B2B commercial prospecting can Also, lead generation is a fundamental step in a company's sales process, in digital marketing .

Several methods can be used by your marketers to effectively generate leads if you sell B2B. The fact is that you only need to adopt the right techniques to ensure the development of your sales.

How to define lead generation?

In B2B, a lead is a company (which can be represented through a person) which demonstrates a particular interest in the services you offer. In other words, a lead consists of a possible sales lead for your business.

Lead generation, for its part, brings together all the methods and tactics used by companies to capture and arouse the interest of qualified contacts and potential customers to develop sales.

The principle of a sale is based on three main pillars following an order of priority, initiating a discussion, establishing a relationship and conversion. Lead generation comes into play from the first step. Ideally, a lot of information about a lead should be obtained in order to define whether or not it will be a good sales lead to develop.

Define your buyer persona

You must define your typical customer profile, this is the basis of your commercial prospecting . The more you know about the characteristics of your target audience, the more you will increase your chances of converting. You need to have as much information as possible in order to establish your persona more precisely.

To do this, look for essential information to better understand the needs of your targets. You can make the following list of questions to achieve this:

• Who is your customer? (her personality)
• Where does he live?
• What are his main interests? (what he likes)  
• What is his lifestyle like?
• How much does he earn? etc.

Determine the locations to reach your targets

Knowing the right customer profile won't do you any good if you don't know where to reach them. Therefore, you must develop a marketing plan and an inbound marketing strategy to better determine the digital lead acquisition channels that will be effective for your business. These channels can be social networks ( LinkedIn , Facebook, Instagram, etc.), emails, etc. Go where your targets are in order to optimally activate the right levers.

Build a chat funnel to facilitate the buying journey

A fairly important step to do upstream is to optimize your destination pages or landing pages to generate qualified leads. Visitors don't land on your site by chance, they are there for a specific purpose.

The goal of this approach is to be able to collect the personal contact details of your prospects by transforming visitors to your site into contacts. The simplest way to achieve this is to offer your visitors promotional and high-value content to pique their interest. Therefore, you will invite Internet users to leave their contact details via a registration form integrated into your newsletter or a discount voucher.

According to studies, more than 70% of Internet users start with a Google search when they want to find something . The referencing of your site will then be essential for your visibility to be optimal.

Opt for targeted emailing

E-mailing is a marketing technique that is still relevant today and constitutes one of the most practical and most used means in commercial prospecting. To find customers , e-mailing remains among the most responsive channels and requires little investment compared to the resulting profitability.

In B2B, an email sending campaign allows segmentation of your contact lists. You can therefore produce personalized content that meets the expectations of each type of lead. The campaign is implemented in less time and its traceability can be done in real time. The latter is accompanied by the most concrete statistics.

You can also automate your email marketing by opting for a CRM tool. Purchasing an email database from a service provider is also a good option available to you. In fact, this type of service provider can provide you with a B2B database of around 5 million contacts. This will further increase the number of targets to convert.

Social selling: a flamboyant strategy

Social networks are the platforms most used by Internet users, besides email. The possibility of creating conversations with prospects is greater. In order to interact with your audience, you are then required to be present on all types of social networks available such as by creating a Facebook page, a Twitter or Pinterest account, a profile on LinkedIn, etc. The goal will be to redirect your prospects towards your purchasing journey to transform them into qualified leads.

Implement multi-channel prospecting

Of course, social networks and mailing are the two main digital channels to exploit, but that does not mean that you should only use these two means. Simultaneously, you must use various acquisition channels. Increase your touchpoints by using different means of communication.

Determine the most qualified from lead scoring

Lead scoring is a marketing method which consists of putting scores on your contacts. Indeed, among the contacts you have acquired, there are those who are hot prospects and others who are cold. You must then distinguish them in order to increase your chances of converting them into customers and closing sales. Many criteria must be considered for effective lead scoring, such as information about the prospect as well as their behavior and commitment to the brand.

Lead generation is an essential marketing approach . A good marketing database and the exploitation of digital channels will be essential points to take into account to acquire qualified leads.