The marketing and advertising industry has long had a tendency to focus on the next shiny thing that sits on the fringes, promising virtual revolution. From the advent of social, through the questionable promise of VR or NFTs, to the infinite possibilities of the metaverse, many have made their way from the edge of the tech world to the slides of an agency deck.
This isn’t to dispute their worth, but to reflect on the fact that for every presentation or panel about how to utilize the virtual reality of the metaverse, how many focus on the very real and current reality for consumers. The people who we talk to, track and temp. The people who buy products and services we advertise. And now, the people who are in the midst of the harshest personal finance crisis in a generation.
The reality can’t be underestimated. UK inflation has hit a 40-year high of 9.1%, driven by soaring food and energy prices, exacerbating the fall in ‘real’ incomes (after tax and inflation) Brits have experienced since 2021.
YouGov found half of all Brits say their financial situation has become worse in the last month, with one in five already struggling or unable to make ends meet. 5% are already saying “I cannot afford my costs, and often have to go without essentials like food and heating”, up from just 1% last year.
Efforts from Chancellor Rishi Sunak to tackle the crisis were labelled by the Think Tank Resolution Foundation as a “big but poorly targeted policy package” which ultimately will still “see a further 1.3 million people fall into absolute poverty next year, including 500,000 children – the first time Britain has seen such a rise in poverty outside of recessions.”
So as purveyors of goods and services that we hope these same people will exchange their – increasingly restricted – disposable income for, it’s not a huge leap to say that we should take some responsibility and explore ways we can help.
Even if the human case weren’t enough, it’s worth noting that a third of Brits say they can mostly cover essential costs but don’t often have money for luxuries now. With that picture likely to get worse before it gets better, it’s worth considering how quickly your product or service could become one of those unattainable luxuries. The cost of living emergency is a significant crisis with no single solution. But here are some ways we might all be able to help.
B2B: less about cutting costs and more about adding value
It is crucial to hold fast during the crisis and avoid eroding or undermining your hard fought for brand equity. So where possible avoid price and promo strategies that reframe your product and its value in consumers eyes. When consumer confidence and disposable income rise again, you don’t want to be left behind.
Instead, consider other tactics as a business. Offering benefits or points for loyal customers who have long shopped with you shows that loyalty works both ways. Reducing charges for things such as delivery demonstrates that you understand that every pound counts and your willingness to go the extra mile. Or work with retailers and providers to offer free add-ons or savings with every purchase.
Consumer: less about short term pain and more about long term gain
If your prices go up or your products change (see the reported rise in ‘shrinkflation’) make sure you communicate with your consumers as to why, what it might mean for your business, and what it might mean for them.
If, for example, the issues in European supply chains mean you’ve started sourcing locally and therefore that might push up prices, demonstrate the benefit of that to communities and be honest about the impact – good and bad.
Consider other ways you might be able to help your customers save in the long run. Could you offer your product through a subscription service that ultimately saves them money, but also creates one less thing to deal with day-to-day? Are there small elements of added value you can offer, like gifts or free experiences to collect?
And think about those at the sharpest end of the crisis, who don’t know where their next meal might come from or how they’re going to clothe their families, and consider your scope for offering your help to charities, welfare providers and other partners who can put your products to good use.
Importantly demonstrate empathy with what might be happening, but don’t try to commercialise it or take advantage in any way. Our bullshit detectors are at their most sensitive in times of crisis.
Employer: less about pay and more about care
It might be easy to forget that some individuals within our companies will be feeling the impact of the cost of living crisis too. Those who we’re asking to immerse themselves in the metaverse so we look smart in front of a client, might likewise be worrying about their reality as any pay rises or bonuses are quickly outstripped by rising inflation.
So consider how you might be flexible and ready to work with employees on their needs.
For example some might feel the crunch on their home utility costs meaning they would rather be in the office, while conversely others might be less able to afford transport costs and so would rather work at home.
And consider how the benefits you offer to your teams might be able to help ease costs and pressure in certain aspects of their lives. Pay rises might not always be an immediate option, but there are other ways to ease their cost-of-living.
The future will come, the next marketing revolution will inevitably take hold. But here and now, we must consider the reality for our consumers, and the role our brands can play in tackling a very real crisis.
