HOW TO GENERATE B2B LEADS GLOBALLY AND BUILD BRAND AWARENESS

Originally Published at Vitsmuni

For every business and organization building brand awareness and generating leads is one of the important tasks in their venture.

To understand this in a deeper level it something like this – building brand awareness is like people knowing about you and recognizing you, whereas generating leads is acquiring clients or customers for your business to generate revenue.

How important it is for people to know about your business? Well, the answer is very simple very important. If I don’t know you, how would I come to you?

Similarly, how important it becomes for a business to generate leads? It’s like a car without fuel.

Let’s break this down in to even more simpler terms and understand this at a fundamental level. In this article, we’ll cover the persona, challenges and solutions to generating B2B leads and building brand awareness.

Lead Generation B2B

Generating leads abroad is not an easy task, it requires intensive research and understanding of the international market.

Generally, if we see for every business owner the major abroad clients that they would target is from U.S, U.K and the Middle East.

An easy client, and a piece of cake to acquire, isn’t it? But the fact of the matter is, the reality is far more diverse than it looks.

Companies from U.S and U.K they receive tons of emails and offering for which they might be overwhelmed and happy, at the same time ignore it because it’s a normal routine for them.

For the Middle East, it’s all the play of numbers i.e., if you have a good number of followers in your Fb page, Instagram irrespective of the relevancy of your followers along with your good track record of work, you might get the leads or acquire the client from there.

However, there is a huge client based market geographically Asia, Africa, U.S, U.K, Middle East, Europe.

Nonetheless, before getting into that we must understand what are the basic challenges that we face when we acquire a client or leads from abroad.

Challenges of getting leads from abroad:

• Cultural differences
• Competitive offerings
• Competitive pricing (based on regions)
• Adding value to the customers
• Extra effort benefit that we’re offering

How to reach new customer and build a good business relationship with them?

• Research/Analyze:

Research and analyze the market and region you’re targeting. Never be informal and talk about religion and politics not until and unless you’re asked to.

• Understand the Time Zone:

Remember the time zone and stick to the timeline that you have promised.

• Always enquire:

Learn what is common sense and what needs to be talking. Understand their work environment and culture.

• Language:

Work on language, don’t be too big with your vocabulary. However, different people will have a different level of language fluency. But from your end always try to make the message simple, short and clear. Avoid cracking jokes.

• Be cautious about money:

Always be careful with the money you quote in the beginning. Make a standard rate which doesn’t just meet your ends as well as meeting the foreign region pricing and standards at the same time.

Strategies to generate leads

• Focusing majorly on cities, not country wise: For generating leads abroad you must focus on cities because it will give a good search result and target client location wise.
• Using directories and tools: Using local directories and tools and advanced search operators will give us leads based on targeted location and their contact details.
• Using growth hacking tools: There’re various tools that will help us in generating leads and finding details like, leadonardo, followerwonk, hashat etc.
• Targeting less popular cities: Which are related to your niche, and will be less competitive.
• High-quality content: Quality content, blogs, infographics, whitepapers, e-books help in generating leads, the reason is people in foreign countries love to read researched and well-written content.
• Referral and Networking: It is the best way to generate leads. Your existing clients, friends, peers, freelancers can refer you to someone that you might be searching for.
• Experiment: Experimenting based on city wise like Chicago, Dubai, Florida, Illinois etc., extracting details sending them cold emails personalized. Understanding the nature and culture and approaching them and subsequently following up.
• Cold Emails: Cold emails is the most effective and efficient way to reach anyone. Make the use most out of it.
• Research and Outreach Program: Thorough research and using influencer and outreach technique, for generating leads.
• Social Media and Ad Platforms: Using LinkedIn messages, emails, Ads. Using Facebook Ads, Google Ads effectively for generating the lead.
• Events and workshops: Events and seminars are the best way to generate leads by making good connections with them.
• Location Targeting and Remarketing: Location targeting would be great and best would be focusing on remarketing ads and a new campaign for it.
• Intent and Affinity audience: Intent and affinity audience will also perform well in terms of generating leads.

Understanding the Challenges w.r.t to Website, Social Media and other related resources.

Website:

• The page size of the website should be minimum, with its loads time.
• Have a lead form on side of the service pages, as well have a subscription form which pops out for asking contact details to track the lead.
• Design the web page efficiently and wisely, test it and improve it from time to time.
• Install sitemap, which is very important for the bot as well as for the visitors.
• Update quality blogs timely and track it.
• Analyse the website, do competitor analysis, insert the right keywords.
• Understand the sales funnel and the action needs to be taken for the same.

Social Media:

Facebook:

• Increase the number of page likes and followers, which would be beneficial in terms of acquiring clients.
• Post on your Facebook page, with an image or video which will bring a good engagement rate.
• Make your post engaging. Use Infographics and videos are missing.
• Set a time for posting the posts.
• Use proper hashtag.

LinkedIn:

Build a good network on LinkedIn, for generating leads, and regular post on your page for more engagement. A lesson to learn from the social beat, how they have grown faster, with proper and use of LinkedIn and other social media network.

Twitter:

• Use proper hashtag.
• Regularly post, and retweet.
• Gain more follower on Twitter in comparison to following, to have a greater impact.

Instagram:

Regularly post on Instagram, post stories, which can be a good platform for brand awareness and communication, as well as getting leads.

