The world of B2B marketing was always pretty volatile. The first hurdle you have to pass upon entering is the lack of any clear rules – the approach that works for family workshops doesn’t have to work for press publishers. The second obstacle is the fact that the world around us is undergoing constant changes (e.g. introduction of new services and technologies) which can easily disrupt your existing efforts.
So, what can we do when without a rulebook and no idea what lies ahead of us? Let’s take a look at some of the general lead generation strategies that should keep your business relevant in 2019.
Use the power of AI
Artificial intelligence is quickly growing from something we're used to seeing in the movies to consumer-friendly technology that can be found in any back pocket. In the context of lead generation, AI can be a very powerful tool you can use for identification of intent signals, driving segmentation, analysis of huge pools of CRM-gathered data, the creation of ideal customer profiles, and finally predictive analysis. If you can’t anticipate the future, prediction of upcoming trends is good enough of a consolation prize.
Clean up your entry points
So many businesses focus their attention on driving traffic to the landing pages they often fail to consider their landing pages may, in fact, be leaky buckets. Pouring more water into them won't solve the problem. According to HubSpot, cleaning up your pages to show only the focused, important and relevant info can increase the conversion rate by rock-solid 55%. Other moves that can improve the efficiency of your website are calls to action, the inclusion of downloadable content, and strong headlines.
Play up the potential of ABM
Account-based marketing is an interesting marketing approach in which, instead of creating brand awareness and narrowing down specific leads, you flip the funnel, target specific business accounts and then try to find the best ways to promote your business to them. This approach may seem counterintuitive at first, but if we take Australia as an example, we can see that 92% of the local businesses that tried out this approach saw ABM as an important part of their marketing initiatives.
Create a unique value proposition
Having a unique value proposition is a marketing strategy that will never go out of business. Recent research says that simple changes in the value proposition of your company can deliver a 500% in lead generation. For instance, if stay in Australia a bit longer we can see that growing number ofexperienced tax consultants from Sydney and other major cities are expanding their standard tax-season services to pre-season preparation and post-season follow-up to stay competitive with great results.
Nurture prospective leads with email marketing
Although many times proclaimed dead, stats say that email marketing is still the most commonly used lead generation channel used by 78% of businesses. However, email marketing is only productive if used effectively. For instance, automated workflows and segmented email lists can do a wonderful job nurturing the leads that have downloaded the content from your website to the point when they are ready to pick up the phone and contact your sales representative.
Get ready for voice searches
Voice currently sits at the top of the list of the fastest growing trends in the world of search engines with 41% of adults and more than half of teenagers using voice commands to search the web on a daily basis. Since voice searches are more often long tail queries rather than simple search phrases we've used to enter with keyboards, businesses need to think about how to improve their voice-searched discoverability. Also, voice-searches usually open up conversations. Don't rule out AI-driven voice assistants out of your plans in the foreseeable future.
Expand the number of assets you are using
Video streaming services like YouTube and Vimeo are powerful platforms that see a daily number of visitors that easily passes tens of million. Also, YouTube is currently the second most popular search-engine leaving behind competitors like Amazon and Bing. Failing to make a presence on these platforms is a wasted opportunity. But, why stop there? Launching a podcast, building an app or publishing an eBook are all plausible ways of delivering relevant content to the widest possible audience and increasing the number of leads.
Build personalized microsites
Essentially, microsites are scaled down version of your websites with only a couple of pages you can use to point out specific information and advance specific marketing goals. In terms of lead generation, microsites allow excellent keyword optimization and provide a great platform for Lead Capture and PPC landing pages. A number of different microsites can help you easily target different market segments and get more versatile results. Once they pass the point of usefulness they can be easily written-off and abandoned.
We hope these few proposed strategies will help you find the right balance between the upcoming trends that are expected to generate strong results in the near future and the tactics that have proved their value time and again. This might just be the best approach you can take. In the ever-changing world of B2B marketing, it's always good to have one foot firmly on the ground.