B2B Lead Generation: 26 Strategies For 2021

First, use a single Call To Action (CTA), and display it above the fold.

If your goal is to get your lead to sign up for a free account, then focus on that, and don’t tell your lead to do anything else like…

• Signing up for your email newsletter
• Checking out your customer testimonials
• Reading your blog articles

Single CTA = clarity and focus, leading to more conversions.

Multiple CTAs = distraction, leading to less conversions.

Pretty simple, right?

You’ll also want to display your CTA above the fold, so it’s the first thing that your lead sees.

When it comes to wording your CTA, research shows that using first person pronouns can increase your conversions by up to 90%.

Negative example: Start Your Free Trial. Positive example: Start My Free Trial.

Finally, remember to A/B test your CTAs, including:

• Length of the CTA
• Color of the button
• Size of the button
• Special effects (rounded corners, gradients, drop shadows, etc)

CTAs aside, make sure you remove all navigational links on your landing page.

Unlike your homepage, your landing page should not have a top or side panel where visitors can access your About Us page, Contact Us page, or Blog.

Why is this the case?

Again, it boils down to the idea of focus.

You don’t want your visitors to get distracted, and start clicking around on your site.

You want them to hone in on your offer, and convert!

Check out: How to Master Lead Generation

Alright, here’s one last tip that will help you optimize your landing pages…

Reduce your page loading time.

This is one thing that many B2B marketers miss out on, but it’s super important.

Research shows that 53% of people will leave a page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load, and you don’t want your visitors to churn before they even get the chance to see your offer!

Costs involved: $0.

200?

Nope, not by a long shot.

100?

Still too high.

The answer is 20.

That’s right – the average website lets 98% of their visitors slip through the cracks, and out of every 1000 visitors that you get, only 20 people end up converting.

The good news?

You can track your visitors and reach out to them even after they’ve left your page.

How do you do this?

With a tool like Albacross.

In a nutshell, Albacross is a simple-to-use tool that allows B2B marketers to automatically generate leads from their company’s website.

Here’s how it works:

First, sign up for an Albacross account. This takes just 30 seconds.

Next, paste the Albacross’s tracking script on your website.

Once that’s done, Albacross will run in the background and collect data about your visitors.

You can choose to receive either daily, weekly or monthly reports in your inbox. In these reports, you’ll get an overview of which companies are visiting your website, and how are they interacting with it.

From there, simply identify the companies that you’d like to reach out to, and use the contact information that Albacross provides to get in touch!

With Albacross you get:

• Unlimited visitors and companies
• Unlimited users
• Automated email reports
• Revenue, profit & contact information
• Advanced filtering & tagging

If you’re considering buying expensive B2B tools or paying for B2B lead generation services, we recommend that you try Albacross first, and see if it serves your needs.

Costs involved: from €129/month

According to Cialdini’s first Principle of Persuasion, Reciprocity, people are willing to give back something in return once you present them with some type of gift first.

That’ s where content upgrades can be so useful.

Simply put, content upgrades are add-ons to your already existing website content, most specifically, the top-performing posts. If you’re tracking your views, impressions and click-throughs, you should be pretty familiar with the best performing blog posts on your site. And since people love them so much, why not offer a little bit extra on top?

There are numerous content upgrades that you can try out, such as case studies, lead gen calculators, infographics, cheat sheets, swipe files, guides, checklists, reports and many others. For example, Brian Dean of Backlinko was able to improve his conversion rate by a whopping 785% by using a simple checklist.

Brian uses a simple method that you can replicate:

1. Find a post with lots of traffic
2. Think of a relevant resource to make the content better
3. Create it
4. Add it to your site
5. Profit

The hardest part of the equation is step #2, as you have to figure out what’s the most beneficial thing to offer to visitors on that specific page. Once you dial that down, give the upgrade away for free and watch those leads pile up.

Costs involved: $0

Simply put, these pop ups are triggered when a visitor shows signs of wanting to leave your site. (Say a desktop user starts moving their mouse towards that “X” in the top right hand corner of the browser…)

Think of these as a last ditch attempt to convert your visitor.

You know they’re on your way out, so you should throw your most irresistible offer out there, so as to convince them to convert.

Now, exit intent pop ups are particularly prominent in the eCommerce industry.

Say you’re browsing an online clothes store, and you see a couple of pants that you like, but they’re a bit on the pricey site.

After checking out the T&C page, and realizing that you have to pay an extra $8 for shipping, you decide that it’s just not worth it.

Just as you’re about to exit the page, a pop-up appears, giving you a promo code for 10% off storewide plus free shipping.

Wouldn’t that entice you to complete your purchase?

eCommerce aside, exit pop ups can also be used by B2B marketers to generate more leads. All you need to do is to swap out the offer for something that’s relevant to your leads.

