A lead is more than just some random website user. It is someone who has shown at least some interest in the product or service that ‘you offer. Your goal is to pique the interest of the user and get them to take action. However, that is easier said than done for many business owners. Here, we are going to break down the process that goes into acquiring & nurturing B2B leads.
Top of Funnel Marketing
‘Top of funnel marketing refers to the first stage in the buyer’s journey. It is a section of the process where businesses and marketers introduce their products or services to users help generate leads. These top of funnel activities aim to generate marketing leads, generally email collection on the B2B side, but if the price point is low, possibly direct to sale. Some of our favorite methods at this stage for B2B:
- SEO – Search Engine Optimization, without a doubt, is an important component for top of funnel marketing success. A well-researched content strategy is required to attract users to the website with content that people are looking for in search engines.Make sure that all pages have some email collection, with SEO its generally a content upgrade that provides a companion piece of content that is unlocked if you provide your email address. These are generally guides, whitepapers, or checklists that are related to the original piece of content that brought the user into the site.
- LinkedIn w There are a few ways to work with LinkedIn. The first is to leverage LinkedIn Insights to retarget website users. The other is to advertise on LinkedIn and drive traffic to your website. Generally, you want to have this landing page be some email acquisition campaign. Again, collecting emails at this stage.
- Paid Search / Paid Social –”Top of funnel activities here is very similar to LinkedIn, acquisition, acquisition, acquisition. Collect those emails for future nurturing.
Content Consumption Metrics
The success of a content marketing campaign is going to depend on multiple factors. But, you need to know exactly which metrics you can’t afford to lose track of to ensure content marketing success. The following are some of those key content consumption metrics.
- Bounce Rate – The bounce rate is one of the retention metrics that you need to track. It tracks “”how many users come to your site and leave after visiting 1 and only one page. To reduce your website’s bounce rate, it is crucial to provide value, whether that’s in the form of relevant and helpful information or an easy buying process.
- Time on Page / Time on Site – As the name implies, the time on page is the amount of time that visitors spend on a website. Creating quality content will ensure more time is spent by those who visit your website, which is great for ranking on Google and positioning your brand as an authority in a particular niche.
- Pages / Session – Page sessions is another key metric This tells us how many pages on average a user will view during their session. Engaging content with clear and enticing CTAs is the best way to increase Pages / Session and conversion.
- Email Collection Rates for Nurture Emails –If you are collecting email addresses through acquisition landing pages or content upgrades, you want to take a look at your email collection rates. A quick formula is emails collected/ visitors. So if you have 100 people come into a page and collect ten email addresses, that would be 10/100 or 10%. Usability of this page is key, and if you need to improve performance, you look to usability (including the CTA)
CTA Analysis: Lead Generation (Marketing Qualified Leads)
A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is considered to be a qualified lead that can be nurtured or straight up solicited to become a customer. There are two key core methods to engaging these leads so that they take the desired action, whether that action is to buy a product or reachout to someone within the sales team.
- Email Nurture Engagement – Nurture emails are all about building relationships and offering value to the recipient of every email that is sent out, regardless of where they are in the purchase lifecycle. Email open rates are certainly a crucial metric to track to ensure a higher level of engagement. Segmenting recipients and sending targeted emails is crucial to creating email engagement.
- Talk to a Specialist Requests – It’s not unheard of for interested or inquisitive recipients asking to talk to a specialist once they’ve received your email. Many businesses get caught by not offering clear contact information for those interested to get in touch and ask questions.
Summary
In 2020, we see a growing number of B2B marketers focusing on repurposing while keeping a close watch on the key metrics that will help drive their B2B lead generation strategies to success. Generating more leads from multiple different platforms along with tracking key lead generation metrics is the only way forward because it gets you the most bang for your buck.