B2B lead generation is fast changing.
Whatever strategies worked 3 years ago, isn’t necessarily working today. This is why it’s important to reassess what’s working and what isn’t.
Besides this, if you’re a founder, marketer, or sales VP, you are going to want to invest in lead-generation strategies that bring in qualified sales leads.
Why? Because qualified leads drive 20% higher conversion rates (Statista, 2023).
In this article, we will share some predicted lead generation trends for 2024… AND how to master these specific strategies for more qualified sales leads.
(If your company is struggling to find qualified sales leads why not hop on a free 15-minute strategy session with us? Our clients
What worked a few years ago, isn’t working in 2024
A few years ago sending high-volume cold emails with no personalization might have worked, but it’s definitely not working now.
We had clients who were sending like 500 cold emails a day out of their company’s inbox or even their own domain. And this just doesn’t work any more.
Spam filters slammed down their emails, and these clients had developed bad sender reputations.
Even if we go back to 2019 auto warmers were all the craze with cold email.
Google had a new rollout that specifically slammed chat auto warmers and they actually made it illegal. They would discontinue apps that used it.
These are the kinds of lead-generation efforts that are sort of coming out of fashion in 2024.
But, you’re still seeing some teams setting up like 50 different inboxes and sending lower volume mails, but Google has new cold email policies that say you can’t have more than a
1% spam complaint rate.
This makes it seem as if Google is doing away with these old cold email tactics.
Choose a multi-channel approach to lead generation, but don’t try to master everything yourself
One of the biggest mistakes marketing teams make is focusing on one form of lead generation. For example, a company might only use search engine optimization; but the reality is, if you want more high-quality leads, you’re going to have to use a multi-channel approach.
Perry Marshall recommends mastering between one and three specific marketing channels for lead generation.
Going beyond this will spread your resources too thinly, but staying with only one channel is like building your business with a one-legged stool. It’s not going to work. You risk the chance of falling.
If you’re already doing well with SEO, incorporating LinkedIn lead gen is a way to get more customers and this should help diversify your revenue sources.
Whether it’s a mix of outreach on social media, or email marketing and cold calling, you need to incorporate a multi-channel marketing strategy.
Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket.
So think about…
Where are your buyers spending most of their time?
Are they on Instagram? Twitter? Or Linkedin?
Would they be more inclined to respond to emails?
Once you figure out where your ideal customer spends most of their time, reach out to them on that specific platform.
Use a mix of inbound and outbound methods to generate leads.
You could hire a freelancer to manage your content marketing for example, and then hire an agency to take care of your outreach campaigns.
Or perhaps you might want to build your own in-house sales team for example.
It’s important to ask yourself what you enjoy doing when it comes to sales lead generation, and whether or not you have the time to implement these marketing campaigns.
So for example, if you enjoy closing deals, but hate outreach, spend the time doing what you love, and outsource what you don’t enjoy.
But the moral of the story is: Use a multi-channel approach.
At Salesbread we use:
- Linkedin outreach
- Cold email outreach
- SMS
To find new leads for our clients. This approach has allowed us to generate 7000 qualified sales leads in the past 24 months.
For our own in-house marketing, we make use of:
- Content writing
- SEO
- LinkedIn social media marketing
- Email outreach and newsletters
- Podcasting
We use experts who specialize in the above fields to help us generate leads for our own company.
Which trends are predicted for 2024 and will they work?
Building targeted prospecting lists based on data for more sales-qualified leads
This is probably one of the best ways to master B2B sales lead generation this year.
(Especially for outreach.)
The reason why many B2B lead generation strategies fail is that some companies build very basic lists of their ideal target audience.
If your list of prospects isn’t super refined, you aren’t going to find many potential customers who actually convert.
For example, you might want to target all hospitals in America, but this is way too broad.
We suggest doing the following:
Have a look at which companies have purchased your product or service within the last 6 months.
Then ask yourself: What do my buying customers have in common?
- Who’s on their payroll? HR? Sales reps? Social media marketers?
- Where are they located? Greece? Florida USA?
- Who makes the purchasing decisions? The CEO? Manager?
- Do they all use the same CRM tools? Like Hubspot or Salesforce?
- Have these companies recently been funded?