This could be…

• A free SEO audit for their website worth $99
• A free item with purchase (e.g. complimentary access to a keyword analysis tool when they sign up for a plan with your company)
• An extended free trial for your product

Case in point?

When loan origination platform BeSmartee first launched, they utilized exit intent pop ups to convince more visitors to sign up for their service.

According to CEO Tim Nguyen, these pop ups helped the company increase their conversion by a whopping 200%. That’s huge.

Costs involved: Unless you’re a coder or you have a tech team at your disposal, your best bet is to use an online tool to create your exit intent pop up. We recommend Optin Monster, which starts from $22 per month.

Now, most marketers will post on social media and reply to tags or Tweets, but they don’t monitor their social media mentions.

(For those who aren’t sure what these are, they’re basically occasions in which people talk about your brand, but don’t tag you directly).

So not this:

But this:

Why is it important to monitor your social media mentions?

Well, if you don’t do this, you could be missing out on a ton of lead generation opportunities.

Check out: The Best Channels for B2B Lead Generation

Say you’re a marketer from Salesforce. If someone Tweets something along the lines of:

• Does anyone know which is better, Salesforce or NetSuite?
• Has anyone used Salesforce before? Are they any good?
• Does anyone know if you can integrate MailChimp with Salesforce?

It’s pretty obvious that they’re a potential customer.

On top of monitoring your own mentions on social media, you can also monitor the mentions of other competing brands.

For example, say someone Tweets:

• NetSuite sucks, I still can’t get through to their customer service after 5 tries.
• NetSuite is so buggy. Anyone know of any good alternatives?
• Is it just me, or is NetSuite not an intuitive product to use?

…that’s a golden opportunity for you to jump in, and convince this person to switch to Salesforce instead.

Alright, so how do you monitor your brand mentions?

Your first option is to do this manually – just search for your brand name on Twitter, or whatever social media platform you’re using.

Alternatively, if you want to use an automated tool to streamline the process, there are quite a few options that you can choose from.

This list of 15 free social media monitoring tools will help you get started!

Costs involved: depends on the software you choose, $0 if you do it manually.

Now, you already know how to do the usual stuff, such as…

• Use questions in your email titles to improve open rates
• Personalize email titles with your lead’s name to improve open rates
• Use CTA buttons instead of text links to make your CTA stand out more

So we’re not going to discuss all that.

Instead, we’re going to discuss an email marketing tip that’s not as well-known, but one that can make a huge difference:

Stop using HTML in your emails.

Yes, that means you won’t be able to use those pretty email templates anymore. But the difference it can make is definitely worth it.

Now, the common consensus is that a picture is worth a thousand words, and that utilizing pictures can make your emails more appealing.

But here’s the thing…

Using HTML in your emails actually hurts your email deliverability rate. If you’re constantly having your emails land in your prospect’s “Promotions” Tab instead of their “Primary” tab, or if your emails are going straight to the spam folder, this could be the reason why.

Deliverability aside, stripping your emails of HTML also conveys a more personal, intimate vibe.

Why is this important?

Well, if your lead thinks that you took the time to sit down and write them a personalized email, there’s a greater chance that they’ll respond.

Just to make it clear, we’re not saying that you need to email your leads manually…

But if you send your lead a pared-down email without any fancy templates, and you use the right (read: conversational) tone, you can achieve that effect and benefit from it!

Costs involved: $0, just your time.

Simply head over to the Settings page on your email client, and tweak your email signature to include a Call To Action.

Some CTAs that you might want to experiment with include:

• Book a 30-minute non-obligatory consultation
• Get a free website SEO audit worth $50 (available for the first 50 sign-ups each month).
• Download our free eBook on {insert benefit}
• Sign up for our webinar on {insert benefit}

Remember, the more specific you are with your CTA, the better.

Negative example: Book a consultation.

Positive example: Book a 30-minute non-obligatory consultation.

Negative example: Get a free SEO audit.

Positive example: Get a free website SEO audit worth $50.

You get the picture!

Costs involved: $0

Imagine being able to get access to a list of folks who are researching your competitors’ products and services.

Now, wouldn’t that be a dream come true?

Well, technology today is SO advanced that this is actually possible.

LeadCandy, for example, is a tool that scans through the Twitter followers of your competitors and finds their contact details (name, company, verified email, location).

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Tell LeadCandy about your ideal customer, and send across your competitors’ Twitter usernames

Step 2: LeadCandy will generate a Smart Lead List, and email it to you in two business days

Step 3: Set up an automated email campaign to reach out to the people on this list

You’ll probably open with something along the lines of:

*Hi {Name},

I noticed you follow {Competitor Name}’s Twitter, and I thought my company might be of interest to you…*

Then sit back, and wait for your leads to bite!

