How to grow your business with targeted lead generation

Every sale starts with a potential client, and every potential client starts as a lead.

But B2B leads won’t progress through your sales funnel if you aren’t targeting the right prospects. The Content Marketing Institute has found that 85% of marketers say quality lead generation is their most important goal.

Finding the right people – the ones who need your product and are ready and willing to pay for it – means searching the right places to bring them value.

Before you even get to start targeting prospects, you have to figure out where they are.

Traditionally, this means spending hours researching prospects, validating their contact information, and compiling that data into a lead list. That list also needs to be segmented to target your various ideal buyer personas. If you skip these steps, your marketing outreach – whether it’s email or cold calling – will be ineffective.

But it doesn’t have to be that way! Read on to learn how to strategically target the right leads and cut down on the time-consuming parts of this process.

Do sweat the small stuff for targeted leads

You can target leads broadly according to industry or location, but you’ll get the greatest return on investment if you define your marketing strategy more narrowly. After all, your product may generally appeal to a wide range of clients, but only a certain percentage of them have a real need and the means to acquire the solution you’re offering.

For example, if you’re selling office furniture and promoting a special discount on purchases of ten desks or more, there’s little point in targeting a small start-up company with only five workers. In this case, you need to generate leads segmented by a minimum number of employees at each business. If you can laser-focus and segment your lead list, your sales team will be set up for greater success to help your business grow.

Digging deeper into your ideal customer demographics and identifying groups that have small, but important differences can help you shape your marketing approach and maximize your relevance to each potential buyer.

Don’t lose targeted leads because of inaccurate contact info

This should go without saying, but a quality lead is an accurate lead. Wrong numbers and dead emails will kill a sale.

Simply generating as many leads as possible won’t get you anywhere if your emails or calls don’t reach them.

Keeping in mind that even the warmest leads don’t convert every time, it’s in your best interest to have the highest quality contact information available. Searching through company websites for job titles and those precious validated emails takes time and effort, but it’s essential – unless you have access to software that does it for you.

Generate targeted lists quickly

The task of continuously updating and segmenting your prospect list can be very time-consuming. However, there is prospecting software available that can help alleviate the burden, so you can direct your talents where they belong – on closing deals.