The rise of the internet has provided B2B companies with a wealth of opportunities to reach new customers, but it has also made it much harder to acquire new leads.
The competition is fierce. If you’re going to succeed in acquiring prospects and growing your business, you need a well-thought-out B2B acquisition strategy.
This guide will help you develop an effective acquisition plan for your company that identifies the right prospects for your business, then targets them with well-crafted messaging.
Related: 16 Tried and Tested B2B Digital Marketing Strategies
8 Effective B2B Customer Acquisition Strategies
Your acquisition strategy needs to be aligned with your business goals and objectives. The following is a list of questions you should ask yourself before creating an acquisition strategy:
- What are our business goals?
- Who are we trying to reach?
- Which channels do we want to use for acquiring customers?
- How much money will it cost us to acquire customers through these channels, and how often do they bring in new paying customers per dollar spent (ROI)?
- What type of traffic does each channel produce – e-mail opt-in sign-ups, social media followers/likes, etc., or is it website traffic only? This information can help you decide where it makes sense for your company’s advertising budget!
1. Data mining
Data mining is the process of extracting useful lead information from the internet. The term came into use in the 1990s and was popularized by Gartner Group analysts to refer to “the process of identifying and extracting useful information from data.”
Data mining can also be defined as a subset of machine learning, which itself is defined as a subfield of computer science that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.
Through data mining, you find hundreds or even thousands of lead contacts to do a cold outreach to. There are many lead generation companies that can help you with this.
2. Analyze customer data
The next step in your B2B sales process should be to analyze customer data. You’ll want to analyze customer data to identify opportunities and prioritize those opportunities based on their value, effectiveness, ROI, or other key metrics.
3. Prioritize customer segments
Prioritize customer segments. It’s important to categorize prospective customers by their value, revenue potential, and how soon they’ll be ready to buy. This allows you to prioritize opportunities based on which ones will bring in the most profit in the shortest time frame.
Prioritize opportunities. Once you know who your target buyers are and what kind of business you want them to buy from you, it’s time for the next step: prioritizing opportunities for those deals.
Depending on your industry or vertical, there could be several different types of deals (e.g., agency deals vs enterprise deals vs direct sales). Where possible, focus on larger accounts that can impact your bottom line more significantly than smaller deals would.
Digital marketing channels have become increasingly effective over time because they offer a much wider reach than other methods like trade shows or print advertising.
And these days there are even more ways than ever before to reach out through social media platforms like Facebook Ads and Google Ads – so why not take advantage?
But remember: digital marketing only works if people actually see what we’re posting online – which means getting creative with where we place our ads will always be important!
That might mean going beyond targeting just one demographic group at once; instead, think about how different generations respond differently based upon
4. Prioritize opportunities using analytics
Prioritize opportunities using analytics: You can use analytics to identify the most promising prospects, analyze customer data and behavior, and better understand your customers.
Analyze customer data: Analytics can help you gain a deeper understanding of your customers. This includes analyzing their demographics, location, purchasing history and preferences for products or services in the market.
Analyze customer behavior: Customers have different ways of interacting with your business, either through digital channels like email marketing campaigns or via social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.
By analyzing these interactions you can improve how they engage with your business as well as what type of content they respond best too (e.g., videos versus articles).
Analyze customer sentiment: If a large number of people are complaining about something related directly (or indirectly) to one aspect of your business, then chances are there may be something wrong somewhere along that chain which could negatively impact its overall performance going forward if left unchecked.
5. Market segmentation
Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market into different groups of customers or prospects with similar needs, characteristics, or behaviors.
As such, market segmentation helps you to better understand your customers and prospects by identifying the best target markets for your business.
It also helps you identify which products/services to offer in each market segment given their unique needs and preferences.
6. Direct sales for strategic customers
- Direct sales is a good way to sell to strategic customers
- Direct sales are more effective than cold calling, telemarketing and direct mail, and email for B2B acquisition strategies
- If you want to go this route you need an effective website that drives traffic from search engines using keywords relevant to your industry and keywords related to specific products/services in order that visitors to find what they are looking for quickly so that they can convert into paying customers
7. Marketing automation for mass marketing and nurturing
Marketing automation is a solution that automates repetitive marketing tasks. Think of it as the online equivalent of an assembly line, where your leads are placed into different stages of the process based on their behavior and level of interest in your company.
Marketing automation can be used to send emails, SMS messages, and social media messages to nurture leads throughout the buying cycle. It can also be used for mass marketing by identifying profitable prospects and sending highly targeted emails to them.
8. Create laser-focused campaigns
You can use the data you have available (through your analytics tools and your buyer persona) to increase your sales by identifying the most promising prospects and developing a targeted strategy for acquiring them.
As you design your marketing and sales strategy, it’s important to consider whether or not you have the resources necessary for generating new leads.
If you don’t have enough time, money, or manpower on staff—or if there isn’t enough budget in place—it might be better to focus on optimizing existing channels rather than spending more time building relationships with potential customers who aren’t likely to buy anyway.
Conclusion
In summary, we have covered a wide range of strategies that can be used by B2B companies to optimize their sales opportunities.
The key takeaway is that the future belongs to those who are able to use data-driven processes and analytics—not just intuition or gut feelings—to identify their most promising prospects.