Costs involved: from $799 onwards

Guess what?

You’re absolutely right… but that’s what makes it so effective.

Here’s the thing:

Your leads are probably used to getting inundated with emails and messages on their social media accounts.

Every time they log into their emails, boom, they have a gazillion mails from sales reps offering them a free trial or product demo.

And everytime they go on LinkedIn, they get a bunch of invites or InMails from reps saying that they’d “like to connect”.

Well, do you think your leads will sift through each and every one of these messages?

Nope – they’ll either do a mass-delete, or just ignore them and put them on the back burner.

Because your email (or message) is caught in that huge haystack, the chances of it standing out are close to zero.

When it comes to direct mail, on the other hand, it’s a whole different story.

Your prospects aren’t used to receiving marketing collaterals in the mail.

And if you send them something that’s beautifully packaged and thoughtfully put together, you might just get them to sit up and pay attention.

Plus, consider this:

The average click through rate for emails is 2.43%. With direct mail, on the other hand, you’ll get to enjoy a 5.3% response rate for house lists.

If you need some inspiration, Heinz Marketing ran a really successful direct mail campaign just a few years back.

They sent their prospects empty iPad boxes, along with a note that said “We know your time is super valuable, but if you’d be willing to come have a conversation with us to solve XYZ problem that you already have, we’ll hand you the iPad that was in this box.”

Now, you’d assume that people would just take advantage of this offer, and that Heinz Marketing would end up making a huge loss…

But this campaign actually ended up generating a ton of revenue for them.

Now, a few things to note:

First, Heinz didn’t send these empty iPad boxes to all their leads. They only sent them to their hottest leads whom they were confident that they could close.

On top of that, Heinz also nailed the timing of their campaign. The packages reached their leads right before a huge convention, so it was easy enough for the leads to come by Heinz’s booth during said convention, and strike up a conversation.

Costs involved: $0.50 to $30 per recipient, depending on how fancy you want to get.

For one thing, your lead magnet has to consist of original and genuinely useful content.

If a visitor downloads your lead magnet only to realize that you’ve basically thrown a couple of your existing blog articles together and reformatted it into a PDF, they’ll definitely feel like they’ve gotten the short end of the stick.

This will lead to your visitors distrusting your brand, and reduce your chances of converting them into paying users further down the road.

On top of that, your opt-in forms also play a huge role in the success of your lead generation campaigns.

Look, I know that you want to find out as much about your lead as possible so that you can score them and decide whether they’re worth reaching out to.

But if you make your opt-in form too long, this will turn your visitors off, and they might just give up halfway through filling in your form.

How long is too long?

There’s no industry standard or hard and fast rule, but we generally like to keep our forms to three fields or less.

Take it from us…

There’s really no need to include fields to ask about your lead’s website address, the number of employees in their company, and their annual revenue – you can glean this information with a quick Google search.

Costs involved: $0

But hey, that’s where the magic happens.

Here’s why creating a podcast to generate leads is a great idea:

First, it gives you a legitimate reason to reach out to your leads. If your ideal customer is a CEO of a mid-sized SaaS company, for example, then just create a podcast where you interview SaaS business owners about their journey as an entrepreneur.

Second, it’s easier to pull off than it looks. You don’t even need to get any fancy equipment – this article teaches you how to set up your own podcast for free.

Third, you don’t need to worry about not having any listeners. That’s not the point – as long as you manage to strike up a conversation with your lead (whom you’re inviting to be a guest on your podcast), and you get their contact information, you’re good to go.

If you ask us, creating a podcast is an awesome strategy that not enough B2B sales reps and marketers are taking advantage of.

Think about it…

If you reach out to your lead in the capacity of a sales rep, their internal monologue will be:

Dang, not another one of these guys. How can I get rid of him/her?

But if you reach out to your lead in the capacity of a podcast owner, they’ll be thinking: Sounds interesting… it’ll probably be good publicity to go on the show and talk about my business.

That’s how you score your “in”.

Once you’ve done that, start building a rapport with your lead, and nurture them to the point where you can go in for the close.

Costs involved: You can start a podcast for free, but if you want to invest in some basic tools, these might set you back by $100 to $200

As it turns out, there’s a reason why so many people use them for lead generation.

The biggest benefit of hosting webinars is that you get more qualified leads. Think about it – a lead just popping by on your blog may or may not be interested in your product enough to leave their email or sign up for a demo.

On the other hand, someone willing to sit through a 60-minute webinar (ideally between 30 and 45 minutes) is definitely a qualified lead interested in learning about your product, willing to learn in-depth information.

