Elevate Sales: 30 High-Quality B2B Lead Generation Methods

9
Min
Created On:
May 8, 2023
Updated On:
March 14, 2024
Sales Lead Generation Methods

Let’s face it: B2B lead generation isn’t exactly cakewalk.

Much like Frodo’s quest for the ring (guilty of LOTR references), a sales rep has to go through dangerous territories of skeptic buyers, intense competition, countless hours of research, and not to forget, trial and error. 

Most marketers and sales reps struggle to find the right B2B sales lead generation strategy for their organizations. The truth is, no matter what strategy you implement, you have to tailor your approach for each and every client based on their industry, organization, and audience. 

As inevitable as it may sound, more leads = more sales. 

In this article, we’ve covered the step-by-step lead generation process and bring you 30 high-quality B2B sales lead generation methods to fast track sales.

Watch this video to know more about the B2B Lead Generation Secrets - How To Find Untapped Warm Leads. Watch Now!

Step-By-Step B2B Lead Generation Process 

Having a clear idea of B2B sales lead is the first you will need for B2B lead generation. A B2B sales lead is a potential customer (usually an organization) that has previously shown interest in purchasing a product or service. As B2B stands for business-to-business, leads are other business rather than individual consumers.

1. Finding B2B Sales Leads

The first step of any B2B lead generation strategy is to find contact information (and other relevant info such as job title, company name, location, etc.) of potential customers. 

Most B2B companies prefer in-house lead sourcing, but you can also generate lead lists by third-party ‘lead generation’ companies. However, buying third-party lead lists is not advisable for B2B lead generation. 

2. Communicating with the Leads

Once lead sourcing is done and a high-quality lead list is created, designated sales reps reach out to the leads with their offerings through various communication channels like cold emailing, social media, etc.

3. Lead Qualification and Prospecting High-Quality Leads

During the interaction with leads, sales reps measure their likelihood of buying and qualify them as high-quality leads. This is usually done by looking at what stage a lead is in their buying journey. The stages are: 

1. Research and Awareness: At this stage, the potential customer learns what solutions they can avail to solve a certain pain point. This is when the leads start consuming content – blog posts, case studies, whitepapers, etc. 

2. Consideration: The lead narrows down their preferences and they usually decide on the product/service they might opt for and start researching more about the service or product. 

They might contact the seller for queries and compare it to other similar offerings. 

3. Decision Making: Once the right vendor is decided, leads communicate internally with other decision makers in their teams and finalize a purchase.

Based on these steps, sales reps decide at which stage a lead is and launch nurturing campaigns or get them book a demo call. 

4. Closing a Deal

This is the most trivial phase for the sales reps. After multiple meetings and uncountable follow ups, the prospect picks your service/product over your competitor and makes a purchase. 

After a successful sales attempt, the newly-converted customers are moved to the customer success team for onboarding. 

30 High-Quality B2B Sales Lead Generation Methods

1. Integrate Chatbots in Your Communication Channels

It is very crucial to get back to your lead’s query in time. In fact, according to a HBR report, if companies don’t respond to leads within five minutes or less, they risk losing them forever. 

Powered with artificial intelligence, chatbots can help B2B companies to communicate with their prospect customers in a fast and easy way. As the chatbot interacts with the prospects, you will be able to generate lead data like the name of the prospect, their job role, company name and size, phone number, pain points, etc. 

2. Optimize Content for SERP

As per Google data, B2B buyers conduct at least 12 searches before moving on to the company website. Besides that, almost 94% of buyers conduct online research before making a B2B purchase. 

The above-mentioned stats prove that organic search is a very important tool to generate B2B sales leads. Here’s how you can do it: 

  • Publish long-form blog content with the pillar and cluster strategy. 
  • Make sure you target relevant keywords. 
  • Build a solid backlinking strategy.  
  • Create SEO-optimized meta descriptions and title tags. 

This way you can drive organic traffic to your site and generate and nurture top-of-the-funnel leads for your business. 

3. Send Personalized Cold Emails

Even in the era of social media, cold emails are still the best lead generation channel for B2B marketers. In fact, 59% of marketers think cold emails are important for B2B lead generation. 

