Taking a wider-reaching approach to messaging may work well for B2C brands but successful B2B marketing requires more nuance and an account based marketing (ABM) approach on LinkedIn has proven to work time and time again for B2B lead generation.
B2B businesses usually have a smaller, more defined client list and conduct their business in a more personal manner than B2C brands and so each new client acquisition is a high-value one.
New business for B2B brands is traditionally driven by BDMs and sales teams that generate new leads through network connections or word of mouth. This approach does work, but it also means new business is reliant on specific staff members’ relationships and is burdened by the risk of those individuals leaving the business.
Lead generation that suits B2B finance brands
A lead generation approach that suits B2B finance brands well is account based marketing (ABM) actioned in three key stages – market research, first-touch content to capture interest and create targetable audience pools and follow up retargeted advertising that uses relevant, audience-specific content to capture details via a lead-gen form. In fact, it’s an approach we use at ourselves The Dubs to target and distribute our content to the marketing teams within finance services brands.
The process starts with good market research that identifies all of the target businesses that represent new client opportunities. Most B2B finance brands will have already identified who their potential clients are but it’s important to keep updating this research ongoing to ensure you’re capturing all potential leads as they present themselves.
The second piece of research involves identifying the specific decision-makers or contacts within these target businesses. Again, there are many ways to gather this information but LinkedIn has particularly strong audience targeting capabilities such as ‘Job title’ (and variants thereof), ‘member age’, ‘Job seniority’ and ‘member interests’ that can narrow down the audience to specific decision-makers.
Combining both the target business list with the target contact or audience list is the starting point for your finance brand’s account based marketing strategy.
Content is at the core of ABM lead generation
At the core of a successful ABM lead generation campaign is well-crafted content that’s relevant and tailored to the B2B businesses you intend to target. Developing content that will resonate with your target audience not only comes down to the topics and themes you cover, but also how you position this content to different contacts or divisions within a business in a way that will have the greatest impact. Articles, infographics, podcasts, research reports and videos are all appropriate formats to serve as engaging first-touch content that once a lead is captured, will generally drive traffic to a branded environment such as the content hub of your brand’s website.
“ At the core of a successful ABM lead generation campaign is well-crafted content that’s relevant to the B2B businesses you intend to target.”
Before launching an ABM lead generation campaign it’s important to have a LinkedIn insights pixel placed on all pages of your website to cookie individuals that interact with your first-touch content. This then allows you to retarget that same target audience on LinkedIn with follow up content that acts as a ‘lead biscuit’ to capture contact details.
Again, your ability to capture this lead rests on the quality and relevance of your ‘lead biscuit’ content. If you’re to encourage decision-makers to share their personal details in exchange for access to your content, your ‘lead biscuit’ should offer a new perspective, unique research-backed insights, or highly-actionable advice. Added value content such as custom research reports, interviews with industry leaders and beautifully-crafted infographics are all great motivators to prompt B2B lead-gen engagement.
As well as removing the reliance on a specific employee’s personal network to generate leads, an added benefit of an ABM lead generation campaign on LinkedIn is that it is cost-effective as the advertising is narrow-cast to a highly targeted and retargeted audience in comparison to a mass-market B2C one.
At The Dubs, we can help with every stage of an effective B2B lead generation strategy from getting your website in order, to creating quality first-touch and lead biscuit content and targeting effectively to capture relevant, quality leads. Get in touch.
