Throughout the pandemic, corporations learned quickly that a strong sales pipeline is essential to weather any volatility in the market. Generating B2B sales leads should be looked at as the bloodline of the business’ prosperity.

In a new virtual norm where face-to-face meetings are more likely to be on a screen rather than in-person, an organization that can effectively communicate with target prospects, nurtures their prospects’ needs and challenges, and delivers timely, relevant communication wins.

The reason?  B2B lead generation is all about establishing an organization as a thought leader. To remain competitive in your industry, you must consistently build credibility and emphasize your organization’s voice and point of view.

How to Start Generating Leads?

Getting started requires two key investments – time and resources to developing a communication plan. The first will be the upfront time investment in honing in on your target. The second will be the content calendar and actually building out the content

First, you will want to set up a matrix of your ideal target customers by industry, the decision-makers and the role they play, and your key points of differentiation when positioning your agency. Through this process, you arrive at a communication strategy that will effectively solve for the needs and considerations a prospect goes through during their decision-making journey.

At this stage you are putting yourself in your prospect’s shoes, understanding their role, how they research information, whom they share info with to make a decision, what attributes they deem valuable in their decision making, and, most importantly, the timeframe around when they make a decision.

How to Build Corporate Buy-In?

By visualizing the prospect’s journey, you identify ways to tailor your content messaging not only for them but for the key stakeholders in their organization who will play a critical role in the selection process.

Make sure you identify what success looks like and communicate it with the leadership in your organization.

Success comes in many forms:

• New leads
• X amount of leads from a specific vertical
• X amount of wins in a quarter
• X amount of referrals

Aligning with your leadership with help establish critical buy-in by all parties early on.

Creating a Content Calendar

Now that you’ve determined the mindset of your prospect and surrounding influencers, you will want to build a content calendar fleshed out by category, purpose, channel distribution, and timing.

Having a roadmap of where you are headed helps efficiently manage your B2B lead generation campaign and also helps to make sure you are committed to building a strong pipeline of consistent leads flowing into the organization.

Many content platforms like Hootsuite even allow you to schedule your content distribution across social channels ahead of time. Scheduling content ahead of time would allow for your organization to account for resources and align them against any product launches, industry updates, events, etc.

A strong B2B campaign is dependent on communication cadence if you want your organization to be a thought leader in the space.

Staying visible and engaging with audiences in your industry is the only winning strategy when it comes to running an effective B2B lead generation campaign.  At the onset, we would recommend starting a cadence of around 6-8 content pieces distributed per month.

How to Monitor Responses?

When it comes to resources, you will want to have a strong CRM platform (such as Salesforce, Hubspot, Zendesk, Zoe, etc.) in place categorizing each prospects’ journey from inquiry to information to proposal submitted to win/lose.

You will also want to monitor the multiple touchpoints of contact with the prospect and how frequently and through your communication channels are with them.

Your outbound content distribution must be tagged appropriately in your CRM platform so that you are sure to track all of these critical contact points. You will also want to score the quality of your content through the platform, paying attention to:

• Which content is getting the most downloads, views, and inquiries, and does that differ based on the industry or decision-makers.
• Are there seasonal patterns based on the industries you are targeting?
• What’s your proposal to win vs. loss ratio?

If you are losing too many opportunities, it’s time to re-evaluate how well you understand your prospects' needs and challenges against the content you’re putting out.

If you are winning business, it’s important to have a strong Account Management team in place to nurture those new relationships at the onset for future referrals.

Benefits of B2B Lead Generation Campaigns

While sound B2B lead generation campaigns require a serious commitment of resources, the investment is worth it because they also offer some of the best rewards, such as:

• Supporting short-term & long-term growth goals
• Establishing credibility in an industry
• Creating new networking abilities
• Evolving services and opportunities

How you choose to be known to your peers in your industry, what you stand for, and how your employees feel about the organization are all based on your company’s positioning.

In a digital relationship environment, you can create and define your business’ credibility without having to invest a significant amount of money in an awareness campaign. Content distribution creates a level-playing field for all businesses no matter their size or when they launched.

Building relationships takes time, but high-growth companies know that a strong sales funnel process builds in tandem with marketing content will deliver more wins than any cold calling approach. Charting your company’s future is rooted in leaving a long-lasting impression on all those you come in contact with.

How you choose to present your company in today’s digital-first world and your willingness to invest the time and resources into target selection, marketing communication, and evaluation processes will make all the difference.

Ready to schedule a consultation with MatrixPoint? Contact us now to learn more about how we can help.