You give more and you can ask for more. Without a doubt, creating and hosting a webinar takes much more work and time than writing an average long-form blog post. Because leads perceive webinars as higher value, they are also willing to provide more of their data in order to get access.

You’re not limited by space or time. Apps like EverWebinar allow you to create a webinar, host it, and replay it, without having to record it live. While there’s the benefit of less work to be done, you also lose out because you cannot directly engage with your leads in Q&A sessions during or after the webinar.

As it turns out, webinars are simply made for B2B, as 62% of marketers use webinars for generating B2B leads. What’s more, each webinar on average generates 20-40% qualified leads out of the entire viewership.

If you haven’t been following, video as a type of content is skyrocketing. In this moment, 81% of all businesses use video, compared to 63% in 2017. Perhaps more importantly, by 2019, 80% of all online traffic will come from video. Needless to say, this is a power that marketers should harness for lead generation.

So, how do you do it? Problem #1 is – how do you actually generate leads from video? Clearly, simply uploading a video to YouTube and expecting leads to come swarming in is not going to work.

Solutions like Wistia allow you to host your videos on their platform and share it on your website instead of giving YouTube your precious traffic and driving visitors away from your site.

Besides playing video, Wistia allows you to create calls to action, track clicks, follow when the visitors drop off, and perhaps most importantly, put an opt-in somewhere in the video player. That way, the visitor has to leave their contact information to finish watching.

Wistia is not the only option out there, with competitors such as Vooplayer becoming more popular as well.

The second part of the problem is – how is my company going to pay for all of this?

Creating (or outsourcing) a blog post costs anywhere from $50 to $500, while video content is in a whole different league when it comes to cost, or at least that’s what many businesses seem to think.

In reality, though, that’s just not true. The majority of businesses cannot make videos in-house, so they outsource the work – for as little as $1,200 for a basic video.

Which type of video should you use? There’s lots of options to choose from, but explainer videos seem to make a lot of sense. They’re short, they can present a problem and a solution and they’re relatively inexpensive to create.

Alternatively, you can open up your video for public viewing.

Content-wise, you have plenty of options. There’s the standard product demo video, but you can also do a Q&A video, or even take your viewers on a behind-the-scenes tour of your office.

During your video or webinar, encourage interaction by asking your viewers questions. Have someone from your team on standby to follow up on all the comments that your viewers leave.

At the end of your video, direct your viewers to a special offer or another piece of content that will nurture them and bring them further down the funnel. You can set up a custom tab on your Facebook page, or get your viewers to click through to a separate landing page.

Check out: 5 Best Practices for Creative Video on Facebook

Costs involved: If you want to create a video, it can cost upwards of $1,000. For webinars, if you can produce it yourself, you can make it for as low as $100, but with the help of professionals, the cost can rise to $3,000 or even more.

You need to think about your distribution strategy, too.

Consider this: there are 2 million blog articles that are published every. Single. Day.

So what if you’re writing long-form, kickass content that provides a ton of value to your consumers? There are plenty of other companies doing the exact same thing.

To get more eyeballs on your company’s brand, consider syndicating your content on other platforms.

How do you do this?

One option is to reach out to guest blogging sites and tell them you’d be happy to contribute a post (this bumper list of 170+ Quality Guest Blogging Sites should get you started).

Alternatively, you can also use native advertising platforms to help you get your content on other sites. Outbrain and Taboola are two of the biggest names.

Here’s a quick guide on how native advertising works:

First, choose the platform that you want to use. (Here’s a handy guide that breaks down the differences between Outbrain and Taboola).

Next, decide on what content you want to syndicate. You’ll want to pick something that resonates with your audience, so go with one of your best-performing articles that has gotten the most views or shares.

Now, it’s time to set up your campaign. Here’s where you select the audience that you want to target, set your budget, and schedule your ads to run on a continuous basis or on certain days.

Once your campaign is up and running, you can test different targeting settings, and swap out your content to see which gives you the most leads at the lowest costs.

Costs involved: If you’re going with the guest-blogging route, that’s free. If you’re going with native advertising platforms, most of these work with a Cost Per Click (CPC) model. Taboola’s minimum required CPC value is $0.01, but the platform suggests choosing a value of at least $0.20 - $0.70 to start

What does “frequently enough” mean?

Well, according to this graph from HubSpot, you’ll only see a marked increase in your leads if you publish 5 to 10 blog posts per month.

This means you’ll have to publish 1-2 blog posts every week. That’s a pretty big commitment, if you ask us!

If you want to experiment with a lower-maintenance option, there’s always SlideShare, which is a platform where you can upload and share presentation slides.

What’s the big deal about SlideShare?

Well, seeing as the platform receives 159 million page views per month, it’s a great tool that marketers can use to generate more sales leads.

