You have countless warm and qualified leads ready to fight for your B2B products or services, thousands of deals closed every month, excellent revenue rates that your competitors can only dream of, an excellent reputation in your niche, and...
Ensuring a constant flow of potential customers is essential for any business , whether it is a manufacturing company, an agricultural start-up or an IT company .
So how exactly can you automate the process? Want to learn more?
Let's start! 👏🏼
Important disclosure: We are proud affiliates of some of the tools mentioned in this guide. If you click on an affiliate link and then make a purchase, we will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you (you pay nothing extra).
Potential Customers as Business Fuel ⛽️
To work productively and survive, we all need fuel: people need food ; fuel for machines ; Insta bloggers' likes and comments; charging of smartphones ; Businesses need potential customers .
But we also need to prepare or buy food, buy gas, post and promote regularly, and charge our smartphones. Nothing happens by itself - we take action to get the fuel we need.
The same goes for leads : you need to take action to capture them and convert them into deals.
Specifically, you need to seek out and contact them , attract them to your sales pipeline, engage them with great content, target them with catchy ads, and ultimately get them to buy.
All these processes represent lead generation.
Nowadays, you can generate leads online in multiple ways and across many different channels, typically classified as inbound and outbound .We'll take a closer look at both and explain how to automate these processes, improve the performance of marketers and sales teams, and increase lead generation.
Inbound Lead Generation: Create the Conditions - Reap the Harvest 🌾
In the case of inbound lead generation, leads initiate contact by clicking the link in your social media ads or filling out the form on your website or contacting you after a webinar .
While it may seem like leads come to you spontaneously, this is only partially true: you've laid the groundwork for it.
You've created a website with a CTA and all the features needed to communicate with you, like forms and buttons . You've run ad campaigns , posted on social media, written dozens of guest posts, optimized your website, etc.
You've put in the effort , time and resources to get potential customers to come to you themselves .
The great thing about inbound lead generation is that you can generate a constant flow of leads with minimal effort . As we have already mentioned, you need to make sure that they exist by creating all the necessary conditions and "tuning" them from time to time.
In other words, you can automate your inbound lead generation process using a variety of techniques. Here are the basic strategies for marketing automation.
How to Automate Inbound Lead Generation 💻
1. Work on PPC 📝
PPC or pay per click is a well-known internet advertising model. You place an ad on websites or social media to drive traffic to your website and pay the publisher when an ad, usually a banner, is clicked.
This is one of those rare cases where people want to pay someone as much money as possible . We're kidding, but you know what we mean. The more clicks you get, the more you pay to host the ad.
This is exactly what you want: more people coming to your website and interacting with it.However, as it can be quite costly, you need to make sure that you target the right audience, do it in a timely manner, and convert as many potential customers as possible into actual customers.
👉🏼 At this point, you can find and hire a PPC advertising company to do this job for you.
Using marketing automation software to create target account lists and search for buyer intent data – across the web saying “Hi, these guys seem interested in your products and services. This is definitely your target audience. Targeting your ad on them is worth a try.”
2. Take SEO Seriously 🙌🏽
Ahh, those three holy letters – search engine optimization, best known as SEO, is the key to increasing traffic.Which link do you usually click after searching for something on Google? The first or the second?
Okay, maybe a seventh one, but you'll probably never get to the next page.
Add necessary keywords to your blog articles, product descriptions, and other pieces of text and research keyword intent to rank your website higher in search results .
3. Fuel Your Blog 👨🏾💻
If you want to make sure your leads come in consistently, work on your blog. Whether you want to start a WordPress blog or use a different CMS, it's up to you.
Provide high-quality and engaging content on a regular basis: guides, useful tool lists, tips, etc. Also, host guest posts and collaborate with other writers and experts.
In other words, do everything you can to attract potential customers to your blog, so that when they suddenly read the article they come across, they're soon reading your website, checking out solutions, and checking prices.
Working on your blog is linked to point 2: you can write SEO-focused articles and kill two birds with one stone – you provide high-quality content and attract traffic.
In the meantime, consider feeding other blogs as well.
Developing a solid content marketing strategy and writing guest posts is another good way to drive traffic to your website.