We know there are numerous ways to generate B2B sales leads, but let’s face it, the same old methods have been done to death.
It’s time to take an unconventional approach to lead generation, especially for B2B companies, because B2B is a different ballgame than B2C — and your strategies need to reflect your audience.
As a refresher, here’s how organization goals differ in the B2C versus the B2B sectors:
Source: Venngage
Before we begin detailing these B2B methods, it’s important to keep in mind that lead generation isn’t a one-and-done deal.
You have to be open to A/B testing your strategies and your content. Regularly track your content performance, metrics, conversions, and be ready to improve.
So, what are these unconventional methods to generate B2B sales leads? Read on to find out.
1. Tailor content for B2B sales leads
B2B content is brand and agency-focused, and you want to create materials that attract attention from that audience.
Getting eyeballs on your content won’t mean much if they aren’t converting into customers — those aren’t the right B2B sales leads for your company.
Most businesses create audience personas to help them reach their target market. In the B2B arena, don’t aim for a company — look for the decision-makers within that company.
Every target company will have a few key people who decide which products and services benefit the business. These are the decision-makers your content needs to be tailored to, and for whom you can build buyer personas around, such as this example:
Source: Venngage
Determine who within a business will most need your product or service, and build your buyer personas based on the following:
Age
Location
Job title
Level in company
Preferred content channels
Desired goals
Pain points
Create a flow chart with these details to facilitate the content creation process. This also helps you decide which channels will get you the most traction.
Search intent
Once you know your audience, your next step in tailoring content to earn B2B sales leads is to determine their search intent, which can take numerous forms:
Searching for information
Searching to buy
Searching to learn
As a largely B2B company, we do extensive research before creating a piece of content. We ascertain keywords related to our topic, but we also check Google, the “People Also Ask” section, AnswerThePublic, and conduct surveys among fellow marketers.
Choose keywords and terms that are relevant to your audience — not solely based on search volume. Popular searches in your industry will attract more B2C consumers, whereas focused keywords that have a higher value, but a lower search volume, usually fall in the B2B realm.
2. How to use B2B email marketing
B2B email marketing has a higher click-to-open ratio than B2C, and is a favored channel for 59% of B2B marketers.
This is a channel that can consistently bring in B2B sales leads — if done right. You have to keep a few things in mind to make email marketing a successful lead generation channel.
Automate email marketing
Marketing teams know the benefits of automating processes: smoother workflow, faster processing time, and time funneled into creativity instead of repetitive tasks.
You can use marketing automation to segment email lists, send targeted campaigns, respond to abandoned carts, and convert customers, as this graphic explains:
Source: Venngage
Imagine this scenario: a customer gets to the final stage of purchasing, but leaves your site right before checkout. Whether that customer was distracted, lost connection, or changed their mind, it’s up to your company to encourage them to finish the process.
If cart abandonment is being handled manually, this customer could fall through the cracks, or get a response well after they’ve decided on another brand.
Email automation can be programmed to respond to them immediately upon cart abandonment — and you’ve earned a customer who would otherwise have been lost.
Email deliverability
Automating emails is one thing, but are your customers receiving your emails? You can create the best content in your industry, but it will amount to little if your newsletters end up in the spam folder.
Emails sent with a company name instead of a person’s name are more likely to end up in the spam folder or not opened at all. Use an individual’s address to send emails, and include a reply-to option to that address.
Don’t change the frequency of your email campaigns too often. There will be certain periods when you send more emails, but be as consistent as possible so your subscriber base knows when to expect your emails.
Regularly check and clean your lists so you aren’t sending emails to addresses that no longer exist and increase your bounce rates.
Email content
Keep these things in mind when creating your email content as, at the end of the day, your email content is what will be most successful in earning you B2B sales leads:
Your content should be consistent with your brand. Send emails about products, services, events, industry news, and your latest blog posts.
Create a consistent design for your marketing newsletters, including branding elements like your logo, brand colors, and fonts.
Don’t go for the hard-sell approach! If every email is selling products to your list, people will unsubscribe.
Make it worth their while to click on and open your emails by sharing news, updates, and stories that will enrich your customers’ lives.
