Most brand marketing aims to achieve two goals: generate leads and convert them to paying customers. Conversions are crucial, but the first — and arguably most important — step is to engage interested consumers and convince them to give you their attention. Without that, you’ll never have a chance to convert them.

Business-to-business (B2B) lead generation requires a thoughtful, measured approach to content, marketing, and relationship management. To ensure you’re making the most of every interaction, you need a concrete process for generating and qualifying your B2B leads. Thankfully, there are some tried-and-true techniques that can lead you to success.

B2B lead generation: An overview

B2B lead generation is about getting the attention of businesses you intend to market to and, eventually, convert to paying customers. It’s an initial step in the B2B sales funnel that involves introducing your brand to other businesses in the hopes that their employees and executives will subscribe to your newsletter, opt in to your email campaigns, or read your blog.

As with any lead generation strategy, B2B lead generation focuses on collecting potential clients’ information, such as their names and contact information. You’ll use that data to cultivate a relationship with them through personalized ad campaigns and unique sales pitches.

Understanding B2B leads

B2B leads differ from business-to-consumer (B2C) leads because they’re a collective audience of professionals (like a company’s executives) rather than individual customers. So, strategies effective in B2C lead generation, like social media ads targeting individual preferences, often fall short in B2B contexts.

Instead, B2B lead generation benefits more from approaches like customer referrals, where satisfied customers recommend services to their peers, and content marketing, which provides valuable industry insights and establishes thought leadership.

Your B2B leads will fall into two categories based on how active they are and where they are in your sales funnel. Classifying your leads into these types helps you determine which actions you should take to convert them.

Marketing-qualified leads

Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) are passively interested businesses that your marketing team indicates are potential buyers. These leads are generated when the marketing team notices that company-specific email addresses like “@microsoft.com” or “@wdc.com” are signing up for mailing lists or downloading content. This indicates that employees — and perhaps decision-makers — are exploring your product.

Sales-qualified leads

Sales-qualified leads, or SQLs, are businesses or teams actively engaging with your product. Perhaps they’re using your free trial or reached out to schedule a demo. SQLs are a higher priority than MQLs because they’re already interested in your offering. They’ve spent time and effort researching your product and determined it valuable enough to consider. Your job then becomes answering their questions and satisfying their expectations.

The B2B lead generation process

From beginning to end, B2B lead generation requires informing your audience about what your offering can do for their business. Here’s a detailed process for generating B2B leads.

1. Target the audience

Your first step in developing a B2B lead generation process is identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP). ICPs are like buyer personas — but ICPs are typically used for companies, while buyer personas are used for individual buyers. Rather than targeting tech early adopters, for instance, your ICP could be a web development studio.

An ICP should outline the types of companies that would benefit most from your product and are most likely to buy it. For example, if you’re marketing a project management software, you could target startups or established businesses changing their workflows. You wouldn’t target businesses that use proprietary project management software like Google.

2. Create compelling content

Compelling content is the cornerstone of every marketing campaign, but it looks slightly different for B2B marketing. Rather than enticing a customer to buy or subscribe to a product, B2B marketers convince leads that a product suits their business needs and inform them how to advocate for this offering to their peers. They typically use whitepapers, B2B email campaigns, and video tutorials to achieve this.

3. Capture and qualify leads

Your compelling content should always end with a call to action (CTA) that directs potential leads to sign up for your mailing list, take a free trial, or schedule a demo. After they’ve done that, you can learn more about them to discover their level of interest.

For example, if you’re marketing remote team collaboration software, you might create a whitepaper with a CTA that directs users to schedule a demo. During the demo, the sales team can ask why the person is interested and what they think the software will do for their business. You can then use that information to prioritize them in your marketing strategy and perhaps select them to start an account-based marketing campaign.

4. Engage and convert

Now that you’ve enticed and prioritized a few leads, you can deploy marketing strategies to convert them to clients. Use what you’ve learned about them to tailor your marketing campaigns to address their unique use cases and pain points. If, for instance, a segment of these leads identifies remote access as a common concern, create an email campaign or landing page that describes how your product excels in this area.

8 proven B2B lead generation strategies

Online-first strategies prioritizing search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and digital interactions are now the norm for B2B marketing because that’s what it takes to get noticed. Decision-makers need a comprehensive source of truth about your product, and a B2B website is the best way to achieve that.

Here are eight techniques worth considering when designing your strategy.

1. Content marketing

A 2022 Content Marketing Institute study found that 85% of marketing teams rate content marketing as at least moderately successful in generating leads. Usually, content marketing consists of publishing articles or posts, which 89% of businesses report sharing. What format your enterprise content takes is up to you, but publishing at least some content makes a measurable impact on B2B lead generation.

2. Account-based marketing

Account-based marketing (ABM) strategies involve identifying high-priority prospects and delivering them a tailored experience to gain their business. Typically, this is done through one-on-one email campaigns or prospect-specific landing pages. You can use these tactics to showcase how your product solves one business’s unique pain points.

For example, a time-tracking service might create a landing page marketing to a company that encourages remote work. They could highlight the productivity gains their service leads to and share testimonials from executives in similar businesses who’ve had a great experience with it.

3. Lead magnets

A lead magnet offers potential customers an irresistible incentive in exchange for their contact info, like their name and email address, and maybe some basic info about them, like their company name and industry. For example, free ebooks, early product access, a free trial, and limited-time discounts make great lead magnets. You can offer these lead magnets to leads through pop-up ads, emails, or in-person conferences and meetings.

4. Gated content

Gated content is behind a paywall or another necessary interaction, such as creating an account or filling out a form. Either way, potential clients must give their email addresses, which puts them into your lead funnel, where marketers can assess whether they’re an SQL or MQL. Downloadable ebooks, whitepapers, and research papers are great candidates for gated content.

5. Live chat and chatbots

Website chatbots are a win-win for both parties — you gain site visitor information (because you can request an email address before offering help), and visitors gain real-time help as they navigate your site.

Many tools on the market offer custom chatbots, such as Bird and Freshworks. Use them to create and embed one into your site.

6. Lead generation landing pages

Landing pages describe your product in broad strokes and answer common questions, demonstrate use cases, or show off awards and testimonials. B2B websites typically feature landing pages that focus on product features, solutions, or use cases by industry or field.

In your landing page designs, place CTA buttons throughout the content to direct readers to schedule a demo, set up an account, or sign up for your mailing list. As readers explore what you have to offer, the option to take the next step should remain ever present.

7. Omnichannel publishing

An omnichannel marketing strategy aims to place your content on as many platforms as possible. For example, you can publish excerpts or entire articles on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Medium or reach out to partners to syndicate your content on their sites. Whichever method you use, publishing your content elsewhere creates valuable backlinks to your content and spreads your brand awareness to new audiences.

8. Customer reviews, testimonials, and awards

Your audience is a company’s decision-maker, but they rarely make these decisions alone. Even if you convince them your product is the best option, they must still persuade their peers. Testimonials and awards give leads strong arguments for why their business should use your product. When decision-makers meet to compare options, critical acclaim and glowing reviews help to elevate your product over your competitors.

A tool to generate leads with a click

Your website is the foundation of an effective B2B lead generation strategy, bringing together all the key elements to drive growth. With Webflow, you can build, scale, and maintain your site in one visual-first web experience platform, with features like enterprise-grade security, page branching, and user-specific roles and permissions.

Check out our Customer Stories to see why enterprise businesses are switching to Webflow.