Just add the link where needed ☺️
4. Improve Your Landing Pages 💻
Imagine you need service and you just learned about a company that can help you meet your needs. What do you do first? Yes, you go to the website. This is why landing pages are so important – they represent your company.
Therefore, you need to take care of website visitors. Make sure you have streamlined your website's user experience and content, that your website is easy to navigate, and that buttons are designed and placed correctly.
Also consider contact forms; Don't make your potential customers search for where to contact you or spend hours filling out forms - no one will do that!
5. Don't Forget Social Media
We have already mentioned social media when talking about advertising, but managing social media advertising is also a priority in itself.
Nowadays, most people have an Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn account and can browse these accounts for hours.
What if you were among the posts of their friends and celebrities with interesting content?However, it's up to you and it's definitely worth a try.
Since posts can be scheduled, content managers can think about social media content strategy in advance and post regularly without any daily effort.
Of course, the list is not limited to these strategies, but these are the basics that help automate inbound lead generation.
Once you set up all these processes, brilliant results won't be long in coming.
Are you done with incoming leads? Ready to move to outbound? Let's start!
If the Mountain Doesn't Go to Mohammed: Outbound Lead Generation 👈🏽
Outbound lead generation, on the other hand, means that you need to find leads and reach them yourself – through direct messaging, calling, or even meeting, although this last method is rarely used today.
This is the job of sales reps, and we bet you know this procedure inside and out. First, he looks for the contact information of the leads or buys ready-made databases, contacts these leads and deals with ignorance, anger, etc. You do your best to interact with them despite the circumstances.Imagine scouring social media and related forums, buying leads' contact data from third-party companies... Then you compose emails and messages for each lead, including follow-ups, send them yourself, call, and feel nervous... .
Within a few days of working so hard, you will be completely exhausted and ask yourself if you really need to run a business. Too time consuming, too complicated, too annoying.
Is there a way to avoid this routine manual process while generating warm, high-quality outbound leads ?
This is it. Here comes artificial intelligence 🤖
How to Automate Outbound Lead Generation 🧐
Sales Reps Sell - Artificial Intelligence Does the Rest 🧑🏾💼
It may sound incredible, but generating outbound sales leads can be easier and faster than making dinner or filling your car with gas.
The thing is, you can automate the entire lead generation process by delegating all routine tasks to AI:
- sales research
- Creating prospect lists
- Prioritizing potential customers
- Potential customer segmentation
- Cleaning databases
- Email and LinkedIn access
All of these steps can be accomplished in seconds without human intervention 24/7, reducing the time salespeople spend on routine tasks, allowing them to focus on what really matters: selling.The question is how to automate lead generation so that it is effective and doesn't end up looking even more costly in time and effort.
Imagine getting 1,000 leads a day, but 99% of them are uninterested, or the data is messy and there is almost no contact information, which means you have to call them yourself 😱
So, before you search for quality leads and use advanced software to automate your lead generation, make sure you lay the groundwork.
Let's review the basic steps of the outbound B2B lead generation process .
Step #1: Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) 👱🏼
First of all, you need to know who your buyer and user personas are and, as a result, who you will be contacting and hopefully working with.
That's why you need to define an ideal customer profile, or an ICP for short. Define your ICP in great detail (geography, revenue, number of employees, technology stack, etc.).
All the information you gain can help you target the right B2B leads and best personalize your offer.
Step #2: Find Decision Makers 🧑🏽💼
Since we are talking about B2B, in addition to defining an ideal company profile, you also need to identify the decision makers: the people responsible for making decisions regarding your product (whether to buy or not, how all processes will be carried out, etc.).
Should you contact the CTO, CMO, or CEO immediately?
👉🏼 This really depends on the company information we just mentioned.
For example, in small companies with up to 50 employees, you are likely to contact the CEO or sales manager . Also, in large companies, there may be a VP of sales in a particular region.
Once you've decided who to reach out to, gather information about them : check out their social media accounts and learn more about their interests.
Eventually, you will learn how to have conversations.
Step #3: Identify Sales Triggers 🧾
In this step, you know who to call. But there's something else that will help you identify potential customers: their intent.
