
Make no mistake about it—acquiring quality leads to boost sales is important yet challenging. It only makes sense to invest in lead generators to help streamline this time-consuming business activity.
Lead generators give you an edge by automating the process of acquiring and prospecting leads for your B2B company. Not only that, but these tools empower sales and marketing teams to reel in a steady stream of high-quality leads and increase conversion rates.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll introduce you to the top six B2B lead generators, strategies and templates so you can attract ideal customers and drive sales over the top.
Quick Read
A B2B lead generator is a tool or software that helps B2B businesses identify and attract high-quality inbound and outbound leads.
Thanks to these tools, you can easily reach out and collect information—such as names, email addresses and phone numbers—from leads who are actively interested in what you offer. Once the sales pipeline is filled with quality leads, the sales team can follow up and nurture them until they become paying customers.
Lead generators can take many forms, such as
You can further categorize these lead generation tools into inbound and outbound.
Inbound lead generators let you gather information from leads and nudge them through the sales funnel using online channels and B2B marketing strategies, like contact forms, social media, chatbots, landing pages and website forms.
Outbound lead generators help you scout for leads and reach out to them to pitch your solution through cold calling, cold emailing, LinkedIn cold outreach, social selling, pay-per-click advertising, etc.
B2B (business-to-business) leads are potential customers who have shown interest in your products or services or match your ideal customer profile (ICP). Unlike business-to-consumer (B2C), where leads are individuals, B2B leads are other companies, businesses, enterprises or organizations operating in various industries.
In B2B transactions, the decision-making process often involves multiple individuals or departments in these companies. Therefore, influencers, decision-makers, stakeholders and even solopreneurs who influence purchase decisions can be classified as B2B sales leads.
Marketing qualified leads (MQLs) are potential leads identified by various outbound marketing efforts. Compared to general leads, MQLs are considered more likely to make a purchase because of the level of engagement they have shown or based on other target criteria.
Although these leads have shown interest in your products or services, they are typically not quite ready to buy just yet. Perhaps they’ve attended a webinar, filled out a contact form, downloaded gated content, subscribed to a newsletter, participated in a survey or engaged with your social media posts.
Marketing teams should pass MQLs down the lead funnel and nurture them through targeted campaigns and personalized interactions until they meet all the criteria to be handed over directly to the sales team as Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).
A sales qualified lead (or SQL) is an inbound lead that has not only shown interest but reached out or engaged with your company in some way. They may have repeatedly visited a product page, requested a demo, called, emailed or messaged your sales department, showing their readiness to buy.
When qualifying B2B sales leads, ensure they’re aligned with your ICP and have the financial capacity or budget to make a purchase.
The process of qualifying leads involves collaboration between marketing and sales teams. Once a lead qualifies as an SQL, the sales team can focus their efforts on converting the lead into a customer. This may involve personalized communication, product demonstrations, proposal discussions and other activities aimed at closing deals.
This infographic breaks down the process of turning a marketing qualified lead (MQL) into a sales qualified lead (SQL).
B2B lead generation refers to the process of identifying potential customers for your offerings and persuading them to buy.
The B2B sales process is complex, as businesses typically involve multiple stakeholders in purchasing decisions. So your focus should be to build relationships with key decision-makers, understand their needs and provide solutions that meet those needs.
B2B lead generation isn’t about gathering all the leads you can find and sending them to your sales team. It’s about using the right strategies and channels to find high-quality inbound and outbound leads to build valuable relationships.
To succeed in B2B lead generation, you need to attract interest from the right sources. According to the State of Marketing report by Salesforce, the three channels with the highest ROI for lead generation are websites, social publishing/advertising and influencers.
HubSpot’s State of Inbound Marketing Report cites SEO (14%), email marketing (13%) and social media (12%) as effective lead gen channels for B2B companies. Referrals, partnerships and trade shows are also important offline lead sources to consider. Overall, B2B businesses use a combination of these channels:
When it comes to lead generation, there are some key differences between B2B and B2C.
