Are you struggling to get better b2b lead generation results? Don’t worry, b2b lead generation is something we have all struggled with and like everything else, you will get better at it with time and practice. Others always talk about the problem of closing b2b leads. The issue is that most of us wished we had the problem of closing b2b leads because most of us are struggling to even fill up the sales funnel with leads. How are you going to get better b2b lead generation results if you don’t even have a sales funnel filled up with b2b leads? In this article, we will discuss the ten ways to get better b2b lead generation results.

Our 10 B2B Lead Generation Strategies that Work

1. Networking on Shapr (How We Got a 1,000% ROI From Shapr)

Shapr is a powerful new app that every business professional needs. You can think of it as Tinder for networking, and it generates business like a charm. We have already generated $10,000 worth of business from Shapr over the last 6 months. In order to achieve the same results, follow this easy three-step process:

1. Set up your profile for conversions with a compelling bio. Here is what mine says:

“Text me about our two most recent use cases:

1. How we increased the market cap of a company by $3 million in a week
2. How we generated 1,000 email subscriptions in two days

I’d love to share our marketing process with you. (206) 920-4990.”

1. Have a compelling logline for your header. Mine says “Top 1% Ranked LinkedIn Influencer at Twiz.io”
2. Target the appropriate hashtags that will get you more qualified individuals. I can’t tell you how many times I see profiles on Shapr where they are targeting hashtags THEY are interested in and not what their LEADS are interested in. If you are using Shapr for generating business, then you need to use hashtags as a filter to sort through who you see.

With all of this in mind, I highly suggest upgrading to Shapr Plus. For only $10 a month, this feature is the best return on investment of any app to generate b2b leads. Twiz has spent around $100 on Shapr over the last six months and it has generated us $10,000 in revenue.

The features that are included are the following: teleport and boost. Teleport allows you to network with individuals in any city you want too. This is how I get consistent business leads in Los Angeles while in Seattle. Boost profile allows your profile to be seen by people at a higher frequency than when unboosted. This is pretty self-explanatory and increases the number of leads you generate per day.

2. Sales Navigator for Referrals

This is one of the most fun ways to get better b2b lead generation results, and business professionals still don’t fully utilize sales navigator to its full potential. If you’ve heard of BAMF Media, this is essentially how they started generating business.

For Twiz, we have generated $4,000 in month to month contracts from LinkedIn, and we are just getting warmed up. So to start using Sales Navigator, you’ll first want to sign up for the free 30-day free trial (if you haven’t already). This will allow you to learn the platform, and, more importantly, start connecting with your ideal customer persona. Then what you do is create a saved list of people who meet criteria for you client persona.

After you’ve created this saved list, you’ll be able to message those people daily asking to connect. If you have a very good looking LinkedIn profile, then you will probably get a connection acceptance rate of about 50%. This will allow you to grow your LinkedIn profile with high-quality connections of—and here’s the important part—people that are actually within your client demographic and HIGHLY likely to convert.

Just keep in mind that you don’t message accounts more than 100 times a day, because LinkedIn could flag you as spam and disabled your account. Here is the copy I used to get meetings with a New York Times bestselling author, CEOs of 200 plus person companies, and more:

“Hey <first name>, I’m a scrappy growth hacker that came across your profile while looking for people related startups on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with hopes of learning more about your marketing success.”

I suggest implementing a similar type of copy for yourself. The main thing is to be transparent and to let people know that you want to talk about business. When you come across as shady, people will not want to connect with you.

3. Conference hacking to get better B2B lead generation

One of the best ways to get better b2b lead generation results is by utilizing unique strategies at conferences. For every two conferences we attend, we close one deal. Our company, Twiz, was started by landing six clients from Startupgrind. Landing these 6 deals from Startupgrind provided us enough revenue to bootstrap our business and take the next steps necessary to incorporate and become a legitimized company.

Here is our conference hacking strategy that we’ve incorporated to maximize our b2b lead generation results.

• Do not enter any speaker presentations.
• Stay away from any exits or network.
• Zigzag around groups listening for buzzwords.
• Join conversations with an odd number of people in a group.
• Facilitate introductions within the event

4. Hosting Events

Zig Ziglar once said, “if people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” This is probably most important in B2B selling. We believe so, because about 50% of your job is client management. While you also have to execute on the deliverables, people have to also see you as an authority figure who is the best of the best in their space.

