Lead generation for tech companies: Maximising ROI
Every sale starts with a lead. And the journey that the lead goes through to become a customer is critical.
That's exactly why keeping a healthy lead pipeline is so important for tech companies.
But how can you build one for your organisation? Let's find out.
Lead generation for technology companies keeps the revenue engine running
2022 wasn't a good year for IT and SaaS companies.
Investment dropped from nearly US$40 billion in 2021 to below US$30 billion in 2022. The reasons:
- Economic uncertainty and
- Martech investment fatigue
After years of successful and large investments in tech, funding is now drying up—a phenomenon popularly known as 'funding winter'.
To stay afloat in a highly unpredictable business environment, tech companies must return to the drawing board. This starts with growing the business by (you guessed it right) attracting new leads.
Here's why generating leads will continue to play a pivotal role for tech companies.
- Increasing investment in tech
Luckily, customers are looking to increase their investments in tech in the coming years. This is to serve two significant predictions:
- For the B2B market
By 2025, organisations investing in digital immunity will increase customer satisfaction by decreasing downtime by 80%.
- For the B2C market
By 2027, more than 50% of the global population will be daily active users of multiple superapps.
- Changing buyer requirements
Buyer requirements are complicated and technical. They're utilising more capital-intensive, time-consuming and expensive resources.
As a result, buyers are looking for resilient alternatives.
Lead generation for tech companies follows a more tactical and expertise-based approach to live up to changing buyer expectations.
- Extracting strong ROI
Buyers research extensively before making a tech purchase.
In the real world, 43% of internet users access the internet to research products and brands. At the same time, 58% of consumers have discovered at least one new product by browsing the internet.
So, to develop a unique sense of appeal, you must give buyers a good reason to be in touch with you.
That's what generating leads helps with.
Once you have a robust lead generation strategy for nurturing buyers, you can extract ROI by attracting only prospects with serious potential.
But now the question is how can you build one?
Building a solid lead generation strategy for a tech company
While each company will have unique strategies, they share a few common elements. These elements bind together to form a solid foundation for the lead generation process.
We’ve curated them for you:
- List down goals and objectives
Goals and objectives have conventionally been the foundation of any strategy. And for good reason. They correctly direct your efforts to achieve business success and growth.
Consider the SMART goals framework if you're a small technology business or just starting in the industry.
The more specific your goals and objectives are, the easier it is to build processes to achieve them. Use goals and objectives as markers to measure your progress and align your teams.
As a top technology company or business, you can track the following metrics to understand how far you've come:
- Conversion rate
- LTV
- Acquisition rate
- Click-through rate
- Cost per lead
- Define what a ‘lead’ is for your business
It's easy to get caught up with devising lead generation strategies for tech. But to go with a conventional and generic definition of a 'lead' would be a mistake.
Lead generation has evolved to an extent where you can set key parameters to define a 'lead' for your business.
These parameters could be something as simple as name, email and phone. Or you can refine it with a website, number of employees (if your TG is an enterprise), industry, location and demographics.
Clearly defining a lead helps you structure lead qualification and scoring processes.
- Shape lead generation efforts for your customer
Even if your potential customers are looking for technology solutions, they may not understand the technical terms and jargon.
Since customers may speak a different language than yours, your content must cater to their level of understanding.
Start by understanding your customers' needs, pain points and buyer personas because tech lead generation may differ for B2B and B2C customers (two primary customer types).
Below, we've broken down the key parameters and the respective lead generation efforts for each type.
- Use intent data to your advantage
This is one underutilised tactic for most businesses today. But it's quickly climbing up the priority ladder for lead generation.
37% of marketers plan to test intent or signal data for demand generation in 2023.
But why is intent data important?
For starters, it signifies the actions that users take.
Consider this example. If a user visits your website, browses through a few tabs and exits, that may signal low intent. On the other hand, if a user clicks on your product pricing information, they may be more inclined to purchase.
Naturally, the intent of "I'm ready to buy" is more important than just browsing. And that's what a lead generation company can chase.
You can leverage intent data and reach out to leads with higher motivation to purchase. Plus, you can use the data to create personalised lead generation marketing campaigns too.
- Build a content strategy
A content strategy is essential for successful lead generation. It lets you create content that aligns with your potential customers' primary pain points.
