While modern businesses implement new strategies and objectives every single year, lead generation remains the foremost priority for B2B organizations. In fact, 53% of marketers say half or more of their budget is allocated to lead generation.
And while marketers strive to bring in as many leads as possible, successful lead generation is predicated on quality, not quantity. You generate leads in order to generate revenue — so if your leads don’t convert to paying customers, your efforts won’t translate into business growth.
In other words, you must tailor your lead generation strategy to not only capture more leads, but to capture targeted leads that are likely to purchase your products. In this post, we’ll offer several unique methods to generate more targeted sales leads and drive revenue growth for your organization. Keep reading!
5 Ways to Generate Highly-Targeted Sales Leads
1. Invest in dynamic landing pages.
Marketers spend countless hours optimizing their lead generation landing pages — and for good reason. Minor adjustments to a landing page can result in higher conversion rates and improve the quality of your leads.
There’s no shortage of tips and tricks to optimize your landing pages: avoid competing CTAs, streamline your page design, shorten your forms, etc. But we want to focus on a more innovative method to generate highly-targeted leads — make your landing pages dynamic.
A dynamic landing page displays different messages based on who is viewing it. The content of the page changes based on a number of variables, including the user’s behavior, location, the search terms they used to find the page, and more.
Let’s look at an example, courtesy of Periscopix. In the original, static version of the landing page below, the header simply read “Book Your First Clean for £15”. But in the dynamic variation, the header copy changes based on the user’s location.
According to Periscopix, this dynamic landing page increased the conversion rate by over 25%.
In today’s crowded digital market, it’s critical for every lead generation tactic to be highly-targeted and personalized. Dynamic landing pages enable you to capture more high-quality leads with messaging that fits a visitor’s precise needs and preferences.
2. Develop targeted email nurture campaigns.
We know what you’re thinking: if someone’s on your email list, aren’t they already a lead? Technically, yes. But, your goal is not to simply capture contact information; your goal is to generate targeted leads that convert to paying customers.
Not everyone on your email list is qualified to make a purchase right now, but that doesn’t mean they won’t ever become sales-ready leads. That’s where lead nurturing comes in. Consider this: 80% of new leads never translate to sales; but companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads than companies that don’t have an efficient nurturing strategy in place.
Nurture campaigns serve the purpose of guiding leads to the point of sales-readiness by sending them relevant, personalized content based on where they are in the buyer’s journey. While lead nurturing requires a comprehensive and multifaceted strategy, here are a few of the main steps:
Segment your email list.
Segment your contacts to ensure you deliver the right information to the right leads. The most common types of email segmentation include job function, industry, lead source, web behavior, company size, and purchase history — but those are just a few of the hundred ways you can segment your email database.
Develop your email cadence.
H0w often will you email the leads you wish to nurture? Once or twice a week? Every two weeks? To start, consider adjusting your cadence based on the level of engagement. In other words, you can be more aggressive with leads who have engaged with your content more often — but it’s risky to send frequent emails to someone who hasn’t engaged with much of your content so far.
There’s no universal solution to this step of the process, which is why you should rigorously test and optimize your email cadence.
Distribute personalized content.
Above all else, the success of your lead nurture campaign relies on the content you provide. It’s not enough for your content to be high-quality — it must also be targeted and relevant to the specific recipient.
This is easier said than done, as 59% of marketers say creating relevant content is the biggest lead nurturing challenge. We recommend tailoring your content creation to the stages of the buyer’s journey — also known as content mapping. That way, you can nurture leads by providing targeted content whether they’re just starting their buyer’s journey, are in the consideration stages, or nearly ready to make a purchase.
While lead nurturing can produce staggering results, it’s an intensive process that requires a lot of time and resources. Consider investing in a solution like Propeller CRM that can automate hyper-targeted email campaigns for lead nurturing.
3. Partner with other organizations.
If you’re approaching this tactic with caution, we don’t blame you. But hear us out: no matter how narrow your audience is, we bet it overlaps with the audience of other, non-competing B2B businesses.