I’ll use an apt analogy to explain this. Would you trust a child to take care of your baby, or would you trust a Navy Seal who could care for your baby with his eyes closed? I would much prefer the later. So by hosting events, you can build up credibility, become THE go-to person in your space, and generate enormous business opportunities.

We recommend starting something small and growing it steadily over time. For example, the popular entrepreneurship event in Los Angeles that we host, Founders Live, was first started as a small event in Seattle called Feature Fridays. Every Friday, a small group of entrepreneurs would come together to watch a handful of startups pitch their company. Because this was a pursuit of passion more than anything, the Founders Live team got to understand their value proposition and work out an MVP. Over time, it has morphed into the company you see today and is spreading like wildfire. This is because Nick Hughes, the CEO of Founders Live, understands exactly what the market wants and is providing it for him.

Nick has become an influencer in Seattle and abroad, where almost everyone in the city knows his name. That is the kind of brand recognition that hosting an event can give your company. It has worked wonders for Twiz as well because every month we generate new business leads from the events we host in Los Angeles.

More and more people know the Twiz brand because we are associated with Founders Live and Amazon (the events sponsor). So we recommend starting your own event, even if its something small at first, and watching it grow over time. It can only help you. If you don’t have the time to start your own event, do not hesitate to host one yourself.

5. LinkedIn Influencer

Lucas Capestany, CEO of Twiz, ranks in the top 1% of digital marketers on LinkedIn. We’ve determined this based on the score LinkedIn provides to rate influencers—the social selling index. This index ranks you on a number of factors and can be critically important to how much business you generate from LinkedIn. See the image below to see an example of Lucas’:

The reason why you want to become an influencer on LinkedIn first, before trying to become one on other platforms, is because LinkedIn is the number one social media platform for business professionals. Your ability to target potential clients on LinkedIn blows away every other social media platform. How do you become a LinkedIn influencer? It’s pretty simple. Here’s our step-by-step guide:

1. Start conversations with every person you’re connected to on LinkedIn.
2. Make a list of 10 micro influencers that post frequently.
3. Comment, like, and share their most valuable content.
4. Create content similar to the influencers you follow.
5. Add users who frequently engage with your content in a group.

6. FB lead forms to generate b2b leads passively

If you’re looking for consistency and don’t have the time or knowledge to build landing pages to capture information then FB lead forms is a great b2b lead generation tactic. If you have no budget, then we do not recommend testing this out.

To run an effective Facebook Ads campaign, it will probably cost $300 to $1,000 before you hit the right target audience with the right message. It’s not unheard of to pay up to $10 to $15 per lead at the beginning of a lead form campaign, but with the proper time, testing, and optimization you can easily get it under to $5 a day.

With a $10 budget a day, you can expect 1 lead a day or every other day. It’s not unheard of to get leads for less than $2 a day. When creating a lead form, we request their e-mail, phone number, and name. The best part is that Facebook automatically populates the fields based on the fields a user is using. If you have an e-book or some kind of content you can provide in exchange for their information, it would reduce the cost per lead significantly.

For one of our clients, we got the cost per lead down to $1.65. The way we did this was to point out a very clear pain point to your target audience and clear statement on why you’re the right person to solve this for them. The image for the ad is extremely important as well. Make sure you use images that are bright that resembles happiness. Lately, we’ve been testing cute animals making funny facial expressions in the environment.

7. Initiate a Referral Program for Clients and Friends

Growth Hacking is a methodology built on viral-loops from referral programs. Referral marketing yields one of the highest return on investments of any marketing strategy. This is because you are more likely to make a buying decision based off a trusted recommendation. So to create a strong referral program for your business, you will need to divide your network into two distinct categories, clients, and friends. This is important because each category will be offered a different incentive based on their relationship with your business.

Let’s break this down. For Twiz, we’ve found amazing success offering our clients a 10% discount on their next month of services if we close a client they refer to us. As you can imagine, this gets them excited to help us, because they are then able to save money. We’ve generated business this way, and it seems to lead to a steady stream of referrals.

