lead generation

B2B lead generation: what’s working right now?

08/29/2018 by Linsay Duncan

We share the latest research, benchmarks and advice that will help you reassess your lead generation channels and identify those approaches proven to deliver results.

Word of mouth may be King but who’s the Queen?

It’s no surprise that word of mouth and referrals reign supreme when it comes to B2B lead generation. It has always been a powerful way to generate leads, particularly when done strategically however it is limited by scale.

B2B Lead Generation - Conversion Rate Table — Source: Average Conversion Rate from Lead to Opportunity – Marketo Data Tells Us: What Is the Top Conversion Rate by Channel?

When broader outreach is needed, inbound content marketing comes into its own. The channel, used by 91% of B2B marketers, provides a strong ROI and delivers warmer inquiries compared to cold outreach campaigns. However, it doesn’t come without its own challenges.

What content marketing isn’t

Organisations that are unsuccessful with content marketing are likely to be doing one or more of the following:

1. Publishing content that’s not tuned in to potential buyers, doesn’t recognise their challenges and lacks proof.
2. Sharing self-serving or self-focused stories (the “Read all about us!” approach, you’ve read this stuff before and probably switched off).
3. Poorly timed distribution that misses prime engagement times.
4. Using dull formats which don’t engage with their audience.
5. Lack of content and keyword strategy.

These mistakes mean the opportunity to engage with prospects, and nurture them, are missed.

In contrast, those that that see success through content marketing have a clear and documented strategy (only around 37% of organisations), invest in their content marketing efforts (40% of marketing budget vs 14% of those who are the least successful) and work within an organisation that has a strongly aligned sales and marketing team.

B2B Lead Generation - Leads vs Alignment Chart — Source: State of Inbound Global Report 2018

What does successful content marketing look like?

B2B Lead Generation - Content Marketing Graph — Source: 2018 B2B Lead Gen Outlook

Blog articles, whitepapers and research reports remain among the most fruitful forms of content marketing.

Key is to ensure they are well-researched, long-form pieces of content and provide real value to your prospects.

What’s more, video is becoming harder and harder to ignore, even in the B2B space.

However, successful content marketing doesn’t happen in isolation. For the best results, it will be integrated with your SEO, social media and email marketing strategies.

Account based marketing for your hottest prospects

Account Based Marketing (ABM) is a more focused approach than content marketing but still not as personal as referral marketing.

ABM works because it focuses heavily on building quality relationships (something we’re naturally advocates of). With 84% of marketers reporting that ABM has significant benefits to retaining and expanding existing client relationships, it’s one to seriously consider for your marketing mix.

These are just some of the proven approaches that will help you build impactful B2B lead generation marketing. Get the balance right and you’ll shape a strategy that works short-term, longer term, and which supports wider outreach and focused efforts for those truly hot prospects.

Do your B2B lead generation strategies need a shake up?” Feel like your marketing mix isn’t filling your lead funnel as you’d like it to? We help businesses review their channel mix and find one that works. To find out more, drop us a line.

Sources

5 (often overlooked) tactics to set you up for B2B referral marketing success Your Allies, February 2018

Marketo Data Tells Us: What Is the Top Conversion Rate by Channel? Marketo

Content Marketing Trends and Stats for 2018 [Infographic] Webbiquity, February 2018

State of Inbound Global Report 2018 HubSpot

B2B Content Marketing 2018: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America Content Marketing Institute, September 2017

2018 B2B Lead Gen Outlook Chief Marketer, 2018

Why 3000+ Word Blog Posts Get More Traffic (A Data Driven Answer) Neil Patel

The pivot to video by the numbers – and what B2B marketers need to do next LinkedIn, June 2018

SEO 2018: Top 5 Most Effective SEO Techniques Bubblegum Search, May 2018

Using social media marketing in B2B markets? Smart Insights, April 2018

Global Email Marketing and Marketing Automation ROI benchmarks 2018 Smart Insights, June 2018

Quality is a B2B marketing budget’s best friend Your Allies, January 2017

What Is Account-Based Marketing? Strategic IC

More valuable stats to underpin your marketing strategy can be found here: Sources, stats & benchmarks for your 2018 B2B marketing strategies and tactics.

Sources, stats & benchmarks for your 2018 B2B marketing strategies and tactics

11/19/2017 by Linsay Duncan

It’s that time of year again. Not only the busiest quarter for many B2B businesses, but one that’s also cut short by the festive period. On top of that, there’s 2018 marketing strategies and tactics to be built. If only we could buy ourselves a couple of extra weeks!

