Any business owner will likely tell you what they need the most is more customers. This is because businesses cannot rely on their existing customer base to fuel growth. As a result, there is a constant need for more leads who will become future clients.
Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can help you increase your leads and grow your business. Today, we’ll show you how to use PPC to get the desired results.
Businesses That Use PPC Lead Generation
Many people mistakenly believe that PPC is exclusively for e-commerce websites, but this is not true. In fact, it is an excellent lead generation channel for all types of businesses that have online marketing strategies.
Businesses that cannot or will not work with just anyone, or those that need a specific audience, must use lead generation tactics to acquire new customers. Before making a decision, these businesses and consumers typically undergo a prequalification and data-exchange process.
A lead-gen business might have the following characteristics:
Trial periods.
Denial and approval processes.
A sales cycle takes quite a long time due to the complex nature of the service or product.
Price quotes.
At one time, we’ve all been a lead for a company. You were classified as a lead and then pitched to on a regular basis until an event occurred: you may have signed up, been denied, decided not to act, or been pitched to later at the bottom of their lead pile.
The purpose of lead generation is to get potential customers into the conversion funnel (commonly known as the sales funnel). During the contact phase, the company gathers information about their products and services, while you learn more about them.
The reason behind this is for a salesperson to close the deal and gain a new customer, so the company can benefit. The process begins with simple information like a name and email address, then moves on to gathering more detailed information about the prospect.
Why PPC Is Great for Lead Generation
PPC is simple to set up and maintain, and it is cost-efficient. When you look at your typical lead funnel, you will quickly realize that you must keep filling it with leads. It’s difficult to get the initial leads to fill the funnel. In order for the funnel to work, leads must feed into the top of the funnel.
Here are several techniques for achieving this and why PPC is such a good source of leads:
Blogging: A very good source for generating leads, but you’ve got to be consistent in publishing new posts and cross your fingers that your posts are loved and shared massively.
Email: You’ll have to consistently email your list or buy a list of emails and hope the people you’re targeting are the right audience that will turn into clients one day.
Social media: Social will expose your brand to new fans, followers, and even prospective clients. But it doesn’t always guarantee that the new followers you gain need your service or they’re the right audience for your business.
Organic search: This should be at the top of your lead generation tactics. Websites on page one of search engine results pages (SERPs) get about 85% of search clicks for free. The only catch is that there are thousands of other websites to compete with and you’ll have to wait for months and at times years to get to page one. And this only happens if you put in a lot of on-page and off-page SEO work.
In walks PPC to save the day. You’ll instantly jump to the first page of Google if anyone searches for a solution to a specific problem that you can solve. And bingo! More people who are in need of your solution are more aware of your product.
Sure, PPC is a paid advertising channel. However, it should be noted that no marketing channel is free. Someone must manage social media, write blog posts, work with an SEO firm, and publish emails, and those people aren’t volunteers.
Benefits of Using PPC for Lead Generation
Get visitors who are actually looking for your solution.
Get keyword ranking and traffic immediately.
Bid on different stages of the sales funnel.
Get to see users’ needs and craft your message to fit their needs.
Control the message at every stage of the funnel.
Learn more about your target audience and their specific needs.
Track the return on investment down to every penny.
Grow your leads database and use other marketing techniques to reach them.
E-Commerce vs Lead Generation
The most obvious distinction between e-commerce and lead generation using PPC marketing is the qualification procedure: there is none in e-commerce. You’re eligible as long as you have a credit card.
E-Commerce vs. Lead Gen Ad Copy
E-Commerce CTAs
Lead Gen CTAs
Order now!
Sign up!
Buy now!
Subscribe to our email list now!
Free shipping for orders over $50
Download our e-book
Save big today!
Schedule a free consult now!
30% off on our Valentine’s collection!
Register for our free webinar
Notice how the message and call-to-action vary between e-commerce and lead-generation companies based on ad copy. E-commerce is more about immediate gratification (and sales) while lead gen is about creating value and getting to know your customer. It is seldom the case that you become an immediate customer in lead gen, because you first have to go through a process.
E-Commerce vs. Lead Gen PPC Landing Pages
With lead generation, there are few landing pages and they have few distractions. The heading contains a clear message: “Get an online quote,” “Book a free consult,” “Attend our webinar,” etc.
They give you limited choices, either this or that, not multiple options. With the information provided, businesses qualify customers and lead them down the sales funnel.
On the other hand, e-commerce allows individuals to shop around and make various purchases from the store. E-commerce landing pages are relevant to the search query and provide additional content to look at. Visitors are motivated to make a purchase soon, due to the limited-time offers of free ground shipping. The theme of most landing pages is “Now is the time to shop.”
How to Optimize PPC Campaigns to Get More Leads
Both e-commerce and lead gen are optimized with the same principles. You’ll use closely-themed ad groups, ad copy and offer testing, and a variety of keywords. The only differences between the two are different types of call-to-actions and landing pages discussed above.
It is critical to keep the funnel topped off with qualified leads, which means collecting information from your visitors. Since not every click you get will convert, you should cast a wide net and employ PPC to increase your chances of acquiring qualified leads.
Tips to Improve Your Lead Generation
Give Offers to Your Visitors
Use offers to draw visitors in. Give away a free white paper or guide in exchange for the visitor’s email address, name, and other information. At minimum, provide a link to your blog or ask for a follow on social media. You have squandered your click by getting nothing for it.
Create Focused Landing Pages
Focus on creating clear and concise landing pages. Make sure you reiterate the advantages your product or service offers, and why the visitor should hand over his or her information. Ask for the right amount of relevant information, rather than bothering the customer with too many requests. Use primary and secondary calls-to-action. Test the length and structure of your landing page. Keep it simple, in other words.
Somethings to note:
Include testimonials and a short client list
Have clear benefits in bullet points
Have a free valuable offer in exchange for information
Create a form with very few fields to fill
Prove your credibility and trustworthiness
Use Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI)
You can dynamically alter the phone number on your ads and landing pages. This ensures that call representatives are aware of the keyword that triggered the call. This allows you to route calls efficiently to the appropriate personnel in your company. Call Rail and ifbyphone are two of the most well-known providers.
Get a CRM System
Tracking leads on your own can be overwhelming. A great CRM (customer relationship management) program can inform you who contacted you, what they were looking for, and what happened. You may categorize your leads and keep in touch with them via email or phone call using a CRM. There are many CRMs in the market today, including Infusionsoft, Zoho, HubSpot, and Salesforce, among others.
Keep Your Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) In Check
Rather than focusing on the usual PPC metrics such as cost-per-click and conversion rate, pay attention to a “new” KPI in lead generation—cost-per-lead. The cost-per-lead (CPL) is one of the most important key performance indicators. It can be calculated using the following formula: [Total cost of PPC campaign/number of leads = CPL]. This will tell you how much you pay for your leads, which will help you make decisions.
We hope this post will help you get the most out of your PPC ads.
Predictability is key to achieving real SaaS business growth. Predicting your revenue accurately allows you to make better decisions regarding expenditures, new hires, and product development. It’s critical to know whether you’re on track to hit your revenue goals and whether you’ll have enough cash on-hand to pay your bills at the end of the month.
You can forecast your revenue if you know how many new leads your business receives each month and how many of those leads convert into paying customers. You’ll inevitably grow your revenue if you can improve and increase your lead generation.
Unfortunately, generating leads for SaaS can be one of the biggest challenges a business can face. In this post, I’ll share 11 ways to improve your SaaS lead generation and generate real results.
Have a Defined Goal
How do you define a ‘lead’?
Is the lead someone who might purchase? Is it someone who signed up for your email list or liked or shared one of your LinkedIn posts? You must define what makes a lead and what does not, since SaaS marketers work with a variety of leads. You may even be targeting a variety of leads in different campaigns, so you will require a system that can automate lead qualification. It can be extremely powerful and simple to automate.
It’s especially crucial in SaaS marketing for startups to get this right, or else you risk causing a lot of confusion and making inaccurate growth projections. There are three types of SaaS leads:
Information Qualified Leads (IQL)
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
These three categories represent three different levels of customer intent. Let’s have a look at each of them.
Information Qualified Leads (IQL)
Cold leads, also known as IQLs, are prospect leads at the beginning of the buyer journey, aka the awareness stage. They are typically people who have encountered your top-of-funnel content (blogs, e-books) and have given up an email address in exchange for more valuable information (such as signing up for your blog or reading an e-book).
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
MQLs are in the consideration phase of the customer journey, and are referred to as “warm leads.” They are closer to purchasing than IQLs, but not as hot as SQLs. Prospects have continued to express interest in your product, have probably watched a few webinars, downloaded some whitepapers, and view your company as an option for solving the problems they are facing.
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
Most of us want the SQL kind of leads but, unfortunately, we have to start with IQLs and nurture the leads until they become SQLs or “hot leads.” A SQL is in the decision phase of the buying cycle and is ready to make a decision. Salespeople typically get involved here, offering a bottom-of-the-funnel type offer (such as a free demo or trial) and striving to close the deal.
Content Creation for Lead Generation
Creating content is a great way to generate leads. Today, content marketing is the future of marketing. With a plethora of content tactics at their disposal, SaaS marketers are well on their way to victory if they start with just these three: blogging, gated content, and webinars.
SaaS Blogging
In the 90s, blogs were all the rage, and soon after they became “uncool” very quickly. They have now come full circle. There are over 70 million blog posts published every month on WordPress websites alone.
Creating mediocre SaaS blog posts and publishing them on a semi-regular basis isn’t enough to achieve real success. You must ensure that your blog aligns with your SaaS marketing objectives. If your objective is to generate leads, you must be dedicated to doing so. Remember, consistency is critical. You will not turn a reader into an opportunity unless you provide such remarkable value that they are desperate for more.
Keep these questions in mind when creating blog content:
Is my post directed to my specific target audience? Does it provide a solution to them?
Is the search volume of my keywords good enough to justify why I’m writing this topic?
Are there clear and actionable insights in my post?
Is the post impressive enough for me to give my email address after reading it?
No matter how great your post idea is, if it doesn’t answer at least one of the above questions, your blog isn’t ready to publish (or your topic idea doesn’t need to be written). Always include a clear customer persona and give the reader real, actionable value.
Gated Content
It’s all about give and take. You’re doing trade with your audience. A good example is giving away a valuable e-book in exchange for a prospect’s information (typically an email address).
How can you expect prospective customers to give up their email address when there are so many valuable in-depth blog posts and videos available for free online? The key is providing value that no other company can offer. You will have a better chance of winning if you have already shown your exceptional proficiency, which is why you will often find this approach employed on SaaS blog pages.
Here is an example of how it can be done from Shopify:
Shopify places gated content above the fold on their blog page, as shown here. They offer you content that you’d normally pay to get. It’s impossible to turn down an offer like that. Free business lessons?
You can very easily build a large email list of leads by offering exceptional value in exchange for just an email address.
Webinars
Hosting a webinar is the best way to show your expertise and authority on a subject.
Choose a subject you or your company is an expert in, then decide on the format. Here are a few choices to consider:
One speaker—pre-prepped content that can be presented with or without a live speaker.
Two speakers—an interview scenario that can be live or pre-recorded.Get industry experts and authority figures for these interviews.
Multi-speaker—this involves one main host and guests in a panel. This format is quite popular in the SaaS niche as it helps drive conversations around specific topics.
Once you’ve decided what the webinar is going to cover and how it will run, it’s time to get some sign-ups! Targeted social media ads are one of the best ways to accomplish this. You should create a dedicated landing page and add CTAs to relevant pages on your website.
Recorded webinars can be a tremendous asset for content marketing after the event is over. You can utilize old live webinars as on-demand webinars, video guides, or even have them transcribed into e-books or blog posts.
