The 12 most effective lead-generation strategies for B2B businesses

To help B2B businesses boost their lead generation efforts, we reached out to 12 top B2B leaders for their most effective strategies. From embracing content marketing strategy to developing a strong referral network, discover the valuable insights these CEOs, founders, and marketing experts shared on how to drive success in B2B lead generation.

READ MORE: Ranking Arizona: Top 10 radio stations for 2023


  • Embrace a Content Marketing Strategy
  • Opt for a Mobile-Friendly Website
  • Increase Social Proof for Trust
  • Invest in SEO-Optimized Content
  • Leverage LinkedIn Personal Branding
  • Optimize for Voice Search
  • Use Cold Emailing Effectively
  • Form Strategic Marketing Partnerships
  • Tailor Strategies to Business Needs
  • Implement Automated Email Workflows
  • Capture Leads With Exit-Intent Pop-ups
  • Develop a Strong Referral Network

Embrace a Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is a form of inbound marketing that focuses on creating and distributing relevant, valuable, and consistent content to attract and keep a clearly defined audience with the ultimate aim of driving profitable customer action.

Lead generation is easy if your goal is to provide valuable and relevant content to potential customers. Therefore, it’s also crucial to establish yourself or your company as the authority in the industry. In this way, it will be very easy to engage and attract prospects who are looking for information in the industry.

Not only that, but content also helps to build relationships and trust with prospects. You can do this by providing helpful, educational resources that provide solutions to their problems or answer their questions. Through this type of content, you can show your expertise and build credibility with prospects, which will translate into more leads.

Denise Hemke, Chief Product Officer, Checkr

Opt for a Mobile-Friendly Website

A mobile-friendly web page is now required for all website owners as more people use mobile devices to browse the internet. You may reach more users on various devices by creating a website that is mobile-friendly. It helps raise the ranking of your website in search engines. More organic traffic may be brought to your website by having a better rating. 

Long-term, greater organic traffic enables you to produce more inbound leads without using excessive time and energy. Lead magnets work better when a website is mobile-friendly. If a consumer accesses your desktop website from a mobile device, the lead magnets might not show up as expected. By making your website mobile-friendly, you can make sure that they are noticeable and unavoidable.

John Willis, Founder, Convertfree

Increase Social Proof for Trust

When buying goods or services, B2B buyers are more picky. Because of this, their hesitancy may prevent the production of leads. Increase social proof to increase leads’ faith in your company. 

They will be more interested in and likely to make a purchase if they trust your company. The best strategies to develop social proof are to display user evaluations on your website, display business statistics, including live sales notifications, and employ social media plugins.

Mike Lees, Chief Marketing Officer, LeaseAccelerator

Invest in SEO-Optimized Content

Producing high-quality, SEO-optimized content that ranks well on Google, grows organic traffic, and targets your specific clientele can be incredibly effective for lead generation. It can have little to no cost but takes a long time to build.

So many felt like they were in a mad dash for growth over the past few years and didn’t have the time to wait for an SEO-focused strategy to pay off. Then, when the economy got tougher, many didn’t have resources to spare. Meanwhile, those disciplined who continually invested in SEO built an ever-growing lead generation machine with a true competitive advantage.

Lachlan De Crespigny, Co-founder and Co-ceo, Revelo

Leverage LinkedIn Personal Branding

Harness the power of LinkedIn through your personal brand and create relevant, niche content that’ll set your audience’s hearts aflutter.

LinkedIn is the ultimate B2B playground, and your personal brand is your ticket to ride. When you infuse your expertise, creativity, and spunky personality into your content, you attract attention and engagement like bees to honey.

To create content that truly resonates, build it around content pillars—these are the core topics that define your niche and showcase your expertise. Address your audience’s pain points, share valuable insights, and sprinkle in some wit and sass to keep things fresh.

As you consistently produce relevant content, you’ll establish yourself as a thought leader and watch those leads come pouring in. So, start flexing your LinkedIn muscles and let your personal brand shine!

Megan Killion, Chief Consultant, Megan Killion Consulting (MKC) Agency

Optimize for Voice Search

One of the most effective lead-generation strategies for B2B businesses is optimizing your website and content for voice search. As voice search becomes more popular, it’s important to make sure your content can be found when people look using a digital assistant on their computer or phone. 

