In B2B marketing, lead generation can feel like throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. 

The internet is flooded with conflicting advice - should you put your CTAs at the top or the bottom of the landing page? Is it best to send an email in the morning or at lunchtime?

Before you implement the lead generation tips in this article, there is a crucial element to optimising your campaigns that cannot be underestimated. Every lead generation campaign needs a strong foundation, and this comes from watertight buyer personas. You must target the right people in your lead generation campaigns, and many of these tips require you to understand your audience thoroughly.

Once you’re happy with your buyer personas, you can implement the following strategies to optimise the performance of your lead generation campaigns to increase conversion rates. 

3 WAYS TO OPTIMISE B2B LEAD GENERATION CAMPAIGNS

A typical B2B lead generation campaign might look like this:

1. A paid social campaign on LinkedIn, because it is the best channel for targeting B2B customers. 
2. This campaign encourages your audience to download a white paper, or attend a webinar. 
3. The prospect visits your website and hopefully completes the desired action on your landing page. 

But it’s not as simple as that. 

Here are some tips you could implement to improve your B2B lead generation campaign.

LEVERAGE FAMILIARITY BIAS:

A prospect is more likely to engage with a brand they know and trust, so if you’re asking them to exchange their contact information on their first interaction with your brand, it’s not surprising your conversion rates are low. 

To increase your conversion rates, add an extra phase at the beginning of your campaign that is purely focused on driving brand awareness. This could be with a video introducing your company or product, that doesn’t ask anything of the customer in return. 

This doesn’t need to be a paid activity, although paid campaigns are a faster route to building awareness. Developing and maintaining a solid presence in the areas that your customers are in will organically build brand awareness, but it will take time to grow your audience.

Read More: A Practical Guide To B2B Social Media 🚀

TAILOR YOUR OFFER 

To increase lead conversion rates, you must ensure your offer is relevant and irresistible to the audience. The hard work at this point should have been completed already when creating your buyer personas. 

For example, our client SECO Tools wanted to raise awareness of their new exchangeable head range, X-Heads. 

We knew that their target audience was Machinists and Purchasing Managers. Although the Purchasing Managers were ultimately the decision makers, it was the Machinists’ mindset that we really drilled into to create the foundation of the X-Head campaign. We honed in on  getting Machinists to realise they could save more time and work smarter by using SECO’s product, ultimately turning them into ambassadors for the X-Head range. 

Don’t be Smart. Be X-HEAD: How we reached over 2 million people for SECO Tools

Therefore, the webinar and white paper that we implemented as part of this campaign resonated strongly with the target audience, and so although the messaging piqued their interest enough to visit the landing page, it was the content offer that encouraged the form completion and drove the lead conversion.

IMPROVE YOUR LANDING PAGE

The design and experience of your landing page can contribute to lead conversion rates. While A/B testing is always the best way to truly find what works for your specific audience, there are a few key elements that you should consider when optimising your landing page for lead conversion. 

Keep copy minimal but impactful

Landing pages flooded with text will not inspire lead conversion. Prospects won’t trawl through endless paragraphs to find the reason to convert. You need to be in the business of saving your audience’s time, so concise but compelling copy is the way to go. 

Work on your call to action

The smallest changes to your call to action could have a big difference on your conversion rate. Here are some things to experiment with to increase your conversion rate:

• Direct CTA Text ('Submit' versus 'Improve your productivity')
• CTA placement (Place multiple times on the landing page)
• CTA colour (Does it stand out? Is it on brand?)

Think about the design

What’s the first thing your prospect sees when they ‘land’ on the landing page? The average bounce rate for a landing page is between 70% and 90%, and you only have seconds to keep their attention. As well as making sure your landing page is in line with your brand, think about elements such as placement of the form, images and videos, all of which can help increase conversion rates.

Here are some stats to consider when creating your landing page:

Reduce file sizes and limit your font families to speed up your website. 

Keep your copy short, sharp and to the point.

Include a video on your landing page, such as a testimonial video, to increase conversion rates. Find out more about our video services. 

IN SUMMARY

What customers want changes and evolves over time. New technology appears,  marketing techniques get overused, and the audience recognises tactics. 

Therefore, the best way to increase your lead generation campaigns is to keep experimenting. 

Researching what is working for others online is a great place to start, but only through testing will you be able to understand and determine what works best for your audience.