The Best Lead Generator Is Your Website
Whether you’re focusing on organic traffic through content marketing, paid social media campaigns, or extensive email marketing programs, you’re probably directing prospective clients to your website. As a result, you must ensure that your website is optimized to increase your conversion rates if that is the case.
There is an entire field dedicated to conversion optimization, but here are some pointers from experts that will get you started.
Have an Exit Intent Popup
Have you ever been browsing a website and noticed that as you moved your cursor towards the top of the screen a little popup box appeared? The box is referred to as an exit intent popup.
When a prospect clicks on the exit button, the popup is activated. It’s the holy grail of website lead gen as it acts like a last ditch effort to get your audience to give you what you’re asking. The contents of the box are entirely up to you, but it’s usually a good idea to give away something of incredible value for free (such as a free email course).
You should consider establishing different exit intent popup windows for different web pages. The customer may be interested in a different offer if they are exiting a blog page (e.g. subscribe to our blog) than if they are exiting a product page (e.g. how about a free trial?).
Get a ChatBot
Your chatbot should function as your store’s virtual assistant to get your customers talking. A chatbot can play the same role as a physical store employee, by helping customers find their way around or offering service. Even if they are just looking, an employee is always present to help them.
You can set up a chatbot to answer a number of common questions, or to direct the prospect to their area of need. If the chatbot is unable to answer a particular question, don’t shy away from saying “give us your email, we’ll get back to you.” Cha-ching!
RingCentral’s chatbot eliminates barriers and makes it simple and instant to start a conversation with a salesperson.
Offer a Free Trial
A free trial is the best way to snag hot leads at the bottom of the funnel. Having a prospect go deep into your product during a trial is not only a great way to capture some prospect information, but it also gives them an opportunity to determine if it works for them. If the trial lasts long enough, they will begin integrating it into their company processes, which ensures a yes every time.
In addition, it provides your salespeople with a good reason to connect with customers. Would you like a free demo, Mr. Customer? Here’s what we have to offer…
Rather than having prospective customers only clicking “free trial” buttons, helping them use and understand your software will increase the conversion rates. It’s one thing to click a “try it free” button, but it’s another to actually spend some time diving deep.
One way to accomplish this is by pairing up a sales representative with a free demo. This will also open an avenue for you to know how serious they are about using your solution. You can also assist prospects by creating quality content to guide them through using your product.
Videos are excellent content for this, as they help show your prospects the features of your software. Prospects can follow along and experiment with your video in real time, and that’s what makes it so effective here.
Social Media as a B2B SaaS Lead Generation Solution
Choosing your SaaS marketing channels wisely is critical to success. Recall that you are marketing to business decision-makers, so you will likely not reach your target audience on platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok.
Despite that, you shouldn’t write off social media entirely. Far from it.
Many social media platforms still function well for SaaS lead generation, particularly LinkedIn, which is fairly business-oriented. You should also consider using Twitter and, especially if your customer personas are the right demographic, Facebook.
Run Targeted Ads (In-Stream Ads)
When users are scrolling through Facebook or LinkedIn, they’ll most likely see a display ad. SaaS businesses typically use them as a type of native advertising based on their customer personas. This strategy pushes ads to users that match the criteria you’ve set such as interests, occupation, and location.
Have you ever wondered why sometimes after you’ve searched for something online, you start getting ads on that particular thing on your social media pages? Well, LinkedIn and Facebook have pixels that help businesses track the traffic that comes to their website. These pixels are also used to remarket content to those prospective customers on social media.
Pixels allow you to construct what is known as a lookalike audience. In other words, you can request Facebook to locate similar individuals (in terms of demographics and interests, for example) to those who have been to your website and show them an ad. An ad being shown to highly relevant people is more likely if they share several aspects with prospects who have already shown an interest in your company.
Your ad must direct viewers to take a specific action when using social media for lead generation. The best approach to accomplish this is to encourage viewers to click through to a particular landing page in an effort to convert prospective customers into leads on your website.
LinkedIn InMail
InMail on LinkedIn operates a bit differently than in-stream advertisements. It’s similar to sending an advertisement directly to someone’s inbox, rather than displaying it in their social feed. Yes, it is a more assertive approach, but it gets stuff done. InMail on LinkedIn has a 300% higher reply rate than emails using identical content.
Email Marketing
Everyone is attempting to improve email at the moment. Slack is calling themselves the “alternative to email.” Some businesses are returning to physical mailings in response to InMail killing email. But to be fair, these guys drinking craft beer and listening to their favorite indie bands on vinyl are probably still twirling their mustaches, you get the point.
Despite this, the fact remains that email marketing is still a very lucrative field with an insane return on investment. You can get some pretty sweet open rates if your headlines are strong.
Here is how to achieve this:
Include a CTA button in your email signature.
Companies send hundreds, if not thousands of emails on a daily basis. If you send tens of emails daily, imagine the number of emails sent by different businesses in a day. Unless you have a strong call to action in your email signatures, you are missing out on a chance. Yes, it is important not to overstuff your signature. You have undoubtedly already included your social media links as well as your contact information. The trick is to keep it simple but also include a link to sign up for a free trial or subscribe to your blog.
Request for email sign-ups EVERYWHERE.
Avoiding going overboard as no one wishes to wade through endless popups to reach a website. You can, however, include several CTAs in your marketing content without being excessively pushy. You can have about four CTAs on a page, with all of them requiring an email address. Be subtle and smart about it and you’ll accomplish this without intrusive popup ads.
Create an email series campaign.
At some point or another, some of your prospects will fall out of the pipeline. Whether they decided against making a purchase or preferred a competitor, you will inevitably have a percentage of leads that do not convert into a “yes,” and others may never give you a sound “no.”
All is not lost. Even if a competitor wins the account, there’s still a chance that those prospects will become paying customers in the future, so don’t write them off just yet. Instead of hoping for luck, establish an email drip campaign in which you slowly and steadily demonstrate that you are the solution they require. At some point, their existing solution will not be adequate, and you’ll be there waiting for the jackpot.
Rather than creating lots of conversion-focused campaigns, these drip campaigns should be less frequent and less intense. A single email every month should suffice, and it should focus on providing as much value as possible rather than simply sending emails for the sake of it. For instance, you can invite them to your future webinar, offer them an e-book, etc.
Wrapping Up!
It is crucial to employ a multi-channel approach when generating leads for SaaS. Putting all your eggs in one basket and expecting them all to hatch is improbable. You must experiment, find out what works best for your business, test, fine-tune, and try again.
Here is a list of the significant SaaS business growth lead generation techniques:
Content Marketing
Website
Social Media
Email Marketing
Blog
Exit Intent Popups
In-Stream Ads
Add CTAs to email signatures
Gated Content
Chatbot
LinkedIn InMail
Maximize email signups
Webinars
Free Trials
Boosted Posts
Drip Campaigns
Sure, there are many other tactics you can employ, but these have been tried and tested to result in SaaS triumphs.
Do you want to learn more on SaaS lead generation?
Every marketer I have ever spoken to has always strived to generate more leads, and there are very few situations where they would get a lead and say “no, thanks.” Lead generation is a critical factor in the development of small B2B companies. It is frequently the most difficult aspect of the job, but once you are able to generate sufficient leads for your enterprise, your work will become much easier.
At some point, you get to know the number of leads you’ll generate per week, month, and even annually. This is referred to as predictable B2B SaaS lead generation. When you have a predictable lead generation pipeline and consistent conversion rates, you can start to accurately predict business growth and the investment needed to achieve it.
How to Create a Predictable Lead Generation Pipeline
To have a successful B2B SaaS lead generation pipeline, you’ve got to use a mix of marketing channels. Feel free to combine SEM (Search Engine Marketing) with SMM (Social Media Marketing), word-of-mouth marketing, and PPC (pay-per-click), among others. You should think of it as hedging your bets to ensure that if one channel falls short, others will compensate for the loss. The most common error marketers make in this area is to excessively rely on one specific tactic they’ve used in the past.
To begin developing a predictable lead generation strategy, you must consider these critical things.
Which channels work well with your brand.
The cost per lead on each channel.
Short-term and long-term investments in your lead generation campaigns.
Discovering Channels that Work for Your Brand
The first step here is to create buyer personas. A buyer persona is an imaginary character that reflects your business’s typical customer. Typically, a B2B firm begins with three buyer personas.
A buyer persona helps you identify the best channels for reaching your target audience. You get to find out the channels they prefer and their specific demographic groups.
Using this data, you can begin to target your desired audience. By combining your buyer persona with your ideal customer profile, you can construct your targeting.
A persona can give you clues about the platforms and publications they consume. For example, if you are developing an ad campaign for a 25-year-old London fashion buyer, you may discover they use Snapchat, Instagram, read certain blogs, or follow certain YouTube channels. You can then build an idea of how to reach them.
There are so many types of marketing channels that it would be impossible to compile a complete list. You can discover the ones that suit you best by working out your buyer persona.
Importance of Measuring Cost per Lead
You can calculate the cost per lead by dividing the amount spent on acquiring leads by the number of leads acquired. For instance, if you ran an ad campaign for $1,000 and got 10 leads, your cost per lead would be $100.
You must determine cost per lead to gauge how effectively each channel is performing for you in terms of pure B2B SaaS lead generation and marketing ROI.
It’s also valuable to track cost per lead because you can tell when you’ve saturated a channel or audience. If the cost per lead on a channel that was $50 crept up to $100, you’ve over-saturated the audience and should make some adjustments.
Making Long-term and Short-term Investments
Don’t leave out the most effective lead generation techniques for your brand for short-term benefits that are more expensive. For instance, content marketing and SEO are effective lead-generation tactics, but they don’t generate results in a few days. In these cases, marketing ROI is calculated over months rather than days or weeks.
You might want to use Google Ads, Facebook, or some other paid advertising channel for quick results, as they generate leads on a daily basis. You should balance this with SEO and content marketing, from which you will see rewards further down the line.
By investing in long-term lead generation tactics, you can reduce your cost per lead in six months by reducing spend on paid campaigns.
How to Increase High-Quality Leads for B2B SaaS Businesses
1. Referral Programs
Your current customers are your best advertisement. Case studies on your website are one of the most popular pages because they prove that your product works. A prospective customer sees them as proof that they, too, had the same problems and that your product solved them.
The closer the case study subject’s profile is to your ideal client profile, the better.
According to HubSpot, salespeople say that the top source of most of their leads is referrals. Referrals are an important source of B2B SaaS lead generation. Referring someone to a hairdresser or to a product you like works the same way as referring a friend to a piece of software.
2. Define Your Product’s Users and Buyers
It is crucial to know who your buyers are and who your users are. In big businesses, the purchaser of a piece of CRM software may be the CTO or Head of Marketing, but the users may be sales reps or secretaries.
While most users currently have little buyer power, engaging them is still important because people frequently switch jobs, and usually move to a higher position. If someone has used one piece of software in one company and found it successful, they are very likely to recommend it to a new employer looking for the same solution.
3. Content Marketing
Creating and distributing quality content is key to successful marketing. It may be too simple, but one of the common issues B2B technology businesses face is not having enough relevant content on their website to rank in Google.
There are two primary methods that B2B companies can use to generate leads through organic search traffic and SEO. The most effective ones rely on Inbound Marketing. People seldom create content because there is little short-term reward for doing so. Those who do not produce enough content will not generate enough low-cost leads for B2B companies.
4. Blogging
You can outsource content if you don’t have the time or resources to produce it in-house. There are plenty of content writers out there who can write relevant content for you.
When someone is trying to hire a content writer or pay someone to write content for a software business, the most common problem is that they don’t understand the sector or technology.
Spending a bit more money can really help here. A content writer will spend time researching your industry and your product before writing. There are also writers who specialize in certain fields.
5. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
This is a strategy that focuses on targeted accounts rather than a broad audience. Due to the fact that there are so many marketing messages in the world, it is difficult to stand out in any profession. Having a more personal approach has become increasingly difficult, and it is often difficult to obtain the same email address or contact information from numerous companies.
A personalized marketing campaign that targets a specific group of companies or accounts is known as Account-Based Marketing. This strategy is utilized by B2B businesses when the value to the enterprise is significant. ABM does not function as well in the B2C sector because the worth of one client is not very significant.
An example of ABM in a B2C firm would be a luxury brand like Christian Dior tailoring the purchasing experience for its wealthy clients. It would cost them more money to employ someone to perform this task, but the value the consumer receives would be worth it, the same principle applies to B2B organizations.
Accounts-based marketing is defined as marketing through personal accounts as opposed to targeting specific products or services (Hess & Banerjee, 2013).
6. Partnership Marketing
This is a form of marketing in which two or more organizations collaborate to market a product or service. It is possible that you already have some partnerships with firms that sell to the same firms as you do. These usually take the form of referral agreements.
There is often a missed connection between marketing and partnering. It is usually a time-consuming occupation to manage a partner marketing program, and frequently a bigger B2B technology company will have someone specifically employed to be a partnership marketing manager.
However, there are some marketing activities that can be done in collaboration that require very little time. For example, you may send a joint email to each other’s database or produce a piece of content that includes input from both sides and share it with each other’s audience.
Having a good relationship with a B2B tech company can be a great way to build high-quality backlinks from websites with relevant and trusted content. As a company grows, these types of programs develop, resulting in a directory listing and event marketing as part of the paid-for program.
Because you are helping the prospect solve more than one problem with one solution, partnership marketing can be particularly effective for lead generation. This can be a very attractive proposition.
7. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
This is an online advertising technique where businesses pay for each click on their ads.
There has been a bad reputation associated with PPC advertising for B2B SaaS lead generation due to the fact that once you begin generating leads with SEO and organic traffic, PPC seems like a waste of money.
It’s also incorrect to assume that paid advertising will never suddenly provide you with an influx of leads. So, in addition to SEO and Content Marketing, B2B SaaS lead generation should incorporate B2B PPC and focus it tightly.
Many PPC campaigns do not work as well as people wish because they either have not done enough research into the keywords they are bidding on or because they have not optimized their websites and click-through links for conversion.
8. B2B SEO
Everyone agrees that SEO is critical. Everyone wants to be at the top of the search results for their product or service, thinking that they are the most relevant to potential consumers.
With SEO services, you increase traffic to your website in order to generate sales leads. Content marketing is a common approach for generating B2B sales leads because B2B buyers usually do a lot of research before deciding to purchase.
9. SEO Link Building
If you get directions from a policeman and a tourist, you are more likely to take the policeman’s directions rather than those of a tourist. Building links from high-authority websites to your website is called link-building. The more difficult it is to build a link, the higher the authority. For example, the BBC, a well-respected website with 320 million links, has links from many other websites.
Having a link from the BBC to your site would be of great advantage, but extremely difficult to get—in fact, websites like this rarely link to external sites.
10. Using Content Marketing to Boost SEO
Creating content is the easiest part of SEO. With this post, I’ve tailored it to the keyword “b2b SaaS lead generation.” Google will then consider the content piece alone as well as many other factors to rank the piece. It’s hard to rank for competitive keywords with content unless you have a very authoritative website with a lot of backlinks. Ranking for high-volume, competitive terms is difficult without one.
Tips to Build a Lead Generation Website
The websites that generate the most leads are the ones that are easiest to use. They have the least amount of friction when customers make a purchase.
There is always a desire for the path of least resistance when it comes to achieving anything. You must make it easy for people to purchase from you, or submit their information. This is not simply about function; it’s also about information.
Do your customers have all the information they need?
Can your web visitors access all the information they need from you? Companies often answer “Yes, but they need to contact us if they want a demo so we can customize it to their needs.” Look for ways to get that kind of information off the phone and onto your website.
Questions to Answer on Your Website
The services/product you are selling.
The problem you’re helping your customer solve.
The solution you provide to your customer.
The price customers have to pay.
How customers can access your product.
Not all B2B websites address these issues, and depending on what you provide, you may not want to address all of them because they aren’t a part of your positioning or value proposition. Here is an example:
Company Y is selling Enterprise Marketing System
The services/product they are selling: Enterprise Marketing System
The problem they’re helping customers solve: Companies want easy-to-use marketing tools all in one place and accessible to multiple people in their enterprise.
The solution you provide to your customer: An easy-to-use SaaS product that combines various marketing tools into one platform.
The price customers have to pay: The size of their company will determine the price.
How customers can access your product: Getting in touch with a salesperson.
There are two points of friction. I can’t get a price unless I get in touch, and I must talk to someone to find out how I can obtain the application.
In regards to whether or not this is an issue, your competitors’ products’ ease of use determines whether or not this is an issue for you. If you’re selling a similar product and someone offers an online trial where you can sign up for free, you’re probably in trouble. But if your competitors are doing the same thing, it may not be a big problem.
The Best Lead-Generating Websites
It’s hard to gauge how effective a website is at generating leads unless you are intimately familiar with the firm.
There is no guarantee that a website’s design and appearance will result in a lot of leads. In some cases, a website that looks terrible might still generate a significant amount of business. While the quantity of leads generated by a website is unknown, we can estimate the amount of traffic it receives by investigating SEO.
An established website with quality, SEO-optimized content may generate more leads in the long run even if it looks a bit outdated than a new website with hardly any content.
Digital Marketing for B2B Firms
In a B2B firm, a digital marketing or growth marketing manager is responsible for generating leads. You may not have time to perform everything or know everything you need to, and that is where a B2B Digital Marketing Agency can be valuable.
As a Lead Generation Marketing Agency, we come across a lot of B2B tech businesses that are all facing the same problems. At Get Going in Business, we help marketers who don’t have the time or expertise generate more marketing-qualified leads.
Lead Generation Reports
After generating all those great leads, you must provide proof of return on investment to the rest of the company.
Your CRM system and marketing software should be properly set up to track if you want reporting to be simple. Reporting becomes difficult when set-up work has not been adequately completed beforehand.
What you should be monitoring:
The total lead generation expenditure.
The amount spent on each marketing channel.
The overall cost per lead.
The cost per lead on each channel.
Total leads acquired.
Total leads per channel.
The number of MQLs.
The number of SQLs.
The number of Opportunities.
What percentage of leads are MQLs?
What percentage of SQLs convert to Opportunities?
Wrapping Up
Whether you work in a SaaS company or not, leads are leads. You will never get anywhere without them. The best method for generating leads for your business is knowing your customers, targeting them, making it easy for them to purchase and empowering your customers to be your brand ambassadors.
Get Going In Business has been helping SaaS B2B companies turbocharge their lead generation for the last decade.
Businesses of all kinds always need more customers to fuel their growth. That is why ppc lead generation is crucial, no matter what industry you’re in.
PPC (Pay Per Click) has become more popular recently and is as important as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in marketing. It’s a goldmine for new business owners or those new to marketing. However, with PPC, all the time, effort, and money you invest can result in nothing if you make even the smallest mistake.
This PPC lead generation guide will give both beginners and pros the ins and outs of PPC marketing.
What Is PPC Lead Generation?
PPC refers to paying for website traffic rather than receiving it through organic methods. PPC advertisements pay out every time a user clicks on an ad.
Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC marketing. Brands bid for ad placement on specific search engine-sponsored links through PPC. They use pay-per-click keywords to bid for these placements. As a result, when a user enters keywords related to what their business has to offer, PPC ads will appear at the top of the page. Every time the ad is clicked, the brand pays a certain fee to the search engine.
When PPC lead generation is working properly, the cost you pay becomes trivial. That is because the visit is worth so much more than what you are paying for. For instance, you may have paid $3 per click and it resulted in a sale worth $300, making a hefty profit.
Keep in mind, though, that building a pay-per-click lead generation campaign will require a lot more work. To properly optimize PPC landing pages, you must research and choose keywords, organize well-worded ad groups and campaigns, and put keywords into them.
As search engines charge businesses less for each ad click, brands are even more motivated to create relevant and intelligently targeted PPC campaigns. With lower click costs and higher profits, your business may end up operating more profitably than usual.
Types of PPC
Social PPC
These PPCs are specifically placed on social media platforms. They are targeted at groups of users based on their demographics, interests, or data. In most cases, your ads will appear on a user’s feed or timeline. The advertisers decide when and who will see the ads as it’s targeted to a very specific audience.
Search PPC
These advertisements are shown to whoever is looking for the same items the advertisers are offering. In contrast, social PPC ads are controlled by advertisers and are shown only when and to whom they choose. Search PPC ads are shown to all users who actively seek out content or services similar to what you offer.
Why Use PPC for B2B Lead Generation
Here are some advantages of using PPC for lead generation for your brand and marketing.
Get To Know Your Customers Better.
With PPC, you will get an extensive breakdown of data on how your campaigns perform. The data provided will help you understand who your audiences are and what they respond to. You’ll learn the demographics, location, and even the behavior of the people who click on your ads.
Your PPC lead generation results can be improved by using that information to finetune your entire online marketing efforts. Since you have data, you will be able to demonstrate the marketing value PPC provides directly, and convince the C-suite that it is a worthwhile investment.
Ppc Allows You To Create Targeted Ads.
PPC lead generation is one of the most direct marketing channels and it prioritizes both quantity and quality of leads. PPC ads are more controllable than other online marketing channels as they give you the power to dictate who sees your campaign.
Social media PPC goes even further and allows you to choose which audiences to target. You can use behavioral data, location, and demographics to reach more people and ensure you are reaching the right people.
Meet Your Audience Where They Are
Every day, 3.5 billion searches are performed on Google. As a result, it’s considered the go-to search engine for every query or need people have. In addition, most Americans (regardless of age) are on a social media platform. They visit at least one social media platform daily.
Using PPC lead generation, you can reach out to anyone with internet access using search engines, social media websites, and even the Google Display Network. The world is your oyster.
Ppc Offers a Solid Return on Investment
Businesses sometimes resist investing in paid ads for lead generation because they have other alternatives, such as social media marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). PPC lead generation costs money, but it is a worthwhile investment that produces an impressive return on investment (ROI). Studies have shown that for every $1 advertisers spend, they get a return of $8 with PPC.
Ppc Generates Results Faster Compared to SEO
SEO can certainly deliver outstanding results over time, but PPC can provide you with relevant traffic right away. This means you don’t have to wait long for your campaigns to generate leads—leads are going to arrive to you in one way or another based on Social PPC and Search PPC.
Once you have established a strong landing page and ad setup for your PPC lead generation campaign, you’ll start seeing results on the same day.
9 Smart Tips for PPC Lead Generation
You should use the following best practices to get qualified B2B PPC leads.
1. Be Where Your Target Audience Is.
The good thing about PPC lead generation is that it can provide brands with an extensive reach. However, that does not mean you have to reach everyone with your ads, since you’ll be paying for every click—even from those people who aren’t going to end up as potential leads. To ensure your ads reach the people most likely to do business with your company, make sure you are placing your ads where people are likely to see them. To reach your target audience, you must know where they hang out online and identify who they are.
Using ads on the Google search engine results page (SERP) would benefit most brands because almost everyone with an internet connection uses Google. Make sure you limit the kinds of sites you appear on based on what your audience likes when you set up ads on different social media platforms.
Based on how your target audience uses social media sites, you can choose which to prioritize. Facebook has billions of users every day, so most companies choose to focus their ads here. Get Going in Business can help you find a specific market using market-based search.
Do You Need to Automate Your Sales Prospecting Process?
With Get Going in Business, you have all the data you need to find ideal leads, including complete contact information. To find the people you want to reach, use a variety of filters. We can tailor your results to a very specific audience, for example, specific, you might find all the people that match the following:
A company in the banking or financial sector.
