Top 20 B2B Lead Generation Strategies to Accelerate Your Business

SDRs and marketing teams come up with highly scalable and efficient strategies to maximize the productivity of an organization when it comes to lead generation. This article will help you understand the best B2B lead generation strategies to aim for potential leads and how to implement them in your sales funnel.

Before we understand the strategies, let us understand a little about B2B lead generation.

What is B2B Lead Generation?

B2B lead generation is the process of identifying and converting potential buyers of your product/service. You attract them to your business through limited offers, discounts, and other strategies.

To maximize impact, it’s essential to diversify lead generation efforts. An AI-driven sales intelligence platform can help make those significant efforts.

As an industry, B2B lead generation is considered a part of the company’s advertising efforts, but it is not limited to that. Some other aspects from where lead generation can be derived are:

• Social Media Outreach
• Content Marketing
• Pay-per-click Advertising
• Website Optimization
• Email Marketing
• Event Marketing
• Cold Calling

These are a few sources from which companies can acquire leads. Let us now look at the best B2B lead generation strategies.

20 B2B Lead Generation Strategies for Business Success

1. Accurate Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the major foundations for generating leads for a B2B business. Based on their approaches, it can be subdivided into the following 2 types:

1. Content Creation

Content creation helps in developing audience-specific content as a part of lead-generation strategies. Tailoring content based on the target audience’s likes and interests helps in generating effective leads.

83% of the B2B marketers try to stand out by not compromising on content quality from their competition and 72% do that by uncovering untapped stories, according to CMI.

Developing content for the target audience and sharing it through convenient channels is the dogmatic and most popular way of content marketing.

2. Content Syndication

Content syndication aids in lead generation by spreading your content through third-party websites that provide a better reach to the company in terms of visibility. These leads navigate your website hailing from diverse channels where your content is published.

Posting content on the company’s website is the right way for B2B content marketing. Individual or landing pages offer desirable content to the target audience of a business and the products they sell which helps to generate leads and drive more traffic to the website.

Make sure to SEO optimize your landing pages so that a reader with a specific problem can click on your page ranking above in SERP results to find the solution for it. This means if your landing page is highly optimized, it will rank higher on the search results page and is easier to find, elevating your chances of reaching a potential lead quicker.

2. Rigorous A/B Testing

A/B testing is one of the best ways to acquire more potential leads in your sales strategy. It helps in generating different leads through different campaigns.

Diverse approaches to lead generation constitute the following:

• Simply changing the text of a landing page to match the user’s search query can enhance conversion in your sales process.
• Redesigning your homepage is also considered a good strategy to drive more leads as your website becomes more navigable with a seamless user interface.
• Revamping your website to generate better leads is another instance of A/B testing.
• A/B testing can also be applied to ad copy, cold-calling scripts, and social media strategies that help elevate sales by generating efficient leads.

3. Social Media Outreach

Using social media for B2C marketing might be true, but businesses need to use it for B2B purposes. Engaging social media posts can boost the lead generation rate of your website by manyfold.

Make sure to research the best channels, and a few are referred to below:

1. LinkedIn

While every social media platform offers unique benefits, LinkedIn is specifically designed for B2B organizations. It has a high visitor-to-lead conversion rate in B2B lead generation.

2. X (formerly, Twitter)

X‘s user numbers may have decreased, but it remains a valuable tool for B2B lead generation. The platform offers real-time engagement, sharing industry insights, and connecting with potential clients through targeted content and hashtags.

3. Meta – Facebook & Instagram

Facebook provides exceptional targeting capabilities and Lead Ads. An effective platform for B2B lead generation that helps businesses reach specific audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.

Instagram, on the other hand, is a highly B2C-oriented platform. Organizations utilize Instagram to display their company products, culture, or services in a visually enticing manner that attracts other businesses via influencer partnerships and targeted ads.

4. TikTok 

TikTok‘s algorithm and trends help companies increase brand visibility, showcase their expertise, and connect with potential leads creatively. According to eMarketer, TikTok will have a staggering 87 million users in the US in 2024, which makes it an important option for B2B marketing.

