5 Great Ways to Generate B2B Leads Post Covid-19

Before Covid-19 most B2B vendors would have hardly considered eCommerce as part of their modus operandi, relegating it to small-ticket items.

But McKinsey research showed that up to 62 percent of B2B buyers around the globe would willingly expend $50,000 in online purchases. Others would go as far as $500,000.

These are pretty substantial numbers and a great revelation too. Businesses that want to thrive post-pandemic need to shift their models to target these online buyers.

They may need to rethink their stance on eCommerce (because there’s no going back) and incorporate digital lead generation tactics to pull and engage prospects.

To that end, we’ll explore five such tactics worth considering post-Covid-19.

Segment Your Prospects

Buyers enjoy B2C experiences because of the level of personalization involved. B2C sellers picked up this secret long ago and have capitalized on it to deliver unique experiences to their buyers.

We in the B2B sector take the easy way, bunching all our prospects together and assuming our messages will resonate with them.

Even those targeting niche segments need to look at individual companies’ needs, because not every business is on the same trajectory.

If you want to garner more from your marketing efforts, you’ll need to personalize their experiences through market segmentation.

Consider this:

Clean your database. Decision-makers switch jobs, companies merge, go out of business, or change their business models all the time. Polish up your database to ensure you have real people and up-to-date intel.
If you don’t have data, buy it. Find a reputable brand that can offer custom lists of prospects based on your total addressable market. You can also purchase intent data from TP vendors to determine your ideal customers’ thinking patterns, interests, and needs.
Choose a segmentation criterion. Armed with a cleaner database that also considers intent data, group your prospects. Some customers are budget-conscious, others focus on productivity, while others want solutions that match their current tech stack.

Make Cold Calls

Why is cold calling still a thing today? Because research shows that senior-level buyers—think business owners, VPs, C-level executives, and managers still want phone calls.

Calls make it easier to ask questions and receive clarifications to quickly decide which vendor to proceed with.

Marketers can leverage calls to make connections, introduce their products/services and demonstrate how the solutions will positively impact the brand.

Best practices include:

Personalize your script. Avoid generalized pitches that brag about how your organization helps businesses like theirs. Do some research instead, then adapt your pitch around their specific pain points.
Talk numbers. Your solutions may sound good but are they quantitative? Request your sales managers for some of the values they have generated for customers and share these with your targets.
Make follow-ups. Statistics show that reps will probably hear no four times before the prospect says yes. Sadly, up to 44 percent of reps will make only one follow-up. Worse, a further 48 percent don’t make any.

Generate Quality Online Reviews

When buyers want a 360-degree picture of a brand, they look beyond your sales and marketing team and on to their peers.

They know that real-life users will offer authentic insight and ratings of your processes, support, and experience.

How do you generate worthy online reviews?

Create a feedback section where users can leave feedback for public viewing. This specially dedicated section may include reviews and ratings, links to TP review sites (if you’re using them), case studies, and FAQs.
Obtain reviews from industry experts, analysts, or influencers. You can ask them to sample your solutions and share their opinions with their followers. The credibility they’ve built with their audiences will make their recommendations weightier.
Leverage your social pages. Toot positive reviews left by (influential) customers on your social pages to drive awareness. You can also co-create value by encouraging loyal customers to drop user-generated content on social platforms and use the feedback to better your solutions.

Send Out Cold Emails

We mostly associate email marketing with promoting and selling via email. There’s obviously a place for this but the platform is also useful for educating, building rapport, and sharing success stories with prospects.

A fundamental aspect of your email marketing strategy will involve using email marketing software and you’ll find plenty on the market.

Budgetary concerns are a given for many businesses, so we’ll tackle other considerations:

Ease of use. Most software comes with ready mobile-optimized templates, but how easy are they to tweak? Find one that offers an easily customizable builder to ensure the emails conform to your brand’s guidelines.
Integration. Martech integration allows you to pull customer data from different internal sources and use it in targeted email campaigns. Don’t assume your preferred software offers these integrations. Ask the developer.
Reporting and analytics. From click-through rates to list growth rates, conversions, bounce rates, and spam complaints, you need to track campaign performance. Go for software that offers detailed sets of dashboards to help you derive actionable insights.

Invest in Brand Collaborations

Collaborations with complementary brands can make significant contributions to your pipeline and sales. You’ll be tapping into your partner’s network and audience and the shared expertise provides a more formidable and trustworthy front.

Top ways you can leverage partnerships include:

Co-hosting webinars. You may have expertise in your field but be a novice in a complementary one that your audience also uses. When you partner with a complementary brand, you can tackle greater issues and provide more value.
Creating newsletters together. Outline the problems your shared customers’ experience and align complementary products/services that may solve these issues. Work on content that tackles both solutions. This may include industry updates, how to maximize value or regulations that may affect both audiences.
Incorporating distribution partnerships. This is particularly effective in SaaS partnerships but can apply across other industries. Agree on products/services that can be bundled and sold together. You can even put a time limit to increase urgency.