5 Critical Elements of B-to-B Lead Generation
Everyone thinks lead gen is so easy - whip together a piece of content, build a quickie landing page, push it out on social. As someone who’s executed dozens of B-to-B lead gen campaigns, I can tell you that it’s not that easy! Want quality leads? Want volume? Here are 5 things I’ve learned over the years about lead gen campaigns, that I wish I understood before I started working in marketing 14 years ago.
Bigger Audiences Are Not Always Better Audiences
When you first start doing lead gen marketing on the client side, you’ll get hit up a lot by publications. These are called content sponsorships, and they usually consist of paying for content placement in a printed mag or an email newsletter, in return for guaranteed leads. Publications will tell you how many readers they have, which in reality, is just the number of email addresses they have. It doesn’t matter in the slightest how many addresses they have, if the addresses are out of date, or if the content isn’t desirable to any of those people. THIS NUMBER MEANS NOTHING.
Before plopping down 5 figures for a content sponsorship, think about other (even better) ways to get in front of the same audience yourself. Can you use LinkedIn, YouTube or Facebook targeting? Can you sponsor an industry event? I rarely ever use content sponsorships anymore, simply because I can usually find a fresher audience elsewhere for less $ per lead.
Design Matters. Big Time.
I’m not sure I can say this enough: If your customer journey doesn’t look professional at every step, people will leave it. Period. Do not cut corners with design.
Everything must be designed to be consistent, clean, and engaging from tip to tail. That includes not only your ads, but the landing page, email blasts, and the content piece itself must be polished.
You should be having a designer work on all of these elements at the same time. When you submit your content assignment to them, include everything that a consumer will touch in the same project. That way, the designer can see the full journey, and design it accordingly. If making sure every element is in sync means you get fewer campaigns over all, so be it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve improved the look of a campaign element and have seen results in conversion rates almost immediately. But don’t be like me. Take care of it before the campaign launches.
Think Brain Candy, Not A Full Meal
When brainstorming your content pieces, it’s easy to get caught up in your amazing product and your desire to be thought leaders in the space. You may want to construct the “bible” in your area, compiling your years of research along with tedious studies, loads of stats, and complex case studies.
“Bibles” don’t get clicks. Wanna know why? People want quick wins. Advice that they can implement TODAY as opposed to full college-level curriculum. For most lead gen activities, you’re interrupting them in their daily routine of checking email and social media. Humans don’t/won’t want to stop for too long - think about the time it takes to read a news article. That should be the breadth of your content. Try taking your “bible” and splitting into 5 sections. That’s brain candy.
Switch It Up
How many different way can you spin your content? White papers, blog posts, webinars, live videos, infographics, podcasts, checklists, animated videos, song lyrics. Well, maybe not song lyrics, but can you take your 5 mini-topics and create 3 pieces out of each? That’s 15 lead gen campaigns!
Different people in your audience will be pulled in by different formats. Get in the groove of creating 3 content types for each topic, and you’ll reach a wider swath of your audience.
What Happens After The Click?
When you’re planning a party, you never think of the follow-up. But in the case of lead gen, the follow-up is EVERYTHING. Think about it - that’s the reason we do lead gen campaigns in the first place - for the privilege of following up with that lead to make them a customer. But, you only have hours or days to capitalize on their newfound knowledge of your company, so you don’t want to be building the follow-up pieces AFTER you’ve converted them.
Before your campaign launches, map out, design, and build the following: thank you email, nurture email campaign, retargeting display campaign, scoring rules, and sales follow-up protocol. Don’t work hard on a lead gen campaign only to have the leads just sit there! That’s like baking a cake and letting it mold on the counter-top.
It’s not the lead that’s important - it’s what you do with it that matters!