5. Other Platforms (Reddit & Quora)

There are multiple subreddits dedicated to the B2B industry on Reddit, and Quora hosts a wide range of questions related to B2B topics. These platforms provide access to a substantial audience interested in B2B marketing, making them valuable channels for generating leads.

4. Efficient PPC Campaigns

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns have been the age-old measure for lead generation. This tactic has expanded its roots from Google Ads to LinkedIn Ads, Facebook Ads, Facebook, ThruPlay, and many more. Utilizing PPC to generate B2B leads is an effective strategy to reach a niche B2B audience.

PPC is also quick and versatile as teams can incorporate it into their lead-generation campaigns easily and get quick results. Coupled with A/B testing, this strategy will help you understand the things that are working and the ones that aren‘t.

Automating PPC responses and searching for the right search ads are some of the ways that can help you conduct a successful PPC campaign. However, make sure that you are not swayed by this strategy and stay fixated on it by getting complacent once it works.

5. Catchy Cold Emails

Confusing email marketing with cold emails is an honest mistake any business owner can make, so it is important to understand their differences. So let us take a look at them:

1. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a technique that helps to nurture the existing relationships with customers and clients, promoting ongoing engagement. These emails may comprise anything from newsletters and promotional surveys to offers and event invitations.

Email marketing is not only about sending emails but also about building robust relationships with your audience. Valuable content, personalized messages, and special offers in your emails can help you build loyalty and trust with your audience in the long run.  

Consider incorporating QR codes into your emails; they provide a quick and easy way for recipients to access exclusive deals, register for events, or view additional content with a simple scan, enhancing engagement and driving action

2. Cold Emailing

Cold emailing is a lead-generation method that targets potential clients in the hopes of converting them into permanent ones.

Cold emailing generates high-quality leads by contacting leads that do not exist in your email marketing list. Given that the majority of the prospects prefer to email a sales rep for a product/service they like, this is a solid lead generation strategy.

A cold email is not only relevant and simple but also highly engaging and witty since its purpose is to spark interest in the lead’s monotonous inbox. Hence, both these methods have their own benefits when it comes to lead nurturing and generation.

Clodura.AI’s AI writer effortlessly crafts simple and interactive emails for you. The platform sends personalized emails to the lead and persuades them to take further action regarding its service.

6. Web Content Personalization

Generalizing web content is a thing of the past when it comes to B2B sales and marketing. Mass emails and marketing automation might be the talk of the town, but so is web content personalization.

In 2022, Account-based marketing (ABM) was introduced, forever changing B2B lead generation tactics. ABM allows business owners to tailor their website and marketing materials to specific leads or segments that are more promising than others.

Another strategy is to code your website in a way that tracks the visitor’s IP address and displays geographically specific content to the reader. 86% of B2B marketers believe that personalization is the key to success for lead generation.

7. Encourage Video Content

Lead-generation has now gone visual and the best part is, you don’t need to be an expert video creator to generate B2B leads through video marketing. Pulling stock videos from different websites, and creating different marketing graphics with acceptable jazz is enough to release your video online. Here are the two prominent forms of video content:

1. Long-form Content

Videos that exceed 10 minutes and are suited for detailed narratives and storytelling fall under the long-form category. This type of content retains the audience’s attention in brand storytelling and has higher chances of conversion.

After Google, YouTube ranks as the best search engine in the world on the internet. YouTube generally encourages long-form video content on its platform.

Videos like product reviews, detailed criticisms, B2B podcasts, and different product analyses help users market their products to a wider audience which is also applied to B2B companies.

2. Short-form Content

Videos that are 10 minutes or less, suited for mobile devices, ad-worthy, and low in production costs fall into the short-form category. This type of content is bound to go viral and is best for quick engagement, as it can also be repurposed on different marketing channels.

The majority of marketers believe that short-form videos yield the highest ROI of any social media strategy. Shopify is an example of a platform that markets its AI tools to its audience through short-form TikTok content. 

Since 500 million users are active on Instagram each day, B2B brands have a high chance of generating leads through these platforms. Both TikTok and Instagram reels can help brands achieve effortless, high-quality lead generation.   

Thus, make sure to create video content to drive traffic from a different platform to your website.