Also, consider the fact that the presentations on SlideShare (the well-received ones, at least!) are a lot more visual and aesthetically appealing than your boring old blog post.

This means they’re more shareable, which in turn means that your product or company gets more exposure and air-time.

Last but not least, it’s a lot less time-consuming to create a deck for SlideShare as compared to banging out a long-form blog article.

Yes, you’ll still have to do your research and come up with valuable content for your readers…

But you get to save a ton of time on the actual writing.

If you’re keen on making SlideShare part of your content marketing strategy, check out these 7 ways to use SlideShare for your business.

Costs involved: $0

Infographics are three times more likely to be liked or shared on social media than any other type of content, so if you want to reach a wide audience, using infographics is the way to go.

Check our recent infographic on creating a lead generation funnel

But merely creating an infographic isn’t enough - most B2B companies are already using infographics as part of their marketing strategy, so if yours are going to be seen and have an impact, you need to find a way to stand out and optimize them for lead generation purposes.

That comes down to two things:

1. Grabbing the attention of your target audience with highly-relevant information
2. Getting your audience to take action with an engaging call to action

Since infographics get shared on social media so often, you should make them a prominent part of your social media lead-gen strategy. Post them to your social media pages, and add social sharing buttons on your site so that the readers have a simple way to share the content on their social media accounts.

Another way to use infographics is to make them the incentive that entices your site’s visitors to leave their contact information.

Since a visually-strong and data-heavy piece of content like an infographic has a lot of perceived value, it usually performs very well as the “freebie” offered for filling out the information on an opt-in form.

Finally, just because infographics are usually digital, doesn’t mean that you can’t use them offline as well.

We already talked about the huge potential of using direct-mail marketing for engaging hard-to-reach leads, so if you can turn an infographic into a brochure or pamphlet and send it via snail mail, you can see tremendous results.

Costs involved: Cost of the design can range anywhere from $30 to $500 if you put together the content yourself. Creating an infographic from scratch can cost upwards of $1,000.

SEOptimer, for example, houses an SEO audit tool on their website.

The goal is for consumers to Google “SEO audit tool”, find SEOptimer’s website, and then go on to check out the company’s paid product.

Then there’s SumoMe, which has a headline generator tool on their website.

And Shopify, which has a nifty profit margin calculator (among the other tools on their site).

Now, don’t worry about actually building your tool… there are a ton of solutions out there which will help you create a tool without coding it yourself.

Here are some you can check out:

• Kuia
• Outgrow
• LeadDoubler

With these platforms, you’ll be able to get your tool up and running in no time!

Before we move on, here’s a quick tip:

Don’t get so preoccupied with crafting your tool that you forget to think about how you can engage the people who use your tool.

If you want to use a softer approach, just make sure you’ve got a CTA on your landing page (perhaps for a free trial or a product demo).

If you want to be more aggressive, you can always ask for your lead’s email address before you grant them access to your tool.

The choice is yours!

Costs involved: depends on your needs and imagination. Starting from $45 if using Outgrow and goes from there

Let’s talk about press releases first.

Say you’re celebrating a milestone, pushing out a new product, or collaborating with a celebrity or a famous personality.

To get more eyeballs on your brand, you can write a press release and circulate it on sites that aggregate and distribute these releases.

If you’re lucky, reporters or journalists might pick up your story, and run with it.

Of course, you’ll need a great “hook” to capture the media’s attention. Basically, your story has to be newsworthy.

To learn more about writing a press release, read this guide from HubSpot.

Looking for somewhere to distribute your press release? Check out this list of websites.

Okay, onto the next tactic… pitching to the media.

First things first: this requires a great deal more effort on your part. You’re approaching individual reporters or journalists, and pitching them a story that’s relevant to the publication that they write for.

Sounds familiar? Yup, the process is pretty similar to what you’d do to secure a guest post.

That said, you’ll be subject to a more rigorous vetting or screening process when you’re trying to get your company featured by mainstream media (as opposed to an industry blog).

Industry blogs may be happy to accept guest posts along the lines of:

• X Ways To {Insert Item}
• X Benefits Of {Insert Item}
• The Definitive Guide to {Insert Item}

But these won’t make the grade if you’re pitching to journalists or reporters.

Again, the idea of newsworthiness is important here.

Your story idea should either:

• Be surprising or unexpected in some way
• Feature some sort of superlative, or
• Tie into a trending topic or phenomenon

To expand your list of media contacts, and find more journalists and reporters to pitch to, try JustReachOut.

Costs involved: $0

Remember how we talked about how only 2% of your site visitors convert on average?

Well, live chat helps you generate 4 to 8x more leads with that same pool of visitors.

The beauty of live chat lies in the fact that it reduces the friction on your visitor’s part, and makes it that easier for them to reach out.