That's what real-time selling is: following the market closely, moving quickly, arriving on time, and connecting with those who are truly interested in your products and services when they need you most.
Buyer intent data also helps choose the right moment to reach out. Think about triggers that indicate a particular prospect is interested in your products or services.
For example, some companies posted a new job posting or closed a new round of funding, a decision maker liked a particular LinkedIn post, etc. As a result, you will be able to adjust your outreach campaigns correctly.
If you follow all these steps, you'll likely hit the nail on the head, generate hyper-engaged leads , reach out at the right time, and ultimately close more deals.
Now, once you understand the mechanics, it's time to build a good set of tools to automate lead generation at all stages, including lead prospecting, lead management, lead nurturing, lead scoring, and outreach.
10 Best Tools to Automate Outbound Lead Generation 🛠
The marketplace offers dozens of tools for outbound lead generation. Here are the best ones.
Tools to Research Potential Customers and Create Lead Lists 📝
1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
No surprises here. LinkedIn is one of the most important platforms for searching for B2B leads, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers a variety of features including roles, verticals, company size, location, titles, etc. It is an invaluable plugin that helps search for leads using dozens of advanced filters such as :
2. Signum.ai's LeadMachine
This AI-powered solution automates sales research and helps create a complete list of hyper-targeted leads that perfectly match the target customer profile.
After defining the ICP with Signum.ai experts (yes, this is also an advantage because ICP can be difficult to create on your own), AI collects leads, matches them and creates contact databases.
Tools to Manage Leads
3. Outreach
This platform is perfect for optimizing companies' communication workflow and improving the performance of sales managers.
Along with general stats, you can understand which specific stages you need to work on, giving Outreach an extra boost.
4. Close
It's a great platform for startups and small businesses, essentially a combination of CRM, emailing, and search features.
Custom onboarding, data cleansing, data import and other additional features are also available and can all be tested during a 14-day free trial.
Tools to Organize Contact Data 💻
5. ZoomInfo
Well-known leading service that is still competitive in the market: ZoomInfo provides access to lead contact data, integrates with most CRMs and related services, and offers many solutions for both sales research and managing lead contact data.
6. LeadIQ
A tool that helps LinkedIn users find emails of potential customers on the platform. Frankly, LinkedIn works best in conjunction with Sales Navigator.
Tools to Automate Email Access 📧
7. Lemlist
Probably the best tool for email automation. Lots of cold email templates, integration with most email providers and related apps, affordable pricing, a great community on Facebook...
You caught us, we fainted . You will love it too.
8.Reply.io _
Another solid tool for automating email outreach with a wide range of features, three packages, reasonable pricing, and a good reputation among SaaS companies.
Along with email campaigns, you should also enable LinkedIn outreach.
Tools to Automate LinkedIn Outreach 👋🏽
9. Expandi.io
An excellent tool to automate LinkedIn outreach that allows you to create multiple campaigns, personalized messages, automatic profile reviews and connection requests, and much more.
10. Dux-Soup
Another tool for LinkedIn outreach allows sales reps to attract and engage prospects by running automated campaigns. The basic plan is also free, so you can easily compare the two.
Did you see? Using automation tools, you can automate outbound lead generation at all stages:
- Create contact lists
- Clean all data and manage it effectively
- Run email and LinkedIn campaigns to reach your prospects when they need them most
- Less time on manual tasks = more sales time.
Lead generation, both inbound and outbound, can be difficult, but you can make it easier, more effective, and less time-consuming through automation.
By following a specific set of strategies and using automation tools, such as improving your site ranking through search engine optimization or targeting the right audiences with your digital ads, you can improve the performance of sales and marketing teams, save time on manual tasks, and ensure a steady flow of leads.
Good luck with your lead generation strategy! 🙌🏽
This article was written by Kseniia Burko. Kseniia is a Senior Copywriter and Editor at Signum.ai. Signum.ai is a US-based company that develops AI-powered lead generation solutions for companies looking to capture hyper-targeted leads, take full advantage of real-time sales, and multiply revenue. Signum.ai experts also offer consulting services on sales outreach and help businesses increase sales on a small budget.
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