The best thing about cold email is that you can engage cold leads using them. And personalization is the key to reaching your prospects’ hearts. So, make sure you customize your email based on the lead data to boost your lead gen efforts

4. Add Email Signature

As we were talking about cold emails, here comes another lead generation method through emails. Adding customized email signatures to your sales emails is a great way of promoting your product/service. Also, it gives the leads a feel of authentication. 

Make sure your email signature includes your full name, designation, company name, website address, socials, and/or YouTube links and podcasts. 

You can also add a recent event or webinar links for this. 

5. Engage in Social Media Platforms

These days, B2B marketers use social media channels extensively to generate sales leads. LinkedIn is the best platform for B2B engagement. You can also join social media groups (Facebook, LinkedIn) to engage with your prospects, share info, and build authority. 

However, the key is not to pitch your offer directly or come off as salesy. Rather, focus on building rapport with industry-leaders and professionals. There are many ways you can generate B2B sales leads from social media, including: 

  • Engaging in relevant conversations that others in the group have started
  • Respond to questions
  • Share actionable tips to help solve problems

6. Organize and Host Webinars

According to a study by Outgrow, 73% of B2B marketers think that webinars are very effective for generating high-quality leads. It means if you are offering a unique opportunity for your audience to learn and grow, you will position your business as an industry expert. 

After the pandemic, as we are growing into more and more visual content (video), hosting webinars is a very effective lead gen medium. 

7.  Engage on Q&A Websites

Engaging in Q&A websites like Quora and Reddit is a great way for B2B businesses to generate more traffic to their websites. By answering questions regarding your niche or product helps you demonstrate thought leadership. 

As a B2B marketer or a sales rep, you can join these platforms, identify the relevant questions, run ads to retarget visitors, and promote popular responses to generate Qualified B2B sales leads. 

8. Encourage Happy Customers to Give Reviews

B2B businesses are more skeptical while making a purchase, as the price points are high and the purchases directly impact their business’s performance. That’s why B2B buyers heavily rely on customer reviews. 

In fact, almost 67% of B2B buyers believe that online reviews are extremely important to make a buying decision. You can ask your existing customers to leave reviews. You can also send customer testimonials to your prospects. 

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9. Leverage Remote Selling

Remote selling, also known as virtual selling, is an effective lead generation strategy for B2B businesses. As opposed to in-person meetings with prospects, remote selling is conducted through phone or video calls. 

This technique requires highly-skilled inside sales reps who can respond to prospects’ pain points, industry-specific questions about the product and offer solutions. 

10. List Your Product/Service on Online Directories

B2B buyers are always in the lookout for highly-effective solutions online, and online directories play an important role in increasing visibility by listing products/services. You can list your product/service in directories such as G2, Capterra, etc., to increase visibility of your business. 

Some other online directories are LinkedIn Directory, Google My Business, Saas Genius, Yelp, and Bing. 

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11. Automate Your Marketing Efforts

Marketing automation goes a long way to generate high-quality leads for B2B businesses. With a cold emailing tool or a marketing automation tool, you can segment your email list based on preferences. 

This way, you can run highly-targeted marketing campaigns. Marketing automation also helps the sales and marketing team work together to generate more leads. B2B marketers can score leads through marketing automation and sales reps can take it up from there. 

12. Optimize Your Website

If you are offering top-notch solutions for businesses or running a successful blog, and your website’s loading speed is low, it will hamper lead generation. B2B prospects won’t sit there to load your site, instead, they will move on to your competitors. So, make sure you run site diagnosis from time to time and improve your site speed and the user interface of your website. 

Smartlead website

13. Issue Press Releases

Press releases or press statements create hype and brand awareness, reaching your prospects with detailed information about your offerings. Press releases shared with influencers, social media channels, or media houses can help B2B marketers generate B2B sales leads.

14. Run a Blog and Publish Articles

Content plays a pivotal role in generating and nurturing leads in a B2B business's digital marketing strategy. You can write and publish blog posts related to your industry that educates your prospective clients. With the help of SEO, optimize your content for SERP. 

As most B2B buyers perform extensive research before finalizing a product/service, your high ranking blog posts can increase brand visibility and generate leads. 

