SaaS lead generation in a B2B environment can be quite challenging, and SaaS marketing is famous for being very data-driven with extremely little margin of error. Meaning, we also can’t rely on our competitors making mistakes to find new opportunities.

In this guide, we will discuss some of the most effective B2B lead generation strategies for SaaS companies, starting with the first one.

1. A Performing Website

In B2B marketing, your website is a very important marketing asset more than in a B2C environment. A website is perceived as more ‘professional’ compared to social media profiles, and most B2B buyers today expect a professional-looking and performing vendor’s website.

So, how can we determine whether a website is ‘proper’? There are three main factors:

1. Great content both in quality and quantity
2. Proper user experience, technical-wise
3. Aesthetically-pleasing according to today’s standards

We’ll cover more about content in its own section below, but your website would need to at least achieve the following:

• Mobile-friendly: there are two main reasons for this. First, Google and the other search engines now prioritize mobile-friendly/mobile-responsive websites on their SERP rankings. Second, is that simply a majority (over 60%) of users, including B2B buyers, are using mobile devices to access your website. The latest data has shown that 80% of B2B buyers are using mobile devices at work.
• Fast loading speed: close to half of the users will bounce from a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load (on a standard 4G connection).
• Security: how you convey to visitors that your site is completely safe is very important, especially if you also sell your products on your website. At the very least, make sure your site uses an SSL certificate (HTTPS instead of HTTP).
• Easy to navigate: your website should be an all-in-one resource for your users. Make sure it’s very easy to find your contact information (make it as obvious as possible). Also, include effective clear-to-action with proper placements. Don’t forget to also display clients’ testimonies, client’s logos, awards/accolades, and affiliations properly. They are really important for B2B websites.
• Aesthetically pleasing: yes, we do judge our books from their covers. Close to 40% of B2B buyers admitted to leaving a website due to poor design and/or navigation. It’s especially important to be clear about what your company is, what you do, and what you sell.

In short, make sure your website is performing well in both aesthetics and technical performance. Even just one bad experience on a website can make most users less likely to revisit this site.

2. Effective B2B Content Marketing

Content marketing is obviously very important nowadays both in B2C and B2B marketing, and today content can come in many different forms and mediums from blog posts, social media posts, YouTube videos, live streaming videos, podcasts, and more.

Content marketing is very important because as we have discussed, more and more buyers are relying on online content to make their purchase decisions. 91% of B2B marketers are doing content marketing, and close to 80% of B2B buyers have admitted that content quality significantly influences their buying decisions.

So, how should B2B businesses approach their content marketing? Which types of content should they develop?

There are no one-size-fits-all answers for these questions, and ultimately how you should approach your content would depend on your target audience’s behaviors and preferences. Here are some of the content forms you can consider:

• Blog posts:

Blog posts, articles, and other similar forms of textual content are very useful in the awareness building/demand generation stage.

The idea here is to provide content that tackles your target audience’s needs and problems, which should be related to the problems your product or service solves. Your content should show customers that you understand their needs and pain points and that your brand can be a potential solution for this problem.

Your blog shouldn’t only focus on promoting your product or service but to provide your readers with actionable, informative tips.

• Social media posts:

Social media is where our audience is nowadays (yes, even B2B audience), and it would only make sense that we should have powerful, engaging content on social media platforms. We will discuss this more on the social media marketing section further below.

• Video content and live streaming

We all know how big video marketing is nowadays, and it is also one of the most important formats in influencer marketing nowadays. Videos—in a B2B environment—allow businesses to offer in-depth tutorials and demos of your products, and are also a great medium to promote a product launch.

Live streams are also a very effective medium to engage your audience. You can, for example, create a behind-the-scenes content about your team or your product/service.

• Podcasts

Podcasts are getting bigger in recent years, and can be a very effective medium to establish your credibility/thought leadership in your niche.

The key takeaway is to define your target audience, understand their behavior, pain points, and needs, and produce content to cater to these needs.

3. Social Media Marketing

As discussed, social media is an effective platform to engage your audience, since it’s simply where the audiences are.

We can divide social media marketing into two different types: organic and paid. Organic effort is building your own followers and posting your own social media content. Paid efforts, on the other hand, are about using the platform’s paid options (advertising, LinkedIn’s Sponsored Post, etc. ) to reach more audience.

The key here is finding the balance between both. Organic social media efforts are obviously more affordable and can be totally free, but it would take more time to build your audience. Paid efforts, on the other hand, would save time, but can be very expensive.

So, it is actually the case of finding the balance between time and cost.

4. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing used to be a channel that is almost exclusively B2C. However, in the past couple of years or so, many B2B businesses now adopt influencer marketing in their strategies with varying successes.

Even in the B2B environment, people are more likely to purchase products based on the recommendations of their peers, and this is why when a trusted influencer in the niche promotes your product/service, it can be very effective.

Influencers in the B2B influencer marketing offer:

• Their authority and followers. They can help you promote your existing content and help make your brand more visible to their followers.
• A different point of view than your brands’ which can help you in targeting your audience as well as reaching a new audience.
• Authentic professional credibility that can otherwise take you years to build. This can help provide answers to the pain points of your target audience.

End Words

Although B2B lead generation is difficult, that’s not saying it’s an impossible game. With the right SaaS lead generation strategy, we can generate more leads and open up tons of new opportunities. It’s very important to remember that in B2B lead generation, lead quality is often more valuable than quantity, and we should always aim in getting higher-quality leads with each effort.

