Many B2B companies have worked hard to grow a solid customer base, but now realize that they have become over-reliant on their current customers for growth.

Of greater concern is the realization that those loyal customers won’t be around forever.  As younger professionals move up and replace some of your main customer contacts, there is a wave of retirement underway amongst boomers which is changing the employment landscape. Add to this concern, the geopolitical and financial turbulence and there is a growing list of reasons why reliance on an existing customer base is a risky business strategy. 

In order to ensure continued growth (and find new growth) for your business, your marketing and sales teams will need to employ a wider array of lead gen tactics. 

We have outlined for you several proven ways you can use digital marketing to bring in new leads – along with real-world examples of each. 

B2B Lead Generation Ideas for Small Businesses

Think about the strategies that you are already using for lead generation. Are you employing lead magnets, and lead nurturing to produce healthy conversion rates? If you’re relying on your existing customer base, the answer is likely no.

We’re going to look at some of the best ways to find new growth, and reduce your vulnerability around revenue growth.

1. Implement monthly SEO on your website 

Many businesses are not measuring their organic traffic, and if SEO has not been done, or done in a while, they suffer from low traffic to the website, and sometimes poor quality of traffic.

Monthly SEO will rapidly increase quality traffic to your website which is an important first step in lead generation. With the increase in organic traffic, there is also a wider number of search phrases – terms potential new customers are using – that you’re ranking for.

As your website traffic grows, more leads begin to come in.

Some major benefits of B2B SEO include:

• Grow brand trust by showing up online when new leads search for your offerings.
• Employ affordable & measurable tactics that continue to pay off for your business. Moz has a great article and video that explains the ROI of SEO.
• Gain new leads & customers by showing up at the top of the search results for relevant phrases.

An outstanding example is Hubspot, an industry-leading CRM platform, that transformed its business into a leading online marketing tool thanks to the SEO it carried out on its website. Their efforts took them to more than 15.9 million organic sessions each month (and growing).

Hubspot created content around the best keywords for each point in the buyer’s journey. Their SEO efforts have taken them from a small startup to one of today’s top online marketing leaders.

That’s the ultimate goal of SEO. When you invest in your website through SEO, your dominance in your business sphere grows, along with the share of new leads looking for services like yours.

Interested in learning how much you should budget for SEO? Check this out: How Much Does SEO Cost in 2022?

2. Generate Inbound B2B leads from your website

Finding new qualified leads in this economy is becoming more challenging, but you can turn your website into a resource that brings in leads you didn’t know were even possible.

A fresh new Inbound Marketing initiative can attract whole new opportunities to your website. These are businesses that are searching for your services, but for various reasons were not on your radar.

Inbound marketing involves not only improving your website UX (user experience) for attracting leads, but it also provides analytics data and insights which help you see what parts are working well, and where to improve. Identifying and resolving campaign performance issues on regular basis amps up performance, leading to additional increases in incoming leads monthly.

Universal Robots Academy has created an appealing user experience on its website and was able to generate inbound leads.

They have no-strings-attached content that attracts and compels their users. 

As website visitors find value in their content and learn more about the company’s offerings to see that it meets their needs, that’s when they will decide to reach out. 

And the website’s structure is crucial for that. Universal Robots’ design is simple and easy to follow. The call-to-actions are clear, and their contact information is available “above the fold” to guide inbound leads to create an account, register, or contact them. 

Inbound leads often come after potential customers have had the chance to learn more about your business and offerings. So be sure the content on your website allows potential customers can get to know you and feel comfortable making that first call. 

3. Use Content Marketing to Attract B2B Sales Leads

Expand your reach to a wider range of buyers or industries with content tailored to their needs. 

Buffer increased their blog readership by 1.5 million users per month. They are a software company that uses blogs to get sign-ups. Several factors led to the success of their blog. 

First, Buffer has a good understanding of its audience. This allows Buffer to develop blog posts in their target audience would find valuable.

They put themselves in their customer’s shoes to find out what content and key terms would work well and joined in on industry conversations by writing about those topics with their own unique spin. 

They continued to publish regular content to share updates in their industry and case studies from past successes. 

But posting good content consistently is not enough. You must have a content promotion strategy.

Buffer repurposed their blog posts for social media. They even customized their posts for each social platform for higher engagement.

Don’t overlook the power of a loyal list of email addresses. Whenever Buffer publishes a new blog post, they will email their list. Within the first 24 hours after posting, there will already be thousands of people reading the post.

And of course, Buffer also optimized the blog posts for search engines. By ranking high on popular keywords, they’re able to bring in many new visitors every day.

4. Implement email marketing to grow and nurture your subscriber base

Over the last 12 months, 77% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement.

You can nurture untapped revenue in your existing customer base with a great email campaign.

Adobe Acrobat caters to its customer’s pain points by sending out email campaigns with solutions to those problems.

Virtual and remote working is becoming much more important to entrepreneurs and business professionals, and Adobe is well aware of that. And because a large portion of their customer base is engaging in remote work, they have crafted email campaigns to show their customers how their products can be used for working from home.

Think about the existing problems your customers have and the messages that you can craft to appeal to those pain points.

The benefit of marketing to customers that you already have is that they know you. They are familiar with your brand and reputation and are likely to purchase from you again.

5. PPC advertising

Get new leads flowing in quickly through PPC (or pay-per-click) advertising.

Through a well-optimized Google search campaign, you can bring in consistent and valuable leads.

Split Software used Google search ads to increase its leads and drive high-quality sign-ups. They broke down their strategy for the top of the funnel and bottom of the funnel.

At the top, they offered one of their existing marketing assets in exchange for lead information. And at the bottom, they drove people to sign up for their software.

Instead of sending visitors to the homepage or a product page, Split Software created a new landing page focusing on conversions.

The beauty of digital marketing is the ability to test and measure results quickly. Not only did Split Software test different ad copy, but they also tested variations of the landing page.

Search ads generate B2B leads well because many people start their research process on Google. When users search for a particular keyword, they have a specific problem and are actively looking for a solution.

By reviewing the terms prospects used to search, Split Software refined the keywords they were bidding for. They removed low-performing keywords and added negative keywords.

This B2B lead generation project resulted in a 775% increase in leads while reducing advertising spending by 18%.

Start Generating B2B Leads Today

There’s no shortage of work in the marketing and lead generation department. And digital marketing provides many cost-effective strategies that allow you to increase leads quickly.

We know it can feel overwhelming to dive into a new strategy, and that’s why we don’t leave you on your own. Asset Digital Communications is a full-service digital marketing agency that can help you implement any of these lead-generation strategies to help you grow your customer base.

Reach out today if you have questions, or look through our service offerings to learn more.