Online Lead Generation: A Guide for B2B Owners & Marketers
Online Lead Generation: A Guide for B2B Owners & Marketers Table of Contents Introduction 21 Key Research Findings About Lead Gen The Role of Lead Generation in Inbound Marketing. What s an Online Lead? Critical Pieces of Online Lead Generation & Lead Generation Campaigns TOFU, MOFU, BOFU Tying Offers to the Sales Process.. Fresh Research, Insights and Observations About B2B Lead Generation About Vitberg LLC.. 1 2 3 4 5 8 10 12
Introduction The Fight for Leads and New Business Has Never Been Greater It s likely that 80% or more of your new business is rooted in the network of contacts and referral sources that you ve built over the years. 1:1 marketing - socializing and building relationships with people who can refer business to you and vice versa is the one approach that s more powerful than virtually every other lead generation strategy and tactic combined. Most of the leads that you get this way are toward the middle or the end of the sales funnel and are sales ready. If you have all of the leads and new business that you can possibly handle from this approach, then this whitepaper is not for you. But if you re looking to grow your top line with more leads, here s what you ll learn in this whitepaper: Online lead generation will be a major focus of your company s marketing effort in the years to come A fundamental part of inbound marketing is making your website work smarter and harder to convert visitors to into leads There are a number of working pieces to online lead generation, and you ll need to decide if this is the right strategy for your company given requirements for commitment and resources Lead generation and customer acquisition occurs in different stages. We ll review different types of offers for lead generation that need to be developed and keyed to different parts of your prospect s buying process You will need budget and other resources to do online lead generation that can most likely come from current, ineffective marketing programs We re not looking to convince you to replace 1:1 marketing; we want to convince you that adding resources, technology and commitment to a program of online lead generation will result in more web site traffic, more leads, and more new business for your company. 1
21 Key Research Findings About Lead Generation 1. Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. (Source: InsideSales.com) 2. More than a quarter of all B2B sales cycles take seven months or more to close. (Source: Harvard University and Gallup) 3. 90% of business buyers say when they re ready to buy, they ll find you. (Source: DemandGen Report) 4. 50% of marketing leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy. (Source: Gleanster Research) 5. 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Lack of lead nurturing is the common cause of this poor performance. (Source: MarketingSherpa) 6. 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified. (Source: MarketingSherpa) 7. Just 56% of B2B organizations verify valid business leads before they are passed to Sales. (Source: MarketingSherpa) 8. Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (Source: DemandGen Report) 9. Just 16% of B2B marketers are producing mobile-specific content as part of their content marketing efforts. (Source: Smart Insights) 10. 57% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on their lead generation goals. (Source: Mindjumpers) 11. 49% of B2B marketers confess to not measuring ROI. (Source: The B2B Barometer) 12. 93% of business buyers use search to begin the buying process. (Source: Marketo) 13. 64% of marketers indicate that email is their most important digital marketing tool. (Source: BtoB Magazine) 14. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Source: Forrester Research) 15. Companies with mature lead generation and management practices have a 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate. (Source: CSO Insights) 16. More than two thirds (68%) of companies report struggling with lead generation. (Source: Lattice Engines/CSO Insights) 17. Only 27% of B2B leads are sales-ready when first generated. (Source: MarketingSherpa) 18. Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales. (Source: Gleanster Research) 19. 57% of B2B organizations identify 'converting qualified leads into paying customers' as a top funnel priority. (Source: MarketingSherpa) 20. Only 19% of CMOs identify improving database hygiene as a top strategic priority for lead generation activity. (Source: MarketingSherpa) 21. 17% of marketers spend 15+ hours a week on lead generation. (Source: Marketing Charts) 2
The Role of Lead Generation in Inbound Marketing Most B2B companies spend their marketing budget on outbound marketing to reach suspects. Outbound marketing, also known as traditional marketing, targets a broad audience using print ads, trade shows, telemarketing/cold calls, direct mail/e-mail, etc. Companies push their messages outward in the hopes that it will trigger a response in the form of a contact. The Inbound Marketing Methodology There s a different and new way of getting more ROI from your company s investment in marketing and business development: inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a new approach to business development. It s based upon moving away from pushing messages to pulling suspects and prospects into a relationship. Inbound marketing involves implanting strategies and tactics for: 1. "Getting found first" by