Five Myths Of B2B Lead Generation Campaigns

When promoting your business, you probably have tried out a variety of marketing tactics and strategies that you think will bring you the B2B leads that you need. Lucky for you if you succeed, but it would be a different story if it did not pan out. In any case, your aim here is to  ensure the overall success of your B2b lead generation campaign. And if you think that you know everything there is to proper marketing and appointment setting, well, you might want to think again. There is that high likelihood that you are basing your marketing efforts on myths. Honestly, that is the last thing you would want to experience in your business. So, what are these myths that you should know about?

First, some marketers believe that the customers care about your business. Renowned advertising executive and blogger Bob Hoffman has long disproven that. Customers do not care about you at all, they care about themselves. That is why they are your customers in the first place. If you think that all those sales leads nurturing that you are doing will get you the sale, you should reconsider that thinking. Chances are, you have lost the deal.

Second, you use the same message in different mediums. That is one mistake that you should never make. Yes, your message may be clear and concise, but how sure are you that it would be relayed right with different mediums? In the same manner that you do not use transfer a B2B telemarketing script to television, you should also craft your message according to the medium that you will be using. You have to be careful in that regard.

Third, you send the same message to all business prospects. This is one of the biggest no-no’s in the marketing field. Any sensible marketer will tell you that each prospect is different, and that requires a different manner to communicate with them. Some like it informal, while there are those who wish for a more formal approach. Others enjoy the conversation, while some might prefer going straight to the point. The trick here is in PERSONALIZATION. That will get you better results.

Fourth, you sound just too smart in your promotions. Yes, you want to say your entire piece to your sales leads prospects, but you would want to put your efforts on a leash if you notice that your prospect is losing interest in you. Match your wording and approach according to the person you are talking with. In this way, you not only personalize your marketing (which satisfies point number three), you also make your prospects think more on how you can help them (which point number one has mentioned).

Lastly, you think that B2B lead generation is easy. To be honest,it never was. Success can only be had through hard work and constancy of your efforts. This is the secret to generating customers for your business.

If you can correct your way of thinking, especially with regards to the above myths, then your B2B lead generation efforts will not go to waste.

Building Relationships To Help In B2B Lead Generation

Marketing and B2B lead generation evolve over time, and this observation could not have been truer than today. In the past, we look for B2B leads for the sake of making a sale. Yes, that is true at that time, since we have something good to offer and the market is large. But these days, things are being done quite differently. It is no longer just about making a sale happen. This is now about establishing a Relationship with your sales leads prospects. You see, in today’s highly competitive B2B market, the customers you successfully gather today will affect your continued survival tomorrow.

Still, reality shows us just how poorly employed building-relationship is in business. Let us put it this way: have you ever seen a billboard ad, a business brochure, or a B2B telemarketing that you can really relate to? That you feel like the company is actually interested in your lifeand that they really have something you need? If the answer is mostly no, then you will understand why these same companies may not really have good revenue streams. Sure, the market still follows the motions, still buying, but the moment a better-priced or better-quality competitor steps in, then these customers will move away.

Establishing a relationship with your business prospects is not really that hard. You see, it is all about knowing what really sticks into the mind of your audience. Aside from that, it also pays to know what B2B appointment setting medium will truly get the attention of your people. But you need to know which one will work well with your intended audience. I mean, you have to identify which medium are your B2B leads prospects are most involved in. It does not make sense to invest in a marketing strategy that would not be able to reach your prospects effectively. This requires you to study your market well, maybe conduct some phone surveys to understand what the prospects exactly have in mind.

Researching more about your prospects is also an important part of your marketing campaign. You need to know more about your business prospects. Information about your business prospects is the first important step in the B2B lead generation process. Inquire more about your customers. Talk to them in person, interact with them more, ask them about their problems, learn their main issues, and use the information you obtain to come up with viable solutions for them. What you need to remember is to talk to your prospects as naturally as you can. You have to put your prospects at ease, which will give you better opportunities to convert your prospects into an actual sale or a deal.

In any case, if you do not feel like up to this kind of task, then you can also opt for the alternative:outsource to a professional B2B lead generation company. This would also be perfect for businesses that do not have their own marketing team. As a business investment, this is worth it.

5 Indications of an Ineffective B2B Email Newsletter

Given the success of email marketing in B2B lead generation and its consistent presence in most businesses’ marketing campaigns, it’s hard to imagine that email newsletters would fail. But it does happen, and the problem is that marketers tend to be in denial of the fact that it’s not working and that they need to do something about it.

