How to Generate Leads for B2B SaaS
Video Transcript
Recording of Steve Keifer
“One of the most common questions I get asked is what’s the best way to generate leads? And often people are looking for a simple answer like exhibit at trade shows or run Google ads. But in the world of B2B marketing, particularly for high consideration, complex purchasing processes, the answer is not quite that simple.”
Three Lead Generation Strategies
“I break it into three different categories.
There’s outbound, inbound, and community.
- Outbound is when you reach out to your target buyer and try to get a meeting with them.
- Inbound is when they come to you.
- Community is when you meet in the middle.
So let’s talk about all three of those, starting with outbound.”
Outbound Marketing
“I’d highly encourage you to have a dedicated team that’s focused on prospecting, reaching out to your target accounts at a regular frequency, trying to set up meetings with them.
Channels
You’re going to want to use a variety of different communication channels.
Some people are going to answer the phone.
Some are going to respond on LinkedIn.
Some are going to be responsive on email.
Personalization
You also want to use personalized messaging where possible to stand out from the noise.
If you congratulate the person you’re targeting on a recent promotion or award that they gave.
Or comment on a speech or a podcast, that they that you listened to.
Those are ways to get attention.
Offer
You also want to think about the offer that you’re making.
You’re asking for 20 or 30 minutes of a busy senior executives time, and the ability to demonstrate and pitch your product well, that might be appealing to you is not quite as enticing to them. So you want to think about more creative options:
Can you offer them access to an expert who can the consultant revise on a challenging problem they’re trying to solve?
Or an invitation to be on a podcast?
Or a free audit of a business process that they might be struggling with?
Or simply appeal to their wallet by offering them $100 gift card?”
Inbound Marketing
“Now, the second way to generate leads is inbound.
Search Engines and AI Chatbots
And as you probably know, this is all about being highly visible on things like the Google search engine in AI, chatbots like Perplexity and Claude, and ChatGPT.
But it’s much broader than that.
You also want to be highly visible on platforms like YouTube, which is actually the second highest search engine in terms of traffic, far ahead of Bing and Yahoo!
Social Media and App Stores
You want to be visible on social media platforms like Quora and Reddit, where a lot of buyers go to ask questions and seek answers to things that they’re trying to research.
You want to be highly visible on online review sites like TrustRadius and G2 and Capterra, and even app stores like the Salesforce App Exchange.
Paid vs Organic
Now, there’s generally two ways to be highly visible. One is to earn it, which is called organic, and the second is to pay for it where you pay for advertising. So that you rank very prominently in our highly visible.”
Community Marketing
“Now the third way you generate leads is what I call community.
And this is all about understanding where your buyers congregate, both in the real world and online. And one good example of that is professional associations.
So say for example, you were targeting human resources professionals. Well, there’s a society for human resources management that might be a good place for you to prospect.
If you were targeting accountants, you might want to go after the AICPA.
If you’re targeting, C-level executives are also VIP invitation-only communities. For example, there’s something called the suite that is communities for legal professionals and finance Leaders. There’s Pavillion for sales and marketing leaders in each of these different professional associations, offering lots of different sponsorship opportunities for vendors to go and promote themselves.
They have conferences both on a national and regional level that you can exhibit at.
They have digital offerings like webinars that you can speak on and offer thought leadership perspectives.
They have email newsletters and websites that you can run advertising on. And these are not only good ways to generate leads, they’re also good ways to build brand awareness.”
Mix of Strategies
“So as you’re thinking about the best way to generate leads for your organization, I encourage you to experiment with all three of those different categories outbound, inbound, and community.
Now, the balance in the mix of those is going to vary by company, but using a combination of all three is the best way to consistently and predictably generate leads so that you can hit your growth targets.”
