B2B lead generation: how to collect qualified leads

B2B lead generation means getting businesses that could buy from you to leave their contact details. In return, you give them something useful, such as a guide, a demo or a free trial. A qualified lead is a business that matches the firms you sell to and has shown real interest. Collect them with an offer your buyers want, then follow up quickly, before they lose interest.

What is B2B lead generation?

A lead is a business, or the person you deal with there, that has shared its contact details and shown interest in what you sell. Someone who downloads your guide or books a demo has already told you what they want. You start the conversation from what they asked for, with an advantage rather than from zero.

Leads are often called marketing qualified or sales qualified, depending on how ready they are to buy:

• Marketing qualified lead (MQL): someone who has engaged with your marketing, such as downloading a guide, but isn't ready to talk to sales yet.
• Sales qualified lead (SQL): someone who has shown they want to buy, for example by asking for a demo or a price, and whom your sales team has accepted for follow-up.

Before you start, settle what separates a future customer from a name on a list. Write down the two or three things your best customers have in common, such as company size, sector or job title. Then note the sign of interest that matters most, like a demo request. A lead that has only downloaded a guide is an MQL, so keep sending it useful emails until it asks for more. A lead that asks for a price or a demo is an SQL, and it's worth contacting personally the same day.

What you need before you start

The examples in this guide imagine that you sell cloud bookkeeping software to small UK firms from tallowbrookbooks.co.uk. Whichever strategy you choose, you need three things in place:

• A website you can add landing pages to, with forms that send the details to you. You can build your website with our Aida AI Website Builder, or choose Hosting for WordPress if you need more functionality.
• A clear picture of your target audience: the size and sector of the firms you sell to, who makes the buying decision and which problem your product solves for them. For your bookkeeping software, the right buyer might be a small firm whose owner still keeps the books in a spreadsheet.
• Somewhere to keep your leads: a spreadsheet for the first few, then a CRM (customer relationship management system), which keeps each lead's details, notes and next step together, before leads start slipping through. You can keep your leads in MiniCRM, which reminds you when it's time to follow up.

B2B lead generation strategies that bring in qualified leads

To bring in B2B leads, you offer something a buyer values, and they give you their details in return. Referral programmes and email follow-up work through people you already know, your customers and the leads you have. You can also write to firms first, as long as your emails follow the UK rules under Email follow-up.

Landing pages built around one offer

A landing page is built for one offer and one action, such as starting a trial or downloading a guide. Leave everything else off the page, so visitors aren't pulled away before they fill in the form. At the very least, it needs a headline that says what the visitor gets and a few lines on why it helps. It also needs a clear call to action and a short form.

For your bookkeeping software, that could be a trial page at tallowbrookbooks.co.uk/trial with the headline "Try Tallowbrook free for 14 days". Every visitor who fills in the form to start the trial is a lead from a firm that wants to try your product.

Short lead forms

A lead form is where a visitor types in their details, usually in exchange for something they want. Ask only for what you need to follow up, such as name, company and email address. If some of your buyers are sole traders, also add a box they can tick to agree to your marketing emails. If you ask for too much, visitors give up halfway, so every field you won't use costs you leads.

On your blog, you could offer a bookkeeping checklist behind a form with just those three fields. Each download is a new lead who has told you what they're working on.

Free trials and demos

A free trial lets businesses use your product before they pay. For a product that's hard to try alone, a demo works better: you show it on a video call or in person and answer questions as you go. Either way, the buyer sees what your product does for them before they commit.

Your trial page can offer both. Small firms that want to explore on their own can start the trial, while larger firms that want to see it first can book a demo.

Guides, templates and webinars

Free content works best when it's relevant to a problem your buyers already have. A guide, a template or a webinar gives them something useful straight away, which makes the form feel like a fair trade. What they download also tells you what each lead cares about.

You could add budget templates for small firms to your blog posts about budgeting, each one ready to download after a short form. A firm that downloads one has shown it cares about budgeting, which gives your first follow-up email its topic.

