As 2021 fast approaches and the landscape of business activity, logistics, marketing strategies, budgets and general day-to-day processes are without structure or certainty worldwide, it brings an opportunity to think differently, adapt and re-position for what is essentially a new era.
That new era not being, as we thought, a new decade – but in-fact the post-covid era. Or in many cases still the active covid era.
For that reason the digital presence for so many businesses which was so powerful before will not be a necessity for survival and growth.
With that natural shift and transition will become a saturation of many currently undervalued platforms and opportunities. But there is still such a wide playing field for businesses to develop a strong and professional presence, with the audience potential expanding more and more by the day.
For B2B businesses and the adaptation from office working environments to the working from home lifestyle, there is focus on self-sufficiency and also flexibility. As marketing and sales professionals, this is a chance to re-invent a working routine which is not only effective but enjoyable in providing work-life balance.
Budgets may be limited for many companies who are cautious of the volatility of covid, outbreaks and lockdowns impacting capital availability, market trends and general economy strength.
But for those who are attacking on the front-foot, there can be many advantages to undercut the current situation and build for a strong future.
Even if budgets are restricted, there are plenty of lead generation strategies which are affordable, and powerful in achieving serious results in 2021.
Not every strategy is for every industry or every business. Beyond that every professional. I think it is important to play to the strengths of your resources and not try to over-complicate the approach. For that reason, management must delegate accordingly to ensure the maximization of potential.
For 2021, B2B lead generation and it’s foundations will still follow the fundamental processes:
Target audience
Awareness
Offering
Without awareness and pure clarity these three extremely simple stages, your funnel will become clogged at some stage.
Target audience
Understand in a digital capacity who your decision maker is. Using the digital filters we know they can be found and targeted. But it is important to get as close as possible to the ideal customer profile through the demographic breakdown. Geography, industry, company size, company revenue, keywords, job title. Any further niche characteristics of company or professional. Once this is outlined you can begin to adjust the creative and offering for each platform and work out how they can be reached – at scale.
Awareness
It is a simple thing to say but until you’re aware of something you cannot even begin to consider it. And awareness is rarely achieved in isolation. It can take time to sustain. And that is why as a business the goal is to be as visible as possible, in every relevant location, as many times and ways as your team has the ability and resource to-be-so
Identify a small number of key platforms where your target exists or is active.
And then create a plan to be relevant there, as often as you can with creative ways to attract attention and engage!
Offering
Without an offering it is not possible to qualify a lead as generated. So you need to establish what that KPI is. A sign up, an email collected, a demonstration booked or a call agreed.
Now you need to package this neatly and with enticing copy, imagery, video or a form of freemium hook. Create as many gateways to this without coming across too aggressively and this combination will lead to success.
Now we will overview 5 ideas your business can consider, using this approach above, to generate leads in 2021.
LinkedIn group posting
LinkedIn is an incredible social media hub for networking and building relationships for b2b businesses. And it is only going to evolve as a platform in the coming years. The awareness which can be achieved on LinkedIn is extremely undervalued because it is so uniquely targeted and allows you a better return on time investment.
Finding groups which are active and posting content each day within these, is a remarkable way to generate awareness to target industries and specific businesses. Creative content including blog posts, features or services, or requesting feedback on certain aspects. This is top of funnel unusually but overlaps depending on the nature of your message. A consistent strategy of this will lead to more interest.
Personalized email marketing
Email marketing certainly isn’t anything new or even that exciting – but you can make it so. You can also take it a step further than the expected by injecting advanced personalization and messaging to entice better open rates, click through or leads generated.
Using variable and dynamic tools allowing personalized imagery and data to be pulled through can be the key to exceptional results and if you start collecting the data and building the campaigns out now, you can enjoy the results throughout 2021.
Social automations
Social automations may sound like a broad term, but the concept applies to many platforms and will depend on where you have the best presence and access to your audience. Be that Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or elsewhere.
Automation ideas can include auto follow and Direct message. Auto-liking or favoriting based on keywords. You can also automate publishing of content and schedule ahead to save time and scale your presence with greater efficiency. There are some fantastic tools to help kick-start this process such as Phantombuster.
Website Visitor tracking
A software which identifies businesses visiting your website. This is a b2b lead generation tool which requires two things to operate successfully.
A constant and relevant flow of traffic to your website pages. And an actionable approach to engaging the businesses identified.
Therefore it goes hand-in-hand with paid advertising or other extensive social media campaigns as previously mentioned to drive unique sessions throughout the month.
Beyond this, a sales or marketing representative to receive the notification or access the platform to catalyze the businesses who have displayed an interest.
Re-marketing
The basic advantages of paid advertising are obvious in terms of generating extensive volumes of viability to your advert or business page. But without a solid period of trial and error, it can be challenging to get the best return on investment
But one form of paid advertising which is essential is re-targeting your audience. This can be built on in segments depending on the previous content they have engaged with and how far they went into your sales funnel. But that will be an independent decision for each business. The one constant is that you are leaving money on the table (or leads), if you have not implemented this through Facebook with your tracking pixel.