8. Organize Webinars

Webinars are a healthy choice for B2B lead generation. It hosts multiple leads at once to whom you can sell your product at the same time highlighting the benefits and areas of applications along with answering questions. 

Here are the following types of webinars:

1. Live Webinar

Live webinars happen in real-time and provide access to a wider range of audience. Registering for a live webinar is much easier to attend than an online demo. Hence, leads tend to gravitate more towards the former than the latter, which enhances conversion rates. Lead generation happens through the registration of a prospect who can participate for free. 

2. Pre-recorded Webinar

A pre-recorded webinar are recorded session of webinars, which are later available for distribution. This type of webinar eliminates the need for the user to schedule the time of the event as they can access it whenever they want. Unlike live webinars, pre-recorded webinars can survive permanently on a website.

9. Post Blogs and Articles

Publishing written content like a blog post or an article on the internet is one of the best lead-gen strategies that companies follow. However, to clear any confusion between the two, let us take a look at the table below:

Tips for Posting Blogs and Articles accurately:

• Research your topic
• Write a compelling headline
• Add visuals
• Optimize for SEO
• Edit and proofread
• Publish your post

10. Seamless UI/UX

Boosting lead generation is also done through a seamless UI/UX.

Blockades like conversion barriers, broken links, 404 errors, and prolonged loading times are often overlooked. Any of these mistakes can be enough to cause your visitor to abandon your website and turn to a competitor. Hence, it is important to repair such errors on your user interface.

Some other practices to consider on the design side include restricting excessive buttons on your website, disorganized links, or difficult-to-understand text. Load time and link functionality are a few more strategies to consider from the technical side of things.

According to WebFX, 75% of website viewers around the world judge the website based on its overall design. So make sure to check if your website is working seamlessly on all devices or not.

11. Share Discounts and Limited Offers

B2B business owners convert to high-paying customers when they are offered content or tools that cannot be found anywhere else. Discount prices and exclusive offers can get them going in an instant to buy your product/service.

A waiting list with the number of prospects in line to sign up through a landing page can do wonders, too. You can also establish deadlines for the registration of your webinars, creating urgency for companies and limiting your online attendance, which can also be effective.

However, make sure to be transparent with your audience and hold back on any extensions in time if one of them shows active interest. Being honest with a potential lead builds trust and repo while breaking your own rules flags your company as unreliable.

12. High-Quality Lead Generation through SEO

Optimizing SEO for your long-form written content is just the beginning.

Ranging from websites to press releases, SEO strategies can help your website skyrocket to better heights. If you cannot understand the limited website visitor traffic, take a look at the relevant keywords that your competitors’ web pages repeat.

Furthermore, you can revisit your target audience and put effective lead generation efforts to match your SEO strategies with their interests. 

One of the best ways to rank better on Google is through link building. It garners massive organic traffic and builds enhanced brand awareness and trust. Guest posting is one of the ways that can help you enhance link-building for your content. Backlinking on guest posts helps in building your website’s authority.

A usual lead generation campaign can go a long way by incorporating the right SEO strategies in place.

13. Publish Case Studies

Case studies are one of the best-written formats that help in B2B lead generation. This is an important part of the content format in B2B sales just behind email newsletters and short articles. 

Case studies is only applicable for the middle and bottom of the funnel to encourage buyers to not dropoff and complete their journey. However, B2B buyers want facts and figures. These sales do not target a single individual but an entire company. Businesses love to see some evidence that can support the claims your product is making. Hence, case studies aid a lot in doing that.

14. Effective Advertising and Traffic Generation

B2B lead generation with effective content marketing involves two steps:

Step 1: Entice customers with a carefully planned analysis of your target audience with the necessary information. 

Step 2: Assess the type of communication channel your business wants to target as different audiences can be found on different channels. Acknowledging the type of touchpoints your audience is attracted to, can help you in placing B2B display ads accordingly. 

Let’s now explore the three main Ad Channels:

1. Google Ads

Besides the general search engine optimization of your website, Google Ads prove to be quite effective as an addition to it. These ads help new leads to:

• Find the content they are looking for on your website in the form of ads.
• Go to the appropriate landing page through the link on the Google ad during search engine marketing.
• This page can also help them to include lead capture forms that users can fill out to access gated content.

