The art of generating profitable leads is what makes the difference when a company takes stock of its profit margins at the end of a financial year. The ability to find leads is integral to a business’ survival, while the ability to generate profitable leads is essential for company growth.
Businesses have had several years to adapt to key marketing battles taking place virtually rather than in the real world, so those companies well-versed in online lead generation have a distinct advantage in their industry. The rise of social media sites has significantly altered the way that companies approach marketing, while the decline of physical stores places an increased emphasis on online solutions.
This makes 2020 a crucial year for companies engaged in B2B marketing, as the battle to generate leads is only going to grow fiercer. Gaining a foothold now is imperative, so here are three of the top strategies for acquiring profitable leads in 2020.
Assess the effectiveness of your key webpages
You might have the most incisive strategy for lead generation, but it could be undermined if all of your leads end up at an unwieldy landing page. A company’s homepage is a permanent advertisement for its services, so it must never be neglected. Irrespective of the rest of the marketing strategy, that homepage should be designed with the intention of capturing users’ attention and directing them towards the relevant sections of the site.
Services like heatmap provide analytics about how visitors engage with your key webpages, giving you an insight into what is working and what must be changed. A/B testing should play a part in any web redesign, as an effective website is worth the time and effort. Ensure that your site is designed with the purpose of giving users all of the information that they will need in an accessible and interesting manner. That will retain visitors’ attention as they navigate their way to the site’s CTAs, firming up their prospective interest into more concrete engagement.
Maximize the potential of LinkedIn
A company with engaging and worthwhile output on social media will naturally generate better leads than a company that looks at social media accounts as a box to be ticked. This is applicable to all platforms, but maximizing a social media strategy is particularly crucial on LinkedIn. This is the most prolific social platform for lead generation, so don’t let your company be passive on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a rich resource, but it’s only valuable if you stay active and consider how each action benefits the generation of profitable leads.
Keep your company info up-to-date, post unique content, and interact warmly with other professionals in a visible manner. Utilize the Lusha extension on Chrome to reveal and log the information of new B2B prospects, as harnessing contact details is an essential part of discovering leads. Enhance the use of that extension by joining relevant LinkedIn Groups; these groups will be comprised of professionals that have a vested interest in your industry, so their contact information could be pivotal in the generation of profitable leads.
Provide something for nothing
If you want to produce profitable leads for the long term, then it can be beneficial to give away something for nothing in the short term. A business can reach out to new clients by delivering free content in a multitude of ways. One method is the provision of a free service, where users sign up with their contact information to access that tool. That nature of that service will be dependent on the industry; for example, a web design company could give away WordPress templates free of charge.
There are other universal ways that free content can be presented with the aim of delivering leads. A blog is the simplest means of creating free content with potentially high user retention. Don’t be afraid to discuss current topics in a bold and honest way, while make sure you publicize your blog on LinkedIn and Facebook. Explore the possibility of hosting guest writers, as you can reciprocate the favor by posting content on their blog. That provides exposure to a new audience, with do-follow links bringing prospective leads back to your optimized landing pages.
An effective B2B marketing approach will encompass all of these methods, ensuring that the objective of generating profitable leads is embedded in everything that the business does. While this is not an exhaustive guide on the ways to generate profitable leads, these three strategies are well-suited to the market conditions of 2020 and should yield positive benefits for a company.