Aside from finding the time to do it, there are unique challenges that come with assessing the many pieces of information you need for your next marketing strategy. Objectives and financial targets; budgets, changes in business direction/markets/products; developments in your market (Brexit implications); evolving marketing technologies; marketing people and resource… the list goes on. A complex group of internal and external influencing factors to consider.

Your strategy must continue to support bottom-line growth and well as have buy-in from senior managers. Plus, you need to predict what will continue to be successful in the following year. But where do you start when time is not on your side?

Fast forward to the best bits (i.e. the latest B2B marketing insights)

To help short-cut some of that research and thinking time, we’ve brought together valuable, up-to-date B2B marketing research and resources that will help:

inform your 2018 B2B marketing strategies and tactics – your budget, channel mix and content strategy
demonstrate the proof behind your decision-making.

Whilst this blog post won’t offer up all the answers for your unique situation, it will give you a sound and credible base to work from.

What B2B marketing investment looks like now

According to Katapult, B2B marketing budgets are growing, now taking an 11.3% piece of the overall company budget and averaging at 7.5% of overall company revenue.

This aligns with advice from Forbes & entrepreneur that suggests that established business invest between 6-12% of their gross revenue in marketing. Higher levels of investment should be considered (up to 20%) if you’re in a younger business.

For more guidance on figuring out on the right budget for your business read “Just what should my B2B marketing budget be?”.

2017 best performing B2B marketing channels

As well as a bottom-down approach in calculating necessary investment levels, there’s thinking to be done on how to allocate that across your channel mix. Using past performance is a good place to start but what if your data is incomplete, unreliable or you’re planning a complete marketing pivot?

Whilst, marketing spend is increasing, what that budget is spent on is highly varied across the B2B space. Thankfully BizBible shines some light on this, revealing the best performing channels in 2017 across different B2B industries.

(Image source: BizBible’s best performing B2B marketing channels article)

No big surprises seeing content marketing & SEO and WoM/referrals up there. These must be high up on any B2B marketers list of marketing priorities for 2018. But you’ll know best how to apply your own experience here and weigh these benchmarks up against the results you’ve seen each channel deliver.

Can’t get away from ABM and Growth Marketing

Account Based Marketing has exploded this year, but has actually been around for yonks. Key account marketing being one of its previous guises. Essentially, this is focusing marketing efforts on specific “hot” accounts. Growth marketing has received a lot of airtime in 2017 too. This means not just focusing on filling the top of your lead funnel but on concerted efforts to nurture the rest, in a measured way.

If ABM will feature in your mix and you want to better track performance, BizBible’s download is full of practical pointers: How to Measure ABM.

And PropelGrowth is an excellent port of call if you need to remind yourself of conversion rates for B2B marketing leads as they move from marketing inquiry, to marketing qualified lead (MQL), to sales accepted lead (SAL), to sales qualified lead SQL), through to sale.

(Image source: PropelGrowth’s B2B lead conversion rate article)

Getting your content marketing mix right

We’re advocates of inbound marketing being the backbone of any robust B2B marketing strategy. What’s more, this is backed up by data from PropelGrowth (and a host of other sources) which shows that content marketing and SEO is by far the most effective channel for B2B lead conversions. This is especially true for tech and software businesses. It’s also highlighted in this research infographic neatly presented by Bubblegum Search.

Not content with your content mix? (What type is most effective?)

Once clear on the part inbound marketing strategy will play in your overall strategy, next is to decide how to do this effectively. With so many different content options where should you focus your efforts for maximum return?

(Image source: Marketing Prof’s Top Digital Channels for generating B2B leads article)

According to Marketing Professionals, white papers drive the most leads for B2B businesses (at 53%) these are closely followed by webinars (50%) and case studies (44%).

Similarly, SmartInsights reveals that research reports are the most effective content type for lead generation. Closely followed by video (at 44%) and social media content (42%).

(Image source: SmartInsight’s Which content type generates the most leads article)

That said content marketing isn’t a clean-cut marketing tactic with VenueHarbour reporting that 48% of businesses have long buying cycles. And so, it’s likely that your B2B customer’s journey is complex, involving many touchpoints and potentially involving more than one person in the decision-making process. We cannot stress enough therefore, how vital it is to prioritise lead nurturing and follow-up processes. The B2B marketer ready to serve up answers, in the right format, to buyer questions at each stage of the cycle is well ahead of the game.

Good news here! HubSpot offers up sane, backed-up steer on the types of content which are useful at different stages of the B2B buying cycle.

