SaaS solutions power the B2B technology world. The total SaaS market is expected to reach $157 billion in 2020. And ever since the onset of the pandemic SaaS is the center of attention for most businesses as digital interactions are now two to three times more important to customers.

With SaaS projected for fast growth, this is the best time to optimize your B2B SaaS lead generation process. Lead generation becomes even more important considering the complex B2B sales cycle that involves multiple stakeholders and is usually of a longer duration.

Customers won’t come to you just because you’ve built a product, you’ll need a multi-faceted lead generation approach to maximize your ROI. Let’s explore some of the best ways to do that in this blog.

The Secret to B2B SaaS Lead Generation: Know Your Customer

Knowing your audience well is the first step in B2B SaaS lead generation. This begins with defining your buyer personas and then segmenting your audience.

Segmentation is the foundation of any marketing strategy and there are many ways you can do it.

There are multiple data points you could use to segment your audience. According to a recent study, more than 70% of B2B businesses are segmented by geography followed by industry verticals. 50% of B2B businesses also prefer account-based marketing.

Gathering data points and extracting insights from them can be challenging and time-consuming for your sales team. This makes most SaaS companies consider help from reliable agencies or data partners who can do this analysis for them.

Nevertheless, the output of this exercise should be a clear understanding of your target decision-maker along with any influencers who can impact the sales process.

Armed with this information you are much better placed to then build high-performing lead generation campaigns.

Create Stellar Content for Inbound Marketing Campaigns

Inbound marketing works on the principle of attracting customers to you by creating remarkable content. The inbound marketing cycle starts from attracting, converting, closing, and then delighting your customers.

Creating content that is valuable, thought-provoking, and actionable can be immensely useful for your target audience. It should address the pain points and challenges that your buyer persona is facing at each stage of the inbound marketing cycle.

However, your competitors can quickly create a high-volume content marketing strategy as well. To differentiate yourself, you’ll need to meet your target audience at their digital watering hole (or social network) of choice.

Understand what needs to be created beyond the usual collateral – like a SlideShare presentation to go with a whitepaper or an infographic to go with an eBook.

Knowing this will allow you to plan additional resources before the start of a campaign, such that everything is already set up for your marketing and sales teams to use and share.

Creating eBooks, blogs, whitepapers, and brochures is great but don’t create content for the sake of creating it. Always make sure you add value to the conversation!

Optimize Your Website for Conversion

Your website is your digital storefront and it is more often than not the first thing a potential customer sees. And first impressions matter when it comes to B2B lead generation!

Website conversion rate optimization (CRO) is an essential element of the B2B lead generation cycle. Your website acts as your content library and the space to showcase your best work. Small tweaks to optimize it for conversion can lead to profits further down the funnel.

Identify your top-performing content and provide multiple opportunities across the website for a prospect to download it. Add relevant CTAs to encourage lead capture and rationalize your website navigation for better results.

The key to a good website CRO is to provide logical and relevant next steps to a prospect from the moment they land on your website to downloading a piece of content.

To conclude, in a highly competitive SaaS environment, lead generation forms the bedrock of business growth. Focus on the basics by creating great content and differentiate yourself by enabling a smart promotion strategy and a slick website!