Secondly, you will want to appropriately incentive friends in your network to create what I call your “referral engine.” This is the best kind of referral network you can create, in my opinion, because it allows you to reach a warm audience on a massive scale. What you can do to generate more B2B leads this way is to offer a reward for your friends if a lead they refer to you closes.

We typically offer a range of reward offerings between $100 to $300 depending on the individual. This is because, some individuals may have a more established network and, therefore, higher quality referrals for your business. Now, you may be asking yourself, why do I need to incentivize my friends to refer my business to other people?

The simple answer is because your friends are busy people, just like you. Even though they are the best people to refer you to new clients, you may not always be at the top of their mind for them. That is why you have to sweeten the pot a little bit to get them to share business with you more often. Just remember, provide value first and then value will be provided back to you.

8. Take on free clients for Case Studies

This is quite possibly the number one marketing strategy for b2b lead generation for new businesses. Especially if you run your own business or are in the services industry. This is because there is so much competition nowadays. Not only are you competing with other businesses in your home country, but you are competing with people from around the globe for the same clients. To highlight the issue, I like to say that your competition is only a click away.

But, you should not fear, for if your company has a weak resume then you can still find pro bono clients to show some tangible experience to new prospects. This is what we did here at Twiz, and it has worked like a charm. At first, potential new clients were sounding the alarm at our lack of experience, so what did we do? We spent months crafting case studies and use cases taking on pro bono work for high-quality clients. By associating ourselves with successful brands as their marketing company, and driving results for them, we were able to prove legitimacy and land more deals.

As a side note, we recommend treating the process of landing pro bono clients the same as landing a paid client. Meaning, you don’t want to treat it as something you don’t put a lot of thought into. There is nothing in this world that is entirely free.

9. Create a private group or community

Authority, authority, authority. Honestly, if I could write an entire page filled with just that word I would, so I could highlight the significance of it for your business. It actually took me a while to realize why authority was so important for a business. This is because I couldn’t piece together why businesses who sell to other businesses provide content for their competitors.

For example, Gary Vee gives away many free tips on marketing, and his audience consists of thousands of digital marketers. Doesn’t this mean that he is weakening his value proposition by diluting the proprietary information of his firm? While this is what I thought at first, I came to realize that it is actually a brilliant marketing strategy.

It’s brilliant because your potential new clients start to see you as the best of the best. And, when you are making a purchase decision, don’t you want to buy the highest quality possible. Of course, there are times in our lives where cheap is actually better—think Wall Mart—but when you are about to make an investment into a new B2B vendor you want top notch. Therefore, when you as a service provider create a community that seeks to benefit other service providers in your niche, you are establishing authority and making it more likely for people to reach out and hire you.

10. Target your leads in sales funnel with Ads

If you have b2b leads booked or leads in your funnel that you’re trying to close then you’re pretty close to the end. Here are a few problems with the leads in the sales funnel:

• It’s hard to get a hold of them.
• A meeting is a few weeks from now.
• They’re getting quotes from other industries.

To maximize the effects of your b2b lead generation, you will need to make multiple touches before you get a response and even more so before you close the deal. What we do for all leads in our sales funnel is run a retargeting campaign on FB showing branded ads to them. We also add them on LinkedIn and request to add them to our FB or LinkedIn marketing group. After all these touches they will remember you.

Afterthoughts on Lead Gen

While this may sound odd, we sometimes find effective B2B marketing strategies by thinking like a B2C company. When your business is client facing and embraces exposure, you are going to generate more leads. Plain and simple. I can’t tell you how many times a B2B company comes to us asking how they can generate more business online.

Almost every time, the answer lies in them becoming more available to the community. This could come in the form of becoming an influencer on LinkedIn, creating a private group or community, etc. You get the picture, as we described some highly effective approaches throughout this article.

So at the end of the day, do not be afraid to think outside of the box, get your hands dirty, and constantly experiment. Lead generation is not a one-off thing, it must continue to be cultivated. Now that you have the tools to increase the number of leads your B2B business generates, I can’t wait to see you apply them. Make sure to let us know of your progress by leaving a comment below. We would love to see if these strategies have been as successful for you as they have been for us.

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