The way that marketers approach a B2B lead generation campaign can vary drastically from the way that they approach a B2C lead generation campaign. Certain techniques are just more suited to appeal to consumers rather than businesses. For this reason, it is particularly important to know your audience. If you are looking to launch a B2B lead generation campaign, you need to be aware of the buying behavior of B2B customers. With this knowledge, you can then craft a winning strategy to generate leads.
B2B Lead Generation: Key Characteristics
In general, there are some key distinctions between lead generation for a B2B campaign and lead generation for a B2C campaign.
- Due to the higher price sticker usually associated with B2B purchases, the sales cycle tends to be longer. For this reason, the sales team is essential to closing a deal and planning is required to ensure that quarterly goals are on track.
- B2B lead generation is typically about pulling the customer through the sales cycle by putting out relevant and attractive content to educate and nurture the lead through the sales funnel. While content can also be pushed out in a B2C lead generation campaign, it is usually more about eliciting a feeling from the audience to push them through the sales funnel.
- Audiences tend to be more specific in a B2B lead generation campaign.
- Tactics like inside sales, email marketing and the company website are some of the most effective for B2B lead generation.
Using B2B Buyer Behavior to Craft a Winning Strategy
Software Advice recently collected and analyzed data from over 6 million unique visitors and published their “2013 Online B2B Buyer Behavior Report”. This report offers a lot of valuable insights into the B2B buying cycle and utilizes its findings to give your inside sales team the best possible chance for success. Let’s break down some of their key findings into two of the typical stages of the buying cycle: converting and closing.
Converting
Among other things, the research looks at conversion rates by month and by day of the week.
Image Credit: Software Advice
The number of people who convert to a lead is highest in the beginning of the year. However, the number of people who are qualified by the sales team peaks in the summer months. This could be attributed to a few factors: the longer buying cycle associated with B2B lead generation, the fact that there are fewer leads coming in during the summer months which allows the sales team more time to nurture the leads or the product itself.
Image Credit: Software Advice
Broken down by week, conversion rates are the highest above average on Wednesdays. Therefore, email campaigns or other inbound/outbound marketing tactics should be launched on a Wednesday to optimize take advantage of the higher conversion rates.
In addition to looking at monthly and weekly trends, the research also breaks down the change in unique visitors to their website (relative to the average) during normal working hours.
Image Credit: Software Advice
This graph suggests that most buyer research takes place in the first half of the day. Furthermore, the highest traffic is seen from 12-2pm CST which perhaps suggests that many buyers do research over their lunch breaks.
Image Credit: Software Advice
A surprising finding was that conversion rates were above average after working hours. Therefore, sending content aimed towards the research phase of the buying cycle might be beneficial during this time so that your leads can still be nurtured even when your sales team is not available.
Closing
Compelling visitors to give you their information and convert to a lead is just the first step in the inbound marketing and sales process. After you’ve converted the visitor to a lead, you must then close them as a customer. The same 2013 Online B2B Buyer Behavior Report by Software Advice found that if they called a lead within 5 seconds of them filling out a form on their website, they found that they qualified the buyer at a rate 30 percent above their average qualification rate.
It is notable to mention that while these findings certainly paint a great picture of the B2B buying behavior, buying trends may vary based on the company and the product being sold. An analysis of your own company’s audience, sales cycle and conversion/qualification trends would be beneficial to gain valuable insights into your B2B lead generation efforts.
The Bottom Line
Understanding your audience is vital to any marketing or lead generation campaign. Once you understand how your buyer behaves, what is important to them, where they spend their time, how best to educate them, etc. you can more effectively plan your B2B (or B2C) lead generation campaign. While the tactics and behaviors may vary, lead generation is lead generation and the overall process is always the same: attract, close, convert and delight.