3. Hybrid events
Conferences have always been a good place to make potential B2B sales, as they’re shared spaces for people with similar interests. But 2020 changed all that.
Though the COVID-19 vaccine is ready for distribution, it’s going to take a while to return to business as usual. We’ve seen an increase in virtual events in 2020, but the future of networking lies in hybrid events, like Apple’s annual announcements.
Combining physical and virtual elements and attendees, hybrid events allow access to a greater swathe of industry specialists and clients.
There are three ways to get B2B sales leads from hybrid events:
Attend the event: B2B marketers should look at attending more hybrid events in their industry to meet potential clients.
Participating in events: search for speaking engagements at conferences to place your business as a thought leader in the field and generate more organic leads.
Hold events: your business can hold hybrid events to connect with experts in your field and establish partnerships with prospective customers.
Events can be a lot of hard work, but the potential for earning leads, converting customers, and boosting ROI make the process worth it.
4. Personalize B2B sales lead content
Personalization is a huge part of content marketing — and it’s crucial for finding B2B sales leads. In the B2B arena, you need to build personal relationships, not just transactional ones.
Because every relationship isn’t just a customer earned, it’s also a customer retained, with the possibility for future referrals that will bring in more sales.
Here are the three areas you want to focus on for personalization:
Presentations
Social media
Landing pages
Sales presentations
You can start building customer relationships early on in the lead generation process by designing a presentation that includes your branding and your customer’s.
In the pitch meeting, talk about subjects that matter to your customer — don’t focus too much on what your business can do, unless you’re talking about the solutions you can provide.
Don’t be afraid of getting granular in your pitch by mentioning buyer intent keywords related to your customer and their industry.
Do your research so you can show them how knowledgeable you are about their company, but also that you’re planning for a future with them.
Social media
Take it a step further by personalizing your social media outreach. Long believed to be the realm of B2C lead generation, social media has its advantages in the B2B field, too.
I’ve mentioned the importance of finding decision-makers within target companies. Most of these decision-makers will have a presence on social channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter. Choose personnel who can make personal connections with key decision-makers on these channels. But don’t treat every channel the same way.
Work with your team to craft LinkedIn summaries that showcase your brand’s ethos — and not just on your company page but also on staff profiles, where you can exhibit some personality.
Twitter is another place to generate B2B sales leads, and it’s a good one for understanding your customers, because Twitter is where people tend to share personal stories.
There are scheduling and analytics tools that you can use to research decision-makers and find out what their interests are — this will help create more meaningful relationships.
Landing pages
A great landing page grabs a customer’s attention within seconds. The best way to do that is to personalize your landing page to generate B2B sales leads.
What does a landing page need to include? It has to answer a specific question that your customers are asking.
What we’ve learned from making our landing pages is that you do not want to put too much information on there — that can be overwhelming for a visitor.
Keep it short and sweet — focus on one selling point, not all. That’s why we love the Moz landing page — it clearly states what the brand can do for any customer visiting it.
Can’t fit all your selling points onto one page? Create multiple landing pages, each one optimized to specific keywords and buyer intent.
It sounds like more work but designing more landing pages helps you retain B2B sales leads by creating cohesion between your advertising and landing pages.
For B2B brands — where sales can sometimes involve millions of dollars — a referral from a friend, backed up by strong reviews, can lead to a purchase much more quickly than paid incentives and advertising.
Referrals lead to more loyal customers and better retention rates. They also act as a tool for boosting organic reach because established customers become your company’s ambassadors, like this PioneerSystems case study.
How do you get referrals? Here are a few steps:
Offer rewards such as discounts, free training sessions, and event invitations
Survey multiple customers
Keep your surveys short and precise so customers will be more likely to respond
Send surveys regularly and keep the window between surveys short
Include follow-up questions asking customers to explain their scores
Use the net promoter system to calculate how likely customers will be to recommend you
Ask for a written review or testimonial, or to feature in a testimonial video
Suggest creating a case study
Ask for a quote for a press release
Offer content that customers can share with their friends
Referral marketing is a great way to generate leads, but you do need to incentivize the process so customers participate.
6. Repurpose content
At Venngage, we are huge on repurposing content — we even created an infographic explaining how to do it:
We know how overwhelming it is for marketers to create fresh content to bring in more views and leads. This is why we’ve found ways to repurpose existing content.