A lead form can be a massive help when it comes to lead generation however make sure to not overload them with questions. This can be quite frustrating for the viewer incentivizing them to pick another alternative and drop off.

2. LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn Ads are an extremely important channel that helps in B2B lead generation. Businesses can target customers to an external landing page through a link on your social media. This practice can help you save time and money by increasing the efficiency of marketing measures.

These ads also help in:

• Generating lead gen forms that capture leads and ideal customers, sponsored contact, or InMails along with a CTA. 
• Clicking on this, the user will transfer the contact’s profile data like name, contact details, designation, company, job title, and location to an e-book and download it.

3. Meta Lead Ads

Meta Lead Ads is a LinkedIn alternative to Facebook that sends users directly to the lead-gen form with just a click without sending them off the platform. This implies that the users will not have to leave Facebook to access an external landing page.

Filling out the registration form to gain the user’s name is secondary. Finding out the name of the company in which he/she works is the primary step. The data acquired from your LinkedIn account can be installed and then transferred to your preferred CRM.

15. Highly Optimized Mobile Content

As your B2B business progresses and expands, it is important to optimize your website for mobile devices as it is an increasingly important part of the lead generation strategy.

Since it only takes seconds to check your website’s compatibility with mobile devices, it is not too big of a problem to optimize your website making it mobile-friendly.

16. Enticing Lead Magnets and Incentives

Lead magnets can boost your lead generation efforts effectively. As discussed above, it is a prospect that has enough perceived value in exchange for any sensitive information like an email address. 

Creating effective lead magnets depends entirely on buyer personas, the challenges that they raise, and issues that you can solve. 

However, most companies do not understand the concept of lead magnets correctly. Offering surface-level content on the website is not very ‘lead magnetic’.

Unless it is highly relevant content, eliminate the threshold content and offer deep and insightful information such as:

• In-depth guides
• Detailed case studies
• Workbooks or checklists
• Descriptive how-to’s
• Resource libraries
• Templates

These are a few lead magnets that can help writers develop valuable content. Make sure to get them right, as they can catalyze the lead generation process.

17. Plan Ready-to-Go Remarketing Campaigns

The first-time visitor to your website will rarely purchase anything from the get-go. They visit and leave in an instant while checking out the features and benefits of your product/service. They might find your competitor’s website more interesting.

Effective remarketing campaigns can help you bring these one-time visitors back to your website and content by tagging and re-engaging them through ads. Due to Google’s extensive outreach, you can start a remarketing campaign where the users who dropped off from your website are targeted again.

Hence, you can re-engage your first-time visitors on YouTube, Gmail, and Google Display Network with more than two million websites to bring your existing customers back.

18. Collaborate with Micro-Influencers

Influencer marketing is sweeping the world with its tactics. However, only a few know that it is not just a B2C strategy but also a B2B one. 

There are many influencers across YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter catering to a variety of B2B businesses. The key to winning the influencer marketing game is collaborating with influencers who are relevant to your industry.

Barter marketing is one strategy that helps to spread your brand’s message. It involves paying influencers a percentage of the brand’s services/products instead of cash in exchange for their endorsement services. This type of marketing helps create case studies that enhance a brand’s portfolio. 

You can also target the ones who do not directly work or own businesses in your industry. Due to the authenticity of their audience, micro-influencers are the best choice for such a strategy.

Celebrity influencers, on the other hand, do not showcase the same results as the world views them as living paid ads instead of humans with genuine suggestions.

19. Actively Ask for Referrals

Referral marketing is another one of the tricks up the company’s sleeve. It refers to the ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing that people trust in their communities. The right referrals convince leads to buy the product/service.

How? Let’s see:

• Positive reviews are significant for potential clients as they are live testimonials from other buyers as their first-hand experience. 
• At least 92% of consumers trust referrals from the people they know. 
• Many people miss out on such referrals. These missed opportunities can affect the quality and frequency of lead generation. 

