7 Lead Generation Tips for B2B Brands

Highlights

• Without quality leads, your marketing efforts mean nothing
• Learn the best lead generation tips for this year
• Get content marketing ideas to build into your strategy
• Plus, is anyone still watching videos? The answer may surprise you

Every marketing and sales strategy begins with one common goal: to generate leads. Leads are the lifeblood of B2B brands because without good leads in the marketing funnel, you have no:

• Potential customers to nurture and convert into paying clients
• Data to analyze and optimize your marketing and sales strategies
• Revenue to sustain and grow your business
• Feedback to improve your products or services based on customer needs
• Brand awareness and reputation in your target market

Your business could be offering a game-changing product or service, but without any leads, you may as well have nothing. Without a steady stream of high-quality leads your overall business growth will stagnate.

Experimenting with the following lead generation strategies will help attract leads and get your B2B brand noticed in 2024.

Use LinkedIn for ads and thought leadership

LinkedIn isn’t just a marketplace for jobs. It is a robust social media platform that can be a powerful marketing tool to build brand awareness and foster connections with potential customers.

If it isn’t already part of your marketing strategy, you should be using LinkedIn in the following ways:

Lead generation ads:

With LinkedIn lead gen ads, you have the opportunity to reach potential customers directly with highly segmented targeting.

Filter by professional demographics like job title, company, industry, title, or more traditional demographics. Utilize lead gen forms that auto-populate with profile data and measure the ROI of your campaign. Not only is this a great tactic for building brand awareness, but LinkedIn ads convert 3x more than other ad platforms.

Salesforce uses a lead gen ad to promote their annual State of Marketing Report to marketing professionals who may be interested in the topic. A user who clicks the ‘Download’ CTA is taken to a Lead Gen Form where the fields are auto-populated based on that user’s profile data.

B2B thought leadership content:

As a B2B marketer, fostering a connection with your target audience begins with building trust and credibility. One way to do that is to focus on thought leadership content posted on LinkedIn.

The content gives you a chance to educate readers on industry topics you’re knowledgeable about. It’s also a way to attract readers who are interested in specific topics and a powerful way to rack up more organic leads. Thought leadership content can be delivered in the form of a post, a video, a link to a report, blogs, and more.

Network security company Cloudflare used their LinkedIn page to post a video about DDoS attacks and how they can hurt companies. They assert themselves as experts in this topic while simultaneously touting their ability to help potential customers keep their own networks secure.

Use Meta ads to attract the right leads

Meta (formerly Facebook) remains a powerful platform for B2B lead generation due to its vast user base and sophisticated targeting options. Here’s how to leverage Meta ads:

Targeted lead generation ads:

Similar to LinkedIn, Meta lead gen ads allow you to collect leads directly on the platform through forms that auto-fill with users’ information. You can target potential leads based on job title, company size, industry, and other specific demographics, ensuring your ads reach the right audience at the right time.

Hootsuite uses a Meta ad to entice potential customers with a free demo of their social media monitoring tool.

Use content marketing to your advantage

To build brand awareness, increase traffic to your website, and attract potential customers, you’ll want to use tactics that get your name above the competition in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Creating marketing campaigns using compelling content can help you attract outbound leads and rank favorably on SERPs.

leading landing page builder

What kind of content is good for B2B campaigns? Here are some ways to create compelling content marketing campaigns:

• Case Studies: Detailed case studies show how your product or service has solved specific problems for other businesses and demonstrate how and why you have a successful offering. This builds credibility and shows potential leads how they might use your product or service.
• Webinars: Hosting webinars on relevant industry topics allows you to engage directly with your audience, showcase your expertise, and collect lead information from attendees. Webinars allow you to educate your audience in an interactive way; including a live Q&A section allows potential leads to engage with you and get a glimpse of what it might be like to be your customer.
• Guest Posting: Writing guest posts for reputable industry blogs or websites helps you reach a broader audience and positions you as a thought leader in your field.
• Podcasts: Many marketers are embracing podcasts as a great medium for conveying thought leadership content and having personal, entertaining, and meaningful conversations with other industry professionals. This is another way to build credibility and position yourself as an expert in your field.
• Videos: A recent survey found that 88% of B2B buyers have watched a video to learn about a company’s products or services. 97% of those viewers felt more receptive to hearing from a company’s sales team.

