Best Practices in B2B Lead Generation for 2020
Written By: ShaneWebGuy on September 10, 2020
B2B lead generation has taken a hit because of COVID-19. Nearly all verticals, save for global online retail, have taken considerable damage from the pandemic. What is essential now if you have a business that relies on B2B is to employ all the best practices that you can muster to prepare for even more challenges down the road.
Understand How Programmatic Advertising Works
Programmatic advertising spans multiple broad areas from AdTech platforms to private marketplaces. Contextual targeting allows advertisers to display ads based on the content on the sites. Behavioral targeting uses users’ online behavior (such as search histories) to display relevant ads. Retargeting means users who have had prior interaction will see similar ads from past advertisers. Demographic targeting utilizes demographic information, including the gender and age of the users. Demographic targeting is the most popular method of programmatic advertising and is the most effective.
Maximize your budget with programmatic advertising:
– Make sure that you are connecting to the right network. DSPs and SSPs are different. Always ask for a site list and flag/remove any sites that you do not wish to be part of your campaign. Remove saucy sites and other questionable sites pronto.
– Manage your Real-Time Bidding activities to optimize your campaigns. Immerse yourself in the platform and learn as much as you can about the self-service capabilities of programmatic advertising. If you can’t manage RTB, allow experts to do it for you.
– Private marketplaces or PMPs are invite-only marketplaces. For the most part, PMPs are considered a safer place to advertise, especially for big brands. Allot some of your advertising budget for these PMPs.
– Perform all the analytics you can and come into the game armed with that knowledge. It would be challenging if you only started digging for your ideal audience when you start your campaigns. The “guess and wait” approach will drain your budget without giving you good results.
– Focus on the accuracy and granularity of your campaigns. From job titles to gender, get all of these details down pat before starting. Ensure that all your ads appear in front of the right people so your ads will convert pronto.
Make Your Website COVID-Proof
The pandemic has changed the landscape of digital marketing forever. Despite the odds, you can still leverage your website to meet customer expectations and provide the best customer experience.
– Immediately present to customers what they can expect from your business. Setting the right level for expectations is especially crucial for businesses that have been hit hard by COVID-19. However, if your business has been mostly unaffected (and it is possible), there is no need to add special notice.
– Be crystal clear in articulating what your business does best. 2020 is not a time to be shy. Differentiate your business from a hundred other vendors. The time of the pandemic is also the time to shine the brightest.
– The end-goal of any website is to provide solutions to problems. If this end-goal is not clearly stated anywhere in your site, then Houston, we have a problem.
– Recheck and make sure that all your forms are 100% operational. The last thing your business needs is your vital forms stalling on users.
– Set up a live chat function or, at the very least, an AI-driven chatbot to field inquiries from users. Chatbots will take care of general inquiries, and a live agent can take care of the rest. Website leads are best-taken care of the soonest possible time. The faster your response to inquiries, the higher your chances of getting a paying customer.
– The time of the pandemic is not the time to be shy about your accomplishments. Show product demos and case studies at the forefront of your website. Make sure these sections shine.
Cure Your Ailing Emails
Email marketing is of little value with zero or almost nonexistent CTR (click-through rate). What could be going wrong with your emails?
– There could be too many links in each email. An overabundance of links distracts readers and reduces the effectiveness of your CTAs. Stick to the central objective of your email marketing campaign. Decide on a maximum of two CTAs per email. Stick to one if you can, as this is even more ideal. Always remember that providing value is your objective, even with awareness campaigns. People will only give your email a few seconds of reading time. Sure, a few seconds isn’t close to what you need, but these few vital seconds are all you will ever have unless the email creates an immense impact.
– The language of your emails may not incite people to take action. The language in your email has to be engaging, exciting, and inviting. Everything the eyes can scan within 1-3 seconds should trigger a positive response. Email is an art. Don’t expect a good response if you wrote an email in five minutes.
– Forget about buttons and clickable text that say, “click here.” “Click here” can mean anything from a valuable download to being spammed on the other side of the link. Descriptive links are number one. Instead of saying “download report” for example, you can change that to “I want to succeed.” Sometimes adding a touch of vagueness can make people act impulsively, which is a good thing when you want more clicks. A strategic amount of vagueness in the form of withholding vital information that people want is an excellent way to raise CTRs.
– Review your color scheme. Visual elements communicate several thousand times faster than plain text. The color scheme of the email communicates directly with the user’s brain. Review your past emails and ask yourself: what was your email’s color communicating to the user? If you don’t have an answer, then there’s something wrong with how you are designing your emails in the first place
Summary:
From email marketing to PPC, businesses need to leverage all their resources to generate website leads and improve their sales. The time of the pandemic is a time of change. Contact me today if you want to safeguard your site and improve your ROI this year.
