It’s not enough to have an excellent product or service to sell. You also need a strategy for nurturing prospects and finding targeted leads, the segment of your audience that's ready to buy.
The right plan to collect targeted leads is essential to your sales strategy. It will drive more conversions and ensure you don’t waste time chasing leads who aren’t the right fit.
However, according to a report by HIPB2B, collecting quality, targeted leads is a significant challenge for 42% of B2B marketers. That’s why we’ve listed the best tactics you can use to draw more targeted leads into your pipeline:
It’s not uncommon for spambots or temporary email accounts to creep into your list of leads. Even if a prospect matches your ICP, you can still lose out on a potential conversion if their information isn’t accurate.
When you collect a new lead, ensure that the data (including their contact information) is correct. Otherwise, you could waste time chasing a prospect using the wrong approach and an email that doesn’t exist.
“It's possible that the lead information you discover on LinkedIn profiles isn't always reliable,” says Shiv Gupta, CEO of Incrementors. “To ensure that a lead can be reached, make sure to confirm with a few other resources. Every email that your researchers discover needs to be verified using an email verification tool.”
Examples of email verification tools you can use include:
You start the lead targeting process on the right foot when you get your prospect’s information correct from the beginning. It saves you time and effort as you’re not pursuing useless leads.
LinkedIn is an excellent platform to connect with other B2B professionals in your industry. Still, it’s so overpopulated with sales messages and connection requests that you must find ways to stand out. Here are different tactics you can use on LinkedIn to collect more targeted leads:
When you run segmented ads on LinkedIn, you can promote the product or service you sell to the right eyes and collect sales-ready leads. Tips you can follow to improve your ad performance on LinkedIn include:
You probably already know that sharing posts on LinkedIn is a good way to get exposure to thousands of people. But, if you want to get the attention of target leads, it’s important to share the right type of content on LinkedIn to maximize engagement.
Here are different types of LinkedIn content you can post to catch the attention of your audience:
Content is a powerful way to generate interest in your offering, as it's able to speak directly to your target audience. Gating has become a controversial topic for marketers, as many have moved to ungating all of their content. This all-or-nothing approach can make it difficult to collect lead information; fortunately there are ways to be smart about which content to leave gated or ungated.
With ungated content, you offer content with nothing in return except page views. With gated content, you offer something of value in exchange for the lead’s contact information. Gated content shows a higher level of engagement and interest, which makes it powerful for gathering targeted leads, but it only gets views from those willing to submit their information, which can limit your overall reach. It’s important to balance these two goals when deciding which content to gate or ungate.
The key is to offer a strong enough incentive for the lead to download your gated content. Think about the value prospects will receive from the resource and how it benefits them: for example, will they be reading tips that will help them improve in their jobs? Or learn about important changes in their industry?
Next, create different gated or ungated content for different stages of the funnel.
“For instance, visitors in the awareness stage are probably interested in reading an eBook,” says Rebecca Riserbato, content strategist at Scorpion, in an article on Drip. “On the other hand, a visitor in the decision stage might prefer a product demo or webinar.”
Here’s how you can optimize your content for each stage of your lead’s funnel:
During this stage, the customer becomes aware of the pain point they’re experiencing. As a result, they search for potential solutions to their problem. Here ungated content works best, as the prospect is casually doing research and isn’t necessarily looking to have a sales conversation. The type of content that works the best at this stage includes:
During the consideration stage, the customer has identified various products that could solve their problems. They’re now researching each solution to determine the best product for their needs. The effectiveness of gating here is minimal, as you want prospects to view information about your product case studies and product FAQs without restrictions. The type of content that works the best for this stage includes:
In this final stage, the customer decides to start talking to the sales team(s) about the product that best fits their needs. For this type of content, gating is effective, as searching for detailed product specifications shows intent and the customer’s willingness to have a serious discussion. Here’s the type of content you need to land the customer:
It’s essential to have a content marketing strategy and improve your SEO. That way, when your audience searches key terms in your niche related to their pain points, they will discover your website, the product or service you offer, and how it solves their challenges.
Seventy percent of B2B marketers agree that content marketing increases the leads they can generate. Follow these steps to get started with your content marketing strategy:
The first step of your content marketing strategy is identifying what search terms your audience is typing on Google.
You can use a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to run this keyword research. These tools will help analyze keywords based on factors such as search volume and ranking difficulty, along with what content currently ranks the best for those keywords.
Once you know which keyword you should target, you can focus on creating content that answers the search intent of these queries. Also, analyze the articles that already rank for your target keywords and determine how you can make your content better. Factors that will make you rank higher include word count, structure, better examples, or quotes from an authority figure.
The best SEO practices for your content include:
Sometimes, the lead was interested in what you had to offer, but you caught them at the wrong time. Retargeting gives you a second chance to keep your product or service top of mind for the lead and land a new conversion. Follow these steps to retarget leads:
Not all of your lost leads are the same, and it’s why you want to use your data to segment your list of prospects based on where they dropped off in the funnel. Here’s how you can segment your list of leads:
Based on where the lead dropped off in the funnel, run targeted offers via ads or email to retarget them.
For example, let’s say a customer completed the free trial of your product but stopped using it when they finished. You can send them a discount on their membership via email to encourage them to try the software again.
With these lead targeting strategies, you’ll qualify more leads. As a result, you’ll grow your audience, stop chasing leads who aren’t worth your time, and increase your revenue.
And if you want to take your lead targeting to the next level, you can use a person-based advertising platform like Influ2. Our tool helps you identify key decision-makers and buying groups to deliver highly personalized ads to them. Schedule a demo today to learn more.
A proud marketing generalist driven by a strong urge to Always Be Learning (ABL). Nirosha has a career across many marketing disciplines and industries spanning close to 15-years. Now she is taking on the challenge to build out the evolution of Account-Based Marketing to Buying Group Marketing.