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Cost-Effective Ways to Acquire Quality B2B Sales Leads in Australia

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Cost-Effective Ways to Acquire Quality B2B Sales Leads in Australia

Generating high quality B2B sales leads is top priority among solutions providers in Australia. From financial services to health care, companies in the Land Down Under are constantly seeking to improve acquisition of high level prospects. They also find a need to do so for less.

At present, leads that express a high likelihood to convert to a sale are in the spotlight of the B2B market because they obviously represent revenue. No other type of lead equates to a profitable opportunity than one that actively engages you within the buying cycle. Hence, every effort has to be exerted towards such leads or else risk financial waste.

But in a study by the B2B Technology Marketing Community, at least 61% of marketers consider the acquisition of quality sales leads as a huge challenge. In Australia, companies face these particular issues:

1. Locating high quality leads;

2. Nurturing them; and

3. Convincing them to set an appointment with an agent.

Efficiency in these areas can be obtained through a combination of wise strategizing, up-to-date lead management infrastructure, and a dedicated team of marketing and sales staff. But in terms of maximizing expenses, these practical options come to mind.

Effective web presence

A majority of B2B companies are doing their best to maintain an effective web presence. This is reflected by a need to stay current as more and more B2B buyers depend on online content for scouting and purchasing solutions. Effective web content in this case is highlighted. Using a diverse mix of blog articles and informative resources, companies can provide highly interested individuals to their sales agents.

Social media penetration

The idea that social media is less effective in B2B than in B2C is a misrepresentation of actual facts. Currently, B2B companies are using social media platforms for a better connection with their audience. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn now have applications that allow these companies to initiate effective advertising campaigns.

Automated marketing software

The B2B industry is saturated by marketing automation software, each with its own set of advantages and features. Whatever your preferences, you are assured of better support for your lead generation and appointment setting and improved revenue.

Outsourcing

While some Australian companies prefer to implement technological upgrades, others opt to employ the services of a lead generation company. In fact, analysts are anticipating a spike in off-shoring this year. For many of these enterprises, business outsourcing is seen as an effective way to cut costs in manpower training and database maintenance.

What to Expect when you Outsource your B2B Lead Generation Processes

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What to Expect when you Outsource your B2B Lead Generation Processes

Keeping in mind that ROI maximization is an important marketing goal, businesses are opting for better ways to streamline basic B2B processes like lead generation.

There are tons of strategies that offer diverse advantages along the lines of acquiring high profile B2B leads. And it is just a matter of knowing which strategy serves your campaign best. But making a decision in this aspect is complicated if not financially exhausting. You will have to step up your market research initiatives and set up automated marketing systems. Tracking prospects as they progress through your sales pipeline is a staple in efficient lead nurturing; still, you will have to make hefty investments.

But automation isn’t really enough. Often, you would need hands-on expertise to make sure your lead generation efforts are producing your intended goals.

B2B outsourcing, contrary to some, still professes a high level of discipline and professionalism in whatever industry it is employed. Many businesses still regard outsourcing as a cost-efficient way to boost B2B performance. And now that market vibrancy has reached a point of high activity and competitiveness, outsourcing continues to be a viable option to improve one’s standing in the market.

If you haven’t yet made the decision to hand in your lead management and sales processes to another company, consider these following points on what to expect.

Lesser responsibilities.

There is always a constant need of balancing your company’s priorities. With outsourcing, you will be able to operate marketing and administrative tasks without neglecting the quality of one task for the sake of another. Face it. You will need a few extra hands. With a B2B firm doing the complex, time consuming and costly tasks of telemarketing and appointment setting for you, you will be able to focus more on important administrative agenda.

Issues on reliability.

However, not all outsourced processes are done exceptionally. Often, the problem with outsourcing is that you are uncertain with who to trust. With hundreds of B2B firms out there, you are hard-pressed to find one that suits your current needs. The fact is that there is no guarantee that a company can perform as expected, unless you take a risk to hire that company. In this case, it is imperative to do prior research.

Continuity.

Once you partner with a B2B firm, how do we know if core business processes can go uninterrupted? High levels of uncertainty complicate the B2B industry and solutions are needed to keep the operation running smoothly whatever event might transpire. With B2B outsourcing, you will be assured of extra manpower to reinforce your lead management and lead nurturing in the event of sick leaves and vacations among your in-house staff.