Calculating the effectiveness of your lead generation activities

Early on in strategy building you’ll be setting KPIs, measurements and targets. There are three ways B2B marketing directors typically approach this:

Using in-house benchmarks based on reliable results from previous marketing performance.
Where in-house intelligence is lacking, industry and/or B2B marketing benchmarks can be applied to estimate likely leads, sales, ROI etc (see resources section below).
If approach 1 or 2 throws up some gaps, or leaves you with uncertainty (if the figures don’t look right go with your gut-feel), combine the two approaches and make some sane thumb-in-the-air estimates. Having something to begin benchmarking performance against is better than having no checkpoint!

This calculator by PropelGrowth can help create your own benchmarks for the number of prospects needed in your sales and marketing funnels in order to achieve your company’s revenue targets. All based on current B2B marketing conversion stats.

STOP! Ironpaper points out some important considerations if you’re basing lead estimates purely on industry benchmarks. As this is not a fool proof approach, be aware of the risks and consider their sane advice.

Time running out or have you hit a brick wall?

If time is slipping through your fingers and an extra set of hands pulling your marketing strategy together would help – drop us a line. Or if you’ve hit a brick wall with your planning, or are tackling a B2B marketing strategy for the first time, we can help. Just a few hours of our time might be all you need to be 2018-ready.

And finally… a bunch more B2B marketing insights

Sources on 2017 B2B marketing channels

The Top Digital Channels for Generating B2B Leads – Mar17, MarketingProfs

B2B digital marketing: the statistics & benchmarks that will impact your strategy – Sep17, by Your Allies

B2B Marketing resources – updated regularly with all sorts of juicy B2B marketing insights, by B2BMarketing.net

Sources on pipeline marketing and ABM

The 2017 State of Pipeline Marketing Report – 2017 by BizBible

In here you’ll find insights on budgeting and planning, marketing data management, top revenue generating channels, performance measurement and sales and marketing alignment. Phew!

How to Measure ABM – by BizBible

The 2017 State of Pipeline Marketing Report – 2017, by BizBible

Sources for B2B conversion rates and lead calculations

B2B Lead Conversion Rates – by PropelGrowth

B2B marketing tools and resources (including B2B lead calculator) – by PropelGrowth

What is a Good Conversion Rate? A Guide for B2B Marketers – Apr17, by Ironpaper

NB We strongly recommend you read this if you’re building lead estimates from scratch, based on industry benchmarks. This article points out the flaws in this approach and offers up considered ways in which to tackle this.

Sources on B2B marketing budgeting and investment

Five wise ways to invest your B2B marketing budget – Mar17, by Your Allies

Sources on B2B content marketing & lead nurturing

Which content type generates the most leads? – Sep17, by SmartInsights

How to Create Content for Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey – Aug16, by HubSpot

20 Lead Nurturing Statistics & Charts for 2017 – Sep17, by Venture Harbour

Three steps to ensure your B2B sales pipeline never gets empty

03/14/2017 by Linsay Duncan

You’re in B2B and guiding your business towards another big growth target. Fantastic. So your sales engine needs to fire on all cylinders. But what’s happening upstream in your sales pipeline?

So far, your growth might have come organically, through positive word of mouth and referrals. But you know that won’t last forever. After all, there’s only so much you can do with your personal network. So you’ve dipped your toes into campaigns to reach out to new audiences and increase B2B sales leads.

Maybe it’s made sense to focus on the more immediate short-term appeal of cold-calling, direct marketing and telemarketing. However that well-trodden route is expensive and won’t always talk to prospects when they’re ready to buy. Indeed, some won’t be looking at all. Some won’t respond because they don’t know you. Some might want a call back months down the line. Perhaps a few might be open to talking. But it can feel rather like looking for a needle in a haystack.

So there comes a point when you need to invest in the medium to long-term game, as well as knowing what to do if your B2B sales pipeline is empty in the here-and-now. But how?…

Route 1: The short, the medium, the long term

For a short-term sales pipeline fix, running well-targeted and carefully crafted outbound lead generation campaigns – to thoroughly researched prospect lists – can buy you time and give you breathing space. See our blog for tips on how to ensure campaign success.

Over time, if you can get clarity on what your buyers are looking for (and when), then you’re in a luxurious position. Understanding who’s seeking-out your products and services at any one time can be a game changer.

Work that one out then you can build a new business marketing programme that always ensures you’re having relevant conversations about the right stuff, tailored to your prospects’ position in the buying cycle. It also enables you to set more realistic expectations about the leads your campaigns are likely to generate. Our 9 step guide will help you successfully create each campaign.

