Customer acquisition remains an unsolved conundrum for many marketers in the realm of B2B marketing. The competition is cutthroat, the spectrum of similar products and services is seemingly endless, the channels are limited, and the budget constraints are ever prevalent. All these factors make the B2B lead generation process stressful, irrespective of your field. B2B Lead generation could be classified as the first concrete step towards customer acquisition; however, more often than not, organizations have already exhausted most of their marketing budget when they arrive at this same step. This makes customer acquisition a costly maneuver, hence it remains an “unsolved conundrum.”
Leads are important. There’s no denying that fact. But then, so is the cost attached to each lead you generate. You wouldn’t want to compromise on either of the two fronts. You need leads to grow your business, but you cannot break the bank while acquiring them. This is why it is so important to strike a balance between the cost per lead (CPL) and the leads’ effectiveness. What can be done to boost the effectiveness of the leads generated is a discussion worth having; in this post, however, we will be focusing on bringing down the cost per lead – without compromising the lead quality of the leads. We hope that should do for now.
We have spoken to various marketers to understand their B2B lead generation strategies, what works, what doesn’t, what’s hot, and what’s not. The following is the compilation of some of the most effective and successful B2B lead generation strategies marketers across industries. As a B2B marketeer, you understand there are a number of factors that can affect your B2B lead generation strategy. Because something has worked in one scenario, it might not necessarily work for you in another campaign. So, it is strongly advised to calculate your current cost per acquisition (CPA) before you act upon bringing it further down. With that caveat out of the way, let’s dive straight in.
Table of Contents
Here are the 3 ways to bring down your B2B lead generation cost down
1. Know Your Audience
Most organizations think they know their audience, which broadly translates to “we know whom we market to.” There is not much clarity nay focus when it comes to customer targeting in most B2B marketing campaigns. In most cases, it’s just a blast email, social media, or paid ad campaign without much thought or research gone into understanding the customer base. The bigger the campaign, the higher the price, and dare we say, the fewer chances it has of generating the leads you are looking for.
This is why, it is strongly recommended to do your market research, identify the users, demographics, socio-economic status, geography etc., that will be most benefited from your product/service, and then target them. You can use any data analytics platform of your choice to analyze your customer data to derive insights to learn about your customer base. Once you have those insights, you can narrow your B2B lead generation campaign to target those prospects. This will bring down your campaign budget and allow you to create a message that will resonate the most with your prospects and forge long-term relationships.
2. Organic Search is Your Friend
More often than not, the journey of every single purchase begins with a simple internet search. In fact, over 75% of buyers across the B2B and B2C spectrum perform an online search before making any purchase. This makes the organic search a potent tool in the arsenal of every modern marketer. By simply ranking higher for keywords relevant to your products and services on Google’s search results page (SERPs), you can significantly grow the reach of your products.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a valuable technique to help your business appear higher in search results without investing heavily, as it requires very little expertise and is mostly free. It’s worth mentioning that not many users take their search for the best product beyond the first page. So, having better search rankings can do a world of good to your product or service.
You can do extensive keyword analysis to identify the keywords you have better chances of improving your rankings and consequently gather more eyeballs for your products/services. With organic search fetching more general leads for free, you automatically bring down your CPL further.
3. Analyze Your Traffic & Eliminate Ineffective Inbound Channels
Digital marketing has emerged as the primary source of effective B2B lead generation. However, to make the most of your digital marketing channels, you need to analyze your web traffic using tools like Google Analytics to understand the traffic on your website and the sources. This will give you a great insight into the best performing inbound channels such as email marketing, social media, paid ads, etc., track conversion from each of the channels, and consequently eliminate the low-performing or ineffective inbound channels. It has been seen, far too often, that businesses fail to identify their poor-performance channels, which drives up their cost per lead and, as a result, cost per acquisition. Thus, it is essential to make sure that you identify and eliminate any ineffective inbound channels.
Closing Words
While these methods are just some of the many highly effective B2B lead generation strategies, they can quickly help you reduce your cost per lead (CPL). The effectiveness of each of these strategies will depend upon the nature of the B2B marketing campaigns you are running, the database of prospects you have, and the channels you are targeting. So, before you employ any of these strategies to bring down your cost per lead, please do a thorough introspection, as while it is vital to bring down the cost per lead, you certainly wouldn’t want to break something that has been working well for your business.
If you are still unsure about starting your B2B lead generation journey or refining it to bring down your cost per lead, our lead gen experts are just a note away. You can write to us at: [email protected], and we will connect you to our lead gen expert to understand your business requirement and tailor a solution for you.