These aren’t even half the total issues in B2B outsourcing. In the end, however, what matters most is better performance in your lead management and telemarketing efforts. Hiring a firm that is dedicated to these goals is a sure step towards maintaining a firm foothold in your industry.

Qualities of a Competent B2B Lead Generation Outsourcing Firm

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Qualities of a Competent B2B Lead Generation Outsourcing Firm

Confident B2B businesses are more than willing to spend on anything that provides optimum advantages. Typically, they exhaust a great deal of their marketing budget on such aspects as social media and branding.

However, lead generation continues to be a complex challenge. Production of qualified sales prospects often causes massive headaches and unnecessary expenses. That is if lead management is handled sloppily.

Although in-house lead generation services have their own advantages, they entail additional costs and time for personnel nurturing. Since cost-efficiency and performance are important factors in the production of high quality B2B leads, outsourcing would prove to be a wise choice for many businesses seeking to get a good ROI rates.

But this leads to yet another challenge: Choosing the perfect firm for the job. This is not to say that you should seek the best out of a bag of hundreds. This is all a matter of knowing which company suits your lead nurturing and management needs.

Here is a simple list of qualities and proficiencies that can help filter out the competent from the not so competent.

Multi-channel capabilities.  An outsourcing company should be capable of utilizing multiple platforms in lead prospecting. The use of various communication channels provides better results than when you focus on solely on social media listening and engagement. Also, a company should make use of a perfect balance between inbound and outbound lead management techniques.

Accurate. In B2B prospecting, it is important to have an efficient market profiling and analytics system in place. A company should generate B2B leads that match your industry. It should also come up with an appropriate demand generation formula that attracts the right kind of people.

Persistent. Following up on prospects complicates the lead nurturing process. But it really takes a high amount of perseverance in order to keep B2B leads satisfied and interested. Sure, having a high turnout of qualified leads might be a source of optimism, but real gains come in the form of high profile conversions. For this, go for results-driven B2B companies instead of those focusing more on quantity.

Transparent. As a business leader, it is important that you maintain direct supervisory control over outsourcing partners. You also need to determine the progress of your lead management. With respect to this, a candidate firm should have an effective campaign tracking and management system in place to maintain quality and reliability.

Outsourcing B2B lead nurturing and generation is a cost-efficient way to drive up revenue. With B2B competition in constant activity, it is important to make use of viable ways in order to get one step ahead of the competition.

 

“We’ve outsourced our B2B telemarketing before –umm, it didn’t work”

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We’ve outsourced our B2B telemarketing before –umm, it didn’t workThis is what you’ve told John, a persistent telemarketer on the phone who’s been trying to convince you to hire them, a B2B lead generation company, to perform telemarketing tasks for your business. The problem is just that you don’t have enough faith left in the process because you’ve already been there, and things didn’t go as planned. You just don’t want to do it again and true enough, nobody can hold it against you (sorry, John).

But at least you’ve got to find out exactly what happened back then, right?

You don’t need to consult a detective to pinpoint the flaws in your previous venture with an external company, because there can only be 3 possible culprits:

  1. The outsourced agency
  2. You 
  3. Everything in between

That’s all there is. It could be one, two, or all of them, but for sure, the fault will not go beyond those three. You need to do a little introspection, see beyond the failure, and ask, why did it fail?

The outsourced agency

Just because they’re a lead generation company doesn’t mean they are faultless when it comes to producing results. To start with, there could be a lot of loopholes in their system: incompetent agents, lack of support from leaderships, substandard equipment, lousy IT infrastructures, and so on. It is important, should you decide to give another company a chance, to seek for testimonials from businesses that have gotten their services. Investigate on the things regarding their practices that you may not like. Consult one of your own IT people to assess their systems. Make sure they’re in tip-top shape before they do business with you. If in doubt, don’t.

You

What could I possibly have done to ruin my own campaign, you might ask. Well, you may have set unrealistic expectations and goals. Most B2B telemarketing agencies won’t tell you if your targets are unreasonable (of course, they’re trying to show-off a bit, that’s all). Or perhaps, on the other hand, you may have been very vague about what you wanted to achieve. You can’t just give them assignments and leave them hanging in the air, and then pop back when the deadline’s up. For all you know, the company you’ve hired may be the best out there, but you just didn’t use them the logical way.

