If you rely on B2B lead generation as a business then you’re not alone. 85% of businesses engaging in B2B marketing say that lead generation is their top goal with content marketing. 

Simply put, B2B lead generation is important.

There is no end to the list of strategies available to business owners to get more leads. From visiting trade shows, to leveraging digital marketing, and even buying leads – it can be hard to sort through all of your options to choose the best combination for you.

There is an art and a science to generating high-quality leads that will eventually convert into clients. Whether you choose to generate leads from social, trade shows, or other methods, here are a few B2B lead generation tips to help you pump up your efforts. 

To start, let’s talk about buying contact lists: 

The Controversy Behind Buying Contact Lists

We’ll be candid with you, this is easy to do wrong. But, if you’re smart, and a little lucky, this can be an immediate solution that can flood your pipeline with qualified leads. 

Before we dive into the application of this B2B lead generation strategy, we have to talk about the controversy and hazards that surround this tactic. 

Since 2010, data privacy has become a hot topic in the press – but the value of people’s personal information has skyrocketed as digital marketing became to cornerstone of every business’s marketing strategy. Businesses like Facebook, Google, and other social platforms have been under special scrutiny for accusations of unethical data collection and data sharing. 

These large companies collect data like your name, location, interests, job title, online activities,  and IP addresses- many people feel this is an invasion of privacy and there is a push for legislators across the world to crack down on this issue.

Many big businesses have pivoted to position themselves as “data-safe” by building data protection into their products and adopting new policies around data sharing. These changes have hurt businesses everywhere, but especially small businesses see who relied on these platforms to use people’s personal data to deliver their messages to hyper-niche audiences who would be interested in their goods and services.

The pivot toward data privacy has helped protect users’ data, but the value of personal data has skyrocketed as a result.

As the value of personal data continues to rise, many data collection agencies are capitalizing on the opportunity by collecting personal information about individuals with the intention of selling it in bulk to businesses for a premium. 

Consumer contact lists are rarely ethically sourced. As a B2B business, these contact lists are hardly of any use to you. B2B businesses are served better when acquiring contact lists with business contacts, not consumer information. The information is collected ethically and the contacts will be much more aligned with your target demographic.

MarketReach has perfected its contact acquisition process to generate leads. Combined with our telemarketing and appointment-setting services, MarketReach delivers more leads, better appointments, and bigger sales. Think MarketReach could be a fit for your business? Click here for a free consultation.

As a business owner, the data they offer could be instrumental in the success of your business. That said, you need to know the pros and cons to buying a contact list from a data collection agency so you can understand if this is a reasonable option for you.

The Pros & Cons of Buying Contact Lists

The use of contact lists has been on the rise in recent years as businesses seek to reach a larger audience with their marketing efforts. However, there are both pros and cons to consider before making a purchase. 

On the plus side, buying a contact list can save time and money that would otherwise be spent on gathering leads. In addition, it can provide a business with access to a wider pool of potential customers. 

On the downside, there is no guarantee that the contacts on the list will be interested in what the business has to offer. The list may also contain inaccurate or outdated information. 

As a result, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons carefully before deciding whether or not to buy a contact list. Ultimately, high-quality leads come from actually interacting with potential customers. If that’s your goal then follow these tips below.

Pros: 

• Immediately receive names, emails, and/or phone numbers for prospective customers 
• Depending on your provider, you may get information including: 
  • Company 
  • Role
  • Country, State, City, and/or street address
  • Demographics (gender, age, race, etc)
  • Income
  • Marital Status
  • Interests
  • Online activities
  • Devices & operating systems
  • & more
• Saves time and money that would be spent on advertising 
• Can be uploaded to digital marketing platforms (Facebook, Google, TikTok, Twitter, etc) so ads are only delivered to marketing-qualified leads
• Can be used to make lookalike audiences for some digital marketing platforms (Facebook, TikTok, and others)

Cons:

