Content Marketing Tips For Effective B2B lead generation
Content Marketing: So here are a few tips from experts on how to optimize your B2B lead generation, with a special focus on content marketing.
Simply put, B2B or business to business lead generation, is a marketing process that generates new leads or prospects for your business. This is an important part of business marketing as new leads mean new customers and new customers mean more revenue, which is vital for a business to grow and profit. Obviously there are lots of ways that business leads can be generated, including inbound marketing, content marketing, terrestrial and social media advertisements, but not all are equally effective according to social media and content specialist Thomas Connors.
So here are a few tips from experts on how to optimize your B2B lead generation, with a special focus on content marketing.
Platform optimization
When it comes to the choice of marketing platform, there is a lot of bias and variation out there. Some say social media, some say email, but whatever your choice, there are ways to optimize each method to get the best results possible. The secret seems to lie not in which channel you use, but instead how you use the channel.
Whatever marketing avenue you choose, make sure that it is effective and is actually converting into customers. Many marketers spend a large amount of money on a certain advertising funnel, without confirming its effectiveness, and when leads do not convert to sales, they pour more money into it which simply ends in a large loss of revenue.
Websites & Content
Marcus Taylor from VentureHarbour sheds some light on some of the problems caused by forms on landing pages. As these forms are designed to separate your leads from non-leads they have a huge impact on your conversion rates. He recommends using a form optimising tool, such as Leadfromly, to prevent leaving leads behind from your marketing campaigns. You can even consider multi-step forms vs. traditional ones as they have much higher conversion rates.
Lots of time and revenue will go into creating content for your website and blog and you can make the most of that investment by combining related blog posts into in-depth guides that customers can download for free. A little something free often goes a long way in building a strong relationship with a customer. Added to this you can place a Call to Action, or CTA in you blog posts that prompt customers to download your guides. Lastly, make sure your content is jam packed with relevant information that is useful and shareable. Content should also be SEO compliant to get the most turn-out to your website.
You can also optimize your site by using heat maps that show how users of your site have used their mouse and what they have clicked on. This can give you an idea of where your website is failing to grab attention or areas that may be distracting from actual conversion.
Integration of content marketing with email and social media is very important and inextricably linked. So let’s have a look at how you can improve these supporting platforms.
According to surveys, most B2B customers would still prefer to receive marketing messages via email, Thomas Connors, Social media and content specialist at Clickback, recommends a dual, inbound and outbound email marketing campaign. Despite its age (23 years) email is still one of the leading marketing campaigns in the business. Inbound marketing involves the advertising of your product or service in a way that targets customers seeking that service or product. This is a great way of advertising as the customers in this group have already shown interest in your business, but the process can be time consuming.
Outbound marketing is far less specific and involves contacting a large group of potential customers from a list bought from a data provider. Outbound marketing campaigns need to be specifically tailored to separate itself from spam with an added personalized message to a clear market persona, while avoiding target words like “free” that may have you picked up by a spam filter.
Automation of your email marketing campaigns can cut manual labor and improve sales by up to five times. Better yet, automated referral campaigns can motivate customers to refer you to more potential customers, with a potential reward for either one or both of them.
Additionally, make sure that your data provider is reputable and that the platform you are using for inbound and outbound mail has the capacity to do so properly (Source: Quora). Many data lists can be filled with errors and need to be checked before used.
Social media is a huge advertising platform and more that 80% of marketers use it. LinkedIn may be a less obvious marketing choice due to the high prices of their ads, but it does have one advantage in that it allows you to target the big spenders, or decision makers in your industry to make large profits even from the low conversion rate.
Facebook and twitter are expert platforms that have been around for a long time. They allow a personalised contact with your business customers on a daily basis, and this can be a very positive experience if your content is great and your online involvement is prompt. More importantly, as an extension of your website, both Facebook and twitter can be linked to updates on your website or blog to direct traffic to your website.