more than once worthy cases directly in the B2B niche. It is impossible to call this method universal in this case. That is, you can experiment, but initially you should not place an absolute bet on this option. We would also like to warn you right away that this option is not suitable at all for complex products, which means that you should not even spend money and time on launching it.
2. Special lead generators. This is an option for attracting potential buyers that should be used in practice by a stable business that has already formed a professional sales department. That is, you will pay for the services of a lead generator, and he, in turn, will guarantee the implementation of target actions and minimize potential risks. But the difficulty in this case is that most B2B markets are quite narrow-profile. This means that it will not be possible to generate a large number of potential buyers for the most part. That is, you cannot count on attracting hundreds or even thousands of new clients to your business in this way.
3. Your own dealer or partner networks of your business. This solution is quite similar to classic network marketing. Its essence is that you initially form a group of specialists who agree to work with you on the principle of receiving payment for each attracted lead. In a similar way, you can start working with marketplaces, your own online representations. In practice, such channels give quite good results, but it is important to understand that the competition here is quite high, and every year it increases in most niches.
4. Specialized Internet agencies. Since in today's review we are talking directly about the B2B market, we can say with confidence that this option is capable of giving the best results in practice. The very specifics of the work assume that you pay a certain subscription fee to the agency, and then provide an additional fee for each completed target action for now. As a result, you are guaranteed to receive potential clients, and the agency itself - income. In addition, such cooperation will be mutually beneficial, and also - personalized. The fact is that in this case, all solutions will be developed exclusively for your business, which will ultimately give quite decent results. If necessary, you can quickly make adjustments aimed at increasing efficiency.

If you are just thinking about buying leads, we recommend paying attention to the last option. It is capable of giving the best results in practice, regardless of what niche you work in. Other methods can be used as additional ones, increasing the efficiency of work and expanding the attracted audience.

Features of developing an effective lead generation strategy in B2B business

The presence of significant differences in B2B business, which we already mentioned at the beginning of our review, also leaves its mark on the strategy for attracting leads here. Regardless of whether you seek professional help from specialized agencies or decide to do all the upcoming work yourself, in most cases the entire process of future work will be carried out as follows:

• Initial study of the material, during which the tasks that need to be solved, as well as your individual preferences, are determined. Here you get an overall picture of future work, evaluate the channels and tools that can be used in practice.
• Setting specific goals, as well as indicating the time frame for achieving them. It is important to understand what you are striving for when starting this work. If you miss this stage or set the wrong goals for yourself, then in the end you can get completely unpredictable results that will be far from desired. It is also important to distribute this goal among specific indicators for both leads and sales, which will ultimately allow you to track the results obtained as accurately as possible.
• Checking advertising channels, marketing strategies, your products or services, defining a portrait of the target audience. Here we would like to draw your attention to the fact that you should primarily focus not on ordinary managers, but on people who can make specific decisions, including making a purchase. That is, it is important to determine the group of such potential clients and then focus on it.
• Developing a direct work plan for at least 1-3 months, depending on the developed strategy. Here, first of all, you should focus on increasing interest and awareness of the market for your business as a whole. That is, in order to ultimately get a good result, you must tell about yourself and make sure that potential clients learn as much useful and valuable information about you as possible, emphasizing your authority and professionalism. Without such knowledge, you will not be able to generate interest in your own offers. That is, you cannot do without a good and thought-out advertising campaign.
• Direct management of the process, control over its main indicators, making adjustments if necessary until the set goals are achieved. Here you must understand that making each of your leads become a real client is impossible. But all your actions should be aimed at achieving the highest possible indicators. And here it is important for you to constantly, but at the same time unobtrusively remind about yourself, emphasize the advantages and uniqueness of your offer. By analyzing the results of lead generation, you will be able to understand how effective your strategy was, how many leads you managed to attract and transform them into clients. The information obtained will help optimize business processes, as well as the budget allocated for them.

Despite the fact that the given algorithm is quite basic and universal, it allows you to make sure how large-scale the work is ahead and that the entire lead generation process should be under the full control of specialists who are well versed in all the nuances. And this, in turn, will be the key to high efficiency.

Mistakes that are most often made in practice during lead generation

If you do not delve into the lead generation process itself in as much detail as possible, do not take into account the specifics of the B2B business, then you can make a number of mistakes, and quite significant ones. And it is not possible to list absolutely everything here. We will now highlight the problems that are encountered most frequently in practice. In particular, we are talking about the following:

1. Lack of a comprehensive approach to analyzing the target audience. Let us repeat that it is important to clearly understand who exactly you are targeting with your campaigns. These should not be ordinary managers, but directly people who are able to influence decision-making.
2. A weak commercial offer that is unable to demonstrate the features and advantages of your product, convey to the audience its usefulness, and the ability to solve current problems. If another business does not see value in your goods or services, it will not contact you with an order and will not even be interested in your company as a whole.
3. Problems in the work of marketers and the sales department, inconsistency between them. Alternatively, marketers can attract an audience that is clearly not interested in your products, or the sales department itself will not be able to prove the value of your products to a potential client and transform a good lead into a buyer.
4. Chaotic lead generation. Here we are talking about the fact that a number of companies can simply spend huge amounts of money on advertising, but do not pay due attention to developing the concept, monitoring the effectiveness of the launched strategies. As a result, the budget is wasted and does not produce the desired results.
5. Refusal to score potential clients. Let us remind you that in B2B business there are practically no spontaneous decisions. Any client will take a balanced approach to your offer, evaluate it, weigh all the pros and cons. But in order not to lose their interest, it is important for you to remind them of yourself from time to time, motivate them to perform the target action, and do it as unobtrusively as possible. That is, without scoring, you can simply lose a rather promising client.

It is also important to think through communication down to the smallest detail, primarily focusing on your potential clients. Eliminate complex forms of access, present information as simply, accessibly, and consistently as possible. Think about what you would expect to see in the place of a potential client and offer them something similar. If you do not miss such moments, you will see how much more effective your strategy has become, and the number of B2B leads has increased significantly.

Summing up

The B2B market segment has its own specifics, features that complicate the management of many business tasks, including lead generation. We hope that the information we have provided in today's review will be useful and valuable to you, will help you develop the most effective strategies for attracting your target audience and minimize potential errors. Do not forget to regularly analyze the results obtained, compare them with the predicted ones, because this is the only way to understand whether you are moving in the right direction or simply wasting your advertising budget.

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