It doesn’t matter if you’re an established business or a brand-new startup, you need customers. Without customers, you can’t sell your product or service to make money. Without money, your business can’t sustain itself and it will be forced to close. Thus, you need customers.

Yes, we know this is an obvious statement.

Another obvious statement: To gain customers, you need to generate leads. Again, it doesn’t matter if your business has been in operation for 100 years or 100 minutes, lead generation plays an important role in growing and sustaining a business, especially when it comes to B2B marketing.

Even industry leaders with big reputations, such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and others, engage in lead generation.

Of course, the strategies for a startup are going to be different than they are for an established business and that’s what we’re here to decode.

As far as marketing campaigns designed to generate leads go, the sky is the limit. However, startups need to be careful when they formulate their lead generation strategies as they come in with limited resources and more importantly, possess a novice reputation in the market.

They have to play it smart to enjoy effective lead-generation campaigns and must select the most suitable strategies based on their requirements to create effective marketing campaigns that successfully deliver customer lists.

This is what we’ll be focusing on; The Top Lead Generation Strategies for Startups.

So, let’s dive in and explore!

What Are The Top Lead Generation Strategies for Startups?

Before sailing off to discover the top strategies for startups, we need to get some formalities out of the way. Namely:
 

• What Is A Lead?

  A lead is a potential customer who has shown interest in a business's product or service. Leads could also include someone who is already a customer but can be retargeted for another purchase now or in the future.

• What Is Lead Generation?

  Lead Generation AKA Lead Gen is the process that’s used to scope out leads from a pool of a larger audience. This process includes finding potential customers who can be contacted via different channels.

• What Is Lead Scoring?

  Lead scoring involves comparing qualified leads against each other and ranking them based on perceived value. This helps businesses determine which leads should be targeted first and are most likely to be converted to customers versus those who are less likely.

Now that we’ve set an anchor on the basics of what lead generation entails, let’s hit the deck and check out what are the best lead generation strategies on the horizon for startups.

Employ The Evergreen Email Marketing Maneuver

Yes, despite modern technology enabling a host of new marketing channels and tactics, this age-old method remains gold. With over 4 billion daily email users, 87% of brands believe email marketing is a critical component for business success.

It’s key for startups to prepare an ideal customer profile and identify their target audience. While the aim is to generate as many leads as possible, startups can’t afford to send emails willy-nilly. As a new name, they may get flagged as spammers and develop a negative image online.

This also creates a challenge with purchasing email lists. In case they do purchase email lists, each potential lead should be vetted before engagement, while targets are cross-checked to possess accurate contact details.

When it comes to creating the content of an email, it’s important to be clear. A startup must list what value they bring to their customers while using a positive and confident tone but not boastful. Ensuring each email offers highly personalized content goes a long way and inserting a call-to-action (CTA) encourages readers to engage with the brand. These CTAs can move them to provide additional contact details.

Since email marketing is an evergreen technique that will remain with them in the long run, startups should invest in email automation tools that can help them build and grow their lists, categorize target groups, automate content delivery and measure their performance. Where they don’t get responses initially, startups should automate follow-up emails to offer gentle reminders.

Getting your name out there is important but it’s not going to do much if people can’t find you!

SEO Is Vital At All Times

Imagine, a potential customer opens an email you sent and sees a product they like. They haven’t heard of your brand, so, they open Google and search for your company but can’t find anything on the first page. They dive deeper and finally find you on the fourth page. Now, they wonder if you’re genuine at all.

It would be much worse if you didn’t show up at all!

Research by FirstPage finds that the CTR (click-through rates) of the first page of SERPs hit 39.8%, with 18.7% for the second page and 10.2% for the third. A study by Brightside found that 68% of all trackable website traffic and digital experiences begin from search engines, including paid and organic search results.

Suffice it to say, that search engine optimization (SEO) plays a vital role in brand discovery.

To rank higher organically, you’ve got to identify and use the right keywords across all your web pages and optimize meta tags, headings and subheadings. As far as content goes, don’t fill up your web pages with random buzzwords but instead use content that focuses on the needs you fulfill. Being a new name in the industry, you need to backlink reputed websites in your content, while long tail keywords related to your product will help you appear higher in specific searches.

However, for startups, it might be tough to hit the first page organically, which is why you should also use SERP (search engine results page) advertising.

Aside from search engines, you should also list your business on free startup listing sites such as G2, Capterra, Crozdesk, Crunchbase, StartupRanking and others.

Essentially, you’re going to need a whole bunch of relevant content to drive SEO success.

Content Marketing Will Help You Gain Visibility

A thumb rule of content marketing: ensure all content created for your website is optimized for search engines.