With live chat, your lead doesn’t need to look for your email address, copy it, switch to their email client, paste it, and then think of how to word their message…

They can simply click on the chat function, get connected to a real-life person, and describe what they need.

In fact, live chat is so effective that:

• 94% of customers who are proactively invited to chat are somewhat or very satisfied with the experience, and
• 91% of customers who’ve used live chat are satisfied with its ability to aid in their online product-buying decisions, resolve customer service or tech support issues, and answer product questions in a timely manner.

For best results, make sure to man your live chat 24⁄7.

If you’re trying to reach out to business owners, they might be researching products and services after office hours or on weekends – and if you’re available to chat with them, this gives you an edge over your competitors.

Costs involved: Popular live chat software solutions include Zendesk (plans start from $0 per month) and Kayako (plans start from $15 per month).

The premise behind this is pretty similar to what we just discussed with live chat.

Basically, you want to reduce any friction that your lead might be experiencing, and make it super easy for them to reach out to you.

At this point, you might be wondering…

So should I use live chat or toll-free numbers? Which one will get me more leads?

Well, it really depends. If your target audience is someone who’s older and more comfortable speaking on the phone, using a toll-free number might work better.

If you’re selling a big-ticket item and most of your customers like to speak to someone over the phone before they make their purchase, the same rule applies.

That said, even if you’re targeting millennials who prefer live chat over speaking on the phone, this doesn’t mean your toll-free number is useless.

Why? Having a toll-free number on your site makes your business seem more legit; it also provides your leads with a greater sense of security.

Think about it…

Your lead might be able to get all their questions answered via live chat for now, but it’s nice to know that they DO have the option of reaching out to your company via phone in the event that they needed to.

Costs involved: Costs vary according to which country your leads are located in, and where you’re forwarding your calls to. If you’re using VoIP to answer your calls, TollFreeForwarding has pay as you go plans that start at $7 per month, and a 250 minute plan that starts at $11 per month.

PPC ads can get pretty expensive. New advertisers join the fray each year, and seeing as how most platforms operate using a bidding system, this inflates the price of your ads.

For this reason, we don’t recommend that companies use PPC ads as their only source of B2B leads.

That said, companies can use PPC ads in conjunction with other strategies. Just make sure your PPC campaigns are profitable!

For this, try different PPC Ads platforms.

Facebook Lead Ads

Facebook Lead Ads are quickly gaining popularity among B2B marketers.

If you’re unfamiliar with these ads, they are a type of ad that features a contact form that your lead can fill out, with the understanding that you’ll reach out to them.

You can do a variety of things with these ads – build your email list, get sign-ups for a product demo, or promote your free trial.

Now, you might be wondering:

What’s the difference between using Facebook Lead Ads, and using a regular banner ad to direct a lead to a landing page with a form?

Well, Facebook Lead Ads are more direct, and involve less steps. Your leads can sign up for your offer without leaving the Facebook app.

On top of that, Facebook Lead Ads are already pre-populated with the contact information that users have shared with Facebook.

Many times, users don’t even have to tap to input any data - they can simply click “Submit”, and be done with it. Again, because the process is easier and quicker, this results in more leads generated for you.

LinkedIn Ads

Another option to consider is LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms; like Facebook Lead Ads, these ads are also pre-populated with details from a user’s LinkedIn profile.

What’s the difference between Facebook Leads Ads and LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms?

For one thing, LinkedIn is a professional networking site, which means that most users on LinkedIn state work-related information (such as their job title, company, seniority, etc) on their profile.

Bearing this in mind, you can potentially get a richer set of data when you advertise on LinkedIn, and this allows you to target your leads more effectively.

On top of that, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are also available in different formats. You can choose between running a basic ad which shows up on mobile, Sponsored Content, or Sponsored InMail.

Go ahead and experiment, and see what works best for you!

Google AdWords

Last but not least, we have Google AdWords.

Generating leads via AdWords isn’t as straightforward as it is with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms or Facebook Lead Ads, but they can still be very effective if used the right way.

First, you’ll have to set up a dedicated landing page for your company. If you offer different services, then you might want to set up multiple pages.

The next step is to do keyword research, and determine what keywords your target audience is searching for.

Finally, set up your campaigns and bid on these keywords. When someone does a search and clicks on your ad, they’ll be redirected to your landing page, and this is where you’ll capture them as a lead.

But remember: use the right keywords.

Don’t waste your ad spend on low intent keywords, because these will bring you consumers who are still in their research phase (not those who are ready to make a purchase).

Long-tail keywords, as a general rule of thumb, tend to indicate low intent.

If someone is searching for:

• How does SEO work
• How can I use SEO to improve my ranking
• How to optimize blog articles for SEO

Then it’s safe to say that they’re still gathering information, and they’re not going to engage the services of an SEO agency any time soon.

