Article Written by: Rebecca S
Generating high quality leads is important for businesses selling Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions to other companies (referred to as business-to-business or B2B). Without a steady source of promising new leads in the sales funnel, revenue growth can quickly stagnate. However, lead generation for B2B SaaS is incredibly challenging given longer, more complex sales cycles, and business technology buyers tend to be more informed and demanding.
For you to uncover the five strategies for B2B SaaS lead generation, sit back and continue reading this article.
1. Content Marketing to Draw in Prospects
The pillar around which every effective B2B digital marketing strategy is based these days is quality content. Nowadays, there is too much information that is easily accessible on the Internet. This means that as they go through more than half of the decision-making processes, buyers might never even come in touch with any sales rep. As such, buyers have read many educational materials detailing their own needs,
The same dynamic applies to SaaS lead generation. Unique, compelling, and authoritative content is like a magnet – it draws qualified prospects actively into the sales funnel. Content marketing for SaaS lead gen should address critical questions at each stage of the buyer journey, including:
- Awareness Stage – What business challenges do this SaaS solve? How widespread and costly are those issues? What outcomes does this category of software deliver?
- Decision Stage – What results have customers achieved? How do the total cost of ownership and return on investment compare? How does this integrate with and complement other systems?
While text-based mediums remain highly popular, video and audio content have become equally vital for lead generation impact. Prospects want easily digestible, visually engaging information.
2. AB Testing and Optimization of Sales Funnels
The tip of the spear for lead generation in SaaS is the sales funnel. This is the engine that actively converts interest into the pipeline. A funnel guides prospects through a series of pages and forms that qualify buyer readiness, provide value, capture contact information, and schedule follow-up sales interactions.
Well-designed funnels immediately redirect visitors from awareness content into lead nurturing flows. They frame compelling reasons to act now to engage further. Form fields securely gather vital details to support sales prioritization and personalization. Confirmation messaging expresses appreciation, provides more value, and sets expectations for what happens next.
Behind the funnel scenes, marketing automation tracks prospect behaviors and scores leads. Sales reps receive notifications to follow up on high potential SQLs promptly. Customized drip campaigns send tailored content to MQLs to warm up interest until sales are ready.
3. Leveraging Sales Intelligence to Find Target Accounts
While inbound tactics bring some “walking” leads, companies cannot build an entire business from one channel alone today. A successful formula combines both inbound and outbound lead generation, leveraging account-based strategies powered by sales intelligence.
Account-based approaches pressure test marketing’s capability to penetrate named target organizations identified through close cross-team coordination with sales counterparts planning territory coverage. It is much easier to brainstorm content themes vaguely than go to market with focus disrupting concentrations of highest potential accounts with hyper relevant campaigns, conversations, and connections.
Getting account targeting right relies on leveraging sales intelligence – accurate business contact data, firmographic analytics, org charts, technographics, buying committees, etc. Modern sales and marketing technology delivers this timely data essential for executing account-based lead generation:
- Company attributes like industry, revenue, locations
- Technologies in use for targeted integration and alignment value propositions
- Decision-making team contacts across roles
- Triggers and events for current solution requirements
- Personas with detailed preferences and priorities
4. Retargeting and Behavioral Analytics for Improved Lead Scoring
Even with excellent content drawing visitors in and funnel performance capturing prospects, many still need to catch up. The buyer journey is seldom linear. Prospects constantly cycle across channels comparing options through fresh lenses shaped by new information and internal conversations.
Here retargeting based on behavioral analytics facilitates re-engagement. Retargeting shows customized messages to past visitors or lookalike audiences across sites to keep your brand at the top of mind during decision-making.
But retargeting without differentiation annoys. Tailor messaging relevance based on observed behaviors, known interests, and predicted needs using lead-scoring algorithms. Lead scoring models assign points predicting sales readiness based on factors like:
- Pages viewed
- Content topics consumed
- Form interactions
Keep refining scoring logic combining attributes indicative of sales qualified accounts, roles, and subjective assessments of lifetime value. This focuses retargeting on the warmest prospective customers. Lead nurturing content suggestions also improve.
5. Strategic Account Based Marketing to Engage Key Decision Makers
Buyers still get cold outreach from reps to sell products they haven’t shown viability or value. Not many decision makers will take that route of persistent, tone-deaf stubbornness when they face crowded schedules that also have more strategically important matters needing their precious time.
Account-based marketing (ABM) strategies counter sales spamming with orchestrated awareness, interest, and desire campaigns personalized to named target company priorities. ABM combines earlier principles of long form content, sales intelligence, and retargeting with human engagement to penetrate influential accounts.
The first step is researching accounts for strategic alignment opportunities. Seek views where customer objectives and desired outcomes overlap with solutions uniquely fitting your offerings. Such as extending mobile capabilities, improving operational reliability, or enhancing real-time data sharing with partners.
Conclusion
Attracting and nurturing quality leads is the lifeblood of driving SaaS revenue growth. To outperform alternatives, leaders employ integrated strategies addressing all stages of the buyer journey. They lure inbound prospects with compelling content aligned to concerns, challenges, and questions purchasers ask during exploration.
Core sales processes ingest this interest directly through optimized conversion funnels, enabling low-friction enrollment, progressive nurturing, and data-driven sales prioritization.
Lastly, continuously monitored performance dashboards allow teams to measure effectiveness and shift investments toward tactics proving most productive based on pipeline and revenue outcomes.