The idea here is to create high-quality, high-value, informative content that resonates with your target audience. If they’re searching for a product you offer, they should find your website offers valuable insights into any queries or questions they may have. These can also provide actionable steps for them to take or practical tips that add value.

This can be done through blog posts, podcasts, videos, webinars, live workshops, infographics, quizzes, whitepapers, eBooks, guides, reports, statistics and even memes! Through this content, you have to position yourself as a thought leader with a new and interesting take on topics related to your product or service. Additionally, these content pieces can be used to gather further contact information or personal details that can help you deliver personalized interactions.

Here, artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) will come in handy. According to a Semrush report, in 2024, 67% of small business owners and marketers used AI for content marketing, where 68% of them witnessed an increase in ROI. It’s no wonder that the content marketing industry is projected to reach a valuation of $600 billion in 2024.

However, where asking for more information can come across as intrusive, you should use CTAs directing to your website or specific landing pages. These pages can also be promoted on other websites, to showcase your capabilities and build your brand.

Content created in one format can be recreated in other formats to reach wider audiences. For example, a video that was made can be converted into a lengthy blog post or a summarized social media post and vice versa.

It’s important to ensure the deployment of content should follow a consistent production and delivery schedule.

Social Media Is Your Friend

The best thing about social media is that it can reach everyone in the world using cost-effective methods.

Of course, for startups that’s a tough achievement to hit but as your activity builds, you’ll reach more prospects. For this to work, your social media campaigns must always be strategically sound and abide by your brand’s voice and tone. Do not over-post and bombard prospective customers with content irrelevant to the platform just for the sake of reaching them. Do not avoid posting so much so that your social media profile looks like a ghost town. Furthermore, find the best time to post based on when your target audience is most likely to see your post and interact with it.

To boost your social media presence, it's vital to use compelling content that relates to your target audience, use hashtags and keywords to enhance visibility in social media platform search results and create content that people would like to share with others.

While it’s key to remain active on all major platforms, it’s also crucial to know what kind of content should be posted where. Instagram is good for building brand awareness, while LinkedIn is a popular platform for B2B growth. Here, you should post thought leadership articles, informative guides and interactive content that engages users to contribute. This technique can also help gather feedback.

To garner leads, the biggest weapon in your arsenal is credibility. One of the best ways to boost credibility across social media is by posting testimonials or positive comments, displaying accolades or achievements, sharing success stories or case studies about your products.

To get the wind in your sails, you can run targeted ad campaigns to connect with a specific segment of prospects.

Paid Ads Will Boost Your Image

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising enables highly targeted campaigns that reach prospects actively searching for what you offer. This tactic can direct prospects to specific landing pages with purpose-driven intents.

Here, you’re paying only when an ad link is clicked on. However, you must ensure your content is optimized and campaigns are rigorously tested before deployment.

Affiliate marketing involves partnering with experts who recommend your products or services to others in exchange for referral rewards. This includes current customers referring your product to others or prominent figures or popular blogging websites (such as TechDogs) that already market content related to your sector.

Here, you should offer effective incentives to generate successful referrals, simplify the referral and incentive process, invite happy customers to the program, monitor the success of referrals and express gratitude to those taking part.

Influencer marketing involves hiring influential people to promote your product or service to their followers through sponsored posts, videos, podcasts or other media channels.

Here, it’s important to connect with influential people in the same sector as your offering. Alternatively, if it’s with a persona from outside of the industry, you must convey how your brand enabled their success story.

Collaborative marketing enables startups to partner with other businesses or startups and engage in co-marketing initiatives or joint promotional activities. This enables the sharing of leads and customer databases.

Here, you’ll want to identify a business or another startup that caters to a similar target audience but isn’t a competitor. The idea is to advertise each other’s offerings through individual or co-branded marketing campaigns, which can include any channel or technique.

Events are another avenue to explore. This could include sponsoring live events, attending them or booking a booth at events or exhibitions, where you can directly interact with potential customers. It remains crucial as Marketsplash notes that the three most used B2B lead generation strategies are email marketing (78%), event marketing (73%) and content marketing (67%).

To Sum Up

Lead generation can be challenging for startups, especially when they come in with lower resources, a novel and neutral reputation and a lack of experience in generating leads for their business.

However, if they approach the process by maintaining the basics, they should be able to build a base that can propel them to the top of search engine result pages (SERPs) without having to pay to get there. Of course, that’s a long-term dream.

In the short term, they should focus on delivering high-quality, optimized content of high value across prominent social media platforms that are customized not just for those platforms but also for the customers it’s reaching. Of course, they’re helped by the wonderful capabilities of AI in this endeavor, which can also be accelerated by participating in live events and leveraging paid ads.

Are you looking to boost your B2B Lead Generation strategies? Contact TechDogs today and learn how you can enjoy successful B2B lead generation!