What are the top B2B marketing operations strategies for lead generation?

The first thing is to realize that lead generation will not succeed without Marketing and Sales Ops. You are vital for the process. This means that Ops people cannot just be executors when it comes to lead-gen activities but to lead and make sure the process is run well and that data is clean and measured correctly. Ops need to decide on and provide the following: 1. Make sure all sources of traffic are tracked properly 2. Data is full and enriched 3. Leads are routed to the right person and are contacted in minutes, not hours 4. Reports are focusing on what matters.

Aligning the product, solution, and/or service with the ICP and delivering a clear and concise message that shows a direct business impact should be first and foremost. Try different avenues of lead generation like Linkedin ads and other resources. Don't pollute the CRM, I see this constantly and it costs tens of thousands of dollars to clean up. Ensure your CRM matches your KPIs and what is important for you to track the success of the campaign. Last but most importantly, engage with the sales team on a regular basis if not daily to keep your finger on the pulse of the market, prospect and customer needs, and help with shortening the sales cycle.

For B2B marketing (for us SaaS specifically) we stopped measuring clicks, views, and vanity metrics. Only two KPIs mattered: sign-ups and demos booked. Everything else was window dressing. If prospects signing up and booking demos, we’re winning. That clarity changed the game. Everyone knew the goal. Simple, clear KPIs = game-changer. Get everyone on the same scoreboard, and watch the magic happen!

Most B2B marketing now a days is fully aligned to business strategy and sales agenda. You need to deliever consistently on revenue and not just build brand or create leads. It starts right from making your product or service known to closing deals, enabling adoption and engagement that permeates across all users. Marketing in B2B is the most critical function today. And it dons so many hats! To be successful, align your marketing strategy with sales. Look at what percentage of revenue you can contribute via activiating new markets or enabling growth in existing ones. Define TAM, KPI and Pipe and Revenue contribution at the start of the year in agreement with Sales.

One of the key advantages of modern marketing operations is that everything is trackable. Starting with a low budget allows you to perform daily analysis to understand what's working and what's not. Once you see positive results, you can then confidently increase your budget to scale your lead generation efforts. This iterative approach ensures that you're not just throwing money into campaigns but are making data-driven decisions to optimize ROI.

At the outset of ExactBuyer, our operations were scattered. We were managing email campaigns manually, landing pages were inconsistent, and our data was fragmented. Recognizing the inefficiencies, we implemented Automated Enrichment and Segmentation. By integrating automated lead enrichment with Hubspot, we created precise workflows attuned to audience behaviors. Additionally, an aligned CRM meant our interactions with leads became tailored, referencing specifics like recent articles they'd written, triggers and signals. This overhaul transformed our lifecycle strategy and significantly improved retention.

Sorting out your target audiences profile / avatar is one of the first things you should do. Knowing your niche audience and being able to target them with a high degree of accuracy is vitally important. When you can specifically call out your potential client based on who they are and their pain points, it solves a lot of the issues with getting leads. Being highly targeted in this way will always out perform none niche related B2B marketing.

A/B testing is a handy way to figure out how to improve your website, landing pages, ads, and more. - A/B testing is crucial for optimizing landing pages. Identify key elements to test: headlines, call-to-action buttons, pricing, etc. - Create two versions of the page, one with the original and one with the desired change. - Utilize A/B testing tools like Google Optimize or VWO. - Allow time for testing, with results being more significant with higher daily website traffic. - If the variant performs better, implement it as the live page. - Continuously conduct A/B tests on different elements and pages for ongoing improvements. - A/B testing enables data-driven decisions based on audience preferences.

Proper data collection is essential for being able to accurately track, optimize and attribute marketing efforts. That means ensuring your integrations are set up properly and that your CRM is collecting all the relevant data points that matter most to you. Decisions around optimization or increasing budget should be data-driven and if yourdata is not in order ..it can lead to expensive mistakes. Ideally your marketing operations team will own this and work with you on this so your data integrity is solid. If you don't have the support you need, outsource it. Messy or improper data collection is the cause of so many headaches down the line.

BANT is a terrible lead qualification method in my opinion and shouldn't be used on a call with a customer. They are getting no value from you. Instead, they are made to feel like they are in an interview and just being interrogated on their position. If you want to qualify your leads before they are passed over to sales, there are better ways to do this.

BANT qualification is not certainly the best to do on a call. Companies like Qong utilized qualification process without asking much question in a lead enrichment process. This allowed to reduce friction in the buying process customer-wise and to gain customer insights company-wise

This is where segmentation is super important! Not all leads are in the same stage of the buyer's journey. Identify different personas and create multiple nurturing flows based on their current needs. By doing this, you can tailor your messaging and value proposition to deliver more valuable information.

This where a lot of marketing falls down. We place too much emphasis on forms fills and Mqls that’s drive an urge for an instant sales out reach. This will just damage the brand and the potential lead. Have lead scoring in place but at the same time look at what they are doing, what actions are happening, where, in relation to what topic. Taking the time to understand this can then help you to craft an outreach that is of value to them. It doesn’t need to be a sales outreach every time. They may still be in the research phase or perhaps searching for additional content that is yet to be created. Understand your audience interactions and then serve them accordingly.

When you launch campaigns and programs, the first team/person who need to know is Sales. They are your champions and will also be prepared when prospects ask related question. So make sure you have - buy-in before you start a program/campaign - have done a de-brief of what it is and how it will support or create pipe - seek help and offer help to sales to uplift current engagement/conversation - craft and include specific high growth target lists for quick results - provide "conversational starter" kits/script to sales for post campaign outreach. - Follow-up: Super critical to keep a check on movement of MQLs/SQLs or pipe - Feedback: Ask what worked and what did not for them and and the customers. - Learn, pivot and execute again!

Lead generation is NOT dead. Leadgen is not to blame for many companies and employees limitations. We can still hit our objectives doing leadgen. We need to carefully follow all the steps broke down here. I've seen that leadgen projects fall short when we take shortcuts and skip stages. These stages that are often skipped are: - No lead nurturing program. Just lead generation actions. -No strategic assets: no ICP, no buyer persona.. If we don't know our audience, we will never connect with her and our project will fail -Incorrect or lack of marketing operations: No sync between different tools garnering customer insights... Data hygiene is a must in any marketing strategy.

I’ve been working with sales professionals for a number of years now in a range of sectors, and the alignment in our relationship is key. The sales professionals have a lot to offer in terms of insight and approach, and OK, they may need some probing, but they can definitely give you valuable insight. As a marketer, it’s my job to keep the lead generation process evolving, which means analysing the data and probing the sales professionals for insight. All of this should allow you to improve your lead generation process. Don’t just focus on filling the pipeline with any leads, focus on targeting the right leads.

The best way to win a lot of leads (and good quality leads) is to have a very full funnel. And funnels fill from the top, not the middle. So don't neglect awareness. You need lots of people in the awareness stage so you can eventually convert some of them into leads later. Remember, a funnel that's all bottom and no top isn't a funnel, it's a straw.