Understanding the different challenges of lead generation allows you to mitigate setbacks. As a result, your campaigns will run smoothly and ensure that you achieve your objectives faster.
B2B Lead Generation Meaning
Before discussing the common challenges of B2B lead generation, it’s crucial to understand its definition. This process focuses on efforts that capture the attention of individuals who have decision-making abilities within an organization. Its main purpose is to bring new prospects into the pipeline and nurture them into customers.
Examples of high-converting B2B lead generation strategies include:
- Appointment setting: This lead generation strategy uses cold calling and emailing to identify high-value leads. It helps shorten the sales cycle, as it prioritizes prospects with the highest possibility of becoming a customer in the shortest time.
- Content marketing: Most prospects begin their buyer journey by looking for information that will help them address their pain points. Content marketing is an excellent lead gen strategy, as it’s designed to provide leads with answers to their question through videos, infographics, ebooks, and more.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO refers to practices that help improve websites’ ranking on search engines. It is an effective lead generation strategy, as it makes your company easier to find for people searching specific keywords.
B2B lead generation strategies can be implemented by either the sales or the marketing teams. The professionals that oversee these tactics are:
| Position | Job Description |
| Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) | These salespeople are primarily responsible for generating new leads for account executives by contacting potential customers and building initial rapport. |
| Business Development Representatives (BDRs) | BDRs have similar functions as SDRs, but are also responsible for finding new business opportunities for the company to scale. |
| Growth Hackers | These marketers’ main responsibility is to increase market share by leveraging data, experimenting with strategies, and implementing solutions to improve efficiency. |
| Demand Generation Specialists | These professionals coordinate their efforts with the sales and marketing departments, utilizing metrics and analytics to assess and enhance lead generation results. |
Common B2B Lead Generation Challenges
Lead generation is vital to the success of any business, but it can also be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Even seasoned professionals are bound to experience setbacks in its implementation. Knowing common pitfalls and understanding how to prepare for them can significantly mitigate the risk of mistakes along the way.
Here are the common B2B lead generation challenges and the best tips on how to overcome them:
Challenge #1: Choosing the Right Strategy
With so many options available, choosing the best strategy for your B2B lead generation campaign can be a daunting task. If you search for the keyword “best B2B lead gen strategy” online, you’ll find endless resources from various professionals and perspectives. Although this information can be helpful, it would be unfeasible to read through all of them to get the answer you are looking for.
Solution: Understanding your target audience is essential in determining what type of B2B lead generation strategy would best suit your campaign. To do this, you’ll need to create an ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer persona. These are research-based descriptions of your businesses and the people who are a good fit for your offerings.
Challenge #2: Lack of Expertise
Having a good strategy is not the only essential for a successful B2B lead generation campaign. You’ll also need experts who know how to implement and manage your chosen tactics.
For example, not all salespeople have the skills to create relevant and high-quality content that can capture leads’ attention. You might need to hire a content writer to produce informative and engaging materials.
Solution:
In-house teams can overcome a lack of expertise with consistent training. Here are 9 lead gen programs that can boost their skills:
| Lead Generation Course | Duration | Price |
| HubSpot inbound marketing certification course | 5 hours | Free |
| Lead generation machine: cold email B2B sales master | 4 hours | $130 |
| Lead generation foundations | 1 hour and 20 minutes | $25 |
| Small business lead generation for B2B & B2C | 13 hours and 30 minutes | $100 |
| B2B Sales course | 4 hours | $35 |
| Institute of Data and Marketing B2B lead generation course | 7 hours | $500 |
| Klozers B2B lead generation course | 9 hours | $1695 |
| Sales prospecting and lead generation course | 3 hours | Free ($21 for certificate) |
| Online marketing institute content marketing course lead generation | 4 hours | $859 |
You can also consider outsourcing lead generation if you don’t have in-house talents. Outsourcing is the process of handing over tasks to a third-party service provider. It allows you to access experts without needing to invest time and money in the hiring process – agencies already have a team of vetted experts ready to take on your campaign.
Challenge #3: Lead Quality
Lead generation processes rely on data to reveal insights into potential customers’ needs, objectives, and problems.
The success of a B2B lead generation strategy heavily depends on the accuracy of information about prospects. When your marketers and salespeople have the wrong info, their outreach efforts will be useless, causing them to do more work.
In this video, Salesroads’ founder David Kreiger explains the importance of research on the demand process. He explains that the sales development representatives who implement appointment-setting campaigns are not necessarily researchers, which is why it’s important to put in the legwork beforehand.
Solution: A quality lead refers to someone who has a high degree of interest in your offerings. Aside from clearly defining your ICP and buyer persona, you can use data to understand what your audience is looking for. Doing so will help establish your company as an authoritative voice in your industry and build trust with your audience.
Challenge #4: Insufficient Lead
Converting leads into customers is often a numbers game; the more prospects you reach, the higher the chances of finding high-value leads that are fast and easy to convert. The problem is that many lead generation campaigns fail to have enough leads to pursue, causing the pipeline to become stagnant.
Solution: You can increase the number of leads entering the pipeline by developing multiple lead sources. These are some powerful examples of channels through which potential customers can become aware of your brand and offerings:
- Social media: With 4.9 billion active users monthly, this channel is a great lead source. It allows you to reach more audience, increasing the chances of getting the attention of your target demographic.
- Email marketing: Most people who subscribe to an email list are considered warm leads because they have a certain degree of interest in your brand and offering. There’s also a lesser chance of your message being ignored, as it goes directly into the receiver’s inbox.
- SEO: 60% of marketers cite SEO as one of their greatest quality lead sources, mainly because warm leads usually use specific keywords to find the information they’re looking for.1
Having a good understanding of where your customers are coming from allows you to bring in more leads that fit your company’s ICP and buyer persona. It also provides valuable insights into what type of content resonates with your target audience.
Bottom Line
A lot of the common B2B lead generation challenges can be avoided through research and preparation. This is why it’s crucial to be meticulous in planning and implementing your campaign to get the best results.
