Lead generation – it’s the lifeblood of any business, because if you aren’t doing anything to generate new business, well, it wouldn’t be long until you no longer have a business. And did you know that 80% of marketers feel their lead generation efforts are only slightly effective? We want to change that, so here are a few B2B lead generation tactics we use when it comes to marketing.

Local SEO

According to WordStream, 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles. This is extremely important not only from a B2C perspective but also in a B2B landscape because if you’re a business that only works locally it makes sense to only target other local businesses. Let’s say you run a company in Toronto that offers shared co-working spaces to other organizations – you want to optimize your site and search efforts around people who are looking for a shared co-working space in Toronto or the GTA; it would be unlikely that anyone living in Kingston would be interested in what you have to offer.

Blogging

Blogging and content marketing, in general, are useful lead generation tactics because they help to establish your organization as a thought leader and it shows that you bring value to your readers. There’s even statistics to show that this works: HubSpot found that companies who published 16+ blog posts in a month got around 3.5x more traffic than companies only publishing 0-4 blogs a month.
 
Blogging is also important from an SEO perspective because the more content you write that’s geared around your potential customer’s pain points, the more likely it is that your potential customers will find through a Google search.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is very helpful for B2B lead generation, and LinkedIn is the most appropriate network for this kind of content because it’s the social media platform that’s actually aimed at networking professionals. In fact, content consumption has increased by 21% in the past two years on LinkedIn.
 
LinkedIn can also be a very effective place to advertise for B2B marketers because it allows you to specifically target a select group of individuals. Do you only want CFOs who work at organizations in the GTA with more than 100 employees to see your advertisement? That can be done with LinkedIn.

Email Marketing

Think email is dead? Think again, and that’s because email gives $38 in ROI for every $1 spent. Email marketing still offers a personalized way for brands to connect with targets, and newsletters are a great way to stay top of mind with your leads. It shouldn’t come as news that not every lead who comes your way will be ready to buy the instant they find your solution. Some leads need time and nurturing in order to convert into buyers, but if the time comes where they’re ready to commit to purchasing and they forget about your organization because they haven’t heard from you in a while, there’s a chance they choose to buy from one of your competitors instead. Email marketing offers a personalized way to keep in touch with your leads while making sure they remember who you are when they reach the point of purchase.
 
Just don’t forget to optimize those emails for mobile, as two-thirds of email are read on smartphones or tablets.

Video

Video is the new kid on the block, and it has the ability to engage your leads in a very meaningful way because you can get across so much information in such a concise amount of time. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, while a one-minute video is worth 1.8 million words. Do you realize how long it would take to write a 2-million-word blog, let alone read it? That’s like reading the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy four times. And remember how I mentioned it could engage your leads? Consider this – 55% of people consume video content thoroughly, which means more than half of the people watching your video are consuming the entire thing. When was the last time you read a blog without skimming over a section or two?
 
Still not convinced lead generation can work for you? Here’s some proof that content marketing for B2B is effective.