Complex offers that need a lot of explanation initially mean a great deal of work for field sales. Winning qualified B2B customers as the basis for sales follow-up is the most effective way to reduce this effort, minimise wastage and keep the cost of sales low.
According to Pinpoint Market Research, over 90% of B2B buying cycles start with research on the internet. That is why it is important to be part of the buying process from the very beginning. In this article you will learn the most important facts about B2B lead generation and why, as of 2022, B2B lead generation no longer works without marketing automation.
B2B lead generation for effective sales
Bad leads have long tails. If entrepreneurs want to win leads, they should always put quality before quantity, because unqualified leads cause a lot of ineffective marketing and sales processes:
- The budget for winning leads rises.
- Leads do not convert because they are not handled properly.
- Sales wastes valuable working time on leads that have no potential.
In the past, B2B marketing often generated leads at trade fairs by collecting business cards.
Today, automation plays the biggest role in digital B2B lead generation.
In general, lead generation means turning traffic, the visitors to a page, into de-anonymised contacts. A lead is therefore a new potential customer who «voluntarily» gives a B2B company their contact details and is no longer a stranger.
Digital B2B lead generation is cheaper
Digital lead generation usually costs considerably less than traditional methods such as TV campaigns. Another advantage: with this strategy, companies can measure how many leads they converted into sales opportunities. That way you see exactly how much return your lead generation strategy has delivered.
Gathering information about a company's potential customers that is as complete as possible is not a commercial task in practice. Rather, it is a form of sales support provided by marketing. Many B2B companies let sales staff collect leads, for example at trade fairs. But digital lead generation within a communication strategy is primarily a marketing task.
Content is king
Today's B2B buying process makes content more important than ever. Content that offers buyers value has become one of the most important keys to building customer trust.
The B2B buyer does not care how the company is organised or who is responsible for the website content. Nor do they want to talk to a salesperson just because they downloaded a white paper. Customers want a comprehensive but non-linear, contextual engagement with digital and human assets.
So for marketing and sales teams to do their jobs at all, they need relevant, high-quality content.
Content is king: content is the foundation of all your marketing and sales tasks.
Experience shows, however, that this is exactly where many B2B companies fall short. They are often aware that good content matters for lead management, but in practice there are often half-hearted blogs with poor content. Strategic content marketing thus remains a marketing experiment at best in most B2B companies.
A smooth handover of marketing leads to sales
To generate leads and customers efficiently, your marketing and sales teams have to define which qualitative criteria leads must meet. That ensures you recognise in time when your leads are ready to buy, that is, when a marketing qualified lead (MQL) becomes a sales qualified lead (SQL). How that handover works is described in our article on the marketing-to-sales handover.
Once your criteria and processes are clearly defined, you can also use marketing automation. You become much more efficient and can analyse your leads' performance even better. Automation pays off especially in lead scoring, the rating process within your lead management.
Lead generation itself can also happen largely automatically by embedding forms on your website. If your company is still at an early stage, though, evaluating leads manually is usually simpler and cheaper, because the volumes of data are still manageable.
Make sure you have a good data structure as a basis from the start.
In growth phases you usually have quite different priorities and let your data grow wild, or worse, forget to collect it at all.
But as in marketing, the motto in lead management is «it is all about the mix». For example, information from personal conversations with potential customers is still entered by hand.
Generating B2B leads with intelligent lead management
Generating B2B leads automatically requires intelligent lead management. Marketing automation is most often measured by conversion rates on the way to purchase. Other important metrics are the number of sales qualified leads (SQLs) or shared interests. Opens and clicks are measured for emails and push notifications.
Of course, most companies are interested in figures for directly or indirectly generated revenue. A measure of customer satisfaction such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a useful quarterly KPI. Further KPIs include marketing qualified leads (MQLs), cost per sale (CPS) and cost per acquisition (CPA).
Since lead generation is part of lead management, its goal is to establish contact with potential customers and obtain their permission to be contacted. The goal of lead management is to streamline this process from start to finish so the generated leads are more likely to become buyers.
Lead management describes the entire buying process and is structured along the customer journey.
Besides the individual components of lead management, leads also differ in how mature their buying decision is. That allows B2B marketers to use the right content for potential customers.
Main benefits of automation in lead management
The two most important benefits of marketing automation are the time saved on repetitive tasks and the possibility of personalised communication. The main benefit is seen in improved efficiency and a higher return on investment (ROI).
Marketing automation can demonstrably generate more and better B2B leads and increase conversion rates on the way to purchase.
In many companies, marketing automation helps improve the interaction between marketing and sales. That is an important capability for companies' development, because digitisation will bring marketing and sales closer together.
Conclusion: clear processes in lead management are a must, marketing automation a nice-to-have
The development of B2B lead management shows that companies have to rely on automated lead generation and qualification. Digital channels are an important touchpoint on the customer journey. To succeed, you have to be present on the most important channels, such as Google, LinkedIn or trade media, so your potential customers come across you again and again. The common mistakes to avoid are collected in our article on marketing automation mistakes.