A quality customer product or service will display a repeated customer pattern, so feel free to reach out to them. Be specific and engage in your request. Provide something in return to the prospects. This helps cross-sell and upsell their referrals. If they spread the word, it implies they like your product and will be a high-value customer for a while.

20. Live Chat Solving Issues Instantly

Multiple clients require instant answers to issues that B2B businesses can solve for them. Live chat helps fulfill these needs, not only offering reliable solutions to leads but also elevating the chances of lead conversion for companies. 

Live chat also gives you a competitive advantage over a brand’s competitors. It allows you to ask questions in real-time to the service/product provider without digging deeper into the website for further research. 

Furthermore, these questions also help the company gain better insights into the lead’s problems and issues, allowing them to understand their leads better. The better you know your lead, the quicker you can convince them to buy your product.

How Important is B2B Lead Generation for Your Business?

Fundamentally, B2B lead generation is significant for both the sales and marketing teams. One major reason for lead generation is the efficiency of work accomplished through it. The sales departments put a lot of effort into developing and pitching high-ticket offers to their leads. 

Furthermore, without lead generation, there will be no sales pipelines, conversions, revenue, or business. Lead generation is utilized to gain information on sales reps, marketing reps, SDRs, and others working behind the scenes. It facilitates a robust bridge between the marketing and sales teams, making the leads easier to convert. 

Some other cases where lead generation helps organizations are:

• Guiding content creation
• Robust marketing practices and strategies
• Enhance conversion rates
• Increase sales pipeline flow
• Drive higher revenues
• Detect your target audience
• Develop high brand awareness and visibility
• Broader market coverage
• Optimize sales cadence

B2B lead generation makes it quite obvious why it is necessary to implement the right strategies as they will reel in the right audience for the organization’s product/service. Let us take a look at the way lead generation works below.

4 Steps Guide to Generate B2B Leads Effectively

Organizations must be willing to look into the complex B2B lead generation process’s intricacies to navigate it successfully. This meticulous approach is essential to building a robust sales pipeline. 

Today’s discerning buyers demand a flawless lead-generation process, making it crucial for sales and marketing teams to collaborate seamlessly. By connecting sales and marketing teams through a smooth workflow, businesses can attract more quality leads and boost sales – effortlessly!

Let us look at the process to understand it better:

Step 1: Locate Good Quality B2B Leads

The first and foremost step in the process is to find the right leads by researching potential customers’ contact information. Apollo or ZoomInfo are the most commonly used lead-generation tools for finding such data. However, at times, they might fail to provide accurate or reliable data. Even their onboarding process is exhausting as it takes quite some time to become a client.

Clodura.AI on the other hand, is a one-stop solution for such issues for its audience. It not only provides reliable and accurate data up to 95% but also an effortless and seamless onboarding process.

Step 2: Contact Targeted Leads

Once the sales reps have a bunch of contacts and accounts, they reach out to them via cold outreach (cold emails and calls), other outbound strategies, or even replying to certain queries. Such methods build rapport between the client and the organization, potentially selling them the narrative of being reliable future customers.

Step 3: Nurture the Right Leads

After reaching out to the leads on your list, nurturing your important leads is the next step in lead generation. This step involves cultivating those leads that are not ready to buy yet.  These leads are taken from the initial to the final stage of the funnel by understanding their intent and problem.

Step 4: Make a Sale. Seal the Deal

The final step in the process is the closure stage, where you convert the lead into a client by effectively selling them the product/service. After researching and discovering different vendors for the product, the buyers pick you as their sales rep, and the latter has sealed the deal. The customer is then set for onboarding. 

Understanding the process of lead generation and conversion is part and parcel of the sales industry. Let us understand the different kinds of business leads that will help you gain more insight on this topic. Segregating them based on their target audience is one of the most important things to understand.

4 Types of B2B Leads Necessary for Your Business

B2B leads are potential customers who are not individuals but businesses and companies looking to sign a deal with you for your product. Unlike B2C, these leads are from other companies and not individual users. However, there are multiple instances of single-led business owners being your customers too. They are difficult to convert into clients.

Hence, businesses look for a sales-qualified lead where there is an individual at the other end of the line. Your sales team needs to work on generating qualified leads, so let’s examine the types of leads.

