According to DemandGen's 2018 Benchmarking Report, increasing the percentage of leads deemed "qualified" is an organization's top priority, followed by improving conversion rates and campaign results, and then increasing lead volume. priority_chart Image source: DemandGen report Marketing executives from B2B organizations in North America, EMEA and APAC who responded to the DemandGen report's survey face challenging success measures in the coming months. For example, 33% of respondents indicated that their primary KPIs were marketing qualified and sales qualified leads, while 30% indicated the total percentage of revenue channels affected by marketing campaigns. Not surprisingly, only 14% of B2B organizations insist on total leads or total inquiries as their primary success metric. The success of a demand generation program is no longer measured solely by the number of leads, but by the number of leads qualified and nurtured in the buying process. How to Generate More Qualified Leads B2B and B2C campaigns have one thing in common: they both target people. People and relationships are at the heart of B2B and B2C activities. In both cases, customers must go through the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of the buyer's journey.
That being said, B2B buyers still have a lot to decide. B2B buyers don't spend money, and they're not the primary risk takers. Purchasing for a company can bring a lot of pressure to do the right thing. If a B2B buyer makes the wrong decision, they could at least face embarrassment in the organization and, in some cases, their professional reputation and career could be at risk. That's why B2B buyers are often very specific and risk-averse about what they're looking for. The pressure is different. Risk aversion varies. The process of making a buying decision is different. But it's still people you have to target , not anonymous organizations. You have to remember that industry mailing list with hope, ambition and many setbacks. And, when dealing with these people, it's critical to understand their needs, wants, and fears. Attract your target audience Before you can attract targeted leads, you need to understand your leads, and that means creating profiles of buyer personas. Your demand marketing team might waste a whole day wondering what the average income of your ideal customer is, and whether they are cat or dog lovers, but that's not always the most effective thing to do. The most important thing is to understand their requirements profile holistically, which often requires end-to-end mapping of their characteristics. In order to attract potential customers, the most critical information you need to know is their problems and pain points. How does your ideal customer's question relate to your product or service?
Their pain points don't need to be an exact match with your company's solution, but they do need to be relevant. Pain points are not just labels Pain points also have three different levels of consequence. Level 1: Surface level issues Maybe your company is in the business of selling bookkeeping software, and your target audience is nonprofit accountants. On the surface, your potential customers may start looking for alternatives, like your product, based on superficial problems: such as current software that is tedious, difficult to use, or difficult to use, leaving them with a high error rate. Level 2: Deeper Issues What is the deeper problem behind a boring software that is not user friendly? In the case of the ideal leader in this example, the accountant may have to deal faster with the annoying user interface of their current solution due to the slowdown. Level 3: Higher Level Influences Continuing with the example of accounting software, accountants who struggle with poor user interfaces are making unnecessary mistakes that cause dissatisfied customers.
Dissatisfied clients may turn to different accountants. Learn about revenue opportunities You can’t just scratch the surface of the pain points of a buyer persona. Understanding the deeper issues and potential impacts through the consequences of all three levels can reveal a variety of opportunities to grab the customer's attention. If you map your ideal customer's pain points broadly, you'll understand your customers better and have the opportunity to create higher-value content at the top of the funnel. Creating lead generation services that address these deep pain points can increase conversion rates and help you attract more qualified leads. When your top-of-funnel lead generation offers map to the real pain points of your buyer personas, not just demographics or company stats (though company stats are also very important), they're more likely to attract the right leads .