- Do they all have bad customer reviews?
- How big are these companies? Less than 10 employees? Or more than 100?
- If your buyers are hospitals, which divisions are purchasing your product/service? Pediatric? Psychiatry? Oncology?
Once you find patterns between your buyer personas, it will be easier to build look-a-like accounts to target.
The video below, explains this process in more detail:
Linkedin outreach
According to SocialPilot, 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation. If you think about it, LinkedIn has over 1 billion users worldwide.
This means you have a huge pool of people and businesses to contact.
All these users are on the platform for one reason – Advancing their careers and businesses.
So if you use LinkedIn in the way in which it was intended, then you’re going to find more sales leads.
But for effective lead generation on this social media platform, you need to follow a few rules.
For LinkedIn lead generation campaigns to work you need:
- An ultra-refined list of potential leads
- No sleazy sales pitches but rather send personalized outreach messages
- Follow up consistently
- Use low-commitment CTAs
By using this approach we have managed to generate close to 7000 sales-qualified leads for our clients in the past 24 months.
Our stats for LinkedIn outreach are as follows:
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to achieve the same results.
Step 1: Build a targeted list of prospects
Follow the guide on how to build a list of prospects like we showed you above. For a more in-depth look, read this article: How to Build a Sales Prospecting List in Any Industry
Step 2: Plug your list of accounts into LinkedIn Sales Navigator and find the right decision-makers to reach out to
If your business hasn’t invested in using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, we recommend considering this tool for your b2b lead generation process.
For $99 per month, you will have access to search filters which can really help you refine your list.
Just a word of caution, Sales Nav sometimes spits out incorrect information, so we recommend reading this article: The Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Sales Navigator Search Filters in order to understand how to use this powerful tool the right way.
Always triple-check the information to ensure you’re reaching out to the correct person. You might want to also filter your list through your 2nd-degree connections and recently posted.
This will refine your list even further.
Step 3: Write personalized outreach messages
When it comes to personalizing messages, you need to go beyond mentioning someone’s first name and job title.
You actually have to research each person on your list and find something specific.
We use a method called CCQ and it goes as follows:
COMMONALITY — > Find something you share in common with your prospect.
Example: “Looks like I’m not the only copywriter that’s into mountain biking.”
COMPLIMENT –> Find something your prospect is proud of and compliment them on it.
Example: “By the way, I really admire founders that support Big Brothers Big Sisters. Thanks for helping out our community.”
QUESTION –> Find something your prospect is passionate about or working on and ask them a question about it.
Example: “I loved reading about your philosophy on building effective distributed teams. Where do you hire most of your talent?”
You can find this information by using Google or checking out your prospects’ social media pages.
For some connection request inspiration, have a look at some of our templates here.
Step 4: Follow up consistently and ask for a booked meeting
We suggest following up between 3 and 6 times. When you follow up, add more personalization to your message, and be transparent about why you’re reaching out.
Also, remember to not come across as a sleazy salesperson. Start a conversion and ask the individual how their company might be handling a specific pain point.
It’s also important to ask for a booked call. Keep your call to action easy for your prospect to follow through with.
Here are some examples:
- Can we target {{=bday+2}} afternoon to discuss [BENEFIT/PROBLEM]?
- What’s the best way to schedule 5 minutes to talk?
- Would you have some time next {{=day}} to discuss?
- If you find the spec interesting, should we set up a confidential chat?
- Can we grab time Thursday afternoon to see if [MY COMPANY] aligns with your goals for this year?
- Are you available for a quick meeting to discuss your use case and see if we can assist in any way?
- Do you think it could help {{company.name}}? If so, happy to tell you how (here’s my calendar) or show you a demo.
What are realistic KPIs for sales teams using LinkedIn?
You want to aim for at least a 20% connection rate on Linkedin. If it’s lower than that you might be doing something wrong or targeting incorrectly.
This might sound high if you aren’t used to sending personalized outreach messages, but if it’s below 20%, you might need to re-look at your messages, or your CTA. Make sure that you’re not sounding robotic.
Think about, how would you respond to this message if you received it. Would you reply to it?
You could even send the message to a trusted client and ask for their honest feedback.
For example, ask: “What do you think is wrong with this message?”
