Strategy

A great strategy is the basis of all great campaigns. If you think carefully about how and why your lead generation campaign will work, you're much more likely to see positive results as opposed to simply pushing out another campaign that looks much like the previous one.

1 - Focus on quality over quantity

The well-known 80/20 rule, which asserts that 80% of outputs result from 20% of all inputs, applies to lead generation campaigns as well as many other things in life. It’s important to understand the campaigns that generate the best results and invest time in making them even better. If you make the 20% of campaigns that generate the best results more effective, it's a much better use of your time than trying to get less effective campaigns up to par.

2 - Be topical

If you're able to be agile, creating lead generation campaigns around topical issues is always going to help increase conversion rates. Fortunately in B2B, the news cycle can be quite long, so you don't typically have to respond overnight. However the quicker you can provide content offers that address changes in legislation or hot topics for the industry, the more effective your lead generation campaigns will be.

3 - Create offers for different buying stage

We all understand that prospects move through a series of stages before they buy. The simplest model is AIDA (awareness, interest, desire, action) but you probably have your own sales funnel or customer journey. At each stage, the needs of the audience change, so build a model where you have different content that you offer to meet the needs of the prospect as they move towards becoming a customer.

4 - Build personas

Great lead generation campaigns understand the needs of the customer. Building personas is one of the most effective ways to understand your audience, from what motivates them to the challenges they must overcome. Use personas to understand what your audience cares about and to create solutions that will generate leads.

5 - Understand different members of the DMU

Almost nine out of 10 B2B purchases are made by a decision-making unit (or buying committee). Too often we see lead generation campaigns focusing on only one member of the DMU. The best campaigns engage several key members and group leads together by creating a rich picture of the team making the purchase decision.

6 - Understand the customer journey

7 - Use scarcity

One of the best strategies to engage an audience is to create the impression of scarcity. Whether it's a limited time offer, or you require people to “qualify” for the content or programme you’re offering, creating artificial scarcity is a great way to drive action.

8 - Promote offers on product pages

Sometimes lead generation campaigns are seen as separate from other marketing activities such as the company website. This is a mistake! Make use of your website and other marketing channels. Offering lead generation content on product pages can not only increase the performance of the campaign, but often provides information the prospect is looking for, helping them make a buying decision.

9 - Use your blog to host lead gen offers

Blogs are a fantastic place to promote lead generation campaigns. Typically, when someone is reading your blog they are researching or learning, which is an ideal mindset for your offering of helpful content. Driving traffic to your blog is expensive, whether you use SEO or other tactics, so make sure you take advantage of this traffic by promoting your content offers.

10 - Create content that follows on from blog posts

A great way to offer relevant content at the end of a blog post is to generate “follow on” content from those posts. This might be a white paper or eBook that goes into more detail than you could within a blog post. This type of content offer performs well as the best performing blog posts will identify the topics that are of greatest interest to your audience.

11 - Use emotion

It's a bit of a cliché that, even in B2B, we are still marketing to humans. However, the desire to follow corporate style guidelines and not say anything controversial sometimes makes our lead generation campaigns a little dull. Don't be afraid to use emotion in your campaigns to grab attention and make prospects understand the importance of what you're talking about.

12 - Solve problems or help people get promoted

This is perhaps the best, and possibly simplest, tip to improve your lead generation campaigns. If you want someone to register on a form you should either solve an issue they are struggling with or offer information that will impress others in the organisation. Put simply, if you can help someone solve a problem or get promoted, your lead generation campaign has a good chance of succeeding.

13 - Make your brand stand out

When building a strategy for a campaign, it's important to stand out from the competition. This can be as simple as using a particular colour palette, or as complex as building a campaign that allows you to “own” a key issue within the industry.

14 - Learn from your mistakes (and successes)

When you are planning the strategy for a lead generation campaign, it's always useful to review campaigns you have run in the past. Look at what worked, and what didn't, to find out what you can learn from previous campaigns. Most importantly, identify where campaigns failed in the past and don't make that mistake again!

15 - Ask for referrals

Don't be afraid to ask for referrals in your lead generation campaign. Whether it's giving someone the chance to share content with a colleague, or using telemarketing to ask if there are similar or partner companies that could be approached, referrals are a great way to get new leads. This is particularly important for Europeans, who tend to be less willing to ask for referrals than our American colleagues.