• Buying contact lists is expensive
• Contacts may not have been captured ethically
• Leads may not meet your qualification criteria 
• You may need to qualify leads yourself upon receiving a contact list
• Some of the contacts you get may contain inaccurate information which can result in them not being usable at all.
• Your contacts may not be interested in your business or its offerings
• Reaching out to leads before they reached out to you could contribute to a negative perception of your brand

It can be a long and difficult road to learning how and why to buy a contact list. MarketReach has perfected their process lead gen and contact list acquisition process so their telemarketing and appointment setting services can deliver sales appointments with real business decision makers. If you think MarketReach could help you, reach out to get started today.   

Generating B2B Leads From Trade Shows

Depending on your industry, generating leads from trade shows can be a highly effective marketing tactic. Believe it or not, 72% of people who attend trade shows do so to generate leads.

So, how do B2B businesses generate leads from trade shows? Research.

At a trade show, you get the opportunity to meet business CEO’s and decision-makers who are interested in working with other businesses. You will need to invest your own time and money to attend a trade show, but just attending doesn’t guarantee leads. 

To make the most of attending a trade show, you’ll need to make sure you’re attending the right ones. Consider the industries that will be represented and the types of clients you would like to reach before selecting a trade show to attend. 

Many businesses will build customer personas that display what their ideal customer looks like. Use your customer persona to visualize their wants and needs, then widen your lens to discern what kind of trade shows they would attend. That’s the trade show you want to sign up for. 

When you’ve identified the trade shows you want to attend, be sure to prepare great promotional materials to hand out at your booths, such as fact sheets, brochures, or business cards. Include a call to action on these materials urging attendees to visit your website or contact you for more information.

And finally, make sure your booth is staffed with friendly and knowledgeable employees who can answer questions and start conversations with potential leads. 

It also helps to have a process in place that allows you to follow up with leads and nurture them (we’ll get into this in a bit, though).

Some trade shows will even deliver a list of attendees along with their contact information. If all else fails at a trade show, this email list can come in handy. 

Generating B2B Leads From Social Media

Is social media effective for generating leads? We know that it’s great for B2C companies because 82% of shoppers have previously used social media to make a purchase.

How about for B2B companies that aren’t purchasing your typical consumer products? 

B2B marketers know that social media is just as important in B2B as it is in B2C. Be careful though, running a poor social media campaign will actively hurt your brand instead of helping it.  

To make a really stellar social media lead gen campaign, focus on quality over quantity.

By creating valuable content and engaging with potential clients on social media, you can reach a larger audience and build trust and credibility with them. 

Implementing a social media lead gen strategy should prioritize using organic social media to continue to engage your audience and reach new people. 

If your organic social media strategy engages your audience, your paid social strategy will yield more lead form submissions, higher quality leads, and more sales  You can occasionally use organic social to generate leads, but be cautious not to push sales messaging too hard with organic – those messages are better suited for paid ads. 

An additional benefit to social media is that it allows you to track leads through various stages of the sales funnel, making it easier to nurture leads and followers to convert them into paying clients. 

If you’re interested in using social media to increase sales and generate B2B leads then we suggest making high-quality content creation your top priority – even if it means posting less frequently. Speak to the needs of your target market using your social content. 

Once you’ve created this content, you need to get it in front of people who will care about it. If you’re starting from scratch with social, boosting posts and running content marketing ads can help you pick and choose which audience sees your content.  

Paid media gives you the ability to set audience parameters that will let you choose who sees your content, ensuring that your first followers are the kind of people you want following you. 

By getting your content in front of the right people (not just a broad audience), you’ll start generating leads that you can then nurture into customers or clients. 

Generating B2B Leads From Word-of-Mouth

In the business-to-business world, referrals can be extremely powerful. Unfortunately, generating leads from word-of-mouth can be difficult. How can you encourage your satisfied customers to spread the word about your business?