Marketers need to identify the signs that tell whether or not an email campaign is successful. Although these indications are pretty obvious, they’re the ones that marketers need to take a look at so they can make the necessary adjustments. These indications are as follows:

1. Low subscription rate; high unsubscribe rate. If your list of subscribers got stuck at 20 and no longer growing, then you obviously have a problem. Also, if people seem to unsubscribe constantly, that’s another problem. To address this, go back to the mechanism that allows them to subscribe – is it a tick box on your landing page? Is it a full-pledged form? You may want to rethink your subscription offers, too. Check whether the frequency and/or content are making them happy.
2. Awful open rates. Your subscribers may not be quitting on you, but if they’re not opening the stuff you send them, it’s pretty much the same thing. It could be your subject line. It could be the timing. Or it could be a previous content piece they so disliked that they've decided not to read anything from you, and they’re just too kind to unsubscribe.
3. Unpromising click-though rates. The industry standard is currently at 4.3%. Is your CTR reaching that target? If no, but intermittently, then you might still be in the game. If no with consistency, then you might as well refocus your energy on something else.
4. Calls-to-action are in oblivion. CTAs measure the very purpose of lead generation. If they are being ignored (or worse, if they are becoming invisible), then you need to check what’s going on. Is it the presentation style of the CTA? Is it being too pushy? Does it make the process too complicated for prospects?
5. Spam rates are unusually high. Being marked as a spammer is the ultimate symptom – it means your would-be readers are just too unengaged and will only generate more spam complaints in the future. If your spam rates are going through the roof, it may be best to pull the plug on email marketing (for a while), rethink the strategy and redeem yourself next time.

Possible reasons why your Lead Generation numbers are not going up

There will always be times when your marketing efforts don’t produce the numbers you've expected. And in those times, it might be hard to shift focus away from failure and instead look at the reasons why it happened. Emotions can get in the way, and that prevents us from seeing things logically. B2B lead generation is one those fields where an element of “chance” is always a part of the game. Sometimes, campaigns fail because of things that are beyond your control, and there’s really nothing you could do about it.

What you can do, though, is to evaluate certainaspects of your efforts and see if they “contribute” to the occurrence of failure.

Below is a checklist that you might want to try for yourself:

Your content may not be generating enough traffic. It might be because of lack of quality or poor search optimization, but whatever it is, it’s the very first thing you need to check. To be able to generate leads, you need a large bulk of traffic, and without that, you can’t expect numbers to go up.

Your calls-to-action are in the wrong places. CTAs are like the pearly gates that lead to conversion heaven. They must be scattered everywhere within the prospect’s decision-making phase, and it should clearly define what’s in it for them. If they couldn't see your CTAs, you wouldn't see them either.

Your social media use may be misguided. A lot of marketers are disillusioned about the number of likes or followers they generate on social media. What you really should be looking at is lead potential, and your social media posts should go hand-in-hand with your other efforts, not as an independent campaign.

Your landing page forms are either too long or too short. Studies show that the optimal number of form fields that lead to conversion is from 5 to 10. If yours doesn't fall within that average, then perhaps you need a re-evaluation.

Your leads are not of high-quality.Again, the battle of quantity versus quality. While campaigns may survive by getting tons of mediocre leads, the ultimate success can only be determined by high-quality leads – meaning, those that rake in large sums of revenue and are more likely to stick.

Your promos are outdated, unoriginal or boring. Prospects may lose interest in offers that keep getting recycled over and over. This lessens the likelihood of sharing and loyalty, thus also affecting conversion rates. Come up with something fresh, although risky, to see if it can put back life into your dying efforts.

The 7 Deadly Sins of B2B Lead Generation

There are only two kinds of things that can bring any business endeavor to its demise: unfortunate circumstances and human errors. Obviously, the former is something that’s out of anyone’s control. It could be anything from a paralyzing economic recession to physical disasters like fires or earthquakes. The latter, however, are the flaws and lapses that key people have in making decisions and performing actions. These things are controllable.

When a business engages in B2B lead generation, it embarks on an elaborate campaign to seek and attract potential clients. The task requires careful planning, patience and cooperation between and among marketers and other functions of the business. The things that could destroy that effort – the ones that are controllable – must not be tolerated. As marketers, it is important to understand why these things can be roadblocks to success. 

These are 7 of the worst things that could happen to your campaign:

1. Lack of strategy – Even the simplest marketing activities require a strategy. It’s the framework that guides marketers to their goals and puts and everything in order for them. Without it, management of time, budget and other resources would be topsy-turvy.

2. Lack of commitment – Lead generation is not the sole obligation of marketing, and that’s true. However, if a marketing team engages in lead generation only to perform it half-heartedly, then goals would be difficult to achieve.