Next, have your landing page copy align with your AdWords ad copy.

If you’ll recall, we previously talked about making your landing page copy consistent with your email copy – this is basically the same thing.

The goal is to provide clarity to your landing page visitors, so that you increase the likelihood of them converting as a lead.

Last but not least, make sure you provide your visitors with a good Landing Page Experience.

How do you do this?

Well, Google says that you can offer a good Landing Page Experience by:

• Offering relevant, useful and original content
• Promoting transparency and fostering trustworthiness on your site
• Making mobile and computer navigation easy
• Decreasing your landing page loading time, and
• Making your site fast

Costs involved: Can be as low as around $150 per month, but can be scaled to thousands of dollars if you can remain profitable.

Check out: Google’s guide on Understanding Landing Page Experience.

The problem is that merely getting your company listed isn’t going to be enough - there are likely dozens or even hundreds of listings similar to yours, and thus the chances of generating a stable stream of new leads are slim, to say the least.

However, there is a way to get in to the very top of the listings page as soon as today.

Sites like Capterra offer PPC advertising programs that allow you to get your listing featured in front of millions of users searching for solutions every month.

If you have a good offer and trust that you can close the leads once they click through, this can be a very effective way to generate leads on-demand.

Costs involved: Capterra offers bidding that starts at $2 per click. How much you spend depends on whether you can keep the campaign profitable and how much can you scale in your niche.

If you become one of the experts that gets interviewed and gain a platform to tell your company’s story and expertise, you can improve your brand awareness and get in front of prospective leads that you wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise.

But how to get started?

Well, the first step is registering on the HARO website.

Then, start going through the directory and regularly check for source requests that are relevant to what your expertise is.

Once you find a good match, send out a compelling pitch offering your expertise on the subject. Make sure to follow the directions of the journalist and thoroughly answer the questions that are asked.

Costs involved: mostly free, just needs time and attention

Step One: Create a Facebook Group, and invite everyone on your subscriber list to join.

At the same time, link to your group from your company’s website and Facebook page in order to drive more traffic to your group.

Step Two: Come up with a posting schedule.

It might take some time for you to gain traction (and for your members to start posting), so in the meantime, you should seed posts internally. Use a content calendar to keep everything on track, and get everyone on the team to chip in.

Step Three: Engage with your members.

Once your members start posting and commenting in your Facebook group, make sure to encourage them by commenting on their posts, and replying to their comments.

You can also ask your members for feedback, and get them to tell you what kind of content they’d like to see more of.

Step Four: Analyze your Group Insights.

Once your group has over 250 members, you’ll be able to access a “Group Insights” section from your left sidebar.

There’s plenty of information that you can glean from here, including…

• Member growth
• Posts, comments, and reactions stats
• Active members
• Popular days and times
• Top posts
• Top contributors
• Age and gender breakdown
• Top countries and cities

Now, think about how you can use this data to fine-tune your posting strategy.

If you realize that your members are particularly active on Thursdays at 8pm, for example, then start scheduling your posts to publish at that time.

Step Five: Generate leads

To generate leads from your Facebook Group, come up with an offer that’s relevant and attractive to your members.

You’ve been interacting with these folks for quite some time, and you should be familiar with their motivations and pain points. Now, go ahead and craft an offer that they can’t turn down.

If you find that a particular offer is extremely well-received, you can resurface the same offer a few months down the road.

This time, add a couple of testimonials or case studies (collected from the folks who previously took you up on your offer), so that you can capitalize on all that social proof.

Alternatively, you might want to come up with new offers and new CTAs to test.

As a general rule of thumb, make sure the ratio of your non-promotional to promotional posts hovers somewhere around 5:1.

No one likes to feel like they’re being sold to, and if you’re too aggressive, you’ll find your members becoming less active (or even quitting on you).

Costs involved: $0

But here’s the thing:

Featuring reviews and testimonials on your website only help to nurture your leads and push them closer to making a purchase…

They don’t actually help you to generate MORE leads.

So don’t just focus on amassing a ton of reviews for your website. Instead, make sure you have a good amount of reviews on external review sites as well!

Now, which specific review sites you should target depends on your industry.

If you’re in the software space, popular options include Capterra and G2 Crowd.

For those of you who aren’t already on these review sites, here’s what you should do:

1. Get your company listed on the review site.
2. Fill out your profile carefully. If you’re on Capterra, for example, make sure that you add in all your product features, because your leads might be filtering out companies based on certain features.
3. Email your subscribers, and ask them to leave you a review.
4. In the event that you receive a negative review (it happens!), make sure you respond to the user, and perform service recovery.

Pro-tip: make sure you give your subscribers or customers some direction when you’re asking for those reviews.

