We recently conducted a LinkedIn survey asking entrepreneurs and executives what their first goal is.
Unsurprisingly, lead acquisition comes first.
This is exactly the same result found in other surveys done by companies much larger than us, such as Hubspot and Canva.
A quick reminder: what is a lead?
Lead acquisition is the search for and generation of new business and sales opportunities. It is therefore an objective that directly links marketing to sales.
The problem is that the vast majority of companies “galley” and devote an enormous amount of time and energy to achieve this goal. We are not yet talking about sales, but only about finding sales opportunities.
According to the answers to our questionnaire here, 87.5% of respondents say they have difficulty generating leads. This is long, tedious and ultimately inefficient in terms of time and effort.
To sum up :
- the majority of companies in b2b want more customers
- and at the same time, finding customers is one of the most difficult, time-consuming and often unsuccessful tasks.
Why is it so complicated?
- The “old” prospecting techniques are much less effective: trade shows, physical prospecting, physical networking… For companies that used these techniques, we are at a dead end.
- To get more customers, you have to be visible! And many companies and entrepreneurs are not. Or at least not good people!
- Efforts are put in the wrong place. We see a lot of expenses made for websites, which is a good investment. But almost no more effort to bring visitors… so we miss the point.
So necessarily, we get results below our expectations and at the price of a lot of effort.
In this article, we share with you 2 levers to greatly improve your conversion.
If you don’t have the time, we talk about it in this video :
The 2 powerful strategies to generate more B2B sales leads
Strategy #1: develop your visibility and find qualified contacts.
The basis for selling since the dawn of time! Of course, it seems obvious. But how many omit this obvious fact? 90% minimum.
Your prospects and your audience simply must not “see” you anymore.
They need to understand
- what problems you solve
- how you are different
- how to work with your company
If you are not clear about this in your marketing strategy, there is no point investing time and money in increasing your visibility.
So go through the starting point: we’re talking about it here.
Strategy #2: Conversation
If you pay attention, in conversation there is the word conversion.
Did you notice that in the word conversation, we find the word conversion?
This is far from being a harmless “coincidence”!
Small point on the etymology:
- conversation means “to live with”.
- conversion means turning around, changing direction.
Are you beginning to see the relationship between conversation and conversion?
We are social beings. To converse, to discuss, to exchange allows us to build a bond. Emotion, meaning, trust.
Conversation (living it together) transforms our perception of the other.
We go from mistrust to trust.
From the unknown to the friend, to ally.
From the average company to the preferred partner.
If the subject of neuroscience interests you,
- you’re right, it’s exciting!
- you will find an article on the subject here
Adapt the conversation to the stage of the relationship
Of course, to have a real impact, it is necessary to have differentiated conversation strategies according to the stage of the customer relationship.
- Wider audience: this takes place on social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.
- community: people who follow you more closely, such as newsletter subscribers for example
- prospects: the conversation will be in a small group as in a webinar or one to one.
This strategy is particularly suitable for B2B companies.
If you are in B2C and mass markets, this does not apply (but here, we are B2B ;))
2 very powerful B2B channels to deploy these strategies
The objective is to jointly develop coordinated actions to both develop conversation and visibility and ultimately conversion.
- the use of LinkedIn in a highly targeted and professional way: no LinkedIn is not a cv database or a facebook for professionals! The leading experts in B2B marketing are unanimous on the subject – including us 😀 Today, it is a network of conversation potentials and business opportunities that is essential.
- the use of emailing in an intelligent, targeted and data-driven way.
No more shooting at everything that moves! This is what makes the results disappointing. Contrary to recurring announcements, emailing is not dead, far from it. It is still the acquisition channel that best transforms B2B.
Find here the marketing trends in B2B for this year.