Route 2: Getting inbound marketing in place

Mid to long-term plans to address poor lead generation should always include inbound marketing – where you draw your prospects towards your brand and your services by using content marketing and social media – not to mention fine-tuning your website with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Rather than ramming your messages down your prospects’ throats, this technique takes a helpful and relevant approach to interaction with your customers, as the basis of a dialogue, not a one-way diatribe.

Unsurprisingly, it takes time and talent to do well. You’ll need to build a range of buyer personas and structure engaging content around the three key buying stages: awareness, consideration and decision. Then you’ll need a robust process to structure and support campaign management – take a look at how Hubspot makes it happen.

Patience and investment will pay-off in the form of higher quality enquiries, because the people who engage with you are more likely to be further down the sales process, and more likely to convert. Bingo.

So much for the ‘how’ and the ‘when’. What about the ‘where’?…

Route 3: Multi-channel, multi-savvy marketing

It’s tempting to focus all your marketing efforts in one or two places, or be seduced by the ‘appointment setting’ agencies who’ll reel you in with ‘no meeting, no fee’ offers and tales of tantalising conversion rates. Sounds good on paper. But it’s no strategy for a lack of sales leads in the long haul. Instead, a multi-channel approach will put your eggs in many different baskets.

Start by considering how your buyers stay informed and where they go for industry information. As consumers we get our news from a variety of sources, and the B2B space is no different. So find out where your prospects go and how you can best reach them. Make it meaningful, timely and engaging and you’ll generate quality leads.

Today’s switched-on B2B marketeers will choose from a diverse mix of channels including social media, events, network marketing, public speaking, thought-leadership, partner marketing, PR and awards. And with dedicated marketing support, you’ll see how these channels fit together and understand the part each plays in cultivating the best B2B leads.

Professional marketing will choose the optimal marketing mix for generating quality leads, nurture them through the sales process, and hand them over when they’re ripe for Sales to convert into new business.

One goal: filling your sales pipeline

Professional B2B marketing is no game of smoke and mirrors. It draws on tried-and-tested techniques to build a B2B sales pipeline, from inbound marketing to a multi-channel strategy, not as an end in itself, but with one clear objective in mind – to keep your sales team busy with quality leads.

Set your marketing free to perform

Is your B2B marketing an engine of growth in your business? Time to find out. Our quick Self-Assessment tool is a tailored B2B marketing audit that’ll help you see where your B2B sales challenges could be lurking, so you can recognise the symptoms and tackle the causes head-on.

How to do B2B keyword research and increase leads in 2017

12/05/2016 by Linsay Duncan

How is SEO for B2B marketing changing in 2017?

One of the biggest shifts we’ve seen in Search in recent years is the way Google delivers results – it’s all about semantic search. Google is getting wise to the intent and contextual meaning of individual searches in order to deliver more personalised and accurate results. B2B search queries tend to be longer and more detailed than B2C. This is because businesses are more likely to need niche products or services and use actual questions or long sentences to find what they need. Google can now assess the intent of these queries to produce more helpful Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), which means your SEO efforts should tap into these more complex and specific search queries.

Although niche subjects and long-tail search queries tend to have lower search volumes, they can be the most valuable B2B keywords because those who use them are looking for very specific information. If you can tap into the niche wants and needs of B2B searchers by ranking well for these long-tail queries, your lead generation rates could skyrocket.

In order to succeed in B2B SEO in 2017, you’ll need to:

– Develop buyer personas to establish exactly who’s looking, what they need, and what drives their search.
– Map the customer journey in order to align your keywords with buyer intent.
– Research niche and long-tail keywords to make the most of the highly detailed queries B2B customers are using.

How to create a buyer persona

When it comes to SEO and B2B keyword research, demographics such as age, gender and disposable income are less important. What matters is the industry of the business and the role of potential buyers in the purchasing cycle and decision-making process.

Ask yourself who is making decisions when it comes to purchasing your product or service. For many B2B transactions, this will be multiple different people. It could be a department manager’s job to search for potential purchases based on a list of criteria given to them. They’ll be searching for a solution to a problem, whilst considering aspects such as budget, price and key features. However, those actually using the product could be junior employees who may be consulted on whether it fulfils their needs in terms of real functionality. Their concerns will focus around practical aspects, such as specific features and functions of a product, and testimonials or case studies from others who have used it. The final purchasing decision is likely to land with a CEO, business owner or stakeholder whose primary interests may be pricing and ROI.

By taking into account these different wants and needs, you can develop a variety of buyer personas and work on researching different keywords that fit into your buyer categories.