B2B lead generation typically involves targeting businesses or other organizations as potential customers, while B2C lead generation focuses on individual consumers.
When targeting decision-makers and businesses, you want to deploy in-depth, personalized educational and industry-specific that addresses their needs, such as whitepapers, case studies and webinars.
B2B content is more visually appealing and consumer-friendly. It focuses on emotions, lifestyle and the benefits of the product or service to resonate with individual consumers.
B2B lead generation often involves longer sales cycles. It makes sense because the deal sizes are often larger than B2C transactions and there’s a need to build relationships. The decision-making process in B2B purchases is somewhat complex since there are multiple stakeholders involved.
In B2C, it’s the other way around. Customers want to make immediate and impulse purchases so the decision-making process is shorter and less complex.
Both B2B and B2C lead generation thrive on meeting customers' needs. However, since B2B transactions often involve long-term contracts and repeat business, the relationship is deeper and ongoing.
While building brand loyalty in B2C is essential, the relationship might not be as enduring as in B2B.
Both B2C and B2B lead generation companies rely on a number of marketing channels.
However, channels like targeted content marketing, networking events, trade shows and account-based marketing and even social channels like LinkedIn are more suited for B2B lead generation.
In this section, we’ll take a look a six best B2B lead generator to skyrocket you revenue.
Visme is an all-in-one B2B lead generator designed to help B2B companies attract high-quality leads.
But it's not just a tool for generating leads, Visme provides a comprehensive range of tools to help you through every stage of the sales funnel, from lead generation to customer retention.
With Visme's easy-to-use online form builder, you can create interactive lead generation forms without coding experience.
Lead gen forms aren’t the only forms you can create. In Visme’s form and surveys templates library, you’ll find ready-to-use templates for
Our ready-made lead form templates are created by design experts to save time and inspire your creativity. You can also choose to create your forms from scratch and explore all the beautiful and interactive design assets Visme has to offer.
We have tested Visme forms on nearly 500,000 organic users and found that the conversion rate increased by up to 40%. You can read the complete case study here.
Easily tweak your form fields to collect vital information from your audience, such as names, email addresses, company names, phone numbers and job titles.
Take full control of your form's appearance by customizing its heading, text, button, footer, icons, ebook, logos, style and branding. The interactive elements and design elements aren’t left out. You can easily select your preferred character and their behavior to create a unique design.
Once you have designed your form, generating HTML to embed it on your landing page or website is a breeze. You can also select the embed style that suits your needs—choose between pop up, between content and sidebar. Furthermore, you can easily share the form by providing a link or QR code for your visitors to scan.
Visme Forms allows you to share your form directly with your social media accounts like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Slack, Pinterest and more. The analytics can help you keep track of the performance and engagement of your forms across all device types.
Visme isn’t just a form-building tool; it’s a content-authoring software for B2B businesses. The Visme template library is filled with lead magnet ideas and templates such as:
But that's not all—Visme can also help you attract high-converting leads in various ways. For instance, Visme allows you to create visually stunning presentations, infographics and social media graphics that will capture the attention of your target audience and keep them engaged.
Overall, Visme is an all-in-one solution that can help you streamline your lead-generation efforts and take your sales team's performance to the next level.
Best For
Lead generation, lead nurturing, interactive forms, high-converting lead magnets and all kinds of visual content.
HubSpot is another powerful lead generator for B2B marketers looking to reel in qualified leads, close sales and scale revenue growth. It has six core products for marketing, sales, customer service, content management, operations and commerce.
HubSpot provides a comprehensive set of tools to help you generate leads, build landing pages, create ads and send bulk emails, all on one platform.
HubSpot’s Breeze is one of the platform’s key standouts. It includes a series of specialized AI agents designed to automate tasks all across your sales and marketing funnel, from generating web pages to attract leads to personalized email outreach sequences to turn prospects into customers, and more.
Additionally, the platform offers a robust analytics tool to help you improve your conversion rate by analyzing your campaign performance. You can manage your contacts and campaigns in one place and use automation tools to streamline your workflows.
