Offering products or services business-to-business (B2B) can be very lucrative for a company. The hardest part of B2B lead generation is that it may be hard to identify the companies that need the products or services that your company offers. And if even if you are able to identify the companies it is sometimes difficult to determine who you need to speak with in the organization that has the decision making ability. So what is the best way to generate a B2B lead and determine who to target as a B2B contact?

Make A List Of Prospects

Take a good hard look at what your company has to offer. Then make a list of the specific companies or types of companies that can truly benefit from what your offering is. If you already have a client base, then you may also want to analyze your list of past customers and add them to the lead. You will probably need a different marketing approach to past customers than you will need from a customer that has never bought from your company before, but both past and potential customers are still B2B leads.

Reaching The B2B Leads

Now that you have an organized list of the past and potential customers that you want to contact because they can benefit from your product or service, it is time to figure out how to reach them. There are many different marketing tactics that can be used to reach B2B contacts, but it is important to do some research and find out what are the best avenues to take to reach your target market.

Research:

• Publications that they read: Trade publications, newspapers, magazines that specifically reach and are read by companies that you are trying to reach.

• Websites: Many companies list their executives’ names on their website along with contact information. Sites like Hoover’s also allow you to look up a company’s key contacts.

• Blogs

• Newsletters

• Trade Shows: Usually trade shows have an attendee list.

• Conferences: Usually conferences have an attendee list.

• Associations: Usually associations have a membership list.

These are just a few examples of places that you can find names and contact information for individuals that are employed by and running companies that are your target market. Once you have access to this information, you can organize it to then determine what type of marketing campaign you are going to use in order to contact these people.

The Approach

What approach works best for your company may depend on the type of product or service that you are offering. It also may be some combination of these approaches that ends up being the magic mix. Below is a list of possible approaches that you can consider and test to see which works best for your business.

• Cold calls

• Warm calls (maybe you know someone that works at the company that can introduce you to the person that would be able to make a decision about buying your product or service)

• Direct mail (this can be either via email or regular mail)

• Print advertising in the trade publications, newspapers or websites that your target market reads

• Blogs