With 15 or more employees.
They have used Google Ads.
They use HubSpot.
They have a HR manager.
Who’s been in the role for a year.
This is just to show you how crazy specific you can get.
2. Proper Tracking Setup.
Data is the key to a winning PPC campaign. Every time you run a campaign, you will get data that you can use for your next campaign. Besides the PPC platform’s analytics, you can further investigate your PPC lead generation campaign’s details by setting up more intricate tracking.
You might want to consider the following:
Track the Conversion Rate
This metric tracks how many times a person clicks an advertisement and then subsequently visits a website, makes a phone call, or takes another online action. This requires having a global site tag on the header of your site, with event snippets tracking conversions on specific pages.
Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI)
You have to set up a way of connecting the calls you receive back to your PPC ad if one of your PPC ad’s main goals is a phone call. CallRail is a terrific example of an automatic phone number generator for lead generation campaigns. You can quickly identify which advertisement inspired a particular phone call using this program.
UTM Tracking
You can use UTM codes to track the success of your PPC campaigns. Every time you create a PPC lead generation ad, you should also create a unique URL containing the correct UTM codes.
You can find out which ads were clicked, where they appeared, what kind of content they came with, which channel they appeared on, and what keywords they were targeted to with UTM tracking.
CRM tools (also known as customer relationship management tools) can also be used in conjunction with ads tracking to make the right connections between purchases and ads.
3. Create Specific Campaigns and Ad Groups.
Using PPC lead generation, you may restrict ad availability to just those individuals who belong to your targeted market segment. Many companies have multiple audiences, each with their own objectives. Creating ad groups to target each ad to the appropriate individual at the appropriate time can help make your campaign successful.
You can create segments for your marketing campaign based on: geographical location, target industry, competitors, brands, and products and services.
4. Each Ad Group Should Have Its Own Unique Landing Page.
People have to click on the ads to see your message. However, what they find after clicking is critical and should include exactly what your audience is looking for. Make sure that every click counts because you’re paying for it.
It’s critical to create a landing page that is optimized for each ad’s promise. Make sure the pages are relevant to the keywords and your target audience. You should also design the landing page based on your conversion goal. You have to block out all distractions so your audience can concentrate on what you want them to do on your page.
Long-form content landing pages are now preferred by Google. Therefore, your PPC landing pages can include:
At least 600 words.
Keywords in your titles, headers, and the body of your write-up.
Return policies, warranties, other policies, and any other important information including your company description.
Trust symbols and text like reviews or testimonials.
Make sure your landing pages are not only attractive but also informative. Beyond making sure they are visually appealing, make sure they grab the reader’s attention. The more information they can acquire on the landing page, the more likely they are to click on it.
5. Upload a Form in the Ad.
You can put a form within your LinkedIn or Facebook ad to give your audience the option to convert without leaving the current page they’re on. You can make the conversion even easier by using these sites as they can automatically fill in the form details using the data they have about your prospects. Using this method, you can increase the number of leads by making your potential customers’ data easier to provide.
To make your audience think that clicking on your ad is worthwhile, come up with a persuasive offer. This is particularly effective for competitive keywords and placements, where people have to choose which ad to view. You can write an ad that pleases your customers with an attractive discount, free trial, or free consultation.
7. Use Negative Keywords.
Finding the right keywords is critical to any PPC lead generation campaign, but choosing which keywords to exclude is just as important. Avoiding wasted clicks by choosing which keywords to keep and which to discard can help you reach your goals more efficiently.
Avoid using “free” and “cheap” as keywords unless you’re promoting a free trial or a freemium tool. When these words are used, your ads will only pop up when people are looking for free things.
You should also eliminate keywords that suggest someone is looking for a synonym of what your brand has to offer. For example, a company selling computers might want to get rid of traffic from people searching for a PC for business use when they’re offering a personal computer.
You can identify the keywords you missed by analyzing your campaigns’ results over time and identifying irrelevant traffic that went your way, or brainstorming and identifying them ahead of time.
8. Include Ad Extensions in Your Campaigns.
Ad extensions can enhance the usefulness of your Google PPC lead generation advertisements by providing extra information. The ad extensions are displayed as unique sections or links in your ad. This way, you can easily highlight portions of your ad that your audience might be interested in, such as links to your company’s phone number, special offers, and free trials.
Ad extensions can also help you draw your target audience’s attention to the key actions you want them to take by helping make your ad stand out from the rest of the ads on SERP.
9. Test and Analyze Your PPC Ad Campaigns.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all PPC method. Every business is unique, therefore, what worked for one business might not always work for you. It’s important to know what works for your specific audience and niche. You should monitor your PPC ads, review the results, and apply what you’ve learned to future campaigns to determine what works for your audience.
One of the most effective ways to do this is through running A/B tests. The aim of an A/B test is to learn more about your target market’s preferences. You can test the following aspects of your ad: headlines, ad copy, keywords, form/landing page design, extensions, images, offers, audience targeting, etc.
You can create a variety of PPC ads by arranging them side by side and comparing them. The advantage of testing is that you can identify which parts of your marketing need improvement and which parts work. This way, you learn how to optimize your ads for success.
Testing your PPC lead generation campaign may help you improve your marketing methods and strategies. For instance, you can prioritize the best-converting keywords in your ads for use in your SEO efforts. Or use the effective PPC campaign headline as an email subject—you may find that it works even better that way.
Which Are the Best PPC Lead Generation Ad Networks?
Google Ads
Google is the biggest player in the game. Google Ads have a massive global reach. It dominates the market with over 78% of the share. Because Google is the most used search engine, it may be the best way to reach most users who have internet access worldwide. Regardless of what industry you are in, your target audiences are most likely using Google.
Unfortunately, because Google is so well-known, your competitors may also be using it. In this case, the CPC (Cost Per Click) for competitive keywords may be a bit pricey.
The advantage of using Google is that it provides a large selection of free tools like Keyword Planner and Google Analytics to help you achieve the best results from all your marketing activities. Google’s Display Network is also a game changer in the industry as it helps you show PPC ads on most-visited websites like YouTube.
Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads)
Microsoft Advertising (formerly known as Bing Ads) also has its benefits. After Google, it is the second biggest network for PPC lead generation. You may want to look into Microsoft Ads if you want an excellent and budget-friendly alternative to Google Ads. Microsoft provides paid search engine results, along with a wide range of famous websites to display your content, video, and banner ads.
The number of partner websites is not as large as that of Google but being able to advertise on AOL, Yahoo! and MSN is worth exploring. Also, they attract a large percentage of users with high-income backgrounds, meaning you’ll get an audience with purchasing power.
Facebook Ads
Facebook is definitely one of the big boys when it comes to PPC ads. While it’s rather different from Google and Microsoft, Facebook Ads provides an extremely attractive ad network package. $1.72 is the average CPC for this network, which is lower than Google and Microsoft. Unlike Google and Microsoft, which use keywords and search, Facebook focuses on target demographics. Your ad appears in the feeds of your target Facebook and Instagram audience, who aren’t actively searching for your brand.
Facebook Ads can also appear on the Facebook Audience Network and on Facebook Messenger. FB Ads are focused on ads within apps. If you want to target people who are always using apps, or if your brand is related to apps, then this might be a good option for you. The most significant benefit, of course, is that you can advertise on both Instagram and Facebook feeds.
Remember that everything must be visual. Your advertisements must be clickable, compelling, well-framed, and shareable.
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn is often referred to as “Facebook for professionals.” It is a highly effective PPC lead generation platform. It targets a well-educated and business-savvy crowd. Besides, the audience you get on LinkedIn is highly motivated to buy.
It targets based on demographics like Facebook, but most of the people here are professionals, like business owners, C-level executives, and marketing experts. You get to reach the decision-makers at their home. If you’re in the B2B space, you should definitely consider advertising on LinkedIn.
Your advertisements can be shown in several ways: in a sidebar display ad network, text ads, sponsored posts in the feed, dynamic ads, and InMails (direct mailings to target clients).
Wrapping Up!
PPC lead generation is a great way to attract more leads, but it is still entirely up to you or your sales team to nurture those leads and turn them into paying clients. It would be advantageous to devise a strategy for moving those leads through your sales funnel.
You should treat PPC lead generation as part of your entire inbound marketing strategy, which includes social media, email, and content marketing. You should keep the relationships you created through a PPC ad alive until your prospects are on the path to purchase. Nurture them and you’ll have loyal customers ready to refer your products to others.
Get Going in Business can help you create the most targeted and accurate list of qualified leads for your SaaS business.
Just having an excellent product isn’t enough to generate SaaS leads. To acquire leads and close sales in this industry, you need to employ a number of strategies. In this post, we’ll provide you with a variety of scalable B2B SaaS lead generation techniques that you can use to expand your customer base.
The bottom line is that you need leads to grow your B2B Saas business. Your sales team can only hone your SaaS into a successful enterprise if they have a steady supply of leads. Here are some strategies to turbocharge your B2B SaaS lead generation.
How to Scale B2B SaaS Lead Generation
As a SaaS marketing agency, our goal is to remain competitive by being able to scale your lead generation capacity quickly in order to ensure long-term success. Here are 12 practical methods we use to scale up your lead generation.
1. Use software discovery and review platforms.
Every new lead that comes into your business is at a particular stage. Leads are sorted into three categories: hot, warm, and cold, and each strategy is tailored to suit a certain kind of lead.
Businesses and individuals can use review platforms to identify the best technology stack to run their operations by gathering reviews around software solutions. A good example of this is G2.
These platforms are now well-positioned and are trusted by millions of decision-makers to find, buy, and review software. For B2B SaaS lead generation businesses, this means that millions of potential warm leads are at your disposal if you build, promote, and grow your business profiles.
These platforms are being used by decision-makers to seek out a solution. By displaying at the top of their searches, you can start a conversation with highly motivated buyers that just need a little nudge to convert.
2. Draw in new users with SEO.
The search engine results pages (SERPS) are where businesses with an excellent return on investment (ROI) hope to stay. Every day, over five billion Google searches are conducted, which has a significant impact on businesses’ ROI.
Increasing organic traffic is not simple, which is why search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial. SEO is about matching search intent and providing the best possible response to a user’s query. If you can accomplish that, you’re already ahead of the game. Congratulations!
Your SEO plan may be developed by defining what end users require and how your tool provides a solution for them. You will know the problems they want to solve and how your solution helps them if you know how they think and what they value.
For instance, you have a product that uses data to help fintech companies identify their opportunities. You might want to create a series of articles describing how fintech companies can use data to gain an advantage over their competitors, detailing the best times of year to reach out to potential customers, and so on. The key is to focus on the needs of your ideal customers—once you do that, creating SEO content will become second nature.
3. Make use of interactive tools and lead magnets.
Invite people to sign up for a free trial or purchase, and then provide them with a downloadable lead magnet or interactive tool.
When companies think about e-books or gated content, they often mistake them for lead magnets. However, the most effective lead magnets are those that help their users work more efficiently, effectively, and faster. For instance, a checklist might aim to simplify a complicated procedure or work smarter with data using great tools.
These tools can help you increase the number of subscribers you can nurture with your email workflows, as well as generate organic traffic, build backlinks, and strengthen your brand. A good example is Ahrefs. They developed a free Webmasters Tools site that helped them gain over 8,000 backlinks and attract around 3,000 organic visits per month.
Interactive tools will also help you increase engagement with potential customers as they get to connect more with your site. Using interactive tools will also help you establish a closer relationship with users before they commit to converting into paying customers.
4. Use real-world examples.
Content is critical to attracting users, but making those users turn into customers requires more effort. Businesses are under a lot of pressure and want to make sure that the solution they pick is right for them before they commit to it.