Using old content in new ways takes a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it, your marketing team can structure your strategy around it.
Here are a few ways we’ve stretched a single piece of content and generated more B2B sales leads:
Take quotes and stats from a blog post and create data visualizations for social media
Turn a blog post into an infographic — look at these infographic examples for inspiration
Share infographics on social channels and as a newsletter
Divide an infographic into multiple smaller graphics to share on social media
Turn listicles into social media carousel posts
Create email headers from social posts
Turn a blog post into a podcast or webisode
Combine multiple blog posts on a similar subject into a white paper or eBook
Use an eBook as the basis for a webinar
Divide a longer e-seminar into short YouTube videos
Create GIFs out of videos to share on social media
These are the content repurposing methods we’ve used but the possibilities with this method are endless.
7. Varied content channels
Conventional wisdom has been to focus on the channels that you know best, instead of being a jack-of-all-trades and dabbling in multiple channels. But you also need to know what channels your potential B2B sales leads are favoring. If you’re not where your customers are, you are losing leads.
The content market is currently oversaturated — diversifying your content channels helps you reach leads who may not see your content on conventional platforms. Consider starting a podcast for your business. They take some time and investment, but podcasts are easier to run and maintain now. Focus your podcast on thought leadership, industry news, or on sharing behind the scenes tidbits about your business.
Creating a YouTube channel for testimonials, business insights, how-to guides, and troubleshooting videos will bring in leads who don’t have the time to read a blog post.
But videos do take time and effort to create — you need equipment and software to shoot and edit videos. Plus, you can’t create a video and leave it at that — a promotion plan will need to be executed.
Forums
Search for B2B leads on channels like Quora and Reddit. Customers use these platforms to ask questions and you can tailor content around these.
But don’t use these channels to pitch your company. Follow the same etiquette as responding to a blog post comment. Share your own experience and use these channels for research.
There are a variety of channels available to get qualified leads. Don’t stretch yourself too thin as that will impact the quality of your content but don’t restrict yourself either.
8. Create gated content
eBooks, white papers, and webinars make for great gated content. But why should customers sign up for them?
We’ve seen success with our gated B2B content by doing the following:
Address your customers’ pain points early on
Solve their problems with your content
Include calls-to-action for gated content in relevant blog posts
Use more visuals than text in gated content — don’t make customers work hard
Repurpose your content whenever you can
Provide a preview of your content to whet their appetite
Be informative, inspire action, educate, be personable, and then promote
Your gated content should add value to anyone who accesses it, so longer-form content is the best for this lead generation strategy.
Key takeaways: Focus on the people behind B2B sales leads, not the business
The process of generating leads and encouraging them through the buyer journey to become a loyal customer who advocates for your business is a challenging one. It’s important to remember that even in the B2B field, you are engaging with people at the end of the day.
To recap, here are eight unconventional ways to get B2B sales leads:
Tailored content
Email marketing
Hybrid events
Personalize
Referral marketing
Repurposed content
New content channels
Gated content
You can adopt all or a few of these lead gen methods, but remember to test target segments, CTAs, landing page designs, and social media captions.
And finally, while it’s great to get as many leads as possible, ensure your automation software and sales team can handle it.
Nadya is the Chief Growth Officer at Venngage and has been featured in Entrepreneur, The Huffington Post, The Next Web, Forbes, Marketing Profs, Social Media Examiner and more. She also has a web-series called Drunk Entrepreneurs where she interviews different entrepreneurs who are finding success.
To find out your company’s Net Promoter Score, all you have to do is ask your customers one simple question. That question can tell you a lot about where you stand in terms of customer loyalty.
Developed by Fred Reichheld at Bain & Company, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty metric that measures customer satisfaction using an index that ranges from -100 to 100. Customers are asked one question – if they’d recommend the company to a friend – and then asked to respond using a scale from zero to 10, with zero being “not likely” and 10 being “extremely likely.” Customers are then organized into three categories as detractors, passives or promoters, based on their responses.
Detractors
Detractors are those who score between zero and six – they’re the most likely to have a negative perception of the brand or company and the least likely to spend money. They’re also more likely customers to clog up customer service lines, lodge complaints and spread negative word-of-mouth.
