Lead generation for IT companies ideas

Covid is awful. No trade shows, no events, all the sales contacts are limited scope. Sales reps are hard-pressed to find new leads right now. 

But you don’t have to fret, because there are still awesome ways to generate leads for your business.

In this article, we’ll share some tips that will help you generate leads more effectively and that will create a meaningful relationship with people who are interested in your product or service. Shall we start?

Lead generation in a digital world

Before Covid 19, both B2C and B2B buyers did their research on the Internet. Covid 19 has led to more online research and purchases. 

In an international survey conducted by Sana e-commerce company in 2019, 75% of goods in B2B companies are already bought online. 47% get information online during the buying process. 

And earlier (2011 and 2012), CEB and Google showed in an extensive survey of B2B buyers that 57% of their buying decisions are made before they contact sales.

Today, the purchase decision is almost made before you speak to a customer.

What does this mean for lead generation? If buyers use digital channels, marketing and sales must also go digital. So as bad as Covid-19 is, it’s accelerating the digitization of marketing and sales. 

Lead Generation For IT companies 

Use your website as a lead gen machine

Is your B2B marketing sluggish, or is it like a flowing pipeline that’s generating leads? 

This is what happens when you build an inbound marketing website combined with outbound marketing automation. So how does it work? 

1. Lead generation for it services – Be find-able!

So if what’s been said is true, and buyers got lots of info online before COVID, and now they’re searching even more online with COVID, then you’ll need to do your best to remain visible online. 

But what should be found? Not just your company and your products, but also good content along the entire customer journey. 

In other words, you should answer every question your customers have in the buying process. 

For every question, you need a good article on your website, preferably a blog post.

2. CTAs, conversion offers, landing pages – Lead Generation For IT

If your prospects find you and flood your website, but you don’t get in touch with them, you’ve wasted your time. 

To avoid this, offer visitors the next logical step on every page of your website. This can be a white paper, a guide, a checklist, a webinar, or a video. Whatever the next step, you should include a call-to-action (CTA) that is irresistible and invites people to click. 

Via the CTA, your visitors land on a landing page with a registration form. If they fill out the form, they get the whitepaper and you get a new lead. 

Is it really that easy? YES! However, you need to get the right leads. In other words, the leads who will make a purchase. 

Inbound and outbound marketing go together for IT sales lead generation

Even if you work in the IT industry and sell complex products that need explanation, direct contact with your customers is still important to your sales process. So understanding that it’s not about “either inbound/outbound marketing” and rather, it’s all about combining both and creating synergies is the key to a sustainable marketing approach and a successful sales process.

What Is Your Sales Process Like?

Potential customers are wiser now. They don’t always know what they want, but they know how to search online for content that will add value to their lives. As an IT company, we can’t just treat things superficially. Your contributions should be detailed, your website should also be intuitive and functional. 

You can use all your content marketing cards to guide visitors one step further by producing blogs, whitepapers, and ebooks. Prove to your customers that you know what you’re talking about. 

In short: create thought leadership.

Inbound Isn’t Everything

No matter how clever and in-depth your content is, an inbound strategy alone will not convince demanding IT customers to purchase products or services that usually require larger investments. 

Eventually, you’ll need to meet the decision-maker, or more likely, Zoom with the lead face-to-face. But how do you know when it’s right to use more traditional marketing methods? 

The magic word is “lead scoring” 

You can increase the score of a lead by tracking how much interaction you’ve had with the lead using tracking tools.

Nevertheless, a high level of interaction doesn’t mean this lead is ready for the sales team. You need to qualify your leads well before you hand them off to the sales team where they could potentially be scared off by an overly pushy approach. 

All you know at this point is that your leads are interested in your content. So you don’t know whether or not they can afford your product. You don’t know if they have authorized a purchase. You don’t know who else is involved. Salespeople want leads that are ready to buy NOW. Leads that have been adequately qualified.

Outbound marketing as the link between inbound marketing and personal sales

What Is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing has been around forever. This type of marketing involves contacting potential customers and sending them appropriate marketing messages. 

Examples of outbound marketing methods are cold-calling, emailing, direct advertising, poster campaigns, event sponsorship, trade fairs, TV, radio, print, online or direct personal contact.

After new contacts, in technical jargon “leads”, have been generated using these methods, it is the responsibility of a salesperson to maintain and develop business relationships with these potential customers.

Outbound marketing involves contacting potential clients by sending them messages without knowing if they’re even interested.

In English, this is called the “spray and pray” method of marketing, i.e. an untargeted constant bombardment to which potential customers are exposed. The company interrupts people’s flow of activities to get their attention and deliver their message.

Outbound marketing can raise brand awareness but it can also offend and deter customers, so it must be done properly by experts in the field. 

Outbound marketing is great if you do it the right way. Outbound marketing is more effective if you have reliable data. However, this information is usually expensive to obtain and doesn’t go viral on social media or other means of online communication. 

Outbound marketing has low running costs because the message doesn’t change as often as other types of marketing. Leads can be directed to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Outbound marketing is about talking to your leads

Pick up the phone or jump on a video call and have a personal conversation with your leads. 

Ask questions like:

• Have you downloaded our e-book on “Software trends in the IT industry”, do you have any questions or can we help you with a specific topic?
• We saw that you downloaded the “What to Consider When Introducing New Software” checklist. Are you planning to introduce new software soon?

Get to know your leads, learn about their interests and challenges, and if they’re serious about buying from you.

Do you want to know more about how you can get more leads and convert them into customers? Read the following blog post:  B2B Lead Strategies: How To Increase Lead Generation in 2021

Cold Lead Statistics

Around 50% of leads are “Interested but not yet ready to buy”. What can you do with a lead like that? Provide them with useful information. 

An average of seven to twelve contacts is needed to qualify a lead. Therefore, you need to develop a detailed procedure for delivering high-quality content to interested leads via phone calls and emails and qualify them step by step so that they are ready for sale.

Keep calm and love inbound & outbound marketing

Don’t make an either-or decision when it comes to attracting IT customers. Mix it up! Outbound and inbound marketing work well together and are not mutually exclusive. Fill the gaps and synergies in inbound marketing with classic marketing measures.

Business development requirements for IT and software companies are getting more and more complex due to increasingly complex solutions. The decision-making process is shaped by the departmental needs of different decision-makers. 

At Brightest Minds, we qualify each individual’s needs in order to generate quality B2B leads. In other words, we keep an eye on the whole company’s IT strategy and infrastructure and, if necessary, build a long-term relationship with the target audience.

When it comes to fully exploit the potential of a campaign, you have to go beyond just getting leads from individual people. Communicating with decision-makers and interested parties across departments and levels is critical. 

This doesn’t just mean one-off interviews, but a lot of one-on-one. 

Our approach includes multiple contacts across different channels. So our customers’ offer can be positioned to solve the problems discussed. We use this to get in front of the decision-makers and generate detailed descriptions of potential projects.

This company-related approach to successful lead generation allows us to generate project-specific information that we can pass onto our customers.

Conclusion

We’ve successfully handled 1,600 B2B lead generation campaigns since 2011 because we know how to position an offer with responsible decision-makers in the right tone, at the right time, using the right tools.