Marketers have access to powerful reporting tools to measure the success of their campaigns, all powered by the data in their CRM.
Marketing and sales automation, customer relationship management, lead generation and nurturing.
Leadfeeder is a must-have tool for businesses looking to speed up their lead generation efforts and maximize their website's potential. It provides an array of tools that empower businesses to enhance their website visitors' experience and convert them into high-quality leads.
What sets this B2B lead generation service apart is its powerful ability to enrich company data and contact information, enabling businesses to identify and connect with anonymous website visitors.
Besides, Leadfeeder enables B2B companies to track their visitors' behavior and gather insights into their interests and preferences. With this information, you can optimize your website to deliver a personalized experience that resonates with your target audience, boosting engagement and conversions.
Beyond generating leads, Leadfeeder helps you score, qualify and nurture prospects based on various criteria, such as their value and intent. You can set up automated workflows in Leadfeeder and regularly populate your CRM or marketing automation system with relevant and valuable leads.
Sales prospecting, lead generation, scoring and qualification and account management
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful B2B lead generation tool designed to help businesses find and connect with potential customers on LinkedIn. The fact that LinkedIn has the largest professional network makes it a gold mine for B2B marketers.
With its advanced search functionality, lead profiling capabilities, and integrated communication features, Sales Navigator simplifies the lead generation process and helps businesses build meaningful relationships with their target audience.
Sales Navigator provides data and insights to help you focus on the accounts with the biggest opportunities, making your efforts more efficient.
With this B2B lead generation platform, you can easily identify companies connected to you or your company. You can also use 14+ account filters to search through 61 million+ accounts on LinkedIn and find the best opportunities.
The tool also provides real-time updates on professionals and decision-makers so you can engage them when they're most receptive to outreach. Also, you'll get access to actionable insights such as company hiring trends, department headcount, recent hires and more. These insights can be useful for nurturing your leads and communicating with prospects.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator has three pricing plans, including Core, Advanced and Advanced Plus.
Best For
Lead generation, sales prospecting and social selling
LeadPages is a powerful lead generation software that enables businesses to create high-quality landing pages that are optimized for search engines and conversion.
With its intuitive drag-and-drop builder, you can easily create professional-looking landing pages that drive conversions and boost your sales—with no technical skills or coding knowledge.
The platform also offers a library of over 250 conversion-optimized templates, an image library, and a built-in lead magnet delivery system that helps businesses generate leads and grow their customer base.
Additionally, Leadpages allows you to embed mobile-responsive pop-ups and alert bars on your website to collect emails and pass them to your email service or CRM.
Users have the option to create multi-page sites or a single landing page that effectively communicates your brand message and offers. With access to pre-made design elements, you can save a lot of time and effort.
Website, landing page builder, alert bars, pop-ups, A/B test and more.
Intuit Mailchimp provides a suite of tools and features designed to help B2B companies create, manage and analyze their inbound lead generation and marketing campaigns. It's one of the most used email marketing tools around.
Mailchimp’s drag-and-drop form builder lets you design and publish standalone landing pages for different purposes: marketing campaigns, events or promotions. Within the same platform, you can create and embed signup forms to collect leads from traffic on your landing page.
Whether you’re offering incentives such as free downloads or exclusive content, you can design and send targeted email campaigns that generate massive results.
Marketers can set up automated email sequences based on triggers such as user behavior, time-based events or specific actions. This feature is effective for nurturing leads and engaging subscribers on a consistent basis.
Mailchimp gives you access to detailed analytics for tracking email open rates and click-through rates, subscriber engagement and overall campaign performance. Take advantage of A/B testing tools to test subject lines, CTAs, names, contents, send times and number of recipients to optimize campaigns.
Marketing Platform:
Websites
Website and landing page creation, email marketing, marketing automation, lead nurturing, content creation, reporting and analytics
Attract better leads and yield more consistent sales and business growth.
But how do you land those leads that move the needle for your B2B company?