15. Make Phone Calls to Your Warm Leads

If you are nurturing your warm leads for some time but they haven’t converted into paying customers, consider calling them to persuade them to make their buying decisions. For example, if someone has read your content and wants to learn better or if you don’t hear from them after a webinar. 

16. Publish Guest Post on High-Authority Websites

Guest posting is a proven tactic of B2B sales lead generation. Regular guest posting in high-authority websites (higher Domain Authority) puts your company in the front and also helps in link-building. If you are following this strategy, make sure you are creating high-value content to generate valuable leads. 

17. Use Gated Content for Lead Gen

Sharing eBooks and whitepapers with your target audiences in exchange of their email addresses is another effective method of B2B sales lead generation. As a matter of fact, 76% and 63% of customers agree to share personal info to get white papers and eBooks respectively. 

18. Interview Industry Experts

There are many successful people who are experts in your industry. Leverage their name and knowledge and use it to create podcasts, eBooks, articles or blog posts to offer relevant information to your target audiences. This will help raise your company visibility, boost credibility,  and link-building. 

19. Be Active on Social Media

B2B businesses can leverage social media spaces to generate B2B sales leads. Here are some ideas on how you can do it: 

  • Promote blog posts and articles
  • Repurpose blog content to create videos, reels, infographics, and images. 
  • Run engaging campaigns – ask questions, run quizzes
  • Engage with target audiences in comments

20. Use LinkedIn Sales navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is very useful when it comes to researching key decision makers in a business that you consider as a prospective client. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to network with various decision-makers in a company before you pitch your offer to them. 

Read how to write a successful LinkedIn prospecting message, here

21. Invest in Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is an essential lead generation tool in 2023 for both B2B and B2C businesses. Find our influencers in your industry with a high number of followers and collaborate with them.
This way, you can leverage their traffic to your site and promote new products or build awareness about an existing product. 

22. Launch Powerful landing Pages

To generate high-quality leads, develop powerful landing pages to your website. Landing pages help you to gather lead data and enable you to nurture the leads into paid clients. Here are a few things you can do to create effective landing pages: 

  • Use catchy headlines and subheadings
  • Add photos and infographics
  • Explain what you are selling and how it can help your customers
  • Add an opt-in form with a persuasive CTA

23. Run Paid Ads

Paid ads (Google ads) are a great way to reach out to a larger audience for B2B companies. Research and find the right keywords and run paid ads on ISPs. Make sure you optimize their demographic filters so that your ads reach your ideal customer base. 

24. Ask for referrals from Your Existing Customers

82% B2B businesses generate their sales through effective referrals. If you nurture well, referrals from satisfied customers can be successfully converted into high-quality leads. Ask your happy customers for referrals and make sure the referral process is not very critical – you can create templates for them. 

25. Speak at Events and Industry Conferences

Guest speaking at relevant industry conferences can generate leads for your B2B business. If you can present a meaningful conversation and brand your product effectively, leads will start reaching out to you.  

26. Use SEO Tools

Ranking on SERP hugely impacts your website traffic. Besides targeting keywords and relevant topics, it's important your blog is SEO compliant. Focus on building high-authority backlinks to improve your SEO rank. 

For these things, you will need a reliable SEO tool. A marketing tool helps you research keywords, track performance, and offer insights to improve. Here’s a list of reliable SEO tools for B2B businesses: 

  • Semrush
  • Ahrefs
  • Google Search Console (for paid ads) 
  • KWFinder
  • Moz

27. Use Content Syndication

Content syndication means utilizing top-performing content on various content distribution channels. This way, you can push the same content for multi-channel marketing without investing an extra penny. 

Use SEO research tools to understand which content is working well and turn that content piece into different forms of content. For example, you can turn your high-performing blog post into Youube videos, LinkedIn posts, or an Instagram reel. 

Read more: How to build a successful LinkedIn content marketing strategy? 

28. Leverage FOMO Trigger

Although FOMO triggering is a successful B2C lead generation method, B2B businesses can also use it to drive more traffic and generate leads. You can create a sense of urgency in your marketing campaign to market your products. 