Case studies provide a real-life example of how a customer solved a problem and how your solution helped. They can help you develop empathy with your audience by letting them see themselves in the story, get quick answers to their questions, and get a sense of what it is like to use your solution. Especially if the case study is in the same industry as theirs.
5. Create data-driven content to gain authority in your niche.
When you’re producing high-quality original content, the top of your list of priorities should be content based on research facts. These are excellent pieces to build authority, acquire high-quality organic links to support your SEO, and—if the data is useful or the result is controversial—increase brand awareness through several outlets.
If you’re a B2B SaaS lead generation company, you already have a lot of data about how your users interact with your tool, so you can begin there. Using this information, you can gain insights into the subjects your potential customers care about.
Beyond just producing blog posts, you should also produce podcasts or newsletters to grow your audience and establish yourself as a subject matter expert in your field.
Before signing on for a longer project, make sure you have a thorough outline. These kinds of efforts take longer than usual because they require more planning. To make a solid plan, answer the following questions:
What topic is your target audience eager to learn?
What data do you have to collect for this particular study or topic?
How will you gather the data? Will you do interviews, run surveys, or find it through web scraping?
How will the data be analyzed?
What is your content marketing distribution plan? Where and how will you share your write-up? A distribution plan is crucial for content marketing— don’t make it an afterthought.
6. Use podcasts for your outreach campaign.
According to LinkedIn, podcast listening among senior-level decision-makers accounts for 44% of all listeners. This means that you need to be present among decision-makers to succeed.
Creating your own podcast can be an excellent strategy, but you don’t need to wait to build an audience. Find out what topics might interest your potential customer and be a guest speaker on podcasts to share insights, case studies, statistics, or practical information. These will boost the recognition of your business and provide potential new customers with a connection to it.
Remember your podcast is meant for human beings, not corporations. By recording human beings, your brand is made more personable, new connections are made with untapped markets, and relationships with C-level executives are cultivated through trust.
You can take it a step further and think about using a podcaster. Think about if they’re worth sponsoring. It may take some trial and error, but if a podcast is bringing you new leads, it might be a worthwhile investment in the long run.
7. Ask for referrals.
You are missing out on the best marketing ally you have if you’re not asking for referrals.
If you truly provide the best possible user experience, people will naturally discuss your solution with their friends and colleagues. However, instead of waiting for this to occur, you can act proactively by:
Building a referral system that rewards your customers for each recommendation they bring you.
Approach accounts that are 6 months and older and directly ask for referrals.
After an account has accomplished a major success or milestone, request them to refer your solution to other businesses.
8. Build your LinkedIn network.
Although LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world, founders tend to forget something else: It is also a social media platform, and like in any social network, people want to follow other people.
Having a LinkedIn company page does not guarantee high-quality leads. Instead, think of your company page as the second step of the sales funnel. People are more likely to want to interact with you prior to wanting to deal with your business. By establishing a social media presence on the platform, you can build relationships and expertise.
When people learn about you, they will go to your profile or the page of your company to learn more about what you have to offer. Finding success on LinkedIn is all about being your top brand evangelist. Participate in discussions, post blog posts, podcasts, and other content, and share it with your LinkedIn community.
9. Have a social proof wall.
When running a B2B SaaS lead generation business, you need a bigger monetary investment compared to running a B2C SaaS. As a result, social proof is the best currency to win more B2B SaaS leads. Your customers’ testimonials are particularly valuable since they can be used to back your claims and build trust with potential customers.
Creating interactive social media content, partnering with review sites such as Clutch, providing real-life customer testimonials, and showcasing top awards are instantly more engaging and trustworthy than simply saying you offer the best solution.
10. Create your tool page vs. your competitor’s tool page.
Comparison pages can be used to generate a lot of SaaS leads, as long as it’s clear you offer a unique advantage over the competition. Customers will look for organic comparisons among various providers to ensure they’re picking the right one for their situation.
This is a fantastic chance to demonstrate why you are unique or better and, therefore, generate almost ready-to-close leads that are already in the consideration stage of their buyers’ journeys.
Here are some suggestions for building your pages:
Take a deep dive into your competitor’s tools and study their prices, user experience, functionality, etc.
Use an easy-to-read format to showcase all the major differences and perks of using your tool.
Have tables, graphs, and any other visuals or resources that emphasize your points to decision-makers, making it easier for them to take action.
Be honest. You don’t want to overpromise and then underdeliver.
11. Use video content to create communities for social engagement.
Building a YouTube channel is a great idea, but you need to be smart about how you create your content. Keep in mind that CEOs, CMOs, and CFOs are people with various interests. Videos produced by companies are typically not as engaging as those produced by individuals. They often fall short in terms of entertainment and engagement. However, there is room for video content in SaaS companies.
You can create video content around common problems or interests of your ideal buyers to identify and market to them, without simply selling your own product. You can also organize webinars and conferences, in which case you may want to integrate a conference call service for assistance. Focus on the industry as a whole to avoid being too salesy. Become a news source or showcase case studies.
12. Be involved in virtual and hybrid events in your industry.
Sponsoring events is a great way to reach a large audience of like-minded individuals.
Search for events that are related to your company or client’s interests. You may participate in a variety of ways, including sponsoring events or participating in panel discussions or talks.
The purpose of an event is to create an interest in your services, so if there are no events, create one. Invite people from different B2B industries and backgrounds to share their experiences and insights and become one of the community’s pillars.
It seems like a lot of work, but it’ll pay off fast. Remember that trust is the main currency in the B2B sector, and you’re everyone’s trusted buddy when you’re at the center of the conversation.
Are you ready to increase B2B SaaS lead generation?
Finding the right marketing strategy for your company begins with conducting customer research. Find out where your ideal customer is, what they are looking for, and what concerns them most. Knowing their journey, you will know exactly what to build to grow and scale your SaaS without sacrificing sustainability.
Today, we’ll look at some ways to power your business with leads and establish some basic foundations so that you can take advantage of all the new sales opportunities in B2B SaaS lead generation.
If your B2B business is a car, then leads are your fuel. No matter how well-designed, expensive, or beautiful a vehicle may be, it won’t go anywhere without fuel. You’ll need a well-oiled machine for B2B SaaS lead generation to work. The most efficient vehicles will go further on less fuel, and the ones with the best engines will get to their destination quicker.
The most crucial part of any B2B SaaS marketer’s job is generating leads. If you don’t generate leads, you don’t generate business, and the company doesn’t grow. Because generating leads is such a crucial component of growing B2B technology firms, Sales and Marketing teams are often combined.
According to the Holger B2B Lead Gen Report, more than half of marketers (53%) report that half or more of their budget is allocated to lead generation.
What Is a Lead?
When someone attends an event you organize, completes a form on your website, talks to someone at your company, or clicks on an ad you run, they become a lead. A lead is any company or person that has expressed interest in your services or products.
This article is focused on digital marketing, so we won’t talk about event marketing and direct mail, although both are still significant parts of lead generation.
According to Hubspot’s 2022 marketing statistics, lead generation has remained a major challenge for most companies.
An excellent place to start with any B2B SaaS lead generation strategy is determining how much a new client is worth to your company.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is the term used to quantify this value. LTV is a metric that tells companies how much revenue they can expect one client to generate over the course of their business relationship.
The formula for LTV is:
Average monthly or annual revenue per customer x Number of months or years they have been a customer.
You need to adjust accordingly if you charge annually, monthly, or a combination of both, as LTV depends on your pricing or business model. Some SaaS companies calculate LTV a little bit differently, you can check that model out here.
You’ll then have to calculate the cost of acquiring a customer (CAC). This is the sum of money spent on sales and marketing to attract customers. CAC is a high-level metric that is not accessible to all marketing professionals unless the leadership team provides input. It includes salary, tools, and expenditures.
CAC = Sales costs + Marketing costs / Number of new customers
You can begin to estimate how much you should spend to acquire one client/customer by calculating this. For example, you would not spend $100 trying to acquire a customer valued at $100,000 for your company. You’d probably be underinvesting and would likely miss out on opportunities vs. competitors who spend more money.
While everyone wants to spend as little as possible for a B2B SaaS lead, if you underinvest in lead generation, you will not grow as fast as you could and may lose out to your close rivals.
Calculate Your LTV: CAC Ratio
Simply divide your total lifetime value (LTV) by your total acquisition cost (CAC). Basically, LTV/CAC.
A 3:1 LTV ratio is frequently used in SaaS businesses to determine growth. If a client has an LTV of $100k, for example, you should expect to spend about $33k on sales and marketing to acquire them.
This ratio of LTV to CAC is used to measure financial health.
There is disagreement about whether a higher ratio of 5:1 is desirable since it might mean that although you are very profitable, you are not expanding as fast as you could.
In my view, each situation is unique, and it depends on the goods or services.
SaaS businesses track their monthly LTV: CAC ratio to see how well they are doing.
A top-level view of budgets is provided using this method of calculation. It can be difficult for marketers to justify the spending to their leadership teams. However, LTV can be used as a benchmark to gauge where you stand, then you can decide what kind of investment would be wise.
Determining the Cost Per Lead (CPL)
Keeping an eye on the ROI of your B2B SaaS lead generation strategy is crucial if you want to track cost per lead (CPL). It’s probably one of the most common things used to keep track of the success of any lead-generating campaign, aside from the number of leads generated.
CPL= Total expenditure / Number of leads generated
For instance, an expenditure of $1,000 on lead generation that results in 10 leads, gives a CPL of $100.
Your overall cost per lead across all digital marketing channels should be calculated, as well as the individual cost per lead for each channel. You can then determine which channel gives you the best value for your money.
Measuring the Return on Investment of B2B SaaS Lead Generation
One of the major challenges that many B2B technology firms face is having the sales cycle last for months or even years. In most technology B2B companies, a lead doesn’t close the same month it opens (SaaS is a little different at times).
This valuable study conducted by Implicit showed led to opportunity conversion rates of 13% and that the average time taken to convert was 84 days or about three months.
In Order to Benchmark B2B Tech Sector Conversion Rates, One Must First Determine the Conversion Rate for the Company.
It is better to benchmark conversion rates against your own performance rather than look at what everyone else is doing. If 3% is good for your company, then you won’t go to extremes to get to 5% or strive for 10%.
When you are a marketer, taking a more top-level view of your conversion rates and pipeline over a longer period of time is the best approach. Instead of tracking conversion over the month, track it over the year or the quarter, depending on time frames.
You can try to focus on Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs). Everything you do will be tied back to this metric, and your goal is to increase it. Strive to be as efficient as possible by maintaining high conversion rates and scaling using relevant tactics. This means that you should set brand guidelines that will have a favorable impact on conversion rates.
Here are 5 key performance indicators that will help you set benchmarks and decide what to do next. They also help you track conversion rates at a high level.
The 5 KPIs
Benchmark
x2
# of web visits
1,000
2,000
% of web visits to leads
4%
8%
# of Web Leads
40
80
% of leads that are MQLs
25%
50%
# of MQLs
10
20
Qualifying Leads
Is the prospective customer a good match for your product or service? Are they qualified to be considered a lead?
Each phase of a lead’s progression to becoming a customer is known as the lifecycle stage. The table below shows some examples of stages of the lifecycle:
Lead
MQL
SQL
Opportunity
Customer
Submitted Info
Meets ICP
Ability to Purchase
Opportunity for deal
Deal closed
MQL = Marketing Qualified Lead
SQL = Sales Qualified Lead
ICP = Ideal Client Profile
What is a Marketing Qualified Lead?
According to the Ideal Client Profile (ICP), a Marketing Qualified Lead is a “good lead” as defined by your sales team. It is a lead that matches your perfect client profile. Usually, your sales team determines whether a lead is suitable by collecting enough information about them. You may determine whether a lead is acceptable by using a form on your website.