potential customers who are searching on-line for solutions to their needs or problems, 2. Converting those who have found the company into a new relationship with offers that produce leads 3. Nurturing those leads over time to build a relationship and convert them into a customer, and 4. Continually monitoring and measuring results to refine tactics in order to deliver more ROI. The role of lead generation in inbound marketing happens primarily when an eyeball reaches your website. At that point, instead of having them make a quick visit and exit, we want to put different types of offers, like a hot-to guide or checklist, in front of our visitors that requires them to fill out a form in order to get a redemption of the offer. In the world of inbound marketing, a completed form is a lead. Learn more about inbound marketing. Get The Manufacturer s Guide to Inbound Marketing here. 3
What is an ONLINE Lead? Let s start our journey into lead generation by defining a few terms. In the online universe, a lead is any individual who has responded to an offer your company has made. In order to convert someone from a prospect to a lead, they must take an action to make contact with your company. This comes from filling out a form on your website. Once that prospect completes a form, they re entered into a database, and then over time are sent a series of emails to deepen the relationship. Of course, the ultimate goal is conversion to a client. There s an important reason to use this definition: most digital marketing analytic software products considers a lead in this fashion, and builds their metrics and conversion statistics platform around this use of the term. B2B companies may not be left with a choice as to whether or not to do inbound marketing and online lead generation. It s rapidly becoming a must have for doing new business, so the only choices are when you ll commit and what you ll promote. 4
Critical Pieces of Lead Generation and Lead Generation Campaigns There are 10 must have pieces for online lead generation: Pain Issue/Need Lead generation campaigns need to be centered on a compelling pain point or issue faced by your prospects. Items like saving money; increasing productivity; getting a competitive edge; operational thorns that are impacting top or bottom line performance; or micro or macro economic trends that are keeping prospects or clients up at night are just a few examples of the types of issues that can be used to build a campaign. The Offer There are basically three types of offers you can present to prospects, each keyed to different parts of the buying process: TOFU, or top of the funnel offers designed to deliver education and awareness; MOFU or middle of the funnel offers designed to tie the education process to your company s qualifications; and BOFU, or bottom of the funnel offers designed as one of the last steps for converting a lead into a client. (We will discuss these in further detail later in this whitepaper). The Device Offers need to be packaged into a device, like a how-to whitepaper, seminar, ebook, report, etc. Each type of device you might consider comes with its own unique set of logistical requirements (i.e. where do I get the content and who s going to write the whitepaper?), and each will have indirect/ resource and possibly direct costs. Also, different types of offers (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU) will use different types of devices. 5
Critical Pieces of Lead Generation and Lead Generation Campaigns (cont ) Database Lead generation involves both on-website and off-website promotion (outbound) to reach eyeballs for conversion to leads. A critical and challenging part of lead gen success is having a large and accurate database of prospects, with e-mail addresses, that represent opportunities to promote your offer and device. List segmentation is an important part of the lead generation process. Basically, segmentation involves slicing and dicing your email database into various segments and tailoring the content in your emails to those individual groups of contacts. Because your company s prospects are at different points in the sales cycle, or have different interests based upon their role in their company or organization, the objective of list segmentation is to reach the right prospect at the right time with the right message. Call-to-Action Buttons Essentially, a call to action, or CTA, is a banner, button, or some type of graphic or text on a website meant to prompt a user to click it and continue down a conversion funnel. It is an essential part of inbound marketing as well as permission marketing in that it actively strives to convert a user into a lead and later into a customer. Landing Pages Your lead gen efforts need infrastructure for lead acquisition and capture. This is done through constructing a landing page in the background of your website where you can capture an eyeball s contact information and start the process of generating lead tracking and conversion metrics. One of the best tools to accommodate this is a software program called HubSpot. Off-site promotion There are a variety of paid and non-paid media tactics you ll want to consider and integrate into your campaign. These include paid e-advertising like Linked In and Google Ad words, or banner adverting; and non-paid tactics like promotion of your offer through your social media accounts or your e-newsletter. The centerpiece of off-site promotion should be e-mail it s relatively inexpensive and produces the first set of metrics you ll want to employ for measuring ROI. 6