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About the Author

Mike Khorev is an SEO consultant who helps SaaS, software, IT, technology, B2B and startup companies generate more sales and grow revenue online. He offers expert advice on marketing your company the right way through performance-based SEO, inbound marketing, conversion rate optimization, search engine marketing and many other online practices

What would it feel like to have a competitor beat you to the top of the search engine results page (SERP) after all your effort and hard work in search engine optimisation (SEO)?

What if you’ve applied all the SEO tactics you know, yet a competitor’s web page keeps ranking higher than yours?

You don’t have to hate a website for ranking higher than you or beating you in the SEO game. Hating a competing website is a thing of the past when it comes to the Internet. It’s true that having a higher ranking competitor could lead to not achieving target website traffic, more time, and extra expenses.

However, the online world today has made it possible to use a better ranking site to your advantage. Your SEO drive doesn’t have to dwindle. Instead, you should monitor and analyze your competition to get more benefits from SEO and increase page rank. You should look at their content, keywords, and site optimization. You might wonder, “how can monitoring a competing website help me optimize my site?”

Let’s take a look at a few ways that can happen:

It Helps You Create Better Content

Content is king on the internet. Search engines primarily rank web pages and sites based on content. Google rates websites on E-A-T which means expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. This rating guideline concentrates on quality and reputation of the entire website content, including blog posts and landing pages.

When a website is consistently at the top of the SERP, you can be sure the site is creating epic content that meets search engine criteria. You can look at such site’s landing pages and blog posts.

However, don’t copy their work and regurgitate it on your site. That is plagiarism. Instead, put a twist on the topic or find out a recurring question by visitors in the comment and write an article to answer the question. This means you can get content opportunities from this strategy. You’ll always have fresh content in the form of blog posts, articles, ebooks, and press releases.

It Helps You Find and Use Better Ranking Keywords

While analyzing the content of competing websites, you can find out their potential relevant keywords, domains’ link popularity, and page result characteristics. You will also need to use the Google Webmaster Tool to research traffic that your site gets for various search queries.

This will show you the most effective keywords that bring in traffic. Find out how your competitor ranks for those keywords. Then, you can use the keywords to create researched, high-quality content. Once a user types in the keyword in search engines, your web page will have a better chance of appearing in the results.

You Can Improve Your Branding

Your branding is what sets you apart from your competition. It can help drive your site to the top of your niche market and create customer loyalty. SEO helps build brand awareness. A competing website will have its own branding and unique selling point too.

First, you need to research their website content. How do they promote their brand in each post? What is their brand strategy? Then, you can research their online presence, content output, and customer engagement. By doing this, you can identify the competition’s target audience, targeted niches, and customer attraction strategy.

With the information you’ve gotten, you’ll know what to do to strengthen your unique selling proposition. You can also find new methods of creating brand uniqueness and making your site more appealing to a shared audience. Through this, your online brand presence and search visibility can increase.

It Improves Your Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing and site optimization are intertwined. Let’s say your website’s profile has millions of followers, and your article has a hundred thousand shares on social media; if this is the case, your search rank will likely improve. You need to monitor your competitors’ social media activity by noticing how they interact with followers and what is shared the most. You can track their posts with tools like Hootsuite.

One way to take advantage of their social activity is to reach out to their followers with your content. Some of them won’t be following you. They can be interested in your content and visit your website, which can lead to increased traffic for you.

Another way is to analyze their marketing tactics and tweak your social media strategy to accommodate the successful methods they’ve used. You can also find out which content does well on social media. A post that’s successful on social media will rank high on the SERP. Once you identify the competitors’ content, write an article with a similar topic and mirror their content strategy on social media.

You Can Gain More Backlinks

Getting inbound links from authority sites can help your SEO drive. A competing website that is properly optimized will be building links, just like you are. You can reach out to those sites to get them to link to similar content. Also, you should track any new backlink they have and find out if they’ve adopted a new strategy.

The most important thing here is not to copy every detail of the competing websites’ link building strategy. Instead, use their methods to strengthen your SEO techniques. You can build on their strategies and incorporate yours at the same time. That way, you can have a better internet marketing campaign overall.

It Can Help You Improve SEO Activities

By examining a competitor’s SEO strategies, you’ll be able to keep up with industry trends and find out when something new is on the scene. For example, higher ranking websites may change their SEO strategy and style suddenly.

This can mean a few things. There could be a new algorithm update, and they’re adjusting their optimization strategy too. They might have found out a better way to make their web pages rank higher in the SERP. They might be trying to avoid a penalty or might be removing a black hat SEO technique. Whatever it might be, you can quickly learn from it and ensure your website benefits from it or avoids disaster.

It Can Help You Avoid SEO Pitfalls

By watching your competitors’ ranking and optimization strategies, you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. You’ll find out the SEO tactics that are not yielding much result and will likely become obsolete. This takes a lot of effort because you’re recording every detail in terms of their optimization actions. On the other hand, it helps you avoid falling in the SERP ranking because you know what strategies to copy or not.

Final Words 

Winning in SEO means ranking at number one in the SERP, having strategic keywords, and increasing your website’s online visibility. Analyzing a higher ranking website’s SEO style can help you create better content and give you insight into what optimization strategies work best for your industry. You should always research and monitor your competitor from all angles to improve your SEO New Orleans and to stay one step ahead.