This is your ideal client profile (ICP). It is a description of the characteristics and behavior of your perfect client. Your ICP describes your ideal client, and your target audience. Your own ICP will have more specific information on your product or service (depending on your field).
You may not know which clients are most suitable for your business until you have had some ill-fitting clients. On the bright side, your understanding of your ICP will develop over time.
What Does Sales Qualified Lead Mean?
Beyond just being Marketing Qualified, a Sales Qualified Lead is one that is ready to buy. A Sales Qualified Lead would be someone who would ask to speak to a salesperson when contacting your company.
What Is an Opportunity?
An opportunity has already identified a specific deal of an estimated value to your business and has shown interest in making a purchase. This is different from a Sales Qualified Lead as they have already had a call with a member of the sales team and have discussed budgets, etc.
Leads vs Opportunities.
A lead is someone who is interested in your business. An opportunity, on the other hand, is a chance for a deal to be closed, subject to a number of factors.
Lead scoring and Automatic Qualification
These are two important features of CRMs like Salesforce.
Once you’ve determined what your lead stages are, you can begin to utilize marketing automation to assign lead statuses to MQL or SQLs.
You can use MQL Forms on your website to request more information from your visitors. These forms require the visitor to submit all the information you need to automatically qualify them.
An automatic lead status change could be set up by the CRM if certain conditions are met. This automation is known as lead scoring.
What is Lead Scoring?
Your sales and marketing teams can prioritize working on leads by ranking them in your CRM system. A lead scoring system is typically tied to your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) and their behavior or engagement with your business.
There are several lead scoring systems available, and some CRM systems automatically score leads based on certain conditions for you. Keep in mind that a points-based system is likely to become obsolete very quickly because of A.I.
Qualifying Leads Based on Scores
Once you’ve decided to use Lead Scoring, you must link a lead to MQL, SQL, and Opportunity together in such a way that a certain number of points convert a lead to an MQL and an MQL to an SQL, and finally to opportunity.
For example:
Lead Score
Lead Stage > 10 Lead
10 – 20 MEL
20 – 30 SQL
30 – 40 Opportunity
Is Lead Scoring Worth It?
Lead scoring is only advised if you have a well-structured CRM system with accurate data. This is the foundation of lead scoring. Without these two things, you will not be able to score your leads accurately, as points are usually awarded based on the data you collect.
It’s unlikely that B2B technology businesses will need to use lead scoring. Unless you are getting hundreds or thousands of leads per month, it is probably not worth the time to set it up.
You can create simple Lead Scoring schemes by using demographic and behavioral information.
Why Sales and Marketing Departments Must Work Together
Sales and marketing overlap the most in expanding B2B enterprises. When a commission-driven sales team doesn’t have enough leads to work with, tensions may arise, particularly if a marketing manager is hired to produce more leads but little happens.
A lead handover is used to pass control of the leads from one department to another. Sales and marketing must be on the same page concerning lead qualification standards. The lead handover process is where you decide how marketing will work with leads and what sales will do.
Consider how often and how many leads you get when creating a lead handover process. Establishing an official handover process is not advisable if you only get four leads each week. At this point, you should treat each lead as if he were royalty.
However, if you get more than a handful of leads in a week, here is a simple example of the roles sales and marketing can play.
Stage
Lead
MQL
SQL
Opportunity
Customer
Criteria
Submitted Info
Meets ICP
Ability to Purchase
Opportunity for deal
Deal Closed Won
Sales
No Action
Make Contact
Sales Activity
Sales Activity
Handover to Customer Success & Marketing
Marketing
Lead Nurturing
Lead Nurturing
What Is Lead Nurturing?
A lead is “nurtured” by the marketing team (or sales) when they are not yet ready to buy. The leads are then put back into the virtual pot and “nurtured” until they are ready to make a purchase .
Customer Success
In B2B tech businesses, customer success has become a new accomplice to sales and marketing. Lead gen doesn’t stop when a lead converts. Lead nurturing comes in to turn the customers into referrals and customer advocates. Hence the reason customer success is the new face of many tech businesses.
Building Your CRM for Lead Generation
It’s important to ensure you are ready for a potential data influx before starting your lead generation strategy. This is typically an afterthought, as people learn as they go. In most cases, the learning process looks like this:
More leads are being generated through the website and digital marketing than expected.
Your CRM system/database receives leads.
You then realize you want to be more focused on your marketing efforts.
Then you notice your data is not detailed enough to personalize messages.
Go into a fix-it mode to try to fix the data.
Then go at it with more targeted marketing messages.
To avoid all this when setting up your CRM system for B2B SaaS lead generation, you must consider these things:
The type of data you want to collect.
What needs to be done to standardize the input, e.g., have fewer text fields?
How can you segment data?
Lead Source and Attribution Tracking in Your CRM
Having the ability to track what worked and what didn’t when it comes to lead generation strategies is one of the most crucial parts of B2B digital marketing. You should be able to track the point of conversion for a new lead, whether it’s attending an event, downloading a white paper, or requesting a demo on your website.
Most CRM platforms already have lead source tracking built in, and if you integrate your website with them, you’ll be able to track which form was filled in.
Prior to running any external lead generation activities such as PPC, you might want to track which ad the person followed to then fill in a form.
You can connect your LinkedIn, Google, and Facebook Ad platforms to a tracking system.
The purpose of marketing attribution or multi-touch attribution is to show you the influence your marketing efforts have on a buyer’s decision-making process.
Conclusion
As we’ve seen, leads are the fuel of any business, including B2B businesses in the tech niche. It’s a core competency for the success of any business.
This article will help you make well-informed decisions in SaaS lead generation. You don’t have to know everything on the get-go as you’ll learn as you progress. But it’s important to understand how your business attracts and converts customers, as this is an integral part of every buyer’s journey.
Sadly, for content marketing lead generation 30% of new businesses fail in their first two years, 50% in the first five years, and 66% in the first ten.
Why do so many businesses fail?
There are plenty of potential pitfalls:
Poor market research
Insufficient financing
Poor business planning
Bad marketing
Poor choice of location
Limited online presence
Poor content marketing can have a huge impact on your business. Many business owners and marketers fail because they approach marketing incorrectly.
They do not frequently optimize their marketing campaigns to increase conversions, gather leads, and drive sales.
There is no doubt that marketing is one of the most effective methods to boost lead generation for business development. In fact, content marketing produces 3 times as many leads as other traditional marketing techniques, according to a DemandMetric report.
So how do you create excellent content that generates leads for your company?
This guide explores six effective ways to generate leads using content marketing.
1. Create a Buyer Persona
Did you know that you can generate a thousand leads and still not make a single sale?
Your content must be tailored to suit your target audience if you want it to be effective. If you create content that isn’t compatible with your audience, you risk wasting time and money on leads that won’t convert.
Before starting with content marketing, you must first identify your target audience and develop a persona for them.
What Is a Buyer Persona?
A buyer persona is a research-based profile that describes the sort of person that would purchase a particular product or brand. A buyer persona provides information on the prospective buyer—their characteristics, preferences, and types of touchpoints that lead people to buy your product (or your competitor’s).
If you know who your prospective customers are and what questions they need to be answered, you will be able to create informative, valuable content that addresses their pain points and answers their questions. The process of turning visitors into leads begins with producing content that provides immense value.
You must know the customer’s needs in order to deliver value.
The following are some of the specifics that must be included in your buyer persona:
Biographical details: Name, age, gender, location, profession, family size, and so on.
Values: What are the values, hopes, and ambitions that the customer has, or goals they are striving for?
Pain points: What are the issues that they need to solve? What problems are they struggling with and what questions are they asking?
Knowing who your target audience is can help you create content that meets their demands and boosts conversions.
There are a number of tools available to help you build your buyer persona if you are unfamiliar with the process.
Facebook Audience Insights
The Facebook Audience Insights tool is located inside the Facebook Ad Manager. Using this tool, you can discover a lot of information about your audience and use it to build a persona. You can also add interests that you want to research to get more information about your customers.
Quantcast
There are over 200 billion global internet searches each month, and Quantcast delivers real-time data on over 100 million of those. Using artificial intelligence, Quantcast helps you better understand your target audience. They help you accurately track and measure your audience using artificial intelligence.
Survey Gizmo
Survey Gizmo is a terrific tool for conducting surveys on your audience so that you can construct your own buyer persona based on real audience responses. If you already have an email list, you can use Survey Gizmo to examine data on your current customers.
2. Use the Content-Type Best Suited for Your Audience
There are hundreds of content types available, and in order for your content marketing efforts to have a profitable ROI, you will need to create content that suits your audience.
Creating content for your marketing strategy is the key to generating either traffic or leads. You need both to turn a profit— before you can generate any leads, you must bring visitors to your site.
Some examples of content you can use to generate traffic are:
Blog posts
Blog posts can be a valuable resource for generating traffic to your website. They provide value for your readers and increase the number of indexable pages in your domain. They are also excellent at directing people to your landing or sales page.
Video content
Videos are another terrific way of driving traffic to your site. Make engaging, audience-focused videos to boost the number of times they are shared. Also, focus your efforts on YouTube. YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. Creating videos that are appropriate for the platform can boost traffic to your website.
Social media posts
There are currently 2.95 billion social media users in the world. You should take advantage of this and publish posts on social media to drive visitors to your website. This means optimizing your social profiles, interacting with other users, and using targeted social media advertisements.
Podcasts
Production of podcasts has been on the rise in recent years, as indicated by a 2019 report on podcast statistics. As of now, there have been more than 700,000 podcasts created, with 29 million podcast episodes produced. You can communicate with your customers more intimately using podcasts, hopefully resulting in a bump in traffic to your site.
Infographics
The Demand Gen Report stated that infographics can increase your web traffic by 12% and receive 650% more engagement than normal guest posts. Visual marketing is very much in vogue, so you should seize the opportunity by increasing your visual marketing efforts.
Once you’ve begun seeing traffic from your content efforts, the next step is to create content that can be used for lead generation.
A new blog that hasn’t started generating any traffic yet can still generate leads through great content, but what happens then?
3. Use Content Syndication
People seeing your content is one way to leverage content syndication.
What is Content Syndication?
When you post your content on a high-traffic third-party site, you immediately have the potential to generate a lot of leads. Syndicating your content means uploading it to sites that are larger than you to generate more traffic and increase engagement.
Netline is a B2B lead generation network that allows you to syndicate your content so that you can build traffic and generate leads faster. The best thing about this platform is that it is performance-based, meaning you only pay for the leads that are generated.
Make sure to use canonical tags to tell search engines which content is the primary one that should be given SEO value, to avoid having duplicate content issues or getting a penalty from the Google algorithm.
Medium, Slideshare, Quora, Outbrain, Taboola, Scoop.it, Facebook Business, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Tumblr are some of the best platforms for content syndication.
4. Pick Your Content Distribution Network
Creating content is one thing, getting people to see it is another. You must decide on a marketing channel mix to distribute your content.
There are two main ways to distribute content—organic and paid channels.
You don’t need money to get started with organic distribution channels. Organic channels are the best option if you are on a budget. The only drawback with organic channels is that it takes time to build online authority and credibility. Organic channels grow over time, and it may take a few months before you notice a significant improvement in your audience size or site traffic.
Here are some of the most commonly used organic distribution channels:
Concentrate on spending your budget on the channels where your buyer personas spend most of their time. If you’ve done adequate research on your ideal customers, you’ll know which channels they spend most of their time on. You don’t need to distribute your content across all of these channels at once.
Paid channels generate results immediately but require money to get started. If your PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns are optimally configured, all you have to do is buy some ads and you will start seeing traffic right away.
Here are some of the most commonly used paid distribution channels:
Social media ads
Display ads
Search ads
Content delivery networks
Native ads
Using both organic and paid distribution can make give you more comprehensive lead generation for your site in the long run.