Critical Pieces of Lead Generation and Lead Generation Campaigns (cont ) Metrics and analysis A significant part of the transformation in professional services marketing is based on the quantity and quality of metrics that can be easily acquired. You ll not only want to measure things like quantity of leads secured through the campaign, but also, conversion metrics like visits to leads, landing page effectiveness, and the effectiveness of the various tactics you ve deployed for promoting the offer. Lead Nurturing and Automation - Since it s likely that most leads you acquire through your campaigns will not be sales ready, you ll want to consider including a lead nurturing strategy as part of the campaign planning process. You may need 3 or more touches before a lead is sales ready, and with the marketing technology that s available today, this process can be automated and virtually hands-free. 10 Marketing Technology There are a number of costs associated with online lead generation, including those for securing the right technology. You ll want to consider using some type of marketing technology, like HubSpot s all-in-one software that can help with the creation of CTA buttons, landing pages, email, automating the lead nurturing process, producing data for analyzing results, and more. Companies are also turning to CRM products like SalesForce and Microsoft Dynamics to help with implementing and keeping track of prospect interactions. If you are interested in learning more about HubSpot, click here. 7
TOFU, MOFU, BOFU Tying Offers to the Sales Process By now, you ve probably got the message that offers on your website like Contact Us or Subscribe to Our Newsletter just aren t enough to get the most value out of your website you need a variety of different offers convert a visitor into a lead. One of the key rule of thumb of contemporary online lead generation is people that come to your website may not be ready to make a purchase. But while some visitors may be looking for information, others may be closer to looking for a solution to an issue or problem they have, or a company to solve that problem. So what we need to do is to address each stage of the sales funnel with quality offers that focus on our prospects and what they may want to have at each stage of the buying process. 8
TOFU, MOFU, BOFU Tying Offers to the Sales Process (cont ) Top of the Funnel Offers (TOFU) are designed to convert a site visitor to a lead using valuable educational not advertorial content. Offers for items such as whitepapers, checklists, guides and so forth will not only give your company an opportunity to showcase its thought leadership, but also, to collect prospect names and other contact information via a completed form. You ll get lots of tire kickers for TOFU offers, but it s a necessary part of the qualification and nurturing process. Middle of the Funnel Offers (MOFU) represents a next, evolutionary stage in developing a relationship with a prospect, while at the same time qualifying them at deeper and more meaningful levels. A MOFU offer is built upon the premise that a prospect with an identified problem will now turn to looking for solutions to that problem. To influence prospects at this stage of the sales cycle, our offers may come in the form of case studies, webcasts, solution comparison whitepapers, and so forth. Again, we ll use a CTA, and a landing page with a form to go after these conversions. Bottom of the Funnel Offers (BOFU) are intended to reach those prospects at the stage of the buying cycle where they will be making decisions about vendors. Here, our offers may be along the lines of a demo, trial, free consultation, or a submit your RFP. This is the point at which educating a prospect about an issue stops, and educating them about your company takes center stage. 9
Fresh Research, Insights & Observations About B2B Lead Generation Biggest Lead Generation Challenges for B2B Companies: Source: IDG Enterprise: B2B Lead Generation Marketing Trends, 2013 Survey Results Most Effective Lead Generation Tactic for B2B Companies: Source: IDG Enterprise: B2B Lead Generation Marketing Trends, 2013 Survey Results 10
Greatest Barriers to B2B Lead Generation Success: Source: IDG Enterprise: B2B Lead Generation Marketing Trends, 2013 Survey Results B2B Lead Generation Budgets Source: IDG Enterprise: B2B Lead Generation Marketing Trends, 2013 Survey Results 11
About Vitberg LLC Vitberg LLC was founded upon the belief that B2B companies don t get enough ROI from their investment in marketing and business development. We re focused on business development and top line growth for our clients. Our services are a combination of strategy and creative executions: Develop marketing plans, strategies and tactics Websites built on strategy, designed for lead generation, created for impact SEO strategies and tactics for helping companies get found first Tune marketing budgets for more ROI Convert website visitors to leads Content marketing whitepapers, articles, case studies and more Make social media a new business tool Bring companies into the new world of marketing analytics Design lead nurturing strategies Fill sales pipelines with dynamic and measureable lead generation campaigns Put blogs and blogging strategies into place Visit our website or call us at (585) 425-2552 to discuss your inbound marketing, internet marketing or content marketing needs. 12