So here’s the thing—the higher the quality of leads, the higher the likelihood of converting into paying customers, and paying customers help sustain businesses.

As B2B marketers, our role isn’t limited to just building awareness or carrying out elaborate marketing campaigns. Our efforts need to generate high-quality leads that can be passed to the team for closing.

If you want to maintain competitiveness and thrive, you’ll need to consider strategies that attract the kind of quality leads your business needs.

In view of this, let’s explore several lead generation tactics that actually work.

  1. Invest in LinkedIn Marketing

Did you know that up to 80 percent of B2B leads originate from LinkedIn? 

LinkedIn is the social hub where professionals congregate to network, stay informed, and seek solutions for optimizing their work. 

With 40 million decision-makers using the platform, your target audience is probably on the platform meaning your outreach efforts are likely to reach them.

Top strategies to help you find leads include:

  • Publishing original articles. They don’t just showcase your mastery of your industry but allow you to anticipate prospects’ questions and answer them in advance. This helps instill confidence in your capability. As your followers share this content, users who aren’t in your network can start following you from your articles, increasing your reach.
  • Posting regularly. Repurpose content from other channels (webinars, podcasts, Q&As), direct users to recent newsletters or blogs, or share your opinion of industry news. With your updates appearing on their feeds, you’ll stay top of mind.
  • Joining community groups. Meeting people whose interests resonate with yours creates opportunities to discuss industry trends, ask questions, and discern pain points. Avoid publishing info about your products/services the moment you join a group—you may appear disingenuous and repel leads.
  1. Content Marketing

For a strategy that many marketers consider a business asset, it’s interesting that many companies go in blind. 

They start out excited but soon enough start pushing back deadlines and publishing inconsistently. In the end, they see no returns from their “efforts.”

For your strategy to succeed, you’ll need to document your content marketing goals, know what information interests your ideal audience and have a distribution plan.

You’ll also need to measure your content against your pre-set goals to know what’s working and what needs improvement.

Examples of content for lead generation include:

  • Articles. These are excellent for establishing expertise, expanding your reach and building awareness. Choose topics that resonate with your audience and the right keywords to maximize visibility.
  • Case studies. Do you want to demonstrate the positive results your solutions offer customers? Go on and tell a compelling and relatable story through case studies. It may help convince prospects to buy from you.
  • Email content. From nurturing relationships to sharing company news and distributing fresh content, email content (newsletters, drip campaigns, etc) are great for keep conversations going. Nail your subject line, be succinct and embed visuals for visual relief.
  • Ebooks and guides. Foundational to marketers who want to tackle topics in greater detail, share thought leadership, build audiences, and offer tutorials. They take a little extra effort to create, as you need to compile the content and deal with formating and design.
  1. Make Cold Calls

The ability to make genuine connections with potential customers and persistence are fundamental aspects of the cold calling strategy. 

If you want to generate leads quicker, you need to cut to the chase and pick up the phone. It’s timesaving, removes guesswork, and you won’t have to wait around for feedback.

Best practices include:

  • Research your leads. They aren’t just names and numbers. Nay, they represent organizations that may or may not need your services. Research the contact and their organization for insights into the best ways to approach them and build connections.
  • Stay up to date. Are you aware of shifting trends and developments that affect your prospect’s industry? How do these factors impact the prospect and more importantly, can your solutions bring relief? Your knowledge may be your differentiator.
  • Create a script. Polish up on your intro, organize key points and statistics and prepare for objections. Practice your conversation to help you internalize your points and converse naturally.
  • Work with an agency. Hiring an in-house team can take a toll on your resources. They will need training, proper setup, and time to build up their skill. A professional agency already has a team in place to handle your needs.
  1. Optimize Landing Pages

These are standalone pages on your website whose sole purpose is driving conversions. 

People come to this page through marketing promotions, online ads, search engine results and links in marketing emails. Landing pages use compelling copy, visuals, and social proof to nudge the visitor to share their contact details. 

Depending on your organization, the reward for sharing contact info may include access to a resource (ebook, whitepaper, etc), subscription to an email newsletter, free consultation, or free quotation.

If you want your page to generate more leads consider:

  • Paying attention to the design. Understandable designs with easy-to-follow layouts that feature theme-specific colors may help attract visitors. Space your content properly and embolden titles and CTAs to catch attention.
  • Offering limited offers. Whether it’s free consultations, industry research or free trials, putting a time cap may inspire site visitors to snatch them up quickly. This fear of missing out ensures you capture leads faster.
  • Using high-quality forms. This is the form that appears when your visitor clicks the CTA button on your landing page. Share your value proposition. Ask for minimum information and where possible, use check boxes to make completion breezy.
  • Doing A/B Testing. Experiment with two versions of your landing page that vary in design or content and questions. Send half your leads to one page the other half to the other and analyze how they interact with the pages. It will help you gauge which one converts best.
  1. Give Your Audience Something

Free lunch and lead generation can’t sit at the same table. Because smart marketers know that giving away something may help cultivate goodwill among audiences. 

Attaching a fill-out form to a good freebie helps generate leads, opening up a whole new list of potential customers.

Examples of free stuff you can offer include

  • Free interactive tools. If your target industry relies on formulas and calculators, create tools that automate the calculations to make their work easier. The same goes for those that deal in simulators or product builders.
  • Free consultations. Use simple booking tools to encourage leads to schedule calls with your team. The advice you provide may help instill confidence in your capability and encourage the leads to sign up for your services.
  • Free trials or samples. Allowing potential customers to test your offerings lets them see the value they can derive from them. You can even offer limited time access to higher-tier (paid) versions to entice them to go for the upgrade.