B2B Customer Acquisition Strategies for 2020

Customer acquisition in a B2B environment can be a very challenging process but at the same time can be the most important element in achieving growth. No marketing efforts will bring any value unless we can’t bring in new customers, which in the case of B2B marketing, a new organization/company that is willing to invest in our product.

With that being said, here we will discuss four effective B2B customer acquisition strategies for 2020, and how you can implement them to generate growth. Let us begin with the first one.

1. Inbound Marketing: Content Marketing+SEO

Content marketing combined with SEO as the primary way to promote the content is a concept we call inbound marketing, and it is still a very effective lead generation and customer acquisition method in 2020 for B2B businesses.

In general, we can generate leads via content marketing by using a method we call “lead magnet”. A lead magnet is done by offering something valuable to people who consumed the content, mainly via a pop-up call-to-action in the middle of the end of the content for free, in exchange for their contact information.

The basic idea of this method is fairly simple:

• Publish and promote valuable content to attract your target audience, promoted mainly through B2B SEO.
• Offer something valuable when the audience is being engaged by the content for free, in exchange for their email address
• The visitor is attracted to take the offer, and here they effectively convert as a lead.

The offer can be various things from a limited-time discount to giveaway, but mainly we offer gated content, which is, a downloadable content that is usually more in-depth and is related to the content’s topic. For example, if the current content is about SEO, then we can offer an in-depth ebook covering something like “best SEO strategy in 2020”.

2. Using Social Media To Generate Leads

Social Media can be a very effective lead generation device, but it is still fairly underutilized especially in B2B customer acquisition.

There are several ways we can use social media to generate new prospects:

• Drive your social media audience to visit your website and/or a lead-capture landing page. It’s relatively hard to get your audience’s contact information straight from social media interactions, so the idea is to direct them to our website for a more efficient process.
• Provide links on your social media posts so people can sign-up for your newsletters. You can, for example, encourage people to join your email newsletter when a post is getting a lot of engagement.
• Use Call to Action (CTA) in your social media posts naturally.

In the B2B environment, LinkedIn deserves a special mention because of its effectiveness. The latest data have shown that more than 80% of B2B social media prospects come from LinkedIn. Here are some ways for effective customer acquisition via LinkedIn:

• Build a strong presence on LinkedIn. This should be pretty clear: provide clear and specific information on your LinkedIn profile and regularly publish relevant content.
• Engage your target audience, build relationships with your prospects by asking interesting questions and creating engaging conversations.
• Join relevant groups where your target audience gathers. You can filter groups based on demographics data and previous actions.
• Use various paid advertising and promotional options on LinkedIn to promote your business to the target audience. The basic idea is to find the right balance between your paid and organic efforts to achieve cost-efficiency.

3. Using Influencer Marketing To Build Awareness

Influencer marketing used to be a thing exclusively implemented by B2C businesses, but not anymore. In recent years, however, many B2B businesses have tried to endorse influencers and celebrities with varying amounts of successes.

Influencer marketing can be a great way to build awareness and promote your product since working with the right influencer can effectively help to get your message heard amidst the saturated market.

Here are several things to consider if you are looking to implement B2B influencer marketing:

• The most important aspect of successful influencer marketing is to find the right influencers that will fit your business’ needs and brand. This can be easier said than done in certain B2B where there aren’t a lot of influencers work with. Various influencer outreach tools can significantly help here.
• People nowadays are resisting sponsored messages from bigger influencers and celebrities, and big influencers can be very expensive to work with. You might want to aim for nano and micro-influencers that might offer a more genuine experience for your audience.
• The secret is to build relationships with these influencers. Some influencers might not want to work with your brand (even if you have the budget), and this can help in developing the best possible campaign for the influencers.
• Create a proper campaign with the influencer where you can effectively capture leads or acquire new customers. For example, ask the influencer to drive their audience to a lead-capture landing page.

4. Effective CTAs To Improve Conversion Rate

How we design our CTA, how we use it and where we place it can significantly affect the conversion rate and can make or break our customer acquisition effort.

With that being said, creating a highly effective CTA can be more difficult than it sounds. Your CTA must be specific and comprehensive enough for the target audience but at the same time should be effective in capturing their attention.

Highly effective CTAs consist of at least five different elements:

1. The offer itself: a CTA is only as valuable as what’s behind it (the cover)
2. Copywriting: how powerful the message is in communicating the offer’s value.
3. Visual design: a CTA usually comes in the form of a button or a banner (although it can also come in the form of a text hyperlink).
4. Size: the bigger, usually the better if it doesn’t overwhelm the overall content. Maintain the balance of the overall context.
5. Contrast: the CTA has to stand out from its surrounding content. You can use different colors than the rest of the content, different font, etc.

Make sure the CTA is clear and to the point, and communicate the right message about the role of the user. If they are going to download something, then say “download here” or something similar.

End Words

B2B customer acquisition can be a long and challenging task and not one customer acquisition strategy can be effective for call cases. In the end, customer acquisition is about using many different marketing channels to work together to build awareness, establish online presence, and promote your product.

It’s also very important to consistently monitor your progress, evaluate, and adjust your strategies if necessary. Pay attention to changes in customer behaviors, and leverage the current trends when you can without betraying your brand values.

Mike Khorev is an SEO expert and digital marketing consultant who helps small and mid-size businesses generate more leads, sales and grow revenue online. He offers expert advice on marketing your company the right way through performance-based SEO digital marketing, web design, social media, search engine marketing and many other online practices.