Date
1st November 2023
Why Do You Need to Generate Technology Leads?
Lead generation is a crucial part of growing your technology business.
If you've got innovative technology solutions ready to revolutionize your target clients' businesses, and plenty of capacity to attract more customers, B2B technology lead generation is what you need to drive your company forward.
Want to know how to do B2B lead generation? You're in luck! There are several exciting, cost-effective methods you can use that allow you to track your ROI with a complete digital trail.
These are, in our experience, the five best B2B lead generation strategies for the technology sector as we head towards 2024.
How to Generate Technology Leads
Every business is different, and the B2B lead generation strategy that works for you will depend on your product, audience, and industry.
When researching the best B2B lead gen companies, you need to look for one that specializes in your sector, and most importantly, a specialist you can trust.
Some tech marketers work with suppliers who buy unauthenticated leads from 3rd parties. For example, they may outsource your campaigns to unknown networks or 3rd party suppliers.
You might then find that the technology leads you receive from these suppliers turn out to be low-quality when you try to contact them. Therefore, you should work with a specialist supplier with a transparent process, so you know exactly where your leads are coming from and that they're of good quality. For example, our lead generation process is 100% digital and completely transparent.
Lead Generation Strategy #1: Content Syndication
First up, and in our experience, the most effective lead generation strategy for technology companies is content syndication,
However, as we explore content syndication for technology lead generation we might need you to put your preconceptions, or previous experiences, aside.
It's safe to say content syndication can sometimes have a bad rep within the B2B marketing world, primarily because of the seedy and untrustworthy lead generation suppliers we talked about earlier.
However, when you need to reach niche and specialist audiences, you should consider content syndication through a reputable lead generation specialist.
Reaching Niche & Highly Targeted Audiences With Content Syndication
Content syndication publishes your marketing resources, such as a whitepaper, research report, eBook, or webinar recording, via websites you don't own, such as content syndication platforms.
If your objective is to connect with hard-to-reach technology audiences, content syndication is one of the more granular technology lead generation strategies you can adopt.
However, one of the most important success factors to your content syndication lead generation campaigns is to choose a transparent supplier with reputable content syndication platforms.
For example, at Headley Media, we specialize in B2B lead generation for technology companies using content syndication. We own over 250 content library websites in 60 countries, under six dedicated technology brands, in the IT, Cybersecurity, HR, Marketing, Finance, and Electronics sectors.
Our content syndication for lead generation works by publishing our technology clients' content on the most relevant content library websites from our portfolio, to be read by scores of senior professionals in the technology sector.
In return, the technology decision-makers and influencers reading your content will give their business card details.
Our approach is completely transparent, meaning that each reader must actively consent to hear from your business directly.
Plus, our lead generation process is fully digital, allowing us to track all of our clients' leads through their customer journey.
Lead Generation Strategy #2: Intent Data and Sales Intelligence
A highly-targeted lead can be worth dozens of untargeted ones.
High-quality technology lead generation is essentially a question of timing: it's targeting your audience at the time when they are considering buying a product like yours.
You can achieve this through intent data targeting, which enables you to engage with your target audience when they are actively researching topics that relate to your product or solution.
For example, at Headley Media, we use intent data targeting to track each prospect's use of our content websites to work out what products they're researching. We then cross-reference our 1st party data with 3rd party industry data, to deliver the right leads at the right time to our customers.
Using intent data will help you understand if your lead is in an active buying cycle for a technology product or solution like yours.
You can also target technology leads through audience intelligence strategies, such as super-granular profiling: going further than the company name and job title into such details as company size and seniority.
A simple way of doing this is to add more fields to the form prospects fill in to download your content. At Headley Media, we advise clients on the questions to ask to get the most relevant information from their leads.
Lead Generation Strategy #3: Offering a Free Tool or Resource
Another successful lead generation strategy for technology companies is to offer a free tool or resource.
We're not suggesting giving away your product for free, but if you can offer part of your software as a standalone, helpful service, accessible for free through your website (in exchange for contact details), it makes highly effective lead generation B2B technology.
You can feature the tool prominently on your homepage and keep track of leads who keep coming back to it. It gives prospects a taste of what you can offer, and you can promote your full product to them with wording like "ready to try the whole suite?"
You can use it for retargeting, offering a discount on the entire product: the conversion rate on this type of offer is comparatively huge.
Lead Generation Strategy #4: Content Marketing and Social Media
Technology companies have lots of potential for excellent lead generation because they're full of valuable information and published data.
Prospects in the technology industry are always looking for case studies, research reports, eBooks, and whitepapers.
One of the best-known and most effective B2B lead generation strategies is to publish these 'gated' – with a form that prospects must fill out to download the content, requiring their name, business name, job title, and contact information.
Generally, publishing these on your website and promoting them through social media works well.
Once your content is on social media, you can boost it with advertising. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, along with others, offer simple, budget-friendly cost-per-click advertising, and most have decent reporting features so you can track any new leads.
It's not perfect for B2B technology suppliers, not least because social media is designed mainly for consumers, but careful targeting makes for effective lead generation.
However, the world of content marketing has moved on from gating every piece of content.
Demand generation vs lead generation often talks about gated content as a form of outbound lead generation, whereas ungating some of your content has its benefits for longer-term inbound lead generation.
A trustworthy, respected brand can afford to give away some helpful stuff, such as blogs and educational resources, for free – it can help you build trust and interest with your customers and gain a more significant following contributing to your wider demand generation strategy.
Lead Generation Strategy #5: SEO and Keyword Research
Your own website is your optimum tool for B2B lead generation, and to ensure prospects land there, you need to make sure it's visible to the likes of Google with search engine optimization (SEO).
There's no substitute for ensuring your SEO is up to scratch, and it's surprising how many great technology businesses fall down here. The ROI of SEO lead generation strategies is enviably high.
Finding relevant keywords, and ensuring they're featured naturally in the text of your website and in all content you publish, is a bit of an art – but it can be pretty simple, and there are great tools you can use. Semrush is one of our favorites, helping to generate precise three-words-or-more long-tail keywords that get great results.
You can use these tools to check your competitors' keywords, giving you a nice edge.
The great thing about excellent SEO is that it can last for a long time. If you nail a piece of content with all the right keywords better than your competitors, it can stay at the top of Google for years – and still generate fresh leads.
For more B2B lead generation tips, you can sign up for our newsletter – or download our annual ungated eBook for a complete B2B lead generation guide.
