Five Unconventional Lead Generation Examples to Drive Sales Success

Lead generation activities can be complex to execute. A 2021 Ruler Analytics survey showed that generating high-quality leads was the most challenging job for B2B people, with 37% of the correspondents struggling with this issue. 

Attracting prospective customers can be tricky because the sales and marketing teams have to combine effective channels, techniques, and messaging to produce results. 

We listed the best B2B lead generation examples for you to discover fresh ideas to draw prospects into your sales funnel. 

Five Lead Generation Examples for Your Next Campaign

The best lead generation examples are proven campaign methods that sales experts use to capture qualified leads. 

If you’re running out of ways to generate leads, here are five powerful ways with the potential to generate highly-qualified leads:

Partnership Opportunities: Co-Selling

Co-selling involves two or more sales organizations collaborating directly to sell their products or services. Unlike reselling, where a partner sells products on behalf of another company, co-selling means that sales professionals from each organization are actively working together, sharing information and strategies to close deals. 

In the episode of the “Sell Like A Leader” podcast where David Kreiger, the founder of SalesRoads, is the host, Autumn Grimm, the founder of PartnerTap, defines co-sell as “activating the connection point between sales professionals so that they can work across organizations to source, influence, or activate or accelerate a sales process.”

In co-selling, companies leverage relationships with their partners to gain deeper insights into prospective customers. This can include understanding a company’s previous buying behaviors, organizational structure, and any specific nuances or preferences that the buyer might have. Rather than working in silos, different sales teams pool their resources and information to build a more compelling and informed pitch to the prospect.

One example Autumn shares is about LastPass, a customer of her company, Partner Tap. By leveraging co-selling strategies through their platform, LastPass was able to identify 15,500 new logo accounts from just one of their partners. This significantly boosted their revenue by 4X within the first year of using the co-sell strategy.

Listen to the full episode here:

Calls with Inbound Leads

The most direct way to generate new leads is to contact them directly over the phone. That’s why outbound lead generation gets a lot of attention, but here’s the secret: you can leverage the power of calling with your inbound leads too for two reasons:

• Inbound leads have already expressed interest. A call allows you to have a focused conversation, answer questions, and move them further down the sales funnel faster than relying solely on email or website interactions.
• A phone call allows for a more personal connection than text-based communication. You can build rapport, understand their specific needs, and tailor your pitch accordingly.

One of our Insurtech clients was experiencing delays in responding to their inbound leads, which resulted in missed opportunities. We implemented a rapid response system to address this, ensuring that leads who prefer direct calls were contacted within 60 seconds. 

This allowed for immediate engagement and appointment setting, significantly improving their sales funnel efficiency and maximizing the number of SQLs generated:

If you lack an internal sales team to invest in these strategies or need to accelerate your calling lead-generation process, it’s better to consider outsourcing as a solution. 

Running Webinars

Webinars are live or pre-recorded video content in which companies share information about a pain point or a product or service.  These seminars are amazing for generating leads, as you ask clients to provide their email addresses to register.

Webinars allow you to interact with potential clients and demonstrate expertise in your industry. 73% of B2B marketers report that webinars are one of the best methods for generating high-quality leads.

The differentiator here is the quality of your content. Your topic needs to resonate with your audience and be appealing enough to draw their attention. Educational webinars provide in-depth information on a subject, issue, or new industry trend. The product types are sessions to explain specific features, how-to-use, and benefits of a product or service.

The best way to use webinars to generate leads is to create sessions that combine both types. You can provide research data, industry trends, and pain points, then position your product or service as a viable solution. 

Referral Programs

Leveraging customer referrals is an effective lead generation strategy, as it taps into the trust and credibility established with existing customers. Endorsements from happy clients can strongly influence potential leads’ decisions.

Referrals often come with pre-established trust and greater willingness to engage. Referreach reports that the average conversion rate for referrals is an impressive 11%, indicating their superior conversion potential compared to other lead sources.

Consider giving a percentage of the deal to friends who refer leads that result in closed sales. This type of program incentivizes people to provide you with high-quality, conversion-ready leads.

You can make your referral program even stronger by:

• Setting clear criteria: Define what constitutes a qualified referral (e.g., industry, budget, decision-making authority).
• Offering tiered rewards: Increase the reward percentage for larger deals or faster conversions.
• Making it easy to participate: Provide clear instructions and a user-friendly referral platform.

Long-Tail Keywords for Better SEO 

SEO content creation is an effective lead generation strategy. You can get ahead of the competition by focusing on long-tail keywords that are relevant to your industry and do not getting a huge volume of traffic. 

If you have a website, you have probably already created content using the popular search terms in your industry. You may be struggling to rank well on search engines because these keywords are saturated. 

To make your content rank better, you can research alternative long-tail keywords that still speak to your target audience. 

A few tips for getting relevant keywords include:

• Try localizing keywords to your physical location. e.g. “lead generation agency in Washington D.C”. 
• Look at autocomplete suggestions, related searches, and the “People also ask” section on search engines. 
• Check your website’s internal search history for specific queries and create content with those keywords.
• Use SEO tools to find fresh keywords to make SERPs. 

While traffic for alternative terms may not be as high as it is for more obvious keywords, you have the advantage of being sure that you’re attracting highly qualified leads. 

Bottom line

Instead of sticking to traditional strategies, companies should think outside the box and let their sales teams experiment with different lead generation examples.

That way, you can find the right combination of strategies for your business and tweak them to suit your audience for the best results.