In its 2013 report, The Economics of Net Promoter, Temkin Group identifies detractors as having a low Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), because their behaviors are seen as “economic penalties.” They’re less likely to spend more with the company and more likely to complain and spread negative reviews. As a result, they take up customer service’s time and are more expensive to serve than happy customers. In addition, winning back detractors from a brand is typically more expensive than maintaining loyalty with happy customers.
Passives
Passives score between seven and eight on the NPS, and exhibit behavior that falls between a detractor and a promoter. Passives count towards the total number of survey respondents, which helps balance the detractors and promotors since these neutral customers move the net score closer to zero. In terms of NPS, these customers are less important than detractors or promoters because they don’t inform the organization about their brand loyalty.
Promoters
Promoters include anyone who responds with a score of nine or 10. Promoters are more likely to buy products, stay loyal to the brand and spread positive brand awareness to others. Temkin Group found that 64 percent of promoters were more likely to forgive a business compared to 11 percent of detractors. They’re also five times more likely to repurchase from the business and twice as likely as detractors to recommend to a friend.
Companies typically engage with promoters after the first survey question, they will often follow up to try and find out why the customer is likely to recommend the business to a friend. These responses are typically communicated back to departments in the organization that can benefit from the information. The information might be used to improve products, services, training or to restructure workflow process to keep customers happy.
Tempkin Group states that promoters have a high CLV, since these customers display behaviors that are considered “economic benefits. They’re more likely to spread positive reviews, spend more money, cost less to serve and won’t cost anything to acquire, since you already have them.
How do you calculate NPS?
Once you gather the survey data, your company’s NPS is determined by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, while passives count towards the total number of respondents. Surveys are typically administered via e-mail and SMS, but it’s becoming increasingly popular for companies to include these surveys within their proprietary mobile apps.
It’s easy enough to calculate your organization’s NPS manually, but if you want to outsource the process, there are third-party services that will help you send out surveys and determine your score. Some popular NPS services include:
Survey Monkey
io
Zendesk
Delighted
Ask Nicely
What is a good NPS?
A good net promoter score is technically anything above zero, which means you have more promoters than detractors. The worst score you can get is a -100, which means you do not have a single promoter and that all your customers are detractors – vice versa for a score of 100. A score of 50 or more is considered excellent.
Looking at B2B NPS benchmarks will give you a general reference point for where you stand against the competition and help you measure your progress. It’s important to remember that average NPS scores can vary significantly by industry, and a good score in one industry might be a poor score in another. For example, the B2B software industry has an average NPS score of 27, while the IT services industry has an average NPS of 17. To put that in context, industries like HR services and architecture have an average NPS of eight and 32, respectively.
Why is the NPS important?
The result of NPS is a straightforward metric that companies can use to gauge customer loyalty and the health of the company’s brand. It’s just one question, but it’s an important metric for helping businesses understand where they stand in the market and determine whether their effort is better spent on maintaining customers’ satisfaction or if it’s time to try winning back unhappy customers.
Closing the loop
The NPS has a process called “closing the loop,” which is when someone can get more information from a detractor or, even better, convert them into a promoter. However, it’s important to note that to “close a loop,” you can’t allow customers to submit feedback anonymously. That’s because you’ll need some way to contact them in order to attempt winning them back as a customer.
To get a detractor back, you’ll need to reach out directly to the customer and interact with them first-hand. The Net Promoter survey will help you identify these customers and give you the opportunity to bring them back, if that’s what you want.
Criticisms and cautions
One thing to consider with the NPS is there’s no way to analyze responses without inherent human bias. Since responses aren’t standardized, organizations need to rely on human interpretation, which means the results might be skewed based on that person’s experiences.
Another criticism is that organizations might find detractors are unhappy but continue to stay with the company. Typically, this is because of “switching barriers,”as Reichheld noted in this HBR article from 2003. which is common in industries, like technology, where customers have to sign contracts and service agreements. A customer might be unhappy with their internet provider, but unable to switch because there aren’t any other options available in the area. In this instance, it might be important to focus on improving the experience for detractors, rather than focusing on the promoters.
