We have already stepped into 2021, and it's high time you re-evaluate your B2B lead generation strategies, recognising the ones which are good to keep and the ones to drop off. 

Before diving into it, are you wondering what exactly is B2B lead generation?

Here's a short video for a quick explanation!

Source: Cognism

The secret sauce to getting maximum leads in 2021 is knowing the right time to adopt new trends and optimise those strategies. Owing to an ever-evolving technology, B2B lead generation strategies change with each incremental year.

For a B2B marketer, getting more leads hold greater importance than anything else. In this challenging and competitive B2B market, it's tough to get valuable quality leads. So, how to get success? Keeping your eyes peeled for 2021 lead generation trends is very important.

Before jumping into those latest trends, let's first fix your leaky bucket.

Most of the B2B marketers spend their time pouring more traffic into their leaky bucket (Funnel), rather than fixing it. This habit leads to an increase in the acquisition cost and below-average results.

Marketers don't pay much attention to their primary traffic-driving tool - landing pages and forms. Forms are the one that separates your leads from non-leads and makes them convert into your real customer.

You should focus on optimising your forms to attract maximum leads to your site, ensuring that no potential leads are left behind.

Also, check out these trends to get the maximum benefit.

B2B lead generation trends of 2021.

Ensure your sales and marketing teams are perfectly aligned

The only thing we notice the sales team complaining about is the quality of the leads that the marketing team passes on to them.  Bad quality leads are the single highest revenue loss reason for the company.

To resolve this, ensure seamless and timely communication and coordination between the sales and the marketing teams to ensure a proper understanding of the metrics and the challenges faced by both of them.

Source: SuperOffice

With the right operational strategy implementation by these teams, there is a coherent functioning, more focused on the customers, and thus the revenue trajectory starts showing an upward movement.

Focus on the buyer intent with personalised outreach

We have already discussed how important personalisation is, to the B2B industry and for the lead generation process. Be it LinkedIn marketing for B2B, Instagram marketing, or any other social media platform, personalisation plays an equally important role.

Your website should speak about the buyer intent, which means what exactly is your target customer looking for, and where exactly are they in their purchase journey. 

For instance -  You notice a company visiting your website 10 times in the past 5 days, clicking on a particular product page, and looking for the pricing plans available. That simply means they are interested in your offerings. A simple way of grabbing that business opportunity is to personalise your outreach plan and deliver more valuable content to such customers and try to fulfil their needs. Personalised content not only enhances the user experience but also converts more leads to customers.

You can personalise your offers, landing page, recommendations, etc., and create personalised experiences based on your visitor's stage of purchase, behaviour, industry, job role, location, etc.

Just know your audience, and their problems and start personalising your content accordingly.

Focus on Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has taken the marketing industry by storm. Influencers are not only confined to promoting consumer goods. Today they are playing an essential role in the B2B industry as well. Influencers not only help in lead generation but also in the lead nurturing process, and converting leads into customers.

Source: Freepik

According to a study, the word spread by influencers or expert opinion is one of the most effective content types to persuade B2B buyers.

Customers tend to relate more to people like them, and their advice, rather than listening to any faceless corporation. However, only 15% of B2B companies are using Influencers to promote their business.

If you begin implementing the Influencer marketing campaigns now, it will play to your advantage, because B2B influencer marketing is only going to get bigger.

Are you wondering - Why influencer marketing is so important for the B2B industry?

The answer is - Influencers are the people who operate with the currency called "TRUST." They have the trust of people, and people believe in their advice and statements, which leads to brand engagement.

This trust of people in influencers is a gold mine for B2B companies. They use influencers' channels to connect with their huge fan following and promote their brands. The impact these influencers can bring to your lead generation strategy is much more effective than any other marketing campaign.

Are B2C and B2B influencers are same?

The answer is - NO.

B2C Influencers are social media stars and niche bloggers, but B2B influencers are successful entrepreneurs and industry experts.

Focus on automating selected tasks

Earlier, the lead generation process was pretty straightforward. Reach out to a set of people, offer a white paper or an e-book to be downloaded for free, get them to fill in their details, and then pass on the leads to the sales team.

But, this does not help much in the current landscape.

Today, owing to the humongous competition in the B2B market, you should seriously consider automation. Automate the routine tasks that eat up a heavy chunk of your time, and focus on the tasks that need a human touch.

Source: Free Pik

For example -  There are Chatbots that can chat with website visitors, resolving their queries, assisting them to locate the required resource, along with qualifying that lead for the process to follow.

There are CRM tools that can help you feed in those qualified leads to your system for maintaining a repository. It goes on to assign sales reps to particular leads, who then can focus their time and energies on closing the deals.

Automation tools can also help in lead nurturing, through email drip campaigns, retargeting campaigns, etc.

You, in turn, can focus more on understanding the customer's intent, pain points, their need, and requirements, and work collaboratively in designing a proper personalised solution for them.

Create videos and live streaming

As per a study by Cisco, approximately 82% of all the traffic on the internet will be exclusively due to videos.

Video has become a crucial part of B2B lead generation as B2B customers are consuming more information from this type of content. More than 70% of buyers in the B2B sector watch videos to get ideas throughout their journey. 

This statistic shows how including video content can boost your B2B lead generation campaign performance.

Create a video that educates, engages your target audience, and makes their purchase decision easy. Also, to get maximum leads, you should choose the proper channel for the distribution of the videos.

As mentioned previously, keep it mobile-friendly and select channels like social media, where more than 50% of the buyers do their research and gather information before making any purchase decision.

You might also have seen live streaming of videos on social media, which is trending now. Companies are using this method to engage with their potential customers.

This trend is also becoming popular in the B2B industry. Companies are streaming live webinars and webcasts to demonstrate their products/services and increase the engagement of their customers with their sites, hence, generating more leads.

You can also do live streaming by planning Q&A sessions, webinars, interviews, demonstrations of your product or service, etc, after knowing what exactly is your customer looking for.

To sum it all up

The B2B lead generation process can be a cakewalk if you follow the above trends closely. Since this is an ever-changing industry, with the consumer dynamics evolving with each passing year, you need to act like a night watchman, carefully observing and listening to what is happening. Only then would you be able to catch hold of the trends to focus on, for you to be able to get high-quality leads and incremental revenues.