Spotify uses listener information to create one of the most famous content marketing campaigns we’ve seen in recent years—Spotify Wrapped.

At the end of every year, Spotify listeners get a personalized round-up of their most-listened music of the year. Their data and playlists are made to be shareable and, year after year, it creates a viral moment that everyone wants to get in on.

At Instapage, we love to feature our customer’s success stories on our own website.

Offer product trials and demos

Free trials and demos are powerful tools for reducing conversion friction and attracting more leads. They give potential customers a risk-free way to experience the benefits of your product or service firsthand and a compelling reason to pay for your product or service once the trial is over.

• Free trials: Offering a limited-time free trial allows potential customers to explore your product’s features and functionalities without any financial commitment. This hands-on experience can significantly increase the likelihood of conversion, especially if they are able to tap into the full range of functionalities and are able to see tangible benefits during the trial period.
• Product demos: Personalized product demos tailored to a potential customer’s specific needs can address their unique pain points and showcase how your product can provide a solution. In addition, they give potential customers face time with your brand, which can lead to a sense of trust and a willingness to commit.

Headspace offers a free trial of their meditation app and they succeed in conveying their value proposition, remaining transparent (they clearly list their pricing options), and using a direct CTA to guide the lead to the next step.

Get customers to refer you

Word of mouth can work wonders for your lead generation. Encourage your existing customers to refer your product or service to their network.

Consider implementing a referral program that incentivizes customers to refer your business to others. Offer rewards such as discounts, free products, or other perks for successful referrals.

Dropbox famously grew its user base through a referral program that offered additional storage space to both the referrer and the referred. This not only attracted new leads but also encouraged existing users to engage more with the product.

Encourage customers to leave you reviews

People rarely buy something without vetting the service first. Think of how many times you’ve looked at reviews for a restaurant, product, or service before engaging with it further. Ask your customers to leave positive reviews on third-party review sites as a way to build trust and attract new leads.

Review platforms like G2, Capterra, or Trustpilot are commonly referenced throughout the buying process. Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on these platforms. Positive reviews can significantly influence a leads’ decision-making process and make conversions more likely.

Below is an example of a user’s review of Instapage, left on review site Capterra.

Create more videos

Videos are getting increasingly popular in the B2B space for brand awareness and lead generation.
Leverage the power of video to humanize your brand and get more eyeballs on your content. Two popular types of videos are:

• Explainer Videos: Create short, engaging videos that explain how your product or service works and the benefits it offers. These videos can be shared on your website, social media channels, in email campaigns, and on dedicated YouTube pages.
• Customer Testimonials: Showcase customer success stories through video testimonials. Seeing real customers speak positively and authentically about your product can be a powerful motivator for potential leads. Leads may see themselves in your customer’s shoes and may want to replicate their experience by committing to your brand.

Zendesk uses a simple, straightforward YouTube video featuring an employee giving a quick overview of their workforce management tools. This approach humanizes the brand and helps them appear welcoming.

Incorporate landing pages into your lead generation strategy

Generating leads is essential for the growth and sustainability of any B2B business. As part of your strategy, you should be thinking about the post-click experience. In other words, what happens once a potential lead clicks your ad, watches your video, listens to your podcast, and so on?

Creating custom, dedicated landing pages that match the messaging in your ad can have a tremendous impact on your conversion rates.

Payment-processing company Paystone recently ran a campaign incentivizing users to switch over to them because of their better value and for a chance to win Amazon gift cards. The copy, colors, and image used in the ad were replicated in the landing page, offering a great example of how to tie landing pages to relevant ads.

Instapage is a leading landing page builder that makes it easy to create and optimize landing pages without needing to hire additional resources. Instapage users love these intuitive features:

• An easy to use drag-and-drop interface
• Built-in data analytics
• AI content generation to help with headlines, buttons, and more
• The ability to experiment and optimize via A/B testing
• Insights to match copy to visitor-level data like keywords, firmographics, and demographics, and more!

Best of all, no coding is necessary, so you won’t need to rely on a developer.

Ready to start incorporating dedicated, custom-branded landing pages into your marketing strategy? Get started with a free 14-day trial of Instapage today.