Lead generation. It always seems to be at the forefront of every marketer’s mind and it is often the topic of discussion during sales meetings and goal-setting sessions. However, the honest truth is that most of us do not have any clue how to improve our lead generation numbers.
According to a study by LinkedIn, 68% of B2B marketers want to increase their lead quality and 55% want to see a growth in lead volume. However, a shocking 80% of B2B marketers are not very satisfied with their generation efforts. Only 16% can claim with confidence that their current strategies are totally effective.
When it comes to SaaS marketers, a highly competitive, mature, and the digitally-focused market makes things even more difficult. Driving in relevant leads can be tricky, considering that you are often vying for attention with numerous brands that offer similar products with better or more features. Further, as more and more customers make use of ad blockers and ignore pop-ups, marketers are scrambling to find new techniques to generate leads.
But there is a light at the end of this tunnel – there are some practically foolproof secrets to improve your SaaS marketing strategies. Let’s explore them.
Quick Takeaways:
- Technology and tools make it very easy to know more about your customers and their intent these days.
- Content is critical in moving your customers along the buyer’s journey.
- New social media mobile and web platforms offer great opportunities for B2B marketers to experiment with new tactics.
Always Know Your Customer
I know, I know, this advice seems incredibly basic and elementary. It’s one of the first things you probably heard from your marketing professor way back in the day, right?
But thankfully, modern technology makes it possible to go beyond getting demographic data on consumers and end up with oversimplified personas. You can truly get to know your audience on an individual basis and use this data and AI-based algorithms to formulate and run hyper-personalized marketing campaigns.
In the SaaS vertical, hyper-personalization manifests itself through account-based marketing (ABM). This approach is focused on narrowing down leads to single accounts or small, focused groups, and optimizing resources to customize the nurturing process. Every marketing decision is based on information from past interactions and behavioral data that is processed through an intelligent software system to predict the “value” of a lead.
But in addition to knowing who your customer is, you also need to understand who your customer is not. This starts by understanding the ins and outs of the niches and verticals that stand to benefit the most from your SaaS product.
You also need to know what will disqualify a lead right away so that no time is wasted in pursuing them. For instance, if your solution is geared towards the enterprise, a large number of concurrent users, and comes with a rather hefty price tag, then startups are not going to be able to afford it or see the greatest benefits from implementation.
Understand the Correlation between Content and Conversions
All marketers know that content plays an important role of lead generation, particularly in the B2B realm. But what many fail to understand is the connection that every single piece of content has on a conversion (the second biggest lead generation challenge for B2B, according to the LinkedIn report mentioned earlier). Shockingly, a quarter of marketers don’t even know if their lead generation efforts result in any conversions!
Great content can…
