Leads are undoubtedly the lifeline of any company. Without leads, it means that the company won’t have clients which means there will be no profits. So, to put it simply, a company will no longer exist without leads. However, as some companies are shifting to revenue-generation models from lead-generation, everyone is doubtful whether B2B lead gen is dead or not. The truth remains that B2B lead gen can’t be dead and it’s still an arrow in the quiver for building the road toward revenue.
Nevertheless, as much as these leads are deemed essential, it’s one of the most challenging positions that anyone can ever hold especially in today’s competitive market. It’s because for any kind of revenue, you will always need a high-velocity of pipeline and it requires high-quality leads. But, it doesn’t mean that your approach should always be lead-centric. In fact, a lead-centric approach may lead to the misallocation of your resources and efforts.
Rather, it would be ideal to focus on long-term impact rather than short-term metrics. In addition, it should be noted that traditional B2B lead gen methods don’t work well in today’s time. Rather, your team should always stay updated with the latest trends in the industry and modify their approaches accordingly. So, in this guide, we will discuss why lead generation may have been ineffective in your case and which approaches to adapt to stay ahead in the game.
Reasons Why You May Think It’s Dead
- Changing Behaviour of Buyers
The reality is that the buyer’s behavior has changed over the last decades. Today, as people have less time on their hands, they often delay or avoid filling out any contact registration forms. This is an important step for marketing automation of traditional lead generation processes. The marketing nurture campaigns were used to kick off when people filled out the contact form.
Since people are delaying or avoiding this step, marketing automation campaigns are getting marginalized. And, it leaves B2B marketers with the confusion that how would they engage buyers in the initial point of interest. This is one of the reasons why a lot of marketers may think that B2B lead gen is dead.
- Focuses On Individual Lead Qualifying
The traditional lead-generation process focuses on individual lead qualifying rather than reaching an entire buying group. It’s estimated that the traditional way of email campaigns will not reach 30 percent of the buying group as it has only a couple of contacts in every account.
Also, it should be remembered that generating poor-quality leads at a massive number is no longer a recipe for success. Rather, it increases your chances of landing in spam and diminishes your authority in the industry. So, instead of capturing, qualifying as well as scoring the individual leads, it would be ideal to reach the entire buying group and engage them.
- There’s No Single Source For Leads
Hubspot created a report to showcase where the leads actually come from. And, surprisingly, they didn’t mention one particular channel like social media, PPC, or any other digital marketing channel for lead sourcing. Do you know why?
It’s because a good amount of leads don’t come from a single source. It’s basically a mashup of different channels and efforts that when put together help you go a long way. So, for B2B marketers, the lead generation efforts may seem ineffective if they are searching for leads from a single source.
3 Best Practices to Revamp Your Lead Generation Strategy
There are a few best practices that you can instantly implement and drive leads to fulfill your sales funnel without being too aggressive. These methods will help you realize that lead generation isn’t dead yet. In fact, it’s one of the most significant factors that contribute to driving revenue for a company.
- It’s Always critical to Consider Your End-goal
The first and foremost important step of lead generation is to clearly define what these leads mean to your organization. Do you want someone to signup for a certain offer? Or do you want them to request a callback? Or, it could be anything.
Depending on these goals, you can form the basis of a metric to measure the success of your lead generation campaign. The typical funnel of lead generation has a few steps like advertising the product, using demand generation, and nurturing them to make them qualified to become a paying customer.
- Integrate With CRM Software
As per Capterra, around 53% of all the top companies invest in CRM software for driving sales productivity. In today’s technologically advanced era, CRM tools play a crucial role in generating leads. After all, B2B marketers need to understand, analyze and modify their plans according to the market needs and customer behavior, and CRM makes everything easier.
Using CRM, you can retrieve customer data including their age, geographical location, and purchase habits. This can be used to modify your approach to outreaching them for generating more leads. In addition, CRM allows you to nurture leads, integrate with live chat software, and a lot more to help you with your B2B lead generation.
- Showcase Your Testimonials
Since many companies are popping up in the market, people often look for credible sources. Testimonials are a great way to showcase your credibility. It instantly helps to build trust among consumers when you showcase what other people speak about you.
This is the reason why social proof and testimonials are deemed essential in today’s lead-generation efforts. You can include video testimonials and customer reviews on your website to attract more leads and boost your lead-generation efforts.
Conclusion
So, lead generation isn’t dead and it can’t be. It’s because it’s one of the most important steps for companies to generate revenue. Without generating leads, none can drive revenue in businesses. However, the efforts may seem ineffective at times if you’re relying on traditional lead generation. Since customer behavior is changing rapidly, it’s time to consider the market trends and changing behavioral patterns and then modify the strategy to get ultimate success. To know more about B2B lead generation, contact us now!