Incorporating variations of long-tail keywords in your content will help your content land higher in results when people type into their digital assistants. For example, you would use phrases such as “What are the benefits of…” over simply “benefits of…” which are more likely to come up in voice searches. Optimizing for voice searches can open up opportunities to reach new potential customers that weren’t easily accessible before.

Julia Kelly, Managing Partner, Rigits

Use Cold Emailing Effectively

Cold emailing is one of the best lead-generation strategies for B2B businesses. Using an affordable virtual assistant, you can easily find leads at a far lower price than PPC ad campaigns. It also cuts right to the point and lets you directly communicate with potential clients or customers.

When cold emailing, it’s vital to protect your sender’s reputation. I never recommend using your primary domain, as it could harm your deliverability on transactional and promotional emails to customers. Instead, use an alternative domain (like the .net version of your corporate domain). It’s a good idea to use an inbox warmup tool like Snov.io or WarmupInbox.com to ensure your messages stay out of spam folders.

Axel Deangelis, Founder and Marketing Strategist, Jumpcoast

Form Strategic Marketing Partnerships

One of the most effective lead-generation strategies for B2B businesses is one that’s often overlooked—strategic marketing partnerships. Otherwise known as partnership marketing or co-marketing.

Partnership marketing brings two, or more, brands together to share resources and audiences. ‘Borrowing’ the audience from another brand that targets the same audience as yours is one of the highest ROI marketing tactics there is.

With the impending death of the 3rd party tracking cookie, B2B brands will need to diversify away from PPC advertising and partnership marketing will be a superpower for brands that build up the networks and skills ahead of time.

Partnership marketing will develop your first and second-party data channels, protecting you from the 3rd party cookie deprecation. It can also help your SEO and content plans, so, therefore, your inbound lead generation gets a lift.

Ultimately, it can multiply most of your existing lead-generation activities.

Sven Radavics, Founder and CEO, intribe

Tailor Strategies to Business Needs

I’ve found that the best lead-generation strategies are the ones that are tailored to your business.

Let’s say you’re a small B2B company that sells high-end luxury products. You’re going to have different needs than a big B2B company that sells commodity items. So rather than trying to shoehorn yourself into an existing strategy, create one that works for you.

If you’re not sure where to start, look at your sales cycle: How long does it take to close a deal? If it takes 6 months, then there’s no need to generate leads right away—you can afford to wait until they come knocking on your door by building up brand awareness with content marketing and social media advertising (or whatever else works for your company).

If it only takes a few days or weeks, then definitely consider starting your lead generation efforts early in the sales cycle so that when prospects show interest in what you’re selling, they can find out more about how it works for them quickly and easily.

Gauri Manglik, CEO and Co-founder, Instrumentl

Implement Automated Email Workflows

In B2B companies with lengthy sales cycles, automated email workflows are useful for nurturing leads and clients. They help save time and supplement the efforts of sales teams by connecting with prospects and nurturing them into clients. Emails to subscribers are sent at just the right time and about the right topics thanks to these triggers.

Jason Berkowitz, CEO, BreakTheWeb

Capture Leads With Exit-Intent Pop-ups

Although you may occasionally have a visitor to your site convert right away, many visitors may depart without converting to give things more thought. While you can’t persuade them to buy until they’re ready, you can get them to give you their contact information before they go. Exit-intent pop-ups show when visitors appear to be about to leave your site. 

If the individual is new, I believe you can configure your pop-ups to ask for their email address. Alternatively, if they’ve been there previously, you can use pop-ups to reengage a lead by offering them a great bargain on a product they were considering.

Kim Leary, Creative Director, squibble

Develop a Strong Referral Network

Focusing on developing a strong referral network is one efficient lead-generation strategy for B2B companies. B2B organizations may access a valuable supply of strong leads that are already inclined to trust their brand by developing relationships with current and past customers, industry partners, and other stakeholders.

This can be accomplished by making focused outreach, providing incentives for referrals, and constantly providing existing customers with high-quality service and value. B2B companies can produce a consistent flow of new leads by using their network in this way.

Stoyan Mitov, CEO of Dreamix, Dreamix LTD