B2B Lead Generation: 11 Strategies to Capture High Quality Leads

Every B2B marketer works towards generating leads that the sales team can convert into paying customers. But, it’s not as simple as it sounds.

Both marketing and sales need to work together to understand the pain points of target personas and develop an action plan for generating high-quality leads to drive their business goals.

To make your job easier, we've compiled a list of 11 B2B lead generation tactics that will help you capture paid and organic leads and generate higher conversions for your business.

Table of contents

• What is B2B lead generation?
• What are B2B leads?
• What are high-quality leads?
• 11 B2B lead generation strategies
• Find your next lead today

What is B2B lead generation?

B2B or business to business lead generation is a process of generating high-quality leads for your product/services to nurture them and convert them into paying customers.

You not only drive awareness and prospects to your business but also enable prospects to solve their problems with your help. Overall, it is a win-win for both parties involved.

What are B2B leads?

B2B leads are business terms given to the customer running their own business who finds your product/services valuable to scale their operations. The leads in the B2B sphere are other small, medium, or big businesses or business members such as marketers, product managers, etc.

There are two types of B2B leads:

Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

Marketing qualified leads consist of leads at top of the funnel who interacted with your marketing efforts, such as downloading an ebook and signing up for a newsletter etc. The marketing team defines leads as MQLs if they have higher conversion potential.

Related guide: How to Define Leads as Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

Sales qualified leads (SQLs)

Sales qualified leads are MQLs who have shown interest in buying your product/services. When MQLs are progressing into SQLs, it means they are ready to engage with your sales team. Some ways their intent can be identified are:

• Requesting more information on your product/services.

• Booking a demo meeting with your sales team.

What are high-quality leads?

High-quality leads are ideal prospects that possess a high propensity to convert. Every lead is assigned a lead score by the sales team based on various factors, like the industry they work in, the extent to which they meet your ideal buyer persona or their level of interest in your product/services. The higher the score, the more likely that a lead is interested in your product or service and is ready to make a purchase.

Both marketing and sales teams need to work alongside to collect and analyze the lead data and qualify these leads as they move from one touchpoint to another.

In the next section, we will discuss 11 tactics you can use to generate high-quality leads for your business.

11 B2B lead generation strategies

Here we will discuss 11 inbound and outbound tactics you can use to generate high-quality leads for your business:

1. Engage with your audience on Linkedin

Linkedin is our most recommended social channel to get B2B leads. It's where all the businesses and professionals hang out. There are three ways you can capture leads on Linkedin.

1. Create your business page.

2. Use LinkedIn lead gen ads.

3. Obtain the email address of prospective leads.

1. Business page

Use your business page to share targeted and valuable content with your target audience. You can also reach out to potential customers and start a conversation with them, ask about their pain points and offer valuable solutions that your product/services can offer.

2. Linkedin lead generation ads

Use LinkedIn lead ad gen - sponsored content, messaging ads, and text ads, to reach and engage with your audience.

For example, Linkedin messaging ads are an effective lead-gen tactic as you can promote your live webinar and allow users to either sign up directly or check the event details first.

Big brands like Tableau, a leading global data analytics software, achieved over 90% lead gen form submission rates with LinkedIn’s Conversation Ads.

To ensure that you capture the leads, show ads only to the potential leads by segmenting them. Make your ads compelling, clear, and relevant to your audience's interest and pain points.

3. Direct email collection You can directly get the email address of your target personas if they made it public or you can use tools like Contactout and Gem.com to extract the email address. Once you have the email address list, you can plan a cold email outreach strategy.

Related guide: How to Generate High Quality B2B Leads Using LinkedIn

2. Create content that targets users’ specific queries

Getting leads through content is a long-term game but it definitely helps in generating brand awareness, building trust, and eventually converting prospects into leads.

To capture high-quality B2B leads through content marketing you must have a thorough understanding of your buyer persona. Once you have that, you need to answer their queries through your content.

To get users to share their email addresses with you you need to give them a compelling reason. Here’s an approach you can use:

Give users free downloaded content such as a checklist or e-book that is extremely valuable and relevant to them. Once they find how your content helped them resolve their pain points, they’ll be ready to share their email address in exchange for more valuable content.

The key to getting leads through your content is to offer something so educational and relevant that they are pumped up to hear from you again.

3. Distribute your content on different channels

Creating content isn’t going to get your leads unless you create a buzz about it. You need the traffic to get engagement and eventually convert that traffic into leads. So, distribute content like your life depends on it.

• Got an event coming up? Share it on social media, run ads, and create event email sequences to get more signups.

• Create an ebook? Launch it on Product Hunt to get more downloads.

• Launched a new product update? Send product update emails to your current email subscribers.