B2B sales and marketing teams use a cocktail of online and offline lead gen strategies to attract interest from buyers and guide prospects along the sales funnel.
Here are some effective online and offline B2B lead generation tactics:
Inbound lead generation relies heavily on great content.
B2B buyers often engage in extensive research before making a purchasing decision. According to a DemandGen report, 47% of B2B buyers read at least three to five pieces of content before contacting a salesperson.
Create content that checks these boxes:
High-quality content not only amplifies your brand's reach and exposure but also positions you as an expert in your niche. When you show a deep understanding of your client’s frustrations, they’re more likely to consider you as a solution provider.
Wondering what type of content to share? Here are a few ideas.
This infographic has a detailed list of content for every stage of the marketing and sales funnel.
Offer incentives or valuable pieces of content to potential clients in exchange for their contact information, typically their email address.
Lead magnets work because you’re offering them something valuable for free.
Besides, it paves the way to further engage prospects and get more in-depth information about them.
There are several lead magnet ideas you can use to attract leads, such as: ebooks, whitepapers, industry reports, webinars, templates and exclusive research findings. The most important thing is to create a useful resource that addresses your audience's real-life problems.
Visme has an extensive library of templates to help you create irresistible lead magnets. With our customizable templates and intuitive editor, you can create interactive research reports with data visualizations, case studies and whitepapers. ebooks, checklists, printable worksheets and workbooks and much more.
Targeted landing pages are designed to promote your offering and capture leads.
According to Omnisend, landing pages attract a conversion rate of 23%.
Embedding attractive lead gen forms is the icing on the cake. These forms grab the attention of your clients and allow you to collect their contact information. It makes it easy for them to express interest, seek information or start a conversation.
Armed with these details, you can nurture and build relationships until they become paying customers.
The beautiful thing is that you don’t need coding experience to create forms for your landing page or website in minutes. With Visme’s online form builder, you can design beautiful, engaging and interactive lead gen forms.
Visme also provides templates for building high-converting contact forms, email sign up forms, email collector forms, popup forms, registration forms and feedback forms.
With so many people spending their time on social media, it's the perfect place to engage with your audience and build relationships.
First things first, you'll want to identify which social media platforms your audience is most active on so you can focus your efforts there.
A LinkedIn report revealed that 82% of B2B marketers generate more leads from LinkedIn. Other platforms like Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Quora, Reddit and even TikTok offer more value as well.
Once you've got that down, it's time to create a regular posting schedule that mixes promotional content with value-driven posts that your audience will find engaging.
To help you with this, check out Visme's social media scheduler; it's a great tool for designing and scheduling posts for multiple platforms all in one place.
To keep things interesting and capitalize on trends. Also, try to use different formats. Videos, reels, static posts, carousels and interactive stories are all great options to keep your audience engaged.
Don't forget to invest in your reach by running ads, too. Paid ads can help you reach potential leads who may not have heard of your business yet. Additionally, boosting your organic posts can help you get even more results.
Finally, remember that social media is all about building relationships. So, make sure to respond quickly to comments and messages and encourage user-generated content to build deeper connections with your audience. With these tips in mind, you're well on your way to growing your B2B sales leads database through social media.
Here are lead generation ideas you can use to establish connections, build relationships and boost sales outside the digital realm.
Attending networking events and conferences provides valuable opportunities for you to learn about industry trends and best practices and to make new connections that can benefit your business.
To make the most of these B2B lead generation examples, it's important to do your research beforehand and choose the events that are most relevant to your business and goals.
Be sure to bring plenty of business cards, flyers, brochures and relevant marketing materials to distribute to people you meet. These marketing collaterals showcase your business and provide potential customers with more information about what you have to offer. You can use Visme to create customized pintables, business cards, brochures, flyers, one-pagers, etc.
During the event, be friendly and approachable, and try to strike up conversations with people who might be good potential customers or partners. Don't be afraid to ask questions and learn as much as you can from your prospects.