5. Use Compelling Lead Magnets
An ineffective lead magnet is detrimental to lead generation, even if you have a lot of traffic.
What is Lead Generation (Lead Gen) Content?
Lead generation content is also referred to as a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a valuable resource that you offer to a prospect in exchange for information (typically an email address). You can also refer to these as gated content.
People are extremely protective when it comes to their email addresses. You must offer something valuable in exchange for an email address in order to convince a prospect to hand one over.
You can use the following types of content to generate leads:
Case Studies
eBooks/How-to guides
Checklists
Whitepapers
Recipes
Free reports
Webinars
Mini-courses
Quizzes
Free trials or demos of a product
Templates
Cheatsheets
An effective lead magnet should possess the following attributes:
It should provide a solution for your target audience’s needs.
It should be specific, as it’s targeted to a specific user. Generalized content does not translate to high conversion rates.
It should be easy to access. The user doesn’t need to follow a long process to get it.
It should not only be easy to digest/consume but also engaging to the reader.
6. Create Optimized Landing Pages
You may be squandering a lot of potentials if your website receives a lot of traffic but your landing page is not optimized to generate leads. Here are some strategies you can utilize to improve the conversion rate of your landing pages:
Delete the navigation bar
An opt-in or close button should be the only option at the top of your landing pages. Having a navigation bar up there can be a distraction and prevent visitors from converting.
An increase of 100% in conversions was recorded on the Yuppiechef case study by deleting the navigation bar from the landing page.
Make sure your call-to-action (CTA) button is clear
The purpose of a great CTA button is to persuade users to take action. A CTA button should be simple and visible. The colors red, green, orange, and yellow work best for CTA buttons. Make sure your button attracts the visitor’s attention.
Wrapping It Up
For a business plan and marketing strategy to generate maximum return on investment, you need to follow the right steps. By applying these six strategies your lead generation goals are met, that increase your conversion rates, and ultimately drive more sales for your product.
Most marketing departments consider outbound sales strategies as their bread and butter. However, in today’s SaaS lead generation market, where prospects are increasingly savvy, these strategies may no longer work as well.
Prospects are no longer willing to be barraged with one spammy message after another. Who likes spam? For this reason, SaaS lead generation must adapt to more sophisticated prospecting and engagement methods in order to be effective.
Both online and offline marketing techniques are effective ways to gain new leads and potential subscribers for B2B SaaS companies.
In this article, we’ll explore 7 different lead-generation tactics to help you gain more clients for your company. But first, let’s have a look at what lead generation in SaaS is all about.
What is the definition of lead generation in SaaS?
SaaS firms provide software that customers can access online rather than installing on their own computers, so users can access the program from anywhere and at any time.
Some SaaS business examples are Google Apps (docs), Salesforce (CRM), Dropbox (cloud storage), Slack (communication), GitHub (code hosting), and MailChimp (email marketing).
It’s wrong to say that lead generation is limited to websites since even social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter generate leads. However, the majority of leads nowadays are produced via online marketing efforts.
Picking up the right leads can be one of the most challenging parts of the sales cycle. Lead nurturing is a process of nurturing an active lead to a better stage of the sales cycle. This process includes sending emails, calls, offers, and other messages to a lead.
A lead could be someone who has started filling out a form on your website and stopped halfway through or someone who has downloaded a free trial of your software but never sent you their credit card information.
Even though money doesn’t grow on trees, customers must be directed to consider your company as a potential service provider. However, as we all understand, leads must be pursued and persuaded to convert to clients.
What makes a SaaS lead generation strategy important?
SaaS lead generation strategies utilize both organic and inorganic approaches. On one hand, organic techniques seek to get your website discovered naturally in search engines. Inorganic techniques seek to actively connect with your potential customers via social media, email marketing, paid advertising, and other digital channels.
The purpose of SaaS lead generation is to attract a qualified audience and convince them to purchase your product. Here are 7 tactics to supercharge your SaaS lead generation today.
7 Strategies to Skyrocket Lead Generation for SaaS Businesses
1. Find the platforms your customers use for lead generation.
When creating a marketing strategy for your SaaS product, you should be sure to find your target audience and make sure you stand out.
It’s not always straightforward—for instance, Instagram isn’t just for beauty consultants and clothes stores—it’s also for SaaS photo editing companies. If you know who your target customers are and what they want, you’ll be able to determine which platforms they’ll be on. All you need to do then is reach them!
2. Share not only engaging but also informative content.
Your SaaS marketing strategy must be well-informed and consistent in order to make the most of your content. Do your homework, publish frequently, and optimize!
Before you begin writing about your industry, you must research your buyer personas and see what has been said on the subject before. Get on board with new trends and new developments.
Prioritize posting on a regular schedule. Once a month is not enough; your followers must have something new to digest at least once a week (if not more frequently).
The more content you generate, the more opportunities you will have to position yourself as an expert and leader in whatever field your SaaS caters to. This shows that you understand what your target market is experiencing and you can help them.
Remember SEO. Everything from a piece of content’s length to other websites’ links to it affects its ‘Google-ability,’ so be sure to keep that in mind when creating informative material.
3. Optimize your site speed.
Speed is one of the most important ranking factors directly affecting the user experience. Therefore, it is crucial to optimize your website’s speed.
Everyone has experienced the frustration of a slow-loading website. Even a short wait can make a person want to click away.
Your website is likely to lose 40% of visitors if it takes more than three seconds to load—and those visitors aren’t the only things lost. Poor website performance can also negatively impact your search engine rankings, lead generation, and sales conversion rates, in addition to lowering your visitor retention rates.
Use online tools such as GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights to monitor your website’s loading time and compare your results with those of similar websites.
4. Ensure that your site is mobile-friendly.
The ratio of mobile to desktop use is growing in the marketing sector, so it’s crucial that your website is mobile-friendly.
Buyers don’t have the time to sit down at their computers to make all their purchases these days. So having a mobile-friendly website is critical for expanding your business.
According to ThinkwithGoogle, an average site should take 15 seconds to load on mobile. If you don’t have one, you may be losing leads right when they are most likely to convert.
The last thing you want is for a prospective customer to get irritated on your website and leave in search of a competitor that is more mobile-friendly.
Make your website mobile-friendly and optimized now!
5. Write articles for other sites.
There have been a lot of mixed thoughts on guest blogging lately. Some people think it’s dead, while others are still employing it to drive traffic to their website and generate leads for their company.
Choose a site that has readers in line with your target audience. This ensures that you will get the right traffic back to your website.
Pick a website with a high domain authority rating, since that means it’s regarded as a high-quality site by search engines. Your website will perform better in search engine results due to receiving backlinks from this site. You can use AHref and Moz to determine the domain authority of a website.
Ensure that your guest post on another site provides as much value to readers as what you provide on your own site. By pitching this way, you may be able to write another guest post for them in the future.
6. Use customer service automation tools to help with customer support.
Chatbots and live chats are excellent customer service automation tools, and they can help you grow your lead generation. Having them available 24/7 is one of their greatest advantages. Even if your company has limited working hours, this will impress your customers and demonstrate that you care about them.
You can use chatbots to automate simple tasks such as providing users with answers to frequently asked questions or instructing them on how to use the basic features of your software.
Having live support agents available who care about customer needs and are ready to answer questions will be appreciated by your customers.
7. Try out click pop-ups.
We will finish this list of effective SaaS lead generation tactics by suggesting click pop-ups.
There are many types of pop-ups, but not all of them are effective at generating leads.
Having a short signup process that asks for visitors’ email addresses and names means that visitors will not feel forced to provide their information when they encounter a click pop-up.
Platforms to Boost SaaS Lead Generation
GetResponse
Are you looking for a solution to help you create landing pages? GetResponse is it.
You can utilize GetResponse to generate qualified leads with ease.
With its live chat, transactional email notifications, and landing page builder, it helps you to increase your sales. Using this platform, you can convert traffic, nurture leads, score, and segment them.
With GetResponse as your all-in-one marketing platform, you can:
Make use of the email marketing services’ email creator, autoresponders, email analytics, bulk emails, transactional emails, and list management to upgrade your campaigns.
Build a website to advertise your own company using an AI-powered creator, predesigned templates, drag-and-drop editors, forms and popups, and domain management.
Tags and scores can help you automate your workflow by providing automation flows, abandoned cart emails, website visitor tracking, and product recommendations.
Use screen sharing, call-to-action buttons, on-demand webinars, whiteboards, and polls and surveys to draw in your target market.
Set up paid ads that request social media connections, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google—all supplied by GetResponse—that may be used to generate leads.
Using Facebook Pixel, create signup forms, pop-ups, countdown timers, and e-commerce tools to create landing pages that generate revenue.
By using live chat with customization tools, visitor capture forms, chat notifications, and chat analytics, you can improve user experience by staying in constant contact with your audience.
You can keep track of the conversion rates with custom prompts, unlimited notifications, web push analytics, and automated notifications.
Access an SMS editor, URL shortener, and SMS reports that can be used to automate the entire SMS marketing process.
Pricing starts at $15.58 per month for 1,000 contacts.
Hubspot
HubSpot provides a variety of tools to help salespeople generate more leads and be more successful. Sales teams can benefit from sales automation, pipeline management, meeting scheduling, tracking, goal setting, and live chat.
More sophisticated tools are available at higher tiers, such as sales forecasting, 1:1 video creation, smart send times, and predictive lead scoring. These features will allow your team to generate more leads with less effort.
Two users can be added for $45 per month.
MailChimp
There’s a good reason why Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms—it can significantly help you generate leads.
Using the platform’s easy-to-use, drag-and-drop email builder, you can create stunning emails and use email automation to keep things running smoothly.
There are paid plans starting at $11/month, or you can get Hyper Plan for free.
Wrapping Up
With these 7 strategies listed above, SaaS lead generation can be a game-changer for online companies selling their products.
In addition to email marketing, you can utilize any of the strategies listed above to boost your marketing efforts and generate more leads.
All of these strategies are relatively easy and inexpensive to put into practice. Hopefully, just one of them will be sufficient to meet your objectives!
There are a large number of lead-generation marketing agency out there and it can feel overwhelming to pick the one that best suits your business.
Today, we’ll have a look at some of the most important factors to consider when choosing a lead generation agency.
What is a Lead?
A lead is usually someone who shows interest in your company or business, be it a potential customer or a client that wishes to use your services. Leads can provide you with exposure and direct you to other customers.
Remember that leads are potential customers or clients as well as potential sales. Your ability to market what you have to offer, in turn, converts them into sales and clients.
Some of them may even be brand ambassadors who will help introduce your firm to others and attest to its quality.
What is a Lead Generation Agency?
A lead generation agency is a team of creative individuals and lead generation marketing experts and specialists that work together to come up with the best strategies to help your business boom.
Usually, the team includes marketing specialists, content creators, conversational analysts, social media specialists, graphic designers, and brand managers.
Having a squad that is an expert in each area might help you discover all the areas of your business needing improvement. Working with these companies is a great benefit, as they are focused on what your company needs.
They personalize their services to meet your business needs. They will study and scrutinize everything you need for your site to start generating leads.
Working together also ensures that ideas will be coherent and organized. This way, more work can be accomplished in a shorter time frame. While the feedback may not all be sunshine and butterflies, you will hear what you need to hear in order to grow your company.
When you have a good grasp of everything your business requires, it is easy to see where you’re succeeding, what you’ve been doing that hasn’t been working, and what you’ve been missing.
Types of Lead Generation Marketing Agencies
There are two types of lead generation agencies.
There have been many technological developments that have yielded new methods of lead generation, advertising, and marketing.
It’s important to examine what the different agencies offer before making a decision on the kind of lead generation agency that will be best for your company.
Outbound Lead Generation Agencies
Outbound lead generation is the oldest form of lead gen in the market. It works through emails, cold calling, and even direct mailing.
