Acquiring quality leads is an ongoing challenge for small and mid-sized B2B companies. In most cases, big businesses have comprehensive lead generation SOPs and ICP filters. However, most SMEs struggle in this area. As a result, conversions tend to remain dismal without a structured approach to lead generation and no mechanism to weed out unqualified leads. Marketing, in its truest meaning, is all about reaching out to customers and helping them. However, in reality, it’s now a complex function that requires interaction with multiple departments such as sales, business development and customer support. And this multiplicity of roles becomes increasingly challenging for small enterprise markets where a large percentage of the resources is dedicated towards operations rather than marketing. Therefore, it becomes imperative for SMEs to engage third party agencies to handle their lead generation campaigns.
Given the disparity in marketing budgets between the former and the latter, an important question arises. Is it possible to have a robust lead generation campaign with limited resources and marketing expertise? The answer to this lies in outsourcing lead generation, particularly for digital platforms. When an online business is new, entrepreneurs want to establish a strong follow through with their customers. However, they often lack the skills and experience required to bring this desire to fruition. Therefore, they end up dealing with lead generation campaigns that are not optimized for conversions. While it is evident that everyone wants to generate traffic and leads for free, paying for it might turn out to be more cost effective.
Outsourcing Online Lead Generation
For B2B start-ups, building in-house expertise and resources for lead generation is far too expensive and time-consuming. Firstly, a business needs to optimize its website for higher web traffic. Meticulous keyword research is necessary to target the right audience. High-quality gated content and other free resources are crucial to persuade visitors to exchange their contact details. The online query formats/contact forms must have the required filters to highlight leads with a high conversion probability. Apart from SEO, social media engagement and email marketing are indispensable pillars of digital lead generation. B2B marketers need to craft personalized marketing emails and run a highly targeted social media marketing campaign to generate leads successfully. Needless to state, all of these digital marketing strategies are time-intensive and require experts at the helm. Even a single mistake can make an entire campaign go haywire.
7 Reasons for B2B Businesses to Outsource Online Lead Generation
Fast Results with High Returns:
In-house lead generation can be painstakingly slow, and it can take months to achieve even a marginal improvement. Outsourced B2B lead generation provides fast and tangible results owing to a professional service provider’s high level of expertise.
Immediate Brand Visibility:
For emerging businesses to make their target audience aware of their brand/offerings, professional B2B lead generation is pivotal. There is increasing pressure on start-ups to reach out to many qualified prospects within a short span. Collaborating with the right lead generation service provider can ease this process, allowing businesses to focus on their core operations.
Easy Conversion of MQL to SQL:
Even for businesses that have excelled at lead generation, converting Marketing Qualified Leads to Sales Qualified Leads remains elusive. This is partly owing to the lack of coordination between sales and marketing teams. Not having a well-defined client persona is yet another factor. Businesses can easily overcome these challenges with a list of sales-ready leads to pursue.
Improve Sales Performance:
Outsourced B2B lead generation can provide a significant boost to the productivity of sales executives. Equipping them with a list of high-potential leads will ensure they remain on their toes. On the contrary, burdening them with non-core activities like cross-checking lead credentials and researching prospect data will deter their performance.
Helps in Penetrating New Market Segments:
When in-house marketers are entirely preoccupied with promoting existing products/services, launching an altogether new offering can be risky. Deviating the marketing team towards a new venture can affect the business of existing segments. Hence, outsourcing lead generation best supports expansion in new market segments.
Provides Access to Insightful Market Research Data:
Most marketing agencies that provide lead generation services specialize in market research, data analytics, and digital marketing. For B2B businesses, consumer data is akin to a goldmine, with multi-faceted insights to work upon. Real-time marketing data and consumer trends forecasting can steer B2B marketing strategies and business decisions in the right direction.
Keeps a tab on Marketing Costs and Metrics
Liaising with a reliable marketing partner is cost-effective and helps in fixing marketing budgets beforehand. When the top management is aware of the annual contract charges, controlling sales and marketing costs becomes easier.
Conclusion
Lead generation is an intrinsic aspect of B2B marketing that outsourcing is often misconstrued as a loss of control. As long as businesses entrust credible marketing agencies with their lead generation requirements, such worries are futile. On the contrary, there are massive advantages to outsourcing lead generation, as discussed above. To sum up, outsourcing lead generation can generate significant cost savings for businesses, as well as improve response rates and conversion rates to help businesses make more effective marketing campaigns. It also frees up precious time for sales staff to concentrate on closing sales, where they are much more likely to see a return on investment compared with generating leads from scratch. If a business is still skeptical about outsourcing lead generation, it should first explore the option of lead generation software, or outsource other aspects of the sales funnel such as SEO or PPC to free up personnel resources across the board.
SMEs can save valuable time and marketing resources with a ready list of high-potential leads to pursue. More than anything else, the sales and marketing team can focus on nurturing and converting leads, thus accelerating sales figures. There are countless reasons why brands need to outsource their leads, from saving valuable time, to maximizing pipeline quality and lead ROI. At the end of the day, it all boils down to one thing: increasing sales. Nobody wants to spend their advertising dollars on a dead lead, or worse, not even get a response. By outsourcing, smart marketers can ensure that every lead comes with a strong chance of converting into a sale, making the process more efficient than ever before.