The behavior of business customers in the B2B sector has increasingly turned to online media in recent years. Leads are also becoming digital and can be successfully acquired with the right strategy.
Digital Marketing Leads
In the search for new business partners and customers, companies in the B2B segment have increasingly presented themselves at trade fairs in the past. At the same time, customer acquisition took place via advertisements and advertising campaigns in the media.
In the digital age, customer behavior has changed significantly.
Already when problems arise or when looking for new business partners, decision-makers in the B2B sector start their search on the Internet.
Here they inform themselves about possible solutions to their problems and try to find interesting business partners. In many cases, a decision to buy is already made by the decision maker before even talking to your company for the first time. For this reason, it is important that you try to find your leads digitally on the internet.
Generating leads digitally means that you search for new business partners and customers online through various channels with appropriate marketing activities. Subsequently, the goal is to convert these prospects into paying customers if possible.
These tools can help you do this:
Because attracting customers to your sales pipeline is critical to your successful business in the future, it's becoming increasingly important to have a permanent presence online to find leads digitally.
Winning leads digitally
To succeed in winning leads digitally, you need an end-to-end plan and a precise strategy for your B2B business. Before you start with a plan, it is crucial that the marketing and sales employees are fully involved in all phases.
Only when marketing and sales work together is there a chance that a customer referral will be made to sales at the appropriate time.
We show you how to gain digital leads in 5 steps:
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Step 1: Know your target audience & interests
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Step 2: Create relevant content with appropriate keywords
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Step 3: Distribute content via social media
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Step 4: Gated content and conversion elements
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Step 5: Lead capture tool
When marketing executes the campaign, it is important to ensure that potential customers are picked up at the appropriate touchpoints where they come into contact with your business and provided with targeted information.
Additionally, it's important to document the results in each prospect's customer journey in the company's proprietary database and continue to guide your ideal customer on their path to becoming a paying customer.
Step 1: Know your target group & interests
In order for you to find leads digitally, it's important to know your ideal customers. In this context, quality goes before quantity.
Concentrate on a small circle of selected addresses when choosing your target customers.
This leaves only leads for extensive further processing that are promising for your company.
Step 2: Create relevant content with appropriate keywords
You want to attract your future customers with interesting articles. The following content forms are suitable for generating traffic and leads:
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Whitepaper
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E-Book
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Blog article
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Industry news
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Checklist
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Survey
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Quiz
In order to reach the appropriate leads digitally, it is crucial to know the perfect keywords when creating your content. With the help of keyword research, you will be able to target the most important topic areas of your desired customers. When creating your relevant content, make sure that the posts are up-to-date and in line with your company's products and services.
Source: ELPRO Company Blog
Step 3: Content distribution via social media
Through social media channels, you can easily reach a large group of prospects at a low cost. With regular posts and expert articles, your company will be registered.
Become an expert in your industries and encourage your readers to engage in dialogue with the marketing team. Promising channels for social media posts are mainly:
To reach leads digitally, it's a good idea to include a link to your company's website on each of your posts on social media channels or generate additional interest via a call-to-action button.
Encourage your target customers to network with you and then get more valuable information for marketing.
Source: Preview of a LinkedIn post with the Pedalix software
Step 4: Gated Content and Conversion Elements
Providing gated content is an important component of digitally turning leads into your future customers. In this context, a deal is made with your prospect that benefits both parties.
You provide your prospect with free valuable content that helps them solve their problems and solve their needs. In return, the gate serves to ensure that he only receives the content in exchange for revealing his contact information.
Conversion elements such as the ability to download white papers, industry information, or checklists are perfect for getting your target customer to take an action that has been predetermined by marketing staff. It is used to obtain additional information and is a customer engagement element.
Step 5: Lead capture tool
The in-house database is the best tool to capture if you want to generate leads digitally. In this context, it is important that all contacts that occur during the customer journey of your ideal customers are accurately and up-to-date captured and stored by.
At the same time, it's a good idea to pay attention to what stage of the customer journey your target customer is at every time you change the data. This works best via a scoring model that marketing and sales have established before the campaign begins.
This helps determine the perfect time to refer a desired customer directly to sales.
Conclusion
Digital leads are essential for any B2B company. In order to find leads digitally and subsequently develop them into paying customers, a well thought out lead generation strategy is crucial.
Once the appropriate target customers have been defined, it's a matter of providing your prospects with relevant content and persuading them to take action. This is accomplished through gated content, which is distributed through social media channels and other means.
All responses from potential customers are condensed via lead scoring. This way, the leads can be transferred to the sales department at the appropriate time.
