Generating leads and sales opportunities is at the heart of everyday life for B2B companies, and many questions arise. After more than 22 years of meetings with prospects and customers, the questions that come up are: what tactic will generate leads? How much should I invest on the web, in magazines, at trade shows, etc.?
In B2B, very few companies choose not to invest both in online and offline channels. But yes, there are exceptions depending on the nature of the product and the market. Nevertheless, it is necessary to know the market to make wise choices and integrate them into a coherent strategy. You must also measure each action to optimize its budget and abandon those that do not generate ROI. There is no easy solution, no solution you can use all the time from one company to another. Whether it is the budget or the technological maturity (the tools we use to support the sales and marketing functions for example), there are differences.
Once you have decided which channels and tactics you want to use and everything runs as if in a perfect world, just think that by 2015, websites will be the source of more than 71% of all leads (source: Sirius Decisions). The prospects generated by your actions will go through your website to validate elements of information, depending on the stage in their buying cycle. Make sure your site will generate a sales lead from this visit. You have invested X thousands of dollars in marketing efforts, so make that you are converting these visits into real value for your business.
It also happens on your site.
- You need to know what different information influencers and buyers are looking to get an idea of your potential to meet their needs. So, be sure that they find it on your site. This information can take many forms depending on the nature of the need, but it must be downloadable through a form on a dedicated landing page. The form captures the information, allowing you to pass the baton over to your sales team.
- Measure the results of your efforts with your free or paid tools on your website, but what matters the most is to measure the right performance indicators. Generating tons of clicks while not generating leads or sales opportunities gives you NOTHING in the end! If you do not know the source of your leads, then your analysis is poor. Not just the geographical origin, but also what activities (trade shows, direct mail, SEO, Social Media, etc.) and from which market or submarket these prospects are coming from.
Generating sales leads is one of the ten criteria to be considered when analyzing the performance of activities that you deploy in your web ecosystem.
Our exo bloggers offer a series of articles that will tackle nine different criteria that should be considered in the web ecosystem analysis, diagnostic performance of your website, online strategy and inbound marketing.
- Generating sales leads
- The optimization for different platforms (smart phones, tablets)
- Your content strategy
- Social networks
- Email Marketing
- Landing pages
- Incentives to action (Calls-to-Action)
- Visitors, their behavior and their interests
- Management of sales leads
- Traffic analysis
It would be a pleasure to discuss our Exo blog with you; 100% B2B marketing since 2009.