Everything in between

Blend it all together, and you’ll understand why it all boils down to the relationship between you and the agency. There’s the issue of trust, of transparency, of feedback, of authority, and the list could go on. Just look back during the days when the campaign was still on-going: how often do you check up on them? How are your conversations with the team leader? How did you overcome difficulties along the way? Were there any conflicts? Would you say, with all honesty, that it was a pleasant, productive relationship?

How To Do Your Own Lead Generation

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When looking for qualified b2b sales leads for your business, you might have considered buying a pre-generated business list from a third party or a service provider. This is just one of the many common mistakes that business owners make when looking for more chances of a sale. The truth is, if you don’t want to hire a professional lead generation company for your business (which is the best way to get a steady flow of qualified business leads), then you’re better off generating your own business list from scratch. Try these simple tips to start generating your own leads now:

Put a sign-up form in your website or blog.

If you haven’t already done so, placing a simple fill-up form on your website or blog is the most basic (and easiest) way to get qualified b2b sales leads into your business list. Place the form in an unobstructive yet conspicuous space within your blog or website. Also, to motivate people to sign-up, have contests, promotions, or free giveaways that would require your readers or visitors to sign up. Just make sure your website or blog has certification. Your b2b leads and sales leads are more likely to give you their contact information if they can see an assurance that you don’t participate in spam, or that you won’t sell their contact information to a third party. There are various certifications available on the internet that you can place on your site to offer this assurance to your qualified b2b sales leads; web hosting service providers even offer this as a cheap add-on to their services. When your sales leads see that your online business is authentic, you can look forward to more visits and sign-ups to your business list.

Scour the internet for completely free business information.

It’s a common practice for online (and even offline) businesses to share their basic contact information on their websites to the general public. It helps their customers reach them easily, and you should take advantage of this. A simple Google search will yield hundreds of thousands of business b2b sales lead information. Though this may seem like a daunting task, you can be completely sure that the contact info on your business lists are made up of potential business sales leads from the right niche market.

Utilize the information on social media.

Even if you don’t have a lot of followers on Facebook and LinkedIn, you can check the profiles of these followers and collect their business information, just like doing a Google search. The benefit of getting the information from social media is that they will be more likely to recognize your products and your brand, which means they will be more accepting of your newsletters. You might even be able to ask for referrals from your followers to further increase your business list.

What To Write In Your Company Blog To Help Your Leads Find You

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what to write

Content marketing is the vehicle upon which online companies rely to generate quality sales leads, attract business opportunities and ultimately make a profit. But content marketing is not simply about writing on a topic you are passionate about. If you want your online business to be truly profitable, you have to tailor your posts for search engines and most especially your readers. Here are the important things to consider when deciding what to write on your company blog.

Keywords

Content marketing is all about keywords. Before you write something, you have to check how much competition you have for those keywords. The more competition you have, the less likely your target sales leads will be able to find your blog. You can use Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool to help you choose relatively easy keywords related to your niche that you can use on your posts.

Content

What you write about in your blog basically represents your website, so if you want people coming to your website and purchasing your products, you have to make convincing and interesting content to make this happen. Your blog posts should contain your chosen keywords (but not too much or you could end up penalized by the largest search engine right now: Google) and these should be seamlessly integrated into the topic of your post. To better get the attention of your target sales leads, write about something that they can identify with, or write about a problem that their demographic is constantly experiencing. If you provide solutions on your blog before they even happen with your sales leads, then they will see your blog and your website as a very valuable resource. Write about things that are not only “good to know” but also things that they “have to know”. This will help establish you as a thought leader within your niche and help make your products become more reliable.

Schedule

A schedule is imperative if you want to keep readers coming back to your blog, aside from great content. A posting schedule will help you regularly update your blog, and sticking to it religiously is the only way to make a lead generation tool out of a series of blog posts. In the words of blogger Chris Guillebeau: “I know if I missed a day and nothing happened, then it would be much easier to miss another day. Pretty soon I wouldn’t have much of a sched­ule, and then I’d have less motivation. It’s a downward spiral that I want to avoid, so I keep the schedule sacred. ” To help you keep up with your posts even if life becomes too busy, a great idea from Chris is to write 10 posts in advance. This way, if you become pressed for time, you can still post according to your schedule and keep your readers happy.

If you don’t have time to write for your blog, then consider hiring a lead generation company who is experienced with online marketing. A good company will help you create great content for your blog while you concentrate on your business website.