3.  Lack of quality content – If lead generation is a restaurant business, then content is the menu list. It’s what draws people into engagement. If the type of content is not compelling enough to spark interest, lead generation would be stagnated into a dead campaign.

4. Lack of collaboration with sales – Marketing should not work independently from sales, especially in walking prospects through the entire sales process. Both departments should have a shared vision as to how a prospect’s experience would be enhanced.

5.  Lack of nurturing – The responsibility of marketers do not end when prospects are turned into leads. There must be a thorough follow-up system to maximize the potential of doing business and establishing a long-term relationship.

6.   Lack of fun – B2B doesn’t have to be a boring enterprise. Even within an industry composed of professionals and executives, the element of fun and camaraderie could still be encouraged. No one wants their business to come out as a square to the public eye.

7. Lack of risk-taking – Eventually, the things that the B2B industry practices now would become obsolete in the future. That may still be a long time from now, but for a business that doesn’t have the guts to take risks even today, tomorrow would be a quandary.

Who Is Better At B2B Lead Generation? An Expert Or A Consultant?

You know that marketing is no easy job. Customer trends and tastes change all the time. And it is up to you to make sure that your B2B lead generation campaign becomes successful. Now, as a marketer, approaching potential sales leads requires that you know how to deal with them best. Basically, you have to assume one of the two common roles that appointment setters make: an expert or a consultant? But here is an interesting part, which of these two roles will fit you? Understanding whether you are an expert or a consultant can affect your marketing style. So, which is which?

  

1.    An expert will tell you what to do, while a consultant asks what you might do – Some business prospects do not like being told straight to their faces of what they should or should not do. Consultants, on the other hand, may not be able to get much, especially if the B2B leads prospects they are talking to are not exactly sure of what they should be doing in the first place.

2.    An expert starts a trend, a consultant follows it – honestly, there is nothing wrong about being a trend-setter. What makes it a problem is when it backfires on you, especially if the trend you want to create actually messed up your lead generation campaign. You might as well observe the trends and deal with what you see.

3.    Experts explain the facts, consultants learn facts – business prospects find it harder and harder to analyze the facts and get things straight, so most of them would love to have someone who could make things easier for them. Experts can do that. But consultants are pretty good as well. They just spend more time studying the market and getting the facts straight. Now that would take a lot of time, but it is worth it.

4.    Experts bring a lot of things in, consultants do not bring much – since experts are pretty much knowledgeable of how the market works, it is only natural that you would be telling them everything they should know about. In the case of consultants, they would want to know more about your business first before they can give a concrete answer. There are a lot of problems and issues that may not be seen by experts that consultants might be able to point out. But still, it may work the other way, depending on the business you have.

5.    Experts talk, consultants ask – knowledge is power, so to speak, and in a B2B telemarketing campaign, you need to know how your prospects prefer to be talked into business with. Do they want to hear what you have in mind, or do they prefer someone who listens to their concerns?

Think about it. This might affect your decision on what exactly is the kind of b2b lead generation specialist you are going to be. You can bet that your approach to sales leads prospects will be influenced by the way you deal with them.

5 Questions every B2B Lead Generation Company must mull over

The luxury that a marketer may have if he’s in the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) industry is that he can just pour in the right ingredients into the mix and the product will practically cook itself. That is not to demean their efforts, which are for sure very intensive, but the fact that their audience is the general buying public makes it largely easier for them to perform marketing.

In Business-to-Business (B2B) lead generation, however, buyers’ interests are not easily gained by preppy, bourgeois-eque publicity. The B2B audience is more or less “experts” in the field they are in, and they generally have the tendency to rationalize their purchases by learning about the product or service.

That in turn makes it a little bit more complicated for B2B marketers to evaluate the well-being of their marketing campaigns. It’s more than just asking “Are people buying our products ?” but it entails a lot more concerns to consider:

Does your target market know you?

Oblivion is marketing hell, and the first thing you should shoot for is recognition. If you’re a company that sells, say, technology products and software, the least that you could ask for is for your audience to know you exist, considering the tight competition in the IT industry. That should be your basic requirement; ask yourself, have people heard about my company?

Are you getting good traffic?

The biggest chunk of your B2B lead generation efforts will most likely come from inbound traffic, and if you’re getting none of that, then you should be worried, and you might as well just take down your site.

Do your visitors get converted?

It isn’t enough that people visit your blog almost every day to read your posts and see updates on events; they have to get converted to customers, or at least provide leads for future use. A lot of sites get an awful lot of traffic but end up not increasing sales anyway.

Are you attracting the right people?

Even when people do sign up for newsletters or contact your sales team, what are the realistic odds that they will convert? For all you know, you could be driving the wrong people (or perhaps the right people but for the wrong reasons). Make necessary adjustments to point your aim at the people who are actually going to make business.