4. Leverage email marketing using interactive emails

We can’t talk about B2B leads without mentioning email marketing. Besides traditional cold email outreach, you can do much more with emails to generate B2B leads.

• Run ads in the user’s inbox that appears at the top.

• Reach out to different brands (partnership, sponsored content) in your industry and ask them to mention you in their emails. It’s a great tactic as you can get leads in front of their audience. (Their audiences should be similar to your target audience)

• Use AMP emails to allow users to book a demo call within the meet. With Mailmodo’s Calendly integration and Zoom integration, you can get leads to book a call with your sales team promptly.

Here’s how that works.

Check out our demo booking email template

Related guide: How to Generate Leads Through Email Marketing in 2022

5. Tap into the user’s behavioral data

Tracking users' interactions and behavior across different touchpoints is nothing less than a goldmine of insightful data.

Which ad did they click on? Which e-book did they download? Which link did they click in your promotional email? Did they check out the pricing page?

Collecting data through different marketing channels using a customer data platform (CDP) can give you a 360-degree view of your target persona. Use this data to create targeted and personalized content to encourage them to take the action.

For instance, people come to your landing page but didn’t complete the signup form. You can use this data to look into areas for improvement. You can A/B test the landing page copy or add user testimonials to reinforce trust.

6. Facebook leads ad campaigns

The best part of using FB lead ads is its functionality to allow leads to fill up the form without leaving the Facebook dashboard. It makes the whole process hassle-free, reducing the drop-off points between the click and signup completion.

Note: Facebook lead ads only work for mobile users.

Here is an example of how Facebook lead gen ads work.

Source: Pinterest

Related guide: 11 Facebook Lead Generation Tactics to Grow Your Business

7. Setup exit-intent pop-up to capture website visitors

Pop-ups are annoying when they keep appearing while your audience interacts with your website. Such an intrusive experience can make users bounce resulting in lower conversions. So, what’s the solution?

Use exit-intent pop-ups. These appear when users are about to leave your site. As users are anyway going away these don't seem intrusive and capture the reader’s attention at once. You can ask for users’ feedback to understand why they are leaving your site or encourage them to chat with you.

Here are a few recommendations to make visitors convert into leads through exit-intent popups

• Ask a bold headline like Leaving already? or How can we help you?

• Use a compelling copy to target the user’s emotional psyche.

• Give a clear call to action - Signup for the newsletter, download this ebook, or Give feedback.

Related guide: A Beginner's Guide to Lead Generation For Generating High-Quality Leads

8. Use in-line forms on high traffic blog posts

In-line forms can lead users to sign up for your newsletter, download an ebook, or book a demo call with your sales team. They work best when they are relevant to the content users are reading.

For instance, if you have a checklist to improve email subject lines, try adding inline form links on your blog posts encouraging readers to get access to the exclusive content. As this content is highly relevant to what users are already reading, it will prompt them to submit their email to get the checklist.

9. Run Google ads targeting the right keywords

Paid ads might be expensive but they can help you get high-quality leads much faster than organic marketing. As these ads rank at the top in Google SERP, they capture users’ attention more instantly than organic results.

But to make these ads work in your favor, here are a few recommendations:

• Target the right keyword that your audience might be searching for.

• Write a clear and descriptive title and meta description to encourage users to click

• Direct users to the relevant landing page.

• Optimize your landing page conversions with prominent CTA, compelling copy, and design.

You can read our landing page optimization guide to get more conversions fast.

10. Optimize your site for conversions

Your website is your most crucial asset to convert visitors into leads. All the other tactics we discussed will work only if your website site pages are optimized for conversions.

Here is the most important factor that will contribute toward high-quality lead generation:

• Ensure that your site loads fast preferably within 4-5 seconds.

• Give clear navigation.

• Optimize above the fold by presenting your value proposition clearly in the heading and subheading.

• Use social proof such as ratings, clients your business worked with, etc, above the fold to build instant credibility.

• Use compelling visuals showing your product in action.

To know more, you can read our guide on conversion rate optimization.

11. Assist prospects 24*7 via live chatbots

You must have noticed the widespread use of chatbots on almost all websites. It’s because they work on automation and assist website visitors 24*7 resolving their queries instantly. Such prompt and instant attention build trust and credibility among website visitors.

A great use case of chatbot is to use visitors' queries to qualify leads immediately. Besides, as they come in different avatars, they tend to create engagement among the visitors.

Find your next lead today

Finding the best B2B lead generation strategy will take time and involves a lot of trial and error. The more you understand your target persona's pain points and needs, the better you can devise your marketing strategy.

Once you have high-quality leads, the next step in the funnel involves nurturing these leads to convert them into paying customers. You can read our guide on nurturing leads using email marketing to learn about the next phase of the lead lifecycle.