Blog Post

B2B Lead Generation part 1 - What is lead generation?

Wednesday, 11 October 2017

When a visitor enters the website, the identification process starts by using two different approaches, “call to action” and “lead tool”, which may function either separately or more effectively combined.

Lead generation, from your website, is basically a process about turning anonymous visitors into identified visitors.

When a visitor enters the website, the identification process starts by using two different approaches, “call to action” and “lead tool”, which may function either separately or more effectively combined. The purpose of this process is to turn anonymous visitors into identified visitors, and thereby to create qualified leads to the sales department.

The lead generation process is visualized below as a funnel since only a minority of the anonymous visitors will generate actual sales qualified leads.

Each step in the process, from regular traffic to sales qualified leads, is described in the following sections, and includes a brief description of the differences between “call to action” and “lead tool” leads. Relevant data is used to substantiate the content.

Call to action leads

The primary objective on a B2B website is often to motivate the anonymous visitor to perform a desired action, which we describe as “call to action”. To convince the anonymous visitor to reveal his identity most B2B marketers are working with call to actions like:

• Landing pages with contact forms to access brochures or white papers.
• Forms allowing visitors to sign up for the company newsletter or industry information.
• Contact forms for ordering an online demo or product samples.
• Live chat to learn more about products or to get support.

Through the use of “call to action” tactics marketers are able to identify a number of sales qualified leads, which can be handed over to the sales team.

However, it is difficult and for many B2B companies conversion rates for their call to actions are in the around 0.35% of the total number of website visitors. To raise these numbers we recommend using a lead tool.

Using a lead tool

The primary objective of a lead tool is to identify which companies are visiting your website, and to notify you every time a lead revisits. The identification will generate valuable insights about visitor behavior by collecting and showing unique information regarding the searched content, frequency of visits and return visits. This intelligence will enable you to create and maintain a constant pipeline of sales qualified leads.

In short terms the lead tool will provide the following advantages:

• Gain insights on potential customers visiting your website, and receive notifications whenever they revisit it.
• Contain information on how potential customers landed on your website, what content they searched for and which pages they visited.
• Enable your sales department to engage your potential customers on behalf of the acquired knowledge regarding behavior and interests.

A lead tool is either an application which can be bought and added on to your website, or it can be integrated in your web platform. Both ways will apply, but the integrated solution will provide additional advantages allowing for more refined ways of lead nurturing.

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Continue reading up on this series here:

Part 2- How to use lead generation in your sales process?