10+ B2B Lead Generation Strategies [2024]

There are hundreds of B2B lead generation strategies and ideas, but some work better than others.

In this post, you'll learn about some of the best ones.

Go to sections:

• What is B2B lead generation?

• Types of B2B leads

• B2B lead generation strategies

What is B2B lead generation?

B2B lead generation is a marketing process of engaging and creating interest in a product or service, to build a sales pipeline and ultimately get new clients for B2B businesses. This process helps businesses grow by finding new leads, building relationships with them, and improving marketing ROI.

B2B lead generation strategies help businesses spread marketing messages across channels such as social media, search engine marketing, display ads, and offline events. By using multiple strategies, you can cover a lot of ground and focus on different business goals.

Types of B2B leads

Here's an example of one path a visitor on a B2B website can take to become an inbound lead:

B2B lead generation strategies

• Capture emails with popup forms

• Drive traffic to signup forms with onsite notifications and bars

• Create blog content with practical value

• Prioritize creating case studies

• Host live webinars (also with partners)

• Help leads choose the right product with a quiz

• Consider different ways to implement product demos

• Try B2B influencer marketing

• Implement an AI chatbot

• Use social media marketing

• A/B test your campaigns

1. Capture emails and data with popup forms

Popup forms, if done well, can become an important source of inbound leads. For example, they can collect emails and lead qualification data (industry, company size, use cases, etc.), and drive traffic to landing pages.

Using popups for B2B lead generation requires taking care of a few things:

• Choose who sees them (and who doesn't): how to choose audience

• Creating a design that matches the website: popup design guide & examples

• Have an offer that's relevant to the page it appears on (you can set your popup to appear on specific pages only): 18 discount and coupon ideas

• Have a clear goal (collect emails and data, drive traffic to a tool or form, promote a specific product or service, book a demo, etc.)

• Describe the value for taking the action (e.g. learning how a product helps tackle a specific goal, seeing best marketing practices in action, getting an extended free trial)

Let's now see a few examples of businesses using popups to generate B2B leads.

Intrepy, a healthcare marketing agency, offers a free practice video assessment call to new visitors with this popup form:

Next—

Schulman Insurance invites to complete a short form with this popup to get personalized employee benefit recommendations:

Next—

InsightGlobal, an international stuffing agency, promotes an upcoming webinar for their target audience:

And one more—

YesPark, a parking marketplace for businesses, invites its website visitors to download the official app to start using the service:

There are, of course, many other use cases.

For more examples, check out these 50 website popup examples or—

See how to create a popup form [step-by-step guide]

2. Drive traffic to signup forms with onsite notifications and bars

The goal of this B2B lead generation idea is to direct your website visitors toward lead magnets, signup forms, landing pages, case studies, portfolios, and other resources. Since most of your traffic arrives at your homepage, this would be a way to make them explore more.

Website bars and onsite notifications are two non-intrusive channels to do so.

Biteable, an online video software, nudges homepage visitors to action with this dark bar (note that the bar has a CTA button with a different copy from the homepage CTAs, too):

Website bars can be placed at the top and the bottom of the website. If you make them "sticky," they will remain visible as the visitor scrolls up or down but never interfere with the browsing experience.

Here's how to make website sticky bars if you're interested.

Next channel—

Onsite notifications.

Another non-intrusive way, onsite notifications are social media-inspired message feed for websites. It's added to the website header and is shown as a "bell," which, if clicked, opens a feed with messages.

YesPark, a shared parking service, promoted a new feature with the notifications:

Onsite notifications proved very effective.

In 14 days, 3,901 visitors saw the announcement. Of those, 464 clicked to read more, resulting in a 12% conversion rate. Over 250 visitors went to check out the new feature:

If you'd like to learn more, this case study has all the details:

YesPark case study

3. Create blog content with practical value

Content marketing is one of the things that builds your unique B2B brand and reputation, so creating content is becoming more and more important.

Consider creating:

• Blog articles

• Podcasts

• Videos

• Email newsletters

• Assessments

• Research reports

• Original studies and surveys

• Free online tools, eg ROI calculators

If you're just starting, consider focusing on several content types. Blog articles and videos are some of the easiest to create while podcasts, assessments and email newsletters are some of the most effective in terms of generating B2B leads.

Every piece to serve your readers must have value to position yourself as a thought leader and grow your Google positions. For examples of great B2B blog content, visit Clutch.co and NerdWallet—their collection and expertise level are exceptional.

4. Prioritize creating case studies

Case studies are one of the best ways for your potential clients to learn if your product or service works. That's why they often seek case studies when interested in a company.

That means prioritizing the creation of case studies is a must to increase inbound lead generation. Create a "Case studies" section on your website to differentiate them from the rest of the content you publish.

Effective case study ideas for B2B include:

• Cost savings case study. Eg., "See how company A reduces hiring costs by 30% thanks to product B"

• "Better performance" case study. Eg., "Company A increased organic website traffic by 94% and reduced the cost of lead acquisition by 30%"

• An interview-style testimonial. This means having a client make a video describing their experience with your product or service

For examples of "cost saving" and "better performance" case studies, check out the websites of your competitors.

