Lead Management in B2B marketing

 

Modern lead management has long since ceased to be a pure "nice to have" but an absolute "must-have" in order not only to survive but also to be successful as a B2B company in the world of modern marketing. Outbound marketing measures are becoming less and less critical, and the changed buying behavior is also contributing to a radical rethink in companies. We are starting to focus on content marketing, generating and developing leads, and are attaching increasing importance to the strong cooperation between sales and marketing.

Which companies can still afford today not to generate prospects or develop new customers? What was a "nice to have" until recently has become a "must-have" in a short time. We're talking about integrated lead management and everything related to it. But despite this knowledge, many companies have not yet jumped on the bandwagon. You continue to rely exclusively on tried and tested outbound marketing measures such as cold calling or advertisements.

Lead generation is an essential basis.

When interested parties (= leads) obtain information about products independently via the Internet, social media, and other platforms,  and lead generation companies have the task of making this information available to them in an appealing way. The aim is to accompany you from one decision phase to the next. Every B2B company is already hoarding a large amount of content. Be it in the form of product data sheets, brochures, or case studies. This content has to be viewed, collected, and assigned to an interested party's relevant decision-making phases. This process is followed by the so-called lead generation, which is part of the 4-stage lead management process.

For processes like lead generation, lead development, and closing to function smoothly, it is essential that sales and marketing pull together and think in one direction. Sales employees, especially in B2B companies, far too seldom trust the competence of marketing. They all have the same goal: generate leads, develop customers, and close sales.

The new role of marketing

The tasks of marketing have changed significantly in recent years. Some time ago, organized trade fairs and events, developed colorful product brochures, and created engaging PowerPoint presentations, now contribute to generating leads and pre-qualifying them. This means that interested parties are only handed over to sales when they can be better assessed in terms of willingness to buy and area of ??interest.

But what does the personal dream customer look? Modern companies are increasingly making use of the buyer persona concept, which is ideal for defining the perfect prospect or desired customer. You choose a customer whose type you would like to have more. You work with images and placeholders, define some important profile properties, and create a real artificial figure. Position, industry, company size, personality traits, or search behavior could characterize this figure.

Based on this profile, you can ultimately derive what information the lead needs to advance the decision-making or purchasing process. When developing your buyer persona, you should also ask yourself which channels your prospect and the potential buyer is using. Because this contributes significantly to where you publish and promote your content. Possible channels are, for example, company blogs, video portals, social media platforms, newsletters, or specialist portals. Customers from the B2B environment, in particular, prefer other channels than those from the B2C background.

From prospect to the buyer with lead nurturing and scoring

To develop the interested party to a certain "sales maturity," the data must be enriched (= lead nurturing). In advance, it is determined within the company what information must be available to lead to sales. These can be named, email address, position, country, company size, industry, etc.

But when is a lead a good lead? What industry should he be? What is the minimum number of employees in your company? You should already know an answer to this before you rate your leads (= lead scoring). All of these processes described can be implemented most efficiently with the help of a marketing automation system. Many B2B companies also use these platforms to define campaigns and workflows, which can be measured at any time during tracking and reporting.

Conclusion: According to a Lenskold Group study, the number of companies that set up modern lead management will grow by 41% in the future. Lead management is full of potential for B2B companies. Lead management is becoming a trend-setting compass for sales and B2B marketing. Used correctly, it can make things easier for sales. Marketing and sales will work more closely together through suitable lead generation and lead nurturing measures. In this way, both departments will work hand in hand in the future and be part of their success.