If you don’t specify what you’re looking for, your customer might simply leave you a 5-star review along with a generic “Great product!”

As you might imagine, this isn’t as helpful as a review that actually discusses what the customer likes about the product.

To get more informative, insightful reviews, copy and paste this snippet into your email asking your customers for a review:

The more detailed your review is, the more you’d be helping our potential customers understand our product!

You might want to answer some or all of the following questions:

1. What did you like about ProductName?
2. What objectives or results did ProductName help you achieve?
3. Was ProductName easy to set up?
4. Did you encounter any problems with ProductName?
5. Was it easy to get in contact with ProductName’s support team?
6. Would you recommend ProductName to your friends?

Now, here’s a question that we get a lot… should you incentivize product reviews?

You don’t have to do this if you want to, but if you’ve got the budget, we say go for it.

After all, you’re asking your customers to do you a favor. Why not throw in a little carrot, and offer them a promo code for the next purchase?

Make sure you don’t outrightly buy reviews or get your internal staff to review your product as though they’re customers, though.

Customers are pretty savvy, and they might just be able to put two and two together, and find out that you’re being dishonest with your reviews.

If this happens, you’ll get a ton of negative press, and it’ll be really hard to win back your customers’ trust… so make sure you don’t be caught in that situation!

One last thing before we move on to the next strategy:

It’s very tempting to delete negative reviews that you get (yes, some platforms will allow you to do this), but you should definitely refrain from doing so.

Obviously, it’s unethical, but statistics also show that 95% of consumers get suspicious of fake reviews if the reviews don’t contain any bad scores.

Running in the same vein, the likelihood of purchase peaks at a star rating of 4.0 – 4.7, then decreases as the rating gets closer to 5.0.

Honesty is always the way to go! ;)

Costs involved: Getting listed is mostly free, but if you decide to incentivize your reviews, that could mean offering special deals to the people that agree.

The problem is, getting people to trust you with their email address is an ever-increasing challenge - there are so many companies competing for the attention of the same prospects, that most inboxes have become overcrowded by promotional emails, and thus people are more careful about who they allow to email them.

However, there is another way to reach the inbox of your very best prospective leads, even if you have never interacted with them before.

With the help of Gmail Sponsored Promotions, you can get seemingly regular emails into your prospect’s inbox, and give yourself the opportunity to interact with your audience through a medium that they spend up to 20 hours per week checking.

The reason why it’s so powerful is that you gain access to a much larger audience while still reaping many of the same benefits of traditional email marketing, as the messages are designed to look similar to a normal email.

However, to make the strategy work, you need to understand what makes this advertising method unique.

Since you haven’t been given permission to reach their inbox and the prospect hasn’t been actively seeking your company out, you can’t start off with a hard sell of your products or services.

These prospects have a low familiarity with your brand, and thus you should try and educate them about who you are and what you can offer, while at the same time offering immediate value.

It’s also essential to include a call to action or even integrate an opt-in form, so that you can capture the leads and continue engaging them through email going forward.

Because these ads need to capture attention, don’t be afraid to use strong visual elements that help drive your points home quicker.

Costs involved: Various depending on the CPC and available

We already discussed some methods of how you can build an audience large enough to use, but that can take a lot of time and effort.

So, in the meantime, why not use an ingenious method for extracting user data from Facebook Groups and create custom audiences that are primed to be interested in your offers.

The process is surprisingly straightforward and affordable, and can generate amazing results if you take the time to implement it.

Basically, you use PhantomBuster, a tool automates a lot of social media tasks and helps to extract user information from various platforms, as well as a few other tools, to extract full names, work positions, and the companies that the users are working on.

After extracting the information, you can use it to create a custom Facebook audience that will be based on real people who are the ideal leads that you want to reach.

Then, either use that audience, or use its data to create a lookalike audience with the same interests and behaviors, and start running your ads!

Costs involved: $0 if 10 minutes of execution time per day will be enough. From $30 if not.

Learn More On The Topic

• 7 Amazing Lead Generation Tools That Will Help You To Get More Leads
• 5 Tips for Creating Evergreen Content Upgrades That Never Stop Converting
• How To Find Leads For Sales (While Spending $0 On Marketing)
• Lead Generation for Startups: An Actionable Guide
• How To Create A B2B Marketing Plan (+ Free Tools Every B2B Marketer Needs)

Time to work smart – apply these best practices to your B2B lead generation efforts in order to maximize the number of leads that you are able to attract.

As you can see, there are plenty of tools out there that you can use to streamline your lead gen efforts, and make the process simpler.

Many of these tools are also free to use, so it’d be a crime not to give them a shot.

Here’s to skyrocketing those leads, and upping your lead generation game!