Is your sales cycle functional?

Your sales cycle (in partnership with your sales team) is the machine that takes in the heap of fish, takes out the bones, processes the meat, adds the sauce, and puts the finished product inside shiny aluminum cans. If it’s not working, then your leads would just remain as they are – just plain leads. 

How To Prioritize B2B Lead Generation Tasks

As a business owner or manager, it is understandable if you want to generate the most number of IT sales leads for your company. The IT industry, while profitable, is also the most competitive. A lot of IT companies rise and fall every day, and only the strength of their products and the skills of their B2B lead generation team is what keeps the ones who survive afloat. And with all the things that you have to deal with, you cannot just cover everything in a single day. You need to learn how to prioritize. Otherwise, you would be stretching yourself so thin you have to chance to recharge or recheck your bearings. Now that would be more damaging to your IT business. So, how would you prioritize your tasks?

1.    List down your tasks – the main reason why you end up so overwhelmed with your work is because you do not know how many tasks you have to fulfill. Take stock of your work load. Only then will you know which one would be the most important in B2B leads generation.

2.    Identify the most draining tasks – to be honest, the one activity that would really drain you would be appointment setting. I mean, this is a process that requires constant monitoring and follow-up. You have to do that one right, before you deal with the rest.

3.    Forget about the perfect time – honestly, there will never be a perfect time to decide on things. You just have to deal with the challenges that get thrown your way. If you need to deal with your IT telemarketing campaign fast, then you really have to deal with it. Delays by waiting for the perfect time will not get you anything.

4.    Try not getting stuck on the big picture – sometimes, looking at the big picture makes you lose focus on the small details. And to tell you the truth, it is the small details that matter in your everyday operations. As a marketer, you should ensure that the small details are properly attended to. The big picture would take care of itself.

5.   Move on – there are so many tasks that you need to do in a single day that you just cannot afford to linger on one that you have just taken care of. If you think of each of these tasks as a sort of stages, one that will get you to your intended goals once the day ends.

6.    Rinse and repeat – basically, you do the cycle all over again the next day. The thing about marketing, and its accompanying tasks, is that the process never ends. You know that there will be more tasks coming up on your plate, and it is up to managers and entrepreneurs like you to put some system or process in place to help you go about your work, every day.

That is how you prioritize your tasks in B2B lead generation campaigns. Your IT business would be in a better spot with this.

What To Do With A “No” During B2B Lead Generation

We have to admit that facing rejections, directly or indirectly, can be troublesome for any B2B lead generation campaign. With the way the business world moves these days, knowing how to compel business prospects to buy from you can be a bit of a challenge. It takes a little convincing and persistence on your part to turn these prospective sales leads into actual business deals. And what if your prospects say no? You have to trust your creativity and resourcefulness in this regards. I know, this is not easy, but if you have a general idea on what to say, then you will know how to proceed on this. Take these as examples:

  

   1.   “Send us some information” – you should quickly comply when your prospect asks you that. Additionally, ask him about what attracted his attention the most. There might be something about your offer that caught his interest. Just do it in the most natural method.

     2.    “We have no ready funds for that” – either this is just an excuse or they really could not afford your offer’s price tag. When that happens, try changing tact. See if, price no longer a factor, they would still seal the deal with you. Maybe a little rearrangement of payment terms will do the trick.

     3.    “That is not my priority at the moment” – you may not be able to make a sale with them, but they can give you useful business data for use at a later date. Ask them about their current priorities. Sometimes, no B2B leads generated now can be turned into more B2B leads later.

     4.   “We already use (competitor’s product)” – now, this is the case where you really are least likely to make a sale, but at least you can ask them about their reasons for choosing your competitor. Who knows what you might learn during your conversation that can help you later on.

      5.    “It just costs too much” – do not feel too bad. Actually this is a sign that they are interested. The only reason they are not signing up yet is the price tag. It may just be simple too expensive or the features and benefits not enough to justify the price. You have to ask so that your telemarketing team can adapt.

      6. “Call me back in (period of time)” – do not worry, this might not be a ‘no’. In most cases, they just simply do not have the time at the moment to deal with you. Just clarify with them why they wish to postpone your meeting. This will give your B2B appointment setting team more time to prepare.

      7.   “Someone else makes the buying decision” – when you hear that, either the person you are talking to is the gate keeper or a lower-level executive who does not have the final say. Just earn their trust and cooperation, then. They might be able to help you connect faster to the real decision-makers.

It is not that bad, if you think about it. Just follow these tips to help turn the flow in your B2B lead generation campaign