This will allow them to feel comfortable breaking down your message and analyzing it.
But… Honestly…
If you combine an ultra-refined target list and personalization, you can expect a 20% positive reply rate.
If you’re interested in trying this avenue of lead generation, feel free to read some of our guides on the topic:
Why We Set Out to Build The Best Done-For-You Lead Generation Service
How to Get Leads on LinkedIn Like A Pro
Here are some case studies as well:
-
Is Lead Generation Worth It? Case Study – 67 Qualified Leads in 8 Weeks
-
B2B SaaS Growth Strategy – How We Generated 183 Sales Leads in 130 Business Days
-
Fintech Lead Generation Case Study – How we generated 118 leads in 8 weeks
Chatbots, generative AI and automation
Technology can come in handy in 2024, but there’s still a word of caution here.
For example, some companies have perhaps produced tons of content for their website, using Chat GPT within a short span of time.
You will notice that their traffic increases pretty dramatically, but then it drops suddenly back to zero.
Google states that users can make reasonable use of AI-generated content. What users need to pay attention to is that the generated content must ensure E-E-A-T requirements.
Google still wants you to create helpful content for humans.
Yes, AI can be helpful.
Especially for research, or for creating META descriptions, but your content shouldn’t be 100% AI-generated. Try to add your own personal expertise to your content.
Chatbots can also be helpful for generating leads. At Salesbread we use chatbots for qualifying target accounts. It can be pretty fun.
For example, we will use Chat GTP to pull in research about a specific company.
You could start with a list of MSP providers and you could ask Chat GPT if the company offers a specific service.
This article shares more tactics on how to use Chat GTP for sales lead generation.
Remember the following when using AI:
- Don’t use it for all your copywriting or content-writing
- Be as clear and specific as possible. The more specific the prompt the more accurate the answer will be.
- Provide background information for context
- Keep prompts short and to the point – Using bullet points can be helpful
- Use some testing and adjust your tasks to have more accurate answers
Automation tools can also be helpful, but once again, don’t use them for your entire sales process.
We have noticed some companies use automation even if a prospect replies in real time to a message. This can be off-putting, especially if the prospect asks a specific question about a product/service.
Rather have your sales rep reply in real time, instead of sending an automated reply.
What about webinars? Is this a trend worth investing in?
Webinars can be a great way to generate leads for B2B companies, but you have to make sure that the individuals signing into your webinar aren’t just cold traffic.
It’s extremely difficult to get “cold people” you don’t know to give you 45 minutes of their time in a webinar before they’ve engaged with your brand.
We suggest using webinars for your MQLS (marketing qualified leads) and not for cold prospects.
How would you go about using webinars?
If your prospects are already signed up for your newsletter, or if they follow you on Linkedin you could create a partnership campaign; Where you connect with someone who has the same audience as you, but who doesn’t compete with you.
You could then put a webinar on together because it would be mutually beneficial for your business and the other person’s company too.
Thought leadership
We also predict that thought leadership is going to play a major role in brand awareness, especially across social media. There will definitely be more founders and experts, sharing their thoughts on their industries.
This creates trust in your brand, especially if you share helpful guides, testimonials and case studies. You might even want to share stats and how your company helped others solve their pain points.
Podcasting is a great way to generate b2b business – Here’s what to do.
There are two ways you can start your own podcast and grow a bigger audience to generate leads.
For example with our cold email outreach podcast, we started by interviewing our ideal customers.
Even if sales don’t come from the podcast right away, you’re going to learn a lot more about your craft.
You’re going to learn a lot more about who you are serving. We suggest inviting end users to your show and make it interesting.
Make the interview a win-win situation. You could ask them what would make this “a home run”? Also, make sure to plug whatever product or service they’re excited about sharing with the world into your podcast.
Ready to give some of these trends a try?
The above B2B lead generation tactics are set to make an impact this year. Try a few and see which trend works best for your audience.
If you’re interested in giving LinkedIn lead generation a try, why not hop on a free 15-strategy session with us?
Whether you’re looking to partner up with a lead gen agency, or just need some lead generation advice, we would love to chat with you.
When companies partner up with Salesbread, they know that they can expect 1 qualified sales lead per day, with pricing less than that of hiring a full time sales rep.