Firstly, make sure you’re providing an exceptional product or service that actually solves your customer’s problems. If your customers find your service great, they’ll tell some of their network about it – but if they find it mediocre or sub-par, they will spread the word about that even further. 

Additionally, go the extra mile when it comes to customer service. Make sure each and every interaction is positive and helpful. If your customer service is dialed in, and your products and services deliver everything your customer wants, you can be sure their friends will be calling you.

Already delivering an exceptional product and great customer service? Try offering incentives for clients who leave reviews. Some businesses even see success by offering cash and/or discounts for referrals that result in a sale, also called a referral program. 

How & Why to Implement a Lead Qualification Process

So, you’re firing on all pistons by buying customer lists. leveraging social, and giving a service worth talking about. Fantastic! 

Now that you’ve got leads coming in the door, what’s left to do? 

Qualify. Qualify. Qualify. 

If you’ve done well to get leads in the door, you and your sales team will have a lot of calls to make. You don’t want to waste time on low-quality leads, especially if they don’t have a chance to benefit from your offering. 

This is why you must ensure that you have a robust lead qualification process in place, not just to sort qualified leads from unqualified leads, but to sort your leads by priority. Using this system will allow you to determine whether or not a lead is ready to be passed on to sales, and what to do with the leads who aren’t ready yet. 

To qualify a lead, you have to first discern what characteristics are true of the people who stand to gain the most from your service. 

For example, if you sell kitchen-grade cutlery for catering businesses, your best leads will be owners and managers of catering companies whose businesses have been growing over the last year. They will be actively seeking to purchase cutlery en-masse, and they’ll want to find a business with whom they can build a fluid long-standing relationship. 

Once you understand what your ideal lead looks like, break it down into individual criteria. For the example above, here are the criteria you’d use to qualify the lead: 

A quality lead, for this example, is:

1. In the Catering Industry
2. The business owner or business manager
3. Seeing consistent business growth for at least the last 360 days
4. Looking to buy cutlery in-bulk
5. Exploring vendors with the intention of establishing a long-term relationship

Now that you have a list of qualifiers, you can begin with lead scoring. Lead scoring means rating leads based on their likelihood of becoming customers. Those with a higher rating have a better chance of converting into a sale.

Another option is to create lead profiles. These help you identify the characteristics of ideal customers. Once you have lead profiles in place, you can compare new leads against these profiles to see if they are a good match. 

Regardless, your qualification process for an individual lead should have at least 2 steps: Pre-call qualification, and post-call qualification.

Before you start calling your leads, sort them by industry and job title. Research the business to see if they meet any other criteria. Sort your pre-call leads by priority, then call those leads in order from high priority to low.

Once you’ve sorted those leads, make contact with them – ideally over the phone. This call is NOT meant to be a sales call, but instead a call to learn more about the lead to see what other criteria they meet. If you can set up a sales appointment through this call, great! 

Once you’ve obtained all the information you can about a lead, re-evaluate where this prospect falls on your spectrum of priority. Then, reach out to schedule a sales call in order from high-priority to low.  

By asking a set of standard questions, lead qualification can help ensure that only sales-ready leads are sent through the sales pipeline. This can save your sales team time and energy, and lead to more closed deals. 

When in doubt, you can also outsource this type of lead generation, which leads us to our final tip in this guide to B2B Lead generation.

Lead qualification is a lot of work, but it’s worth it. If you don’t have the time or personnel to do it yourself, MarketReach promises to deliver quality pre-qualified leads directly to your sales team using their proprietary techniques. If this is a service you’d be interested in, contact us to learn more.  

Get Help With B2B Lead Generation & Appointment Setting

Aside from the B2B lead generation tactics mentioned above, did you know that B2B sales appointments using telemarketing can be extremely effective as well? 

However, if you’re going to generate leads via telemarketing then we suggest working with a specialized team that can take care of everything from start to finish.
At MarketReach, we will qualify leads, engage with them, and then convert them into prospects and customers for you. Ready to get started? Get in touch today to schedule a complimentary consultation!