LinkedIn lead gen forms

On LinkedIn, you can run paid lead ads with a Lead Gen Form attached. The form collects the person's contact details while they stay on LinkedIn, which makes it quick to say yes. Lead ads are paid advertising, so they make sense once your offer already works on your own website.

Your lead ad could promote a free webinar on month-end bookkeeping for owners and finance managers of small firms. Everyone who signs up through the form becomes a lead.

Referral programmes

Your happy customers know other businesses like them. A referral programme gives them a reason to recommend you, such as a discount or a free month for each new customer they bring in. Referred leads arrive with trust you haven't had to earn, because a recommendation from someone they know counts for more than an ad. This is social proof: people trust what others like them already use.

For Tallowbrook, the free month works well as the reward. Mention the programme in your emails to customers and inside your software, so they know it exists.

Competitions and giveaways

A competition draws attention and gives people a reason to leave their details. Choose a prize only your buyers would want, such as an upgrade to your premium plan. A prize that appeals to everyone brings in entrants who will never buy.

On the entry form, ask for contact details and the firm's biggest bookkeeping headache. Each answer gives you an opening for your first call.

Content and SEO

Articles that answer the questions your buyers search for bring them to your website while they're already looking for a solution. This is called inbound marketing: buyers come to you, and the offer on the page turns some of them into leads. For example, an article on tallowbrookbooks.co.uk about getting ready for a VAT return reaches the firms you want. It can also link to your trial page. To get articles like that found in search results, start with what SEO is and how it works.

Email follow-up

A lead who gets no reply soon forgets you. Send each new lead what they asked for straight away. Then follow up with emails that help them decide, such as a customer story or an invitation to a demo. Targeted email marketing keeps you in touch until they're ready to buy.

In the UK, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) set the rules for marketing emails. Their consent rule covers emails to individuals, and the law counts sole traders and unincorporated bodies, such as some partnerships, as individuals. So you need a sole trader's consent before you send them marketing emails, with a narrow exception for some existing customers. Emails to a limited company fall outside the consent rule. But every marketing email to any business must be open about who it's from. It must also give a valid address where the recipient can ask you to stop. In practice, include your company name and an unsubscribe link in each one.

Which strategy should you start with?

Start with one offer, one landing page with a short form, and a routine for replying to new leads quickly. For your bookkeeping software, that means the trial page at tallowbrookbooks.co.uk/trial and a quick reply to every new trial.

Our advice: choose the offer your best customers would have wanted before they bought, such as the trial or a template. Get it working before you pay for ads. Once your landing page turns visitors into leads, paid ads can bring it more of the right people. LinkedIn lead ads can collect leads for the same offer on LinkedIn itself. Many paid ads send people to a landing page. A page that doesn't match its ad is one of the usual reasons paid lead generation disappoints.

How to track and measure your lead generation

To measure your lead generation, watch three things: the conversion rate of each page, the quality of your leads and the results of your tests.

Your conversion rate is the share of visitors to a page who become leads. Compare it page by page to see which offer works and which page needs a better headline or a shorter form. Once you've set up Google Analytics, create an event for the form submission, such as your thank-you page loading. Then mark it as a key event. You can then see how many visitors fill in the form and which channels bring them.

Lead quality shows in how many of your leads become customers. When many leads turn into few customers, check whether the offer or prize attracts the wrong audience and how long leads wait for a reply. If the problem is quality, add one question about the firm to the form, such as its size, and accept that a few fewer people will fill it in. If your trial users buy but your competition entrants don't, put your effort into the trial.

A/B testing compares two versions of one thing, such as a headline, a call to action or an email, to find the one that brings more qualified leads. Change one thing at a time, so you know what made the difference.

Your numbers show which offer brings in leads that buy, and the rest depends on how quickly you answer them. When you follow up every lead with MiniCRM, each contact, note and reminder sits together, and you always know who to call next.