Generating B2B leads - what actions should be taken to get quality leads?

Should we wait and hope to find a customer interested in our offer? No, doing so is a straightforward path to business failure. After all, this is not why companies advertise both online and offline. Besides, this increases the chance of acquiring B2B leads. What are they and how do you get them? Here are some suggestions!

What is B2B sales lead generation all about?

Marketing leads are individuals or companies that are potentially interested in an offer from a product or service vendor. In the case of B2B (business to business) cooperation, the leads are the companies, or more precisely their representatives, who decide whether or not to take up the offer received. Marketing and sales departments are involved in acquiring contacts. The former are responsible for promoting their employer's offer and the latter for finalising the transaction. However, in acquiring leads, it is important to combine forces - a valuable offer, an effective advertisement and much more.

What distinguishes a B2B lead?

Acquiring sales leads only resembles to some extent the activities aimed at getting an individual consumer to buy. Business customers are incomparably less likely to make decisions on the spur of the moment. They come to take up an offer after consulting decision-makers. As you can guess, sometimes such a process takes a long time, and the more extensive the hierarchy of employees in a company, the more time you have to wait for a response.

What is more, business customers are much more attentive to tailoring the offer to their expectations. For this reason, it is difficult to count on accepting the first option sent. Demonstrated interest is most often only a prelude to negotiations. During these, individual salespeople and sometimes teams of consultants agree on further sub-points of the contract. It is always necessary to bear this in mind and, consequently, to have already established the boundary conditions, i.e. not subject to change (e.g. minimum acceptable price for service provision).

Why does the quality of the B2B leads being acquired matter?

In the process of acquiring leads, it is also important to bear in mind that not every task ends in a signed contract. The time and effort spent on acquiring a business customer can go to waste even after months of negotiations. This involves, of course, financial losses. After all, the hours spent preparing further proposals and the money spent on advertising cannot be recovered. This is why the quality of leads is so important. In order to ensure that this quality is maintained, close cooperation between the marketing and sales departments of the company seeking B2B customers seems essential.

The biggest danger in the process of finding business leads is the different objectives to be met by people working in each department. If the task of the marketers is only to find as many potentially interested people as possible, the sales staff will almost certainly be contacted by representatives of many companies - sometimes without them deciding to buy the proposed products or services. The database of leads should therefore consist of companies that have the budget required by the offeror and that have previously been checked against expectations.

Purpose of acquiring B2B leads

Once you know what B2B lead generation is and how to assess its quality, it is time to answer the question of what you want to achieve in the first place. Wanting to acquire customers is not enough. The goal is not only to find buyers, but to do so at the lowest possible cost. This is why close cooperation between marketers and salespeople is so important. This decreases the CPA (cost per acquisition), i.e. the average expense a company incurs to acquire a single lead.

How do we understand the meaning of CPA? Let us explain it with a simple example. Let's assume that the budget for an advertising campaign was set at £10k. This money allowed to generate a CPM (cost per mille, cost per thousand leads reached) of 1%. This means that the company spent PLN 100 to show its offer to one person. However, how many of these contacts can be considered qualitative? If it is one in ten, the CPA per lead will be £10, but if it is one in five, the cost will drop to £5 per person. For this reason, it is so important to precisely define the target group and target the marketing message to it.

Lead generation process in B2B

What does it mean to generate B2B leads? It requires taking steps to give your company online visibility and build your brand image. Many of our tips also apply to individual customers. Beyond this, there are issues that only a business lead will pay attention to.

Technical optimisation of the company website

The most important thing that every company should take care of is to ensure that it ranks as high as possible in the organic search results. This is crucial because positioning allows you to reach those audiences who may never have seen any of your company's advertising. What needs to be done? To begin with, take care of the technical aspect, i.e. the fast loading of the page. In addition, two versions should be prepared: a desktop version and a mobile version.

Content optimisation on the company website

A well-performing website is an important foundation, and reaching customers will be made easier by the use of key phrases. This will ensure that Google's indexing bots will display it to people who type the exact same or similar words into the search engine.

Promotion on other websites

Using the reach generated by sponsored articles can also be an effective method of using content for marketing purposes. With the help of such texts, those potential customers are reached who may have overlooked a link to the website of a company offering its services on a B2B basis. The problems they raise and the solution of using its offer also create a positive image of the company. It presents itself as a place of employment for people with a lot of experience, i.e. experts in their field.

However, companies wishing to advertise their offers using content may face a dilemma, i.e. how much to publish and on which sites? As is often the case, this depends - in this case - on the budget for the promotional campaign. In other words, if spending a lot of money on advertising is not a problem, it is best to show up on as many sites as possible. Companies with less money should focus on ordering texts primarily on the most frequently visited websites and portals whose subject matter is related to their business.

Banner advertisements can complement online marketing activities. These can be used to promote themselves both on websites and in Google search. In both cases, advertisers have the option of using different formats for images and graphics, allowing them to adjust costs to suit their budget.

With this method of promotion, it is much easier to reach prospective customers, as sponsored content can be customised and then displayed to a precisely defined target group. It is also important to bear in mind the presence in Google Maps. After all, it cannot be ruled out that a customer will also search for a business partner there.

Use of social media

For millions of people in Poland (and billions worldwide), social media have been important for many years. Targeting campaigns towards them also allows B2B leads to be acquired. After all, it cannot be assumed that among the users of a given service there will not be a single person who will remember the ad and respond to the company that promotes itself using it.

However, it should be borne in mind that a graphic or promotional video on Facebook, Instagram and other portals is enough to encourage an individual customer. A business person can also check out a contractor on LinkedIn. For this reason, it is so important to regularly publish posts about the company and in various ways related to the industry. In addition to posts on the official profile, content posted on individual employee profiles provides an excellent image effect.

Sectoral events

The marketing potential of the internet cannot, of course, be underestimated. However, events where you get to know other professionals from your sector will also probably never stop taking place. For this reason, they are not worth missing out on. Perhaps you can win a new client or meet someone who can help put you in touch with someone potentially interested in your offer? It is worth taking advantage of such opportunities. What's more, attending such events is also a way to give your company visibility, this time offline.

InPost advertising - will it help to attract B2B leads?

Just as one company has an offer that can interest another, the former can be helped to gain publicity and find new customers. This business partner, which will be useful in achieving marketing goals, is us.

Our range of advertising for business is an excellent way to generate leads, as it consists of several highly effective advertising formats. These include:

• publication of advertising banners within the InPost website;
• A parcel machine wrapped in advertising;
• displaying promotional material on the screens of Parcel Machines.

Our proposition works for a variety of industries. Therefore, we recommend ourselves not only to clients wishing to improve the acquisition of valuable B2B leads. Some promotional methods, such as product sampling (providing customers with samples), emailing and notifications in the InPost Mobile app, will also be useful for companies wishing to increase sales of their products or services to individual customers. Sound good? Leave your contact details via the form below and our specialists will get back to you with a tailor-made offer!