Pinterest:

• Post custom images.
• Post blogs.
• Integrate website with Pinterest

SnapChat:

It is mainly used in the US and European regions, it can be a good platform for branding and communication as well as generating leads.

What channels you should use to leverage to generate leads & drive brand awareness and why?

Channels that we can use to leverage brand awareness and leads:

• LinkedIn:

It is the best B2B platform for generating leads as well for brand awareness. It is where all companies reside. Using it wisely can help us in generating leads, not just organically but also paid.

• Facebook:

We can use Facebook for brand awareness and reach campaign. And it’s not that companies are not here, we can generate leads as well in here with a proper strategic plan. Because billions of users use Facebook and we cannot ignore them.

• Pinterest:

It is one of the best platforms for images and also for generating more traction and leads. Pinterest has evolved with time and has become more than an image posting platform.

• Adwords:

We can use AdWords to generate leads. Remarketing ads, affinity audience, strategically planned ads will generate the right brand awareness and leads.

• Twitter:

Twitter can also be used for generating leads and companies. It is the best way to find your clients, using the advanced Twitter search option.

• Instagram:

Instagram stories, images, videos play a vital role in brand awareness and lead generation.

• SnapChat:

It is mainly used in the US and European regions, it can be a good platform for branding and communication as well as generating leads.

• Blogs:

Posting engaging blogs on the website will not just leverage brand awareness but also generate leads.

• Whitepapers, E-books, Pdf, Infographics, videos:

It’s the most sophisticated and innovative way to create brand awareness and generate leads abroad.

• YouTube:

Build a channel which talks about your work and your field. How you’re helping your audience and viewers. It’s a perfect way to build brand awareness and build brand positioning.

Strategic Plan for Building Brand Awareness and Lead Generation:

Building brand awareness is reciprocal to generating leads. It’s a bilateral process when your audience knows about you and we have perfectly communicated the message it becomes easier to convert them.

• Gated Content: It is a free premium content which is available for the users when they fill up the contact details. It can be a great way of generating leads, brand awareness as well as bringing traffic, via, Whitepapers, E-books, Pdf, Infographics, and videos.
• Build Trust: Building trust with your audience and customer makes your brand even more stronf=ger and you can retain your clients.
• Organic Backlinks: Increase in organic backlink means good SERP ranking. It is possible through posting engaging content infographics, videos, e-books.
• Guest Posting: It is the most effective way of bringing engaging content to the website and also building a strong network of freelancers and other influencers, who can be of any help in the future. (Detailed approach and planning)
• Content Marketing: One of the most influential way to build brand awareness and generate leads. Content Marketing isn't just trending but it is the future of marketing.
• Video Marketing: It is a mainstream trend and reality of marketing. Videos have more engagement than any other posts on social media. Proper use of video marketing and leveraging them with the gated content will bring leads and brand awareness over various social media platforms, including YouTube and SERP.
• Interviewing the Influencers and Experts: This has become a regular and well-known trend in the current market. As well it’s an effective way to engage your audience.
• Featuring the CEO or Founder as an Influencer: This is one of the important aspects which most of us ignore. The face of the company is the influencer, and we must build a strategy to do the needful.
• Influencer Marketing: It is one of the important aspects of building brand awareness and also generating leads. Because they can be a good source of referrals.
• Social Media Marketing: Platforms like LinkedIn can be good for B2B leads and brand awareness, Facebook Ads can help us in brand awareness and leads, Twitter can be used for finding leads and companies, Instagram for building mainly brand awareness and SnapChat for building brand awareness and lead generation.
• Adwords: Location targeting would be great and best would be focusing on remarketing ads and a new campaign for it. Intent and affinity audience will also perform well in terms of generating leads.
• Sales Funnel: Make the most use of sales funnel strategies not just for generating leads but also for generating the leads.
• Remarketing: Remarketing can help us in generating leads, where there could have been a loophole in the marketing funnel and can be looked upon once again.
• Landing Page Optimization: It is very important in understanding the right user experience and optimizing it from time to time.
• Building a unique personality: There are other brands in the market how can we compete with them, this is one of the ways.
• Podcast: Podcast can help us in creating brand awareness as well as getting registered on i-tunes and play store will give us more traction.
• Building awareness: about your product and services and what you offer will bring more brand awareness. Most importantly educating not just your target audience but also to the common audience what is growth hacking and how it plays an important role in Digital Marketing.
• Posting tutorials, guides, whitepapers, pdf, newsletter: options will give and bring more traction from worldwide. It will help us in generating leads.
• Compelling stories: Building a compelling story is important, this is what will engage the audience and your target. You must believe and feel in what you’re doing, this should as well transfer to the audience.
• Focusing majorly on cities, not country wise: For generating leads abroad we must focus on cities because it will give a good search result and target client location wise.
• Using directories and tools: Using local directories and tools and advanced search operators will give us leads based on targeted location and their contact details.
• Using growth hacking tools: There’re various tools that will help us in generating leads and finding details like, leadonardo, followerwonk, hashat etc.

There’re other several strategies for building brand awareness Co-Marketing, Piggybacking technique and many marketing strategies. It will differ based on your nature, size and scale of your business.

Building brand awareness and generating leads is a set of procedure and line that follows subsequently after the completion of the one phase.

This is something we must always research and analyse through analytics, market, psychological understanding and future trend analysis.

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