Philip Lombardi

B2B Lead Generation: 5 Effective Strategies for 2019 and Beyond Generating leads is important for essentially every type of business. We have our methods for doing so, but they are often based on the trends of the time. Rather than focusing on the present, it’s good practice to focus on what strategies will be effective in the following years. This will set your business up for long-term success and keep you from wasting money on strategies that are doomed to become short-lived. With that in mind, here are 5 effective strategies you can use for B2B lead generation for both 2019 and beyond. Update Your SEO Practices One method for generating leads that has been effective for the past several years, and will remain effective through 2019 and beyond, is Search Engine Optimization (or SEO). Search engines have become the primary way we gather information and if you want other businesses to find you online, you need to appear at the top of the search results. However, search engines routinely change the way they determine their rankings, so if you haven’t modified how you optimize your website, now is the time. Primarily, you should focus on producing high-quality content on your website’s blog. This provides several benefits, one of which is creating more entryways for people to find your website on search engines. Become a Thought Leader in Your Niche The next thing you should focus on is your reputation within your niche. Different marketing strategies will go in and out of fashion but being a leader within your industry will benefit you no matter what. You want to be an authority on your topic and there are several ways you can do this. Write high quality articles and have them published on as many websites as possible. Host webinars. Give talks at conventions. Produce eBooks or white papers. Do anything you can to get your name out there and show other businesses that you know what you’re talking about. Become More Conversational on Your Website Even though we’ve adapted to do a lot of our business online, people still like to feel that they are interacting with another human being. Therefore, you should focus on becoming more conversational on your website. A great way to do this is by introducing a chat bot. You’ve probably seen chat bots by now, but if you haven’t, here’s how they work: A window appears on your website, allowing visitors to chat with a representative. This representative is typically a programmed bot, but in some cases, you can hire a team to run it. With this chat box visitors to your website can ask questions or gather information that perhaps isn’t readily available on your website. It gives your visitors a sense that they are talking with someone, rather than just reading information off a page. Focus on Word of Mouth Sometimes the best marketing methods are the oldest, just with a more modern approach. Word of mouth is perhaps the oldest form of marketing, and for good reason. If you provide quality products or services, your customers will want to tell others about you, generating you more leads. However, you don’t have to rely on people chatting over dinner anymore. With social media, your customers can now talk about you with millions of other people, all with just a few clicks of their mouse. Social media is poised to remain one of the most effective tools for marketing your business, so if you’re not already utilizing it, get started as soon as you can. Social media allows you to interact with past customers, answer questions from potential customers, and just generally promote your business to anyone who might be interested. The great thing about social media is you can operate it on any scale that you want. It could be a tool that is a small part of your overall strategy, or you could hire a social media marketing campaign to run larger campaigns. It’s up to you and your budget, but regardless, having social media be a part of your marketing strategy is a wise decision going into 2019 and beyond. Optimizing Your Conversions Finally, no B2B lead generation strategy is complete without some form of conversion optimization. The key to any effective marketing strategy is to always look for ways to improve. The way you do this is by testing new tactics, measuring the results, and then adjusting. If you don’t have a system in place to optimize your conversions, you should put one in place to set yourself up for 2019 and beyond. Track how many people visit a page on your website and how many of them convert into sales. Then make a change on that page and measure the difference in results. Split testing is a great method to use here, as it allows you to easily test out new things. Once you find a change that works, stick with it, then try something else. Never rest on good enough - make it a habit to always look for new things to try or new ways to improve. No matter how marketing strategies change around you, having a system in place to optimize your conversions will always provide a benefit. Plan for Long Term Success It’s hard to plan for how the world will change in the coming years. New technologies might emerge that completely transform the way we do business. That’s why you need to focus on marketing strategies that set you up for long-term success, no matter how the world may change. This means developing a solid reputation for you and your business, spreading word on popular sites that are likely to be around for a long time, changing how you interact with potential customers, and putting a system in place that helps you to keep improving. If you can do this, your lead generation abilities will be well situated for not just 2019, but for many years to come.