Automated Lead Generation in B2B

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Lead generation — it’s on every marketing and sales professional’s mind.

91% of B2B marketers, to be exact.

Yet, 37% of these same individuals find that generating high-quality leads is one of their most significant challenges.

Yes, there are plenty of tools out there that claim to simplify the lead generation process. But what happens when, say, your end customer engages with your content through dark channels?

The Captain Data team has found that lead generation’s position as priority #1 is justified but that the secret sauce is automation. Because you don’t want to only generate leads —that’s meaningless unless you can close them, right?

So, in this article, we’re going to walk you through a few proven strategies that work if you’re ready to automate the lead generation process and close more deals.

What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is all about identifying and cultivating potential customers or clients for a business's products or services.

When you engage in this activity, your immediate goals are to attract people who may be interested in what you (i.e., your business) have to offer. Then, it’s to collect their contact information so that they can be further engaged through targeted marketing efforts.

Your long-term goals are to expand your customer base and increase revenue.

Both inbound and outbound marketing strategies are valuable for lead generation and, ideally, you want to use a combination of the two.

However, there's some confusion about what inbound vs outbound marketing strategies entail — especially since the spotlight is on inbound these days.

Benefits of Automated Lead Generation

You can see right away that these activities and strategies, while proven to be effective, can take up a significant amount of time and energy. And that’s before actually reporting and analyzing if the strategies are working.

Marketers and sales professionals don’t just want to do things faster — they want to do them better.

And if you’re one of these individuals, you should know that automation is the key to shaving off hours of time (and marketing dollars) wasted on lead generation activities that can be automated. All that without sacrificing that “personal touch” that converts prospects.

80% of marketers surveyed by Apsis felt that automation generates more leads — 451% more than not using automation. What’s even better is that 77% using marketing automation software were able to close more leads than those not relying on automation tools.

Here are a host of benefits at work helping marketers to realize that 451% increase in leads using automation:

• Increased sales team efficiency and productivity: By automating the lead generation process, sales teams can save time on finding and sorting through leads, allowing them to focus on more value-added activities such as nurturing and closing deals.
• Cost savings: Automating lead generation can also save businesses money by reducing the need for manual labor and reducing the likelihood of errors. Sales reps can focus on higher value activities, while automation takes care of the more repetitive and time-consuming tasks.
• Boosting revenue: By generating leads that fit your ideal customer profile, you can increase your chances of closing more deals and boosting revenue.
• Enhanced accuracy and data quality: Automation can help ensure that lead data is accurate and up-to-date, as it reduces the likelihood of human errors in data entry and management.
• Increased scalability: Automation allows businesses to easily scale up lead generation efforts as required, without requiring additional manpower or resources. This can be especially beneficial for growth marketing operations & experiments and testing new strategies on a larger scale.

Predictable and repeatable sales pipeline: By automating the lead generation process, businesses can create a predictable and repeatable sales pipeline, which can help them plan and forecast sales more accurately.

How to Prepare to Automate the Lead Generation Process?

Let’s be clear: Automation is powerful.

But, like Uncle Ben tells Spider-Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Automation only works when you work it — it’s definitely not a magic wand.

You’ll certainly benefit from automation, but to get the most out of it, you should be taking the right steps to prepare your current operations to be automated.

So here are a few tips from businesses we’ve worked with who get automation right.

Get Clear About Desired Results

Before you start automating the lead generation process, it's important to have a clear understanding of the results you want to achieve. Define your goal and make sure it’s specific, measurable, and backed by data:

“I want all employees of this company that work in HR, who will be found on LinkedIn, to be enriched with email and phone numbers, and then pushed to a spreadsheet.”

This desired result is primed for success when automating lead generation because it spells out exactly who these leads are, where these leads will come from, and what will happen to them when they come in.

Identify the KPIs that will help you measure progress towards your goals such as lead volume, lead quality, conversion rates, revenue generated from leads, website traffic, email open rates, or social media engagement.

Pro-Tip: Run your lead generation process manually first and make sure you understand every touchpoint extremely well. Only once you have clarity around this process should you try to automate. It’ll give you a good sense of parts that are automation-ready and other parts that should remain human-reliant.

Decide On Your Lead Sources

Deciding where leads are coming from is a critical step when automating the lead generation process. The sheer variety and accessibility of channels means that it’s important to choose the ones most likely to generate high-quality leads for your business.

Here are some factors to consider when deciding where your leads will come from:

• Your target audience: Consider where your target audience is most likely to be active. For example, if you are targeting B2B customers, LinkedIn leads may be a more effective channel than Instagram.
• Your industry: Certain channels may be more effective for certain industries. For example, if you are a local business, Google Maps or Yelp may be a good option to generate leads from people searching for businesses in their area.
• Your budget: Consider the cost of advertising on different channels. Some channels may be more expensive than others, and you'll need to determine what your budget can support.
• Your content strategy: Consider what type of content you will be using to generate leads. For example, if you are focusing on visual content, Instagram or Pinterest may be more effective than LinkedIn or Twitter.
• Your competition: Consider what channels your competitors are using to generate leads. While you don't want to copy their strategy, you can learn from their success and determine if there are any gaps in the market that you can fill.