For example, let’s say your company sells an employee advocacy tool that helps B2B marketers streamline content sharing from their colleagues in other departments. Another company sells marketing automation software, and you’ve discovered that their target audience is very similar to your own. Why not form a strategic partnership and introduce each other to new, high-quality leads?
Strategic partnerships yield a number of unique benefits. First, partnerships enable you to immediately access fresh leads and potentially tap into new markets. And, because these leads have already been vetted by the partner company, their quality will likely be higher than that of the leads you generate through traditional lead generation tactics. Last but not least, you can leverage your relationship with the partner company to establish credibility and move leads through the buyer’s journey faster.
If you need some more convincing, a recent survey found that more CEOs point to strategic partnerships as their top growth strategy than any other strategy.
4. Experiment with interactive content.
It’s no secret that content marketing is the foremost contributor to a successful lead generation strategy. In fact, content marketing generates approximately 3 times as many leads as traditional marketing tactics, while costing 62% less.
The problem is, the content marketing landscape has become increasingly overcrowded. It’s difficult to stand out from the pack. If lead generation is your primary goal, your content must be as engaging as possible — and when it comes to engagement, interactive content is king.
Interactive content is just what it sounds like: content that requires the user’s participation, thus providing a more active and immersive experience. Examples include interactive infographics and videos, surveys, polls, quizzes, and contests. And believe it or not, interactive content is proven to generate twice as many leads as traditional content.
Moreover, interactive content enables you to improve the depth and quality of your leads. For example, let’s look at one of the most popular forms of interactive content: surveys. Say you sell a B2B recruiting platform, and you create and promote a survey containing questions about the most common recruiting pain points.
The survey is successful and generates a high quantity of leads — but that’s not all: the survey results provide valuable lead data. You use the insights you glean from their answers to accurately score these leads, craft personalized messaging to guide them through the sales funnel faster, and generate future content based on survey results.
5. Encourage customer referrals.
Last but certainly not least, referrals are one of the most effective ways to generate highly-targeted leads. There’s a reason why 14% of people who visit a referral landing page will convert to leads. Think about it: when a customer refers one of their peers to your company, they do so because they believe that peer is a good fit for the products you offer.
But, it’s not enough to simply cross your fingers and hope your happy customers will refer their friends. To maximize targeted lead generation, we highly recommend you establish a formal referral marketing strategy. Here are some steps to consider:
- Determine an incentive.
What will your customers get in return for providing a referral? This step is crucial, as 50% of people are likelier to give a referral if offered a reward. Beyond offering a static monetary reward, consider creating a more elaborate incentive system that encourages repeat referrals.
For instance, you might tier your incentive offerings so that customers earn bigger prizes with each referral they give. And if your company sells subscription-based products, it might make more sense to offer product-based incentives such as access to premium features.
- Identify your ideal referrers.
In order to take a proactive approach, you’ll need to identify the customers most likely to provide referrals. Examine data points such as purchase history, social media engagement, and survey results to identify your most loyal and satisfied customers. These are the customers you should prioritize when requesting referrals. But, don’t neglect the rest of your customer base, because a customer that doesn’t appear “loyal” might still provide a referral if offered the right incentives.
- Ask for referrals at the right time.
It goes without saying: the best time to ask for a referral is when the customer’s satisfaction with your company is at its highest peak. You’ll never know exactly when that moment is; it might be the day they leave a positive review, or after they send a favorable Tweet about your company, or perhaps directly following a closed deal. Outline a detailed protocol for requesting referrals so you don’t let the most optimal moment pass you by.
Final Thoughts on Generating Targeted Leads
The above list is by no means comprehensive; there are innumerable ways to generate high-quality leads in our modern, multi-channel business landscape.
The most important takeaway is this: if your lead generation strategy is falling short, don’t be afraid to try a unique approach. There are always new tactics to consider — and there are always new ways to tweak and optimize the traditional methods you’ve been using since day one.
Sam Holzman is a Content Marketing Manager at ZoomInfo, a leading sales intelligence solution that helps organizations accelerate growth and profitability. He regularly covers topics related to sales, marketing, and recruiting and likes to write about sports and travel in his free time