Finally, be sure to follow up with the people you meet after the event. Reach out to them via email or social media to thank them for their time and explore potential collaboration or partnership opportunities.
Although it may seem old-fashioned, cold calling is an effective outbound lead generation strategy. Cold calling involves proactively reaching out to potential customers who have not expressed any prior interest in your product or service.
Research shows that cold calling isn’t dead. A sales prospecting research study by Rain Group revealed that 82% of buyers accept meetings with sellers who proactively reach out. Another Crunchbase report showed that 57% of C-level buyers prefer to be contacted by phone.
Now the question is, how do you make your cold calling efforts effective?
Research your clients to understand who the decision-makers are. Also, zoom into their challenges and how your product or service can solve their problems. This can help you tailor your pitch and make it more persuasive.
The next step is to create a sales playbook and scripts for your team to use when making cold calls. This tool provides a framework for your sales reps to follow, including key messaging, sales discovery questions to ask, objection-handling strategies and other best practices.
Use Visme’s sales playbook templates to help your reps anticipate common objections and be prepared with effective responses that close more deals.
Organizing seminars, workshops or training sessions related to your industry expertise can be an effective offline B2B lead generation strategy. This move can position your company as a thought leader and create a platform for interested businesses to connect with you.
At these events, collect contact information from the participants, such as their name, email address and phone number, and use this information to follow up with personalized communications. This can help you build a relationship with potential customers and increase their likelihood of doing business with you.
In addition, consider organizing exclusive events, such as dinners, roundtable discussions or executive briefings, for targeted prospects. These events create a personalized and intimate setting for building relationships with high-value clients and decision-makers.
With Visme presentation software, you can put together engaging and visually appealing presentations highlighting the benefits and value of your product or service.
Tap into our rich library of assets and multimedia elements such as icons, images, videos, charts and other data visualization tools to help convey your message in a way that resonates with your client.
Make sure your presentation is concise and to the point, leaving plenty of time for discussion and questions. And don't forget to follow up after the event to continue the conversation and build relationships with your prospects.
Public relations gets you featured in local publications and media outlets and helps you generate leads.
When it comes to B2B PR, the focus is on building trust and credibility with key figures and audiences and convincing them of the quality of your product or service.
Why is it important? Up to 90% of business decision-makers research opinions from industry experts and peers before initiating their purchasing process.
Securing press coverage does a great job of enhancing your brand's reputation. It amplifies brand awareness and boosts your credibility over time.
PR keeps you at the forefront of major conversations in your industry and helps you reach decision-makers and executives who may not have heard of your business before.
Here are effective B2B public relations strategies you can deploy:
Put out a compelling press release with the help of this template. View more press release templates.
Advertising in industry-specific trade publications or magazines also empowers you to reach decision-makers who are interested in the products or services you offer.
These publications may have a loyal readership base, which can help you get more exposure and generate leads.
Print advertising can also be used strategically to raise awareness and drive interest in your products or services. This can include advertising in local newspapers, magazines or even billboards.
Every company needs a steady inflow of leads to increased revenue, scale growth and achieve long-term success. Otherwise, they may struggle to meet their sales targets and ultimately fail to achieve their goals.
B2B lead generation helps businesses find and attract potential customers who are interested in their products or services. By generating leads, your B2B companies can build a pipeline of prospects they can nurture and eventually convert into paying customers.
Here are some of the key steps when starting B2B lead generation
Here are several effective methods to generate B2B leads:
Visme offers a range of features to help businesses acquire potential customers and grow their sales. Some of the key features include:
And there you have it—a rundown of the top B2B lead generators and strategies to ramp up your lead acquisition efforts.
With these powerful tools and actionable strategies at your disposal, you're ready to attract, capture and retain high-quality leads that will likely turn into paying customers.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one B2B lead generator to enhance your efforts, we recommend Visme.
Visme can help you create captivating visual content, design effective lead magnets, and capture leads using interactive and user-friendly online forms. Sign up for Visme Forms or use our lead magnet template to generate high-converting leads and close more deals.
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