For example, many SaaS brands leverage Cyber Monday to attract more customers. 

Read more: How to generate leads for your SaaS business with cold emails? 

29. Introduce Social Sharing Rewards

Prospects who share your content help generate more traffic to your business. You can encourage more social sharing by introducing a rewarding system. 

30. Start an Advisory Board

Advisory boards work as informal groups who offer their personal network to help generate more leads. Especially many tech companies leverage advisory boards to expand their sales. 

Conclusion

B2B lead generation and increasing sales is a very challenging task, but not impossible. All these lead generation strategies might make your head spin, but don’t worry. The fundamentals of B2B lead generation comes down to a few questions.

  • What is the best B2B sales lead generation method? 
  • Will the tactic actually help increase sales? 
  • How do I drive the best results? 

Stop right there. Over-optimizing your B2B lead gen won’t give you desired results. Instead, talk to your sales team and marketing team, work in collaboration, and then get started with your strategies. Find out what works and what doesn’t and run only successful lead generation campaigns to drive more sales. 

Frequently Asked Questions

How Can Automation Tools Improve B2B Lead Generation Processes?

Automation tools can significantly enhance B2B lead generation processes. They can track customer behavior and create targeted campaigns tailored to their needs, freeing up time for other essential tasks. Additionally, automation tools can shorten the sales cycle, enhance the customer experience, and drive more conversions.

What Are Common Challenges in B2B Lead Generation and How to Overcome Them?

Some common challenges in B2B lead generation include finding high-quality leads, engaging customers effectively, and optimizing conversion rates. Overcoming these challenges requires a comprehensive approach that includes using data analytics to identify potential leads, personalizing content to engage customers, and employing robust tracking measures to optimize conversion rates.

How Do I Measure the Success of My B2B Lead Generation Campaigns?

The success of B2B lead generation campaigns can be measured using various metrics. These include the number of new leads generated, the conversion rate of leads to customers, and the return on investment (ROI) of the campaign. Additionally, tracking customer engagement and response rates can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your lead generation strategies.

How Important is Personalization in B2B Lead Generation?

Personalization plays a crucial role in B2B lead generation. By tailoring content and communication to individual customer needs, businesses can enhance engagement, improve customer relationships, and increase conversion rates. Personalized marketing is particularly effective in B2B lead generation, as it allows businesses to address specific business needs and challenges.

How Can Networking and Relationship Building Contribute to B2B Lead Generation?

Networking and relationship building are key factors in successful B2B lead generation. Building strong relationships with potential customers can lead to referrals, which are often high-quality leads. Additionally, networking events provide opportunities to learn about industry trends, meet potential customers, and promote your business. Building relationships with industry influencers can also enhance your business's credibility and reach.

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

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Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Author’s Details

Sattwik Das

Sattwik is a Digital Marketing professional at Smartlead. He is a dedicated content writer who focuses on juggling words to bring out meaningful content. He is experienced in well-researched and SEO-optimized content creation, content editing, and copywriting for various businesses throughout the globe. His expertise in SEO, SMM, and SMO with a touch of creativity helps businesses grow and maximize their credibility and sales.

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Edited by:

Charu Mitra Dubey

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Frequently asked questions

General Questions

What is Smartlead's cold email outreach software?

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Smartlead's cold email outreach tool helps businesses scale their outreach efforts seamlessly. With unlimited mailboxes, fully automated email warmup functionality, a multi-channel infrastructure, and a user-friendly unibox, it empowers users to manage their entire revenue cycle in one place. Whether you're looking to streamline cold email campaigns with automated email warmups, personalization fields, automated mailbox rotation, easy integrations, and spintax, improve productivity, or enhance scalability with subsequences based on lead’s intentions, automated replies, and full white-label experience, our cold email tool implifies it in a single solution.

How does the "unlimited mailboxes" feature benefit me?

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Our "unlimited mailboxes" feature allows you to expand your email communications without restrictions imposed by a mailbox limit. This means you won't be constrained by artificial caps on the number of mailboxes you can connect and use. This feature makes Smartlead the best cold email software and empowers you to reach a wider audience, engage with more potential customers, and manage diverse email campaigns effectively.

