Without leads, you don’t have much of a business. And in the case of B2B, those leads are a lot scarcer than B2C as well.

Getting more leads in such a scenario becomes a top priority for any business. Not just more quantity of leads, but also better quality. Every business, may it be B2B or B2C is unique, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to getting more leads for your business.

Lead generation can be broadly classified into outbound and inbound lead generation.

As the name suggests inbound lead generation is attracting leads by offering compelling content whereas outbound lead generation is when you proactively reach out to customers.

There are however certain tactics that are an essential aspect of lead generation. Let’s explore some of those tactics in this ultimate guide on how to get more leads for your business.

Get More Leads for Your Business With Content Marketing

Content forms the very foundation of any marketing activity. Your chances of capturing leads rise exponentially with great content.

However, content cannot be created haphazardly. If nothing actionable can be taken away from the content that the reader can apply to their own business, the content is useless.

Begin by creating buyer personas for the people you sell to. Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer based on market research.

Once you’ve got your buyer personas figured out, the next step is to understand your buyer’s journey.

The standard journey is Awareness > Interest > Desire > Action. This can be customized to your buyer’s unique journey and can be more detailed.

Content creation then becomes a function of the buyer personas and buyer journey. You should have a piece of content for each buyer persona at each stage of their journey.

These content pieces can be blogs, brochures, white papers, infographics, case studies or other short and long-form pieces of content.

Conduct a content audit to figure out your content gaps and content atomization to break down broader themes into strategically focused smaller content pieces.

Accelerate Your Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has excellent ROI and can generate high-quality leads. Contrary to common wisdom, social media is not a weak lead generation channel it’s just that social media is poorly optimized in most companies.

Instead of being present on every social media channel possible, focus your presence on those that minimize your lead cost, while maximizing your ROI.

For most organizations, this would mean optimizing for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

LinkedIn is the de facto leader when it comes to B2B lead generation. Since the ethos of the channel is professional relationships, you’ve got a ready audience primed to consume B2B content.

Your key decision-makers, influencers and more are all on LinkedIn scouting out potential partners or just trying to find a solution to their business problem.

More than just lead generation it also helps your Sales team in building relationships with clients and prospects alike.

Look into LinkedIn tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator that can help you target your audience based on intent.

Twitter has also made a name in the B2B and B2C space for being a platform to establish thought leadership, building brand awareness, trust and most importantly leads. Using Twitter’s ad platform and organic posts businesses can generate a direct stream of lead generation.

For B2C Twitter is a great platform to establish quick customer service handles and generate leads by running targeted product promotions.

Facebook is the biggest social media platform out there but is not exactly designed for B2B conversations. That being said the platform is a cost-effective way of building brand awareness and directing potential leads to your website, thereby increasing web traffic as well.

Whereas on the B2C side, Facebook cannot be ignored. It’s extensive ad types and audience targeting solutions make sure you get the right audience no matter what niche you are in.

Instagram is coming up to be the leader when it comes to B2C, especially in eCommerce. It’s image-focused feed ensure that your products get the most attention when viewers are scrolling on their apps.

Its brilliantly implemented shopping tags ensure you can buy the product you are viewing right then and there.

It also offers ad units with form-fills built natively into the app, so that you can capture the lead quickly within the platform itself, without running the risk of the lead getting dropped during the transition to an external link.

Target the Right Audience With Email Marketing

Email marketing is an extremely effective lead generation tool when done right. But it won’t yield any results if you’re planning to send out thousands of generic emails and keeping your fingers crossed.

Segmenting your audience based upon buyer personas (discussed earlier) and using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) goals to build and track email campaigns is a smart way to run your email marketing efforts.

May it be a drip or nurture email marketing campaign, your success will be determined by the content and call to action that resides in the email.

When this content is personalized for the recipient (basis their demographic, industry etc.) you can expect even higher email open rates.

Your best bet to automate these processes is by using a marketing automation platform like Eloqua, Marketo, Hubspot or Pardot. If all of this sounds like too much to do, you’re not alone! A lot of B2B organizations consider hiring an agency to help them.

Organic SEO and Pay Per Click As Lead Generation Must-Haves

Your customer will typically start their research on search engines. Organic search traffic is driven by search intent. You’re receiving visitors who want to consume your content.

Search Engine Optimization makes sure that your website traffic is increasing not just in quantity but also in quality.

Using SEO to build search traffic is one of the best ways to build a sustainable model for lead generation, building audiences and driving sales.

Some basic SEO tactics that you should deploy are inbound and outbound links, inserting keywords into content, building intuitive websites, optimizing your website experience for different devices, and landing page optimizations.

Pay-per-click or PPC is also known as search engine marketing. Put simply, it is paid advertising on search engines. Using text ads that display right on the search engine results page can give a huge boost to your website traffic.

Again, using SMART goals while setting up your PPC campaigns and tracking performance basis historical benchmarks is the best approach.

To fine-tune your PPC campaign you need to keep a watch on your keyword performance and ensure those keywords tie back to your landing page content and experience.