1. Marketing Qualified Leads

Potential leads qualified by marketing teams designated as likely to purchase are called Marketing-qualified Leads (MQLs). A marketing-qualified lead is typically not ready to buy just then; however, must have shown some interest in the service. Some instances of their activities include purchasing your website subscription or installing gated content from it.

These leads must be given leeway to pass down the lead funnel as they are passive outbound leads that have a chance of converting before they are connected to the sales teams.

2. Sales Qualified Leads

Leads that have directly contacted your sales team or company in some capacity are Sales-qualified Leads (SQLs). A sales-qualified prospect needs to meet the following criteria:

• Has a demand for your product/service.
• Has expressed active interest in your product, company, or service. 
• Has the budget to buy your product/service.

Any lead reaching out to you before you can target them must be followed up quickly, and this practice must be included in your sales strategy. Your sales revenue will boost if you follow up on your SQLs quickly.

3. Information Qualified Lead

These leads know very little about the business and are skeptical to take any action on their active interest. These leads appear toward the top of the sales funnel.

4. Sales Ready/Accepted Leads

A sales-ready lead is someone who resides at the bottom of the funnel. They might have spoken to the company’s sales rep and can speak about the chance of doing business with the company.

Which Lead Generation Strategy Works for Your Business?

Knowing which strategy will work for you and your target audience can rarely be predicted from the get-go. Only after multiple tests does a business owner determine their go-to strategy. Lead generation tools facilitate such strategies in their execution for most of the part. Clodura.AI is an advanced sales prospecting platform that helps determine and reel the leads in for client acquisition.

Clodura.AI is one of the best lead gen tools that helps not only in devising an effective lead generation strategy but also in successfully executing it. It has a database of 600M users and companies along with seamless AI-driven sales prospecting software helping the users to increase their sales funnel. Additionally, it also has a free email and direct dial finder Chrome Extension that commodifies lead generation through LinkedIn.

Find Innovative Ways for Effective B2B Lead Generation

Effective B2B lead generation strategies can make or break a business. Implementing diverse strategies to capture leads is crucial, as it can significantly impact a company’s growth and revenue.  

Addressing your competitors’ pain points and providing solutions to those issues in your product/service helps in successful execution and enhances your sales growth. Creating content, and optimizing your website with SEO, A/B testing, and content marketing can help in achieving different milestones. 

So make sure to carefully dissect different lead generation strategies, and don’t shy away from applying the ones that work. Filter out the ones that don’t. Finding one tool that does it all for a business can be difficult. 

Clodura.AI is an AI-driven sales prospecting tool that helps execute multiple lead generation strategies, such as A/B testing, email verification and analysis, and AI email writing, at once. Users don’t have to access multiple tools for different strategies, as Clodura.AI is a one-stop solution for most of them.

Frequently Asked Questions on B2B Lead Generation

1. What are the 3 types of B2B leads?

There are three types of B2B leads:

• Hot Leads: These leads are ready to buy, showing strong interest in your product and having the budget to make a purchase.
• Warm Leads: These leads have demonstrated interest in buying, may have already tried your product or a competitor’s, and are likely to make a purchase soon.
• Cold Leads: These leads are unaware of your company and product, but fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). They require nurturing and engagement to become potential customers.

2. What is the difference between MQL and SQL?

An MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) is a considerable lead who has installed some offer or content from the marketing team and has yet to qualify for the sales funnel. On the other hand, an SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) identifies a lead in its sales funnel, implying that they are actively interested in buying.

3. How many steps does B2B lead generation entail?

B2B lead generation can be concluded, from start to finish, in 4 steps:

• Find a lead
• Make first contact
• Nurture, evaluate, and qualify leads
• Close the deal

4. Which is the best platform for B2B leads?

Clodura.AI is the best platform for B2B lead generation. It has a rich database of more than 600M contacts that provide individual and company data. Some other features include 120M direct dials, Chrome Extensions, and sales prospecting that help in acquiring such leads seamlessly. It also has a bunch of upcoming features lined up like LinkedIn automation, task creation, meeting, and calling integration.