This may be an old-fashioned method of marketing, but these agencies have stayed relevant in the business because of their effectiveness.
Inbound Lead Generation Agencies
Agencies create strategically engineered content as part of lead generation, intended to entice prospective clients. These agencies focus on getting you a large number of inbound leads which is the key to success.
Any digital material such as ads, social content, blog posts, podcasts, videos, etc. can be used as content.
Tips to Help You Pick the Right Lead Generation Marketing Agency
Keep in mind that what has worked for a certain business may not work across the board. It’s about choosing the right fit for your specific business.
Here are the steps required to find the perfect lead generation marketing agency, as well as the qualities you should look for.
1. Type of business
Be clear about the type of business you have. Getting to know your business thoroughly is the most crucial phase.
Having a good grasp of your company’s needs will prevent you from being overwhelmed with proposals, strategies, and marketing campaigns that are irrelevant to the firm’s long-term growth.
Be sure to choose the right lead generation firm for your company, but also be knowledgeable about what kind of firm to choose.
Small-scale companies
This includes businesses with low sales volume ($10,000 and below in revenue) and short selling cycles.
Smaller businesses or product-based companies fall under this category because if your product works, no amount of convincing will be needed.
Yes, some companies may have items or services that require more time to consider, but a prospect’s “no” now may become a “yes” later, in just a couple of weeks or months.
Large-scale companies
A board of trustees or shareholders makes decisions for these firms. With multiple decision-makers, these firms have to follow some bureaucracies before a decision is made.
Some firms provide pricier services or products that may be of value over time, resulting in later decision-making.
It is likely that you will have to work with lead generation agencies that can help you build your rapport, engage with customers in a somewhat personal way, and convince them to avail of your services.
2. Agencies that do a SWOT analysis
Look for a company that identifies both your strengths and weaknesses. Look for a firm that recognizes both your skills and your shortcomings.
When choosing a lead generation agency and a marketing firm, you should seek one that performs a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) evaluation of your firm.
Get an agency that will build on your strengths and seize your firm’s opportunities, but won’t neglect your weaknesses and threats, since addressing them is how a company grows.
Be open to the idea of change, and be willing to accept the changes you need to make.
3. Do thorough research about a firm’s flexibility
An industry-specific lead generation agency usually specializes in just one thing, where they excel the most. A lead generation agency must have a good grasp of your field to generate even a single lead.
A firm must be able to adjust to what their clients want, as well as to what their competitors are doing.
A custom lead generation agency can help a variety of businesses, as they are not limited to a single field of expertise.
Having the ability to customize and meet the demands of their clients is crucial for both B2B and B2C relations. They can also learn from you, just as you learn from them.
It’s important to make sure that the way you prefer to work is aligned with the company’s preferred working patterns, as you will be working closely together for a long time and coming up with solutions and strategies.
4. Discover your target audience
You must ensure that your leads are coming from the right places in almost any type of business. Choose a lead generation marketing agency that prioritizes quality above quantity in leads.
Having a small number of qualified leads that turn into clients is likely to benefit you more than having a large number of leads up front that don’t end up engaging with your products or services.
There are certain criteria to consider when evaluating qualified leads. ICPs (ideal customer profiles), buyer personas, lead scoring models, and list segmentation are all examples.
An ideal lead generation agency will consider these:
The age groups of your target audience.
The age group with the highest percentage of your audience.
Your target audience’s income level.
Can they access your service/product with their income?
The physical and geographic location of your audience.
Can they access your business even when they’re far away?
These answers will help you can begin to ask more brand-related questions:
Which distribution network and platforms will grab their attention most?
What type of campaign will appeal to them?
What voice or tone can you associate with them?
How can you get them to engage with you?
Can you have both professional and personal relationships with them?
A great lead generation agency will help you figure out the answers to all these questions.
Knowing whether or not a firm will be able to fulfill your demands before or after you invest will better allow you to gauge whether or not you should invest in the firm.
5. Choose the right tools for your campaigns
Great, you’ve figured out your target audience. Next, you must decide which of the many tools available to you will work for building a campaign that will appeal to them.
You should know why you need a specific tool before focusing on it because this ties into the previously mentioned steps.
According to HubSpot’s study, SEO, email marketing, and social media are the top three tools for generating leads for B2B companies.
You may have already tried some of these methods, but you may not be familiar with all of them. Digital lead generation and digital marketing agencies employ these methods extensively.
Here is a quick description of how some of the more popular tools and services function.
Direct Mail
Businesses have become quite imaginative when it comes to sending tangible pieces of marketing through the mail to prospective customers. Letters and flyers are no longer the only things sent.
Direct mail is so effective because it connects with customers on a personal level.
Pro: It is interactive with its audience, and for the sentimental, it is incredibly memorable. There are a lot fewer competitors because there is more than one way to get creative with it.
Con: The competitors might be fewer, but you will have to pay a lot for the materials, even if they are just paper.
Exhibiting at Trade Shows
Businesses and companies of the same industries come together at trade shows to showcase their latest products or services.
Pro: Trade shows provide an additional way to advertise. In addition to allowing the free product or service demos or trials, developers are also able to provide in-depth explanations.
Con: It is troublesome to get an in-depth, real-time look at items, and with public health issues such as COVID-19, events may not be allowed at all.
Email Marketing
Marketing using emails has been around for quite a while; it was one of the first forms of marketing. Using emails, marketers aim to build connections with potential customers and consumers.
Pro: People view email as a very professional form of marketing, so you can vouch for your products or services using a long but personal message.
Con: There has been a surge in social media use, pushing email marketing to the sidelines in a world where direct and instant messaging is the norm.
People who are not engaged in business don’t check their emails frequently, so it may take them a long time to reply. People often miss emails because they are automatically put in the spam folder or because they are easily ignored.
Telephone Marketing
Answering and placing calls is where the traffic happens. Phone calls are used to advertise products or services.
Pro: Using a friendly but convincing tone, you can build prospects’ trust in you.
Con: It’s tough to predict when prospects will make time for you.
Blogs
The act of creating a personal website to express one’s personal thoughts and opinions on products or services has become quite popular in recent years.
Pro: Anyone with an internet connection can access a blogger’s content.
Their position makes them reliable and readers of their blogs look to them for personal advice.
Con: Having a wide reach, bloggers must be able to “sell” their products. Not all of them achieve this immediately.
Social media
Social media has become a company’s marketing backbone thanks to its expansive reach. With just one tap, anyone and everyone can take advantage of a service or buy items and have them delivered straight to their door.
Pro: Things can go viral on the internet in just a few minutes.
When a public figure mentions a product or service, it becomes a trend that everyone wants to try for themselves. It’s a very powerful tool.
But having instant fame can also mean having instant infamy.
Con: A single mistake in an age of rampant cancel culture can instantly destroy your chances of generating leads.
Most influencers require payment for mentioning your goods or services on any of their platforms.
Many other viewers avoid sponsorships because they believe them to be unreliable, due to the commissions that influencers receive.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is the process of making a website applicable to as many search engines as possible in order to increase the site’s visibility and traffic.
Pro: Keywords can help you attract the right audience if used properly.
Con: Building an SEO-friendly website involves a lot of trial and error.
While marketing tactics are important, they must be paired with sales in order to be effective. Your sales will rely on how many potential customers you attract.
6. Look for a trustworthy lead generation agency
Choose an established and reputable firm to assist you.
Read reviews to find out if these agencies have satisfied clients or made friends within the industry.
Prospects can also view a list of references and portfolios from these agencies to verify their reliability. Check out their testimonials and case studies as well.
7. Take time to research
Take as much time as you need and do as much research as you want.
Finding the right B2B lead generation and marketing firm takes a little longer since this firm pretty much determines whether or not your company succeeds.
Choosing the right partner can help you save time, resources, money, and trust. You should take time to research previous clients and projects they have worked on to ensure you make the right choice.
Notice how they approach you, the tone they set, and the first impression they give off.
Find out what they are offering—how they prefer to work.
It’s important to take time when finding the right fit for your business.
Wrapping Up
Every business’s foundation is lead generation.
Businesses begin somewhere, and ad agencies, digital lead generation agencies, and the whole marketing pitch provide a road map for how companies develop.
A lead generation marketing agency is imperative to any effective content strategy. A ‘lead’ is a prospective customer or someone who might be interested in your company.
A successful content strategy requires lead generation. In other words, if you want to grow your brand forever, finding the right lead generation services is a big step forward.
What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation means drawing the attention of potential new customers. These potential customers are well-positioned to purchase the company’s products, but for various reasons, they are currently not buying.
Finding these prospective customers is the first step in lead generation.
An intimate knowledge of your target audience is critical in identifying leads. Your product’s nature and the financial position of your target audience will be crucial in determining whether or not they are a good fit for you.
Weak leads should not be disregarded, but lead generation calls for management and prioritization.
Lead generation is specific to the industry and company in question. Fortunately, consumers and businesses have become more connected thanks to the internet.
These aspects of the online marketplace make it easier for people to do research on products and services, as well as for businesses to research consumers. As a result, lead generation services are extremely important for companies seeking to grow today.
Reasons to Hire a Lead Generation Marketing Agency
Having an external company provide lead generation services can greatly benefit your brand. A lead generation marketing agency can greatly increase your operational efficiency.
With lead generation agencies, you can focus on developing and providing your products and services. Lead gen agencies are composed of experts who generate leads that align with your brand’s objectives.
Small businesses may not have the resources to divert toward lead generation themselves. Employing a lead generation agency means that you can keep your full attention on developing and delivering your products and services while someone else focuses on lead generation.
Bringing a lead generation agency on board guarantees you’ll be able to generate solid leads. Finding new clients is often a significant component of a company’s cash flow, thus directly impacting your success.
An excellent lead generation company will also source clients that remain loyal to your company.
The Advantages of Lead Generation
An established business looking to build a strong customer base should look into lead generation services. Lead generation ensures that views and clicks become paying customers. There are other long-term advantages to marketing with a lead generation agency:
Building brand awareness.
Creating engaging inbound marketing content that carries your company name can boost product and service sales. Having a following of your own can be a source of leads.
Increasing the size of your target audience.
Your business may have begun with a clear audience in mind, but that audience may change over time. Your product demands may be hidden among new groups of people or sectors. Lead generation agencies can help you learn about your new prospects and market trends.
Customer feedback.
There is nothing as important as getting insights straight from your customers. They let you know about themselves, your products, what they need from you, and the customer satisfaction level. Having customers leave reviews doubles the amount of proven product value as well as lead generation. 98% of customers refer to online reviews for local business recommendations.
Automation
You can use software to boost lead generation efforts and increase efficiency. Automation increases the sales cycle speed and salespeople can concentrate on high-qualified leads. It also empowers companies to track their progress and make necessary adjustments to their sales strategies. If you don’t want to do it on your own, you can use agencies like Get Going In Business to help you automate leads.
How Lead Generation Helps Boost Online Presence
An effective lead-generation marketing agency will use various types of online marketing content that work together to help you achieve your goals.
Having a diverse range of content for your business results in a strong online presence. Because social media platforms rely on views, clicks, likes, etc., having a robust online customer base directly feeds into lead generation. A properly optimized business will guarantee its ease of discovery.
Why Choose Us?
At Get Going in Business, we are an online lead generation company with decades of experience. We are committed to serving your needs by helping you automate the lead generation process and do so with care.
Knowledge and experience to assist you in reaching your target audience. We offer lead generation services that are tailored to your needs. Our team consists of experienced professionals in content creation.
Get Going in Business can help you achieve maximum brand exposure in digital spaces. We are well-versed in how to succeed there. Digital spaces are becoming increasingly oversaturated, but by partnering with us you’ll receive the benefit of a professional lead generation company and stand out from the crowd.