But if you need a good example, consider Tebra (it's a B2B specializing in healthcare marketing). Their case studies are detailed, include stats, and mention solutions used by clients:

For an example of an interview-style case study—

Watch this four-min video we made together with NUOO:

Tip:

Consider adding a signup form or a popup to pages with case studies to generate B2B leads with a personalized call-to-action message.

Like—

"Get a personalized demo to learn how you can achieve similar success for your business"

In popup software, for example, creating a campaign to display only on the case studies page means adding the URL of the case studies section to page targeting options:

Learn more:

How to target specific groups of URLs

5. Host live webinars (also with partners)

Consider hosting a webinar to show how your product addresses the problems of your target audience. Webinars are a big-time B2B lead generation strategy because they allow showcasing your expertise, connecting with potential clients, and generating quality inbound leads.

Consider these types of webinars for generating B2B leads:

• Use case webinar. Show how your product solves a specific problem with insights from a real client who used it successfully

• "News"-style webinar. The goal is to inform the audience about the latest developments, trends, and best practices in the industry

• Product demo webinar. These are live demonstrations of your product that give info on how your audience will benefit from becoming a user

Teaming up with a partner is a great idea to increase the value your audience will get from watching. Here at Wisepops, we hosted multiple webinars with our partners, including this Black Friday marketing project with Klaviyo (both in English and French):

6. Help leads choose the right product with a quiz

Product quizzes are common in B2C (19% of Shopify stores have them) and are becoming more popular among B2B businesses. The interactive nature of quizzes has a higher potential to engage B2B leads, so many businesses have embedded them into their websites.

For example, Hartford Insurance, an insurance provider for businesses, invites visitors to find the right plan with this three-step quiz:

If you'd like more B2B quiz examples, find inspiration with these:

• Find the Right Coverage for Your Business (The Hartford Insurance)

• Vacation Rental Business Health Check Quiz (from Hostfully)

• Find the right business consultant quiz (from ConsultPort)

7. Consider different ways to implement product demonstrations

Product or service demonstrations can have different names (growth sessions, live demos, discovery meetings, etc.) but they give perhaps the best chance to convert more B2B leads.

Consider different ways to make product demos to make them more accessible:

• Pre-record demos based on industry or target users. Having a selection of pre-recorded demos (some of which might be gated, too) will increase your chances of more visitors understanding the real value of your product or service

• Let visitors book meetings on-demand. This is the most common way to do demos, with visitors completing signup forms to request personalized demos

• Regular group demonstrations. Arrange weekly or bi-weekly meet-ups where you showcase your product or service, compare it with similar, analyze recent case studies, or announce new features in a meeting that anybody can join by signing up

Some examples for you—

Jasper, an AI solution for ecommerce, allows visitors to sign up to get demos on-demand:

Next—

Here's Deloitte with an industry-specific demonstration:

8. Try B2B influencer marketing

B2B influencer marketing is a marketing tactic where B2B businesses partner with known industry figures to promote their products or services. The main goal of B2B influencers is to raise business awareness by showing a product in action.

B2B businesses of all sizes have been using this lead capture strategy successfully. Take a look at this LinkedIn post—Grammarly wrapped up theirs a year ago! (Btw, their influencer campaign involved 10 lifestyle influencers and reached 23.5 million people):

9. Implement an AI chatbot

AI chatbots are a B2B lead generation idea that can point your visitors to the right resources, answer their questions, and, of course, explain the value of your product or service. If you train your chatbot based on the content from your blog, for example, it can become a micro search engine.

Nerdwallet AI chatbot is a good example.

If you land on NerdWallet's homepage or blog, you'll see the form with the chatbot, inviting you to get started:

I asked the chatbot about the best credit cards.

That's what I received—

The chatbot points to the blog articles and landing pages (that's a good way for leads to get immediate value from the service):

Although AI chatbots may sound like an expensive B2B lead generation strategy, it doesn't have to be. With tools like Chatgpt being free, your developers can potentially build a custom chatbot in-house.

10. Use social media marketing

Using social media marketing is still a valid B2B lead generation strategy. There are over 67 million company accounts with millions more decision-makers on LinkedIn alone, so your target audience is definitely using the platform.

Here are common ideas to generate B2B leads on social media, namely Linkedin:

11. A/B test your campaigns

If your B2B lead generation ideas and strategies aren't performing well, consider testing them. Changing the design, message, or placement can really make a difference.

Consider these ideas:

• Emails. Subject lines, preheader texts, main copy, discount sizes

• Targeted ads. Copy, incentives, platforms, social proof, audiences

• Lead magnets. Types of content (case studies, webinars, etc.), display pages

• Landing pages. Design, texts, signup form placement, headlines, customer testimonials

• Lead generation forms. Display pages, audience targeting, incentive, number of signup fields

Summary

Generating B2B leads requires a strategic and multifaceted approach. From personalized product demonstrations and engaging influencer marketing campaigns to innovative AI chatbots and effective social media marketing, each method can play a crucial role in driving quality leads.

Still have questions or need some more ideas?

Consider these resources:

• How to build customer loyalty

• Email list building strategies and tips

• Conversion rate optimization (CRO): 10 best practices

• Product recommendation examples [from B2B and B2C]

• How to add a WooCommerce popup to your website