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Delivering Leads: 5 B2B Marketing Strategies Playbook

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Sixty-eight percent of B2B companies struggle with lead generation and delivering marketing qualified leads (MQLs) that are valuable to sales. A HubSpot study revealed that only 7% of salespeople said they receive “very high quality” leads from marketing. So how do you stop this endless cycle of friction between sales and marketing? 

Here are five B2B marketing strategies that we’ve helped clients implement to fill the sales funnel with more MQLs: 

1. Set the foundation with thought leadership. 

Thought leadership content should position you as a subject matter expert and educate your customers to make informed buying decisions. Curating compelling thought leadership content lays the foundation for lead generation campaigns by gaining your prospects’ trust. 

In an Edelman study, 37% of business decision-makers and 41% of C-suite executives say thought leadership content influenced them to ask a vendor to participate in the RFP process. 48% indicated it had a direct impact on closing the deal.  

Thought leadership content is the cornerstone of our agency’s approach, and successful campaigns start with it. Create a core piece of content, turn it into multiple assets like ebooks, bylined articles, white papers and infographics, and then promote it across every channel. With lengthy B2B sales cycles, companies must gradually nurture and build trust with prospects using content relevant to every stage in their decision-making process.

Every company should design and organize its website with the buyer journey in mind, incorporating features that deliver conversions. Powerful lead-generation websites combine user-friendly navigation; appealing brand aesthetics; device responsiveness; SEO optimization; easy-to-find, consumable content and essential conversion techniques. 

Here are a few features every website should integrate: 

3. Sponsored content should be in every marketing plan. 

Sponsored content is predicted to exceed $400 billion by 2025, and nearly 75% of communications professionals incorporate it into their sales and marketing strategy. We’ve successfully executed numerous sponsored content campaigns on behalf of our clients and found that the following strategies consistently deliver. 

Increasingly, B2B companies are using social media and online review sites to research purchase decisions. According to the Demand Gen Report B2B Buyers Survey 65% of buyers rely more on peer recommendations and review sites. Publish gated thought leadership content on your website, promote it organically on social media and tag top prospects to entice them to download it. 

We also continue to see success running paid ad campaigns on LinkedIn to expose brands to more decision-makers and drive new top-of-funnel relationships. LinkedIn reported an average 6.1% conversion rate among its sponsored content user base, compared to 2.58% for B2B Google Ads. Running lead generation or brand awareness ads that share thought leadership content is an easy and inexpensive way to generate leads and amplify your work.   

Innovative trade show activations, such as hiring an artist to live draw in your booth, can captivate attendees right where you want them — at your booth. We made this happen for a client who walked away with valuable video content and hundreds of new leads. Or, consider partnering with a media company to co-sponsor video interviews of executives from your top prospect companies. Your sales staff can leverage prescheduled media interviews with prospects to convert them to buyers, you land valuable video material that boosts website traffic, and your company drastically increases its share of voice by being included in media interviews. 

With billions of dollars spent annually on sponsored content, trade show marketing and website content management, marketers are constantly hit with new tools and strategies to help them build out an effective demand generation program. Stick to these B2B marketing strategies to deliver MQLs that the sales team appreciates.