From here, you can start to identify the channels that are most likely to generate high-quality leads for your business.

Use Captain Data’s handy guide to find the best sources according to your market. Get it here!

Define What Will Happen With Incoming Leads

When a lead comes in, it's important to have a plan for what happens next to ensure that the lead is properly nurtured and eventually converted into a customer.

Here are some factors to consider when deciding where to push incoming leads:

Your current technology stack: Consider what tools and software you currently use to manage leads. If you are already using a customer relationship management (CRM) system, you may want to push leads directly into that system to ensure that they are properly tracked and managed.

Your lead scoring system: Consider how you score leads and what actions you take based on their score. For example, if a lead meets certain criteria, you may want to push them directly into an outreach tool like lemlist to start a conversation.

Your sales process: Consider your sales process and what steps you take to move leads through the sales funnel. For example, if you have a lead nurturing process that involves sending targeted email campaigns, you may want to push leads into an automation tool like Make to trigger those campaigns.

Your team's workload: Consider how much time your sales team has to manage leads. If your team is already overwhelmed with leads, you may want to push leads into an enrichment tool like Kaspr to help qualify and prioritize them.

Once you have considered these factors, you can decide where to push incoming leads. For example, if you are using a CRM system, you may want to push leads directly into that system.

At the end of the day, what you want is a plan for what happens next once the lead is pushed into the designated tool or system. This may include tasks for sales reps, follow-up campaigns, or ongoing lead nurturing activities.

With a clear plan for managing incoming leads, businesses can ensure that they’re tracking and managing only sales qualified leads, leading to higher conversion rates and increased revenue.

Get Specific About the Target

Be very specific and clear about your target audience to ensure that you are generating leads that fit your ideal customer profile. If you go too broad with your lead gen campaigns, you won’t get high-quality prospects that are a fit for your offers.

This may involve creating an ideal customer profile (ICP) to guide your lead generation efforts. If you’re ready for this step, use Captain Data’s ICP/IAP model.

Survey current customers

Talking to your pre-existing customers or user base will help you better understand your target audience — who they are, what they want, and how you can help them further with your product or service.

Ask current customers about their pain points, needs, and motivations for using your product or service. This information can help you refine your lead generation strategy and create more targeted messaging.

How to Generate Leads For Your Business: 4 Ideas For Your Lead Generation Strategy

Now you know what to do — but how do you do it? Easy: these 4 examples for lead generation automation should help kickstart some ideas.

If you’re looking for a demonstration of automated lead generation in the wild, check out our Search Sales Navigator Leads functionality.

You can easily find leads with emails from Sales Navigator Search, Dropcontact, Neverbounce, and Salesforce. You’ll be able to create the perfect database of leads using a custom Sales Navigator leads Search, including company data and email data with Dropcontact. Then, just push to a tool of choice, like Salesforce.

#1: Inbound Enrichment and Shorten Forms

Your first automation strategy calls for creating valuable lead magnets that are relevant to your audience. These can be content assets like white papers or e-books. You could even schedule, run, and then record a webinar event as a lead magnet that processes interested prospects into your funnel.

From here, use an automated workflow to enrich a simple form attached to your lead magnet. For example, in addition to including the “Name” and “Email” fields, create a form with additional information such as phone numbers, position held, or company profile.

#2: Personalized Intents

Can you keep an automation workflow running but get personalized at the same time?

If you’re strategic about it, absolutely!

We recommend working with highly personalized email automation campaigns. Once your prospects have been segmented based on firmographics, narrow them further through behavioral actions and intents. There’s no limit to how granular you can get, as long as you can define each case for automation clearly.

Essentially, you’d be defining automation workflows based on high quality intents. What actions or behaviors, when taken by a prospect, indicate a high tendency to convert? That’s the question you’ll need to answer to set up these automations correctly.

But it’s not complicated: For example, you can create an outreach campaign aimed at companies from your target market that have recently received Series A funding. You may choose this criteria because you know, based on data, that these companies will engage.

#3: ABM Marketing

Implementing account based marketing is another powerful way to begin automating your lead gen strategy. Leverage social networks like Linkedin and Sales Navigator) and use automations like these to generate an aggregated list of leads that include company and employee info.

#4: Customer Reviews

Another, more indirect but equally effective, way to automate your lead generation is to harness the power of social proof. If your product or service is beloved by your current customers, let them be your number one source of referrals!

For this strategy, you’d automate the procurement of reviews and testimonials by loyal past or current customers. All you’d need to do is set up a workflow that addresses a designated segment of your current user base and that’s set up to automatically capture any incoming users that meet the same criteria as current customers.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that lead generation is an ongoing process, and you may need to adjust your strategy over time based on your results and the changing needs of your target audience. It requires you to regularly monitor your results and adapt your strategy — but doing so can help you optimize your lead generation efforts and achieve your desired results.

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