What do you mean by "unibox to handle your entire revenue cycle"?

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The "unibox" is one of the unique features of Smartlead cold email outreach tool, and it's a game-changer when it comes to managing your revenue cycle. The master inbox or the unibox consolidates all your outreach channels, responses, sales follow-ups, and conversions into one centralized, user-friendly mailbox.

With the "unibox," you gain the ability to:
1. Focus on closing deals: You can now say goodbye to the hassle of logging into multiple mailboxes to search for replies. The "unibox" streamlines your sales communication, allowing you to focus on what matters most—closing deals.

2. Centralized lead management: All your leads are managed from one central location, simplifying lead tracking and response management. This ensures you take advantage of every opportunity and efficiently engage with your prospects.

3. Maintain context: The "unibox" provides a 360-degree view of all your customer messages, allowing you to maintain context and deliver more personalized and effective responses.

How does Smartlead ensure my emails don't land in the spam folder?

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Smartlead, the best cold email marketing tool, ensures your emails reach the intended recipients' primary inbox rather than the spam folder. 

Here's how it works:
1. Our "unlimited warmups" feature is designed to build and maintain a healthy sending reputation for your cold email outreach. Instead of sending a large volume of emails all at once, which can trigger spam filters, we gradually ramp up your sending volume. This gradual approach, combined with positive email interactions, helps boost your email deliverability rates.

2. We deploy high-deliverability IP servers specific to each campaign. 

3. The ‘Warmup’ feature replicates humanized email sending patterns, spintax, and smart replies.
 
4. By establishing a positive sender reputation and gradually increasing the number of sent emails, Smartlead minimizes the risk of your emails being flagged as spam. This way, you can be confident that your messages will consistently land in the primary inbox, increasing the likelihood of engagement and successful communication with your recipients.

Can I integrate Smartlead with other tools I'm using?

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Certainly, Smartlead is designed for seamless integration with a wide range of tools and platforms. Smartlead offers integration with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Clay, Listkit, and more. You can leverage webhooks and APIs to integrate the tools you use. Try Now!

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What type of businesses sees the most success with Smartlead?

No, there are no limitations on the number of channels you can utilize with Smartlead. Our multi-channel infrastructure is designed to be limitless, allowing you to reach potential customers through multiple avenues without constraints.

This flexibility empowers you to diversify your cold email outreach efforts, connect with your audience through various communication channels, and increase your chances of conversion. Whether email, social media, SMS, or other communication methods, Smartlead's multi-channel capabilities ensure you can choose the channels that best align with your outreach strategy and business goals. This way, you can engage with your prospects effectively and maximize the impact of your email outreach.

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Smartlead distinguishes itself from other cold email outreach software by focusing on limitless scalability and seamless integration. While many similar tools restrict your outreach capabilities, Smartlead offers a different approach.

Here's what makes us uniquely the best cold email software:

1. Unlimited Mailboxes: In contrast to platforms that limit mailbox usage, Smartlead provides unlimited mailboxes. This means you can expand your outreach without any arbitrary constraints.

2. Unique IP Servers: Smartlead offers unique IP servers for every campaign it sends out. 

3. Sender Reputation Protection: Smartlead protects your sender reputation by auto-moving emails from spam folders to the primary inbox. This tool uses unique identifiers to cloak all warmup emails from being recognized by automation parsers. 

4. Automated Warmup: Smartlead’s warmup functionality enhances your sender reputation and improves email deliverability by maintaining humanized email sending patterns and ramping up the sending volume. 

5. Multi-Channel Emphasis: Smartlead places a strong emphasis on multi-channel outreach. You can reach your prospects where they are with the LinkedIn outreach feature.   With Smartlead’s cold email automation software, you're always one step ahead in your outreach efforts, enjoying the freedom to scale your initiatives and seamlessly integrate with other tools—all while maintaining a focus on maximizing the impact of your outreach.

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Ensuring the security of your data is Smartlead's utmost priority. We implement robust encryption methods and stringent security measures to guarantee the continuous protection of your information. Your data's safety is paramount to us, and we are always dedicated to upholding the highest standards of security.

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