Ask yourself the following B2B buyer persona questions:

– What is their role in the purchasing process? (researcher, final decision maker, actual buyer, etc)
– What problem do they want to solve? (streamline processes, increase productivity, cut costs, etc)
– What are their main drivers? (functionality, price, ROI, ease of implementation, etc)
– Where do they search for information? (desktop search, mobile search, social media, forums, trade shows, etc)
– What type of content do they consume? (blogs, product pages, video, articles, etc)

The B2B buying journey

B2B customer journey mapping ties in closely with buying personas, because it’s likely you’ll be targeting different personas at different points in the buying journey. The customer journey consists of the following steps:

Discover – when they first become aware of your product/service.
Explore – when they learn more about what you have to offer and how it can help them.
Buy – when they consider things like price, ROI, and whether the product/service is of true value to them.
Use – when they put your product/service into action.
Engage – when they return to you for further support or added value.

When developing your buying journey, consider where each buyer persona fits in, so that you can begin to assess what the different intents and needs are. With this in mind, you can begin to research keywords based around the real demands of your B2B customer at each point in the buying journey. Plus, you can start to formulate the types of optimised content needed to tap into customer demands at each point in their journey.

Perform B2B keyword research

With your buyer personas ready, it’s time to pull together some seed keywords. These can be brainstormed based on the personas you’ve created, but you’ll find inspiration from a number of different places:

– Your existing marketing materials and product copy.
– Your website and blog, using Google Search Console and Analytics to find organic keywords already driving traffic to your site.
– Competitor sites using tools like SEMRush to find organic keywords they rank for.
– Forums and Q&A sites, using tools like BoardReader to search for forums relevant to your buyer personas. Use them to pull together popular questions, phrases, terms and topics, or take inspiration from suggested searches if sites have such functionality.

Go deeper into keyword research for lead generation

Your seed keywords can now be used to do more detailed research and compile a list of terms which are:

Relevant to your business
Have a reasonable search volume, and
Could convert a searcher into a lead.

There are a huge variety of tools you can use, and we recommend trying a few different ones to get a broad range of inspiration.

Google Keyword Planner – found in Google Adwords, this free tool can help you gather searchvolumes, get an idea of competition and get inspiration for related queries and long-tail keywords which is ideal for niche B2B SEO. Note though that the Keyword Planner is designed for help with Google ads, and its data is therefore skewed to PPC data rather than organic search. It’s still a great place to start, though.

Keywordtool.io – you can get up to 750 keyword suggestions for free with this tool as well as related search questions, but to the Pro version has the most potential since it provides search volume as well as even bigger lists of keywords.

WordStream – much like Keywordtool.io, only with the option to find niche keywords which are often very valuable for B2B.

LongTailPro – this tool specialises in long-tail and niche keywords, and even allows you to sort niches into different sets of keywords, which is ideal for splitting keywords into your buyer personas.

Cull and categorise keywords

At this point it’s likely that you’ve grown a list of thousands of keywords, so it’s time to cut out those which aren’t relevant and organise terms into different categories.

– Check the search landscape for ambiguous terms (by simply doing a Google search) and consider dropping them if you’re likely to be competing with content from a whole other industry.
– Categorise terms by user intent, and drop terms with intent not relevant to your products or to your buyer personas and/or buying journey.
– Group words semantically, so that you can target similar phrases like ‘bookkeeping software’ and ‘bookkeeping program’ within one page. This helps avoid thinning out content into multiple pages whilst tapping into semantic search at the same time.

With a list of refined keywords to hand, you can begin to craft content which taps directly into your buyer personas’ needs and fulfils all aspects of the buying journey. As with any type of SEO, your content should be highly relevant to the keywords you’re targeting. But when it comes to B2B SEO and the niche long-tail keywords on your list, you need to be even more careful that your content is relevant if you’re to rank well in the SERPs and keep your customers engaged. If you succeed, you’ll be well on the way towards boosted leads in 2017.

For more tips on how to generate new leads in 2017 take a look at our B2B marketing guide: 9 steps to new business campaign success. Or sign up for your own New Business Marketing Review which will identify the key areas you need to focus your marketing efforts on.

About the Author:

Matt Cayless is the Director of Client Strategy at Bubblegum Search an SEO & Content Marketing Agency. He is an expert in Search Engine Optimisation having worked on campaigns for some of the world’s biggest brands and has a passion for helping businesses grow online. Away from his desk, he can be found training for his next marathon while always remaining fearful of carbohydrates.