You can use it to map your content to the buyer journey at each sales funnel stage—awareness, consideration and conversion.
Next, pick the best communication channels and reach out with the right message to provide value for your potential customers.
For a well-rounded content strategy, take into account the following elements:
- Brand story
- Business goals
- Target audience
- Marketing channels
- Content types and formats
- Optimise your online presence for mobile
Mobile has an impressive influence on your target audience, quite literally.
Of all internet users, 92% accessed the internet via mobile. And 50.9% of online shoppers use mobile to make a purchase at least once a week.
Since mobile is used so frequently, it's only fair for your lead generation efforts to become mobile-friendly. Use channels that are already mobile-optimised or create easy-to-read content on the pocket screen.
A mobile-optimised lead generation presence makes it easier and more convenient for leads to act on their purchase intent.
- Follow reputed lead sources
Third-party data is increasingly considered unreliable as data security, and privacy rules become more stringent. To find eligible lead sources, consider lead quality, lead data and lead cost.
Firstly, high quality leads come from reputed lead sources. These sources provide qualified leads that have undergone several levels of scoring.
Consider zero-party and first-party data. Since these come from reliable sources, they're more likely to offer the most qualified leads yet.
You can extract more ROI from lead generation campaigns as leads become more qualitative.
If finding these lead sources can be intimidating, look no further. We've listed the best ones for technology companies below.
Top 9 lead generation sources for technology companies
Here are the top lead generation sources for tech companies and tips for using them.
- Short videos
Short-form videos continue to gain popularity. So much so that even Google is pushing them forward to make search results "richer and more useful".
A significant reason why short videos are so engaging is that they can explain complex data in accessible and digestible bite-sized content.
It bodes well for technology companies, where the information you share may sometimes be complicated or technical.
With short-form videos, you can do a lot more for your tech and software company. Use them in some of the most appealing ways:
- Answer customer queries
- Showcase your product’s benefits or use cases
- Announce exciting product updates
- Give tidbits about your brand story
Customers—as much as 91%—also look forward to seeing more video content from brands.
Instagram and TikTok are leaders in the space. But you can also create short-form videos on other platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, depending on where your audience is present.
- Targeted landing pages
A targeted landing page motivates leads to take action because they offer a focused experience.
Those specifically built for a campaign are highly relevant, attracting more leads. So, consider landing pages as a reliable source for leads.
A targeted landing page must have these essential elements:
- Headline and supporting headline
- USP
- Key product benefits
- Visual content (images or videos)
- Social proof
- Closing argument
- CTA
CTAs, particularly, must prompt the user to click on them. Therefore, including a strong offer along with a heading promotes more value.
- Lead generation forms
Native lead gen forms are an excellent alternative to landing pages because you don't have to build one from scratch.
Lead gen forms are a popular format to capture lead information without visitors having to leave the platform. Moreover, you can customise and quickly launch them.
This is a convenient source for potential customers to share their information willingly, encouraging them to continue interacting with your brand or product.
To use lead gen forms correctly, you must offer valuable content as lead magnets. These lead magnets could be tech reports, whitepapers, case studies and real-life use cases.
Finally, the best thing about lead generation forms is that you can use them on several channels, including websites, social media and even Google.
- Social media
How could we leave social media from this list? After all, as much as 57% of buyers use social media to discover new products.
What's even better is that today, all social media platforms come equipped with various native lead generation tools and formats. This makes it easier to run campaigns across channels.
Other than simply sharing content to nurture leads, you can use social media to:
- Find and capture leads.
- Run targeted lead generation ad campaigns.
- Share customer testimonials.
- Engage with influencers.
And when it comes to choosing a particular site, the crop is diverse. If you thought social media consisted of only 4-5 platforms, Buffer has a list of 21 social media sites for you to choose from.
Most of these sites will work for B2C brands. But if you're specifically a B2B seller, put LinkedIn at the top of your list to connect and engage with business leaders.
- Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing, or SEM, increases your brand visibility and attracts more traffic to your website through organic (SEO) and paid (ads) strategies.
It works by capturing leads actively searching for your products and solutions for specific pain points on search engines.
With SEM, you can use paid campaigns—like PPC ads—backed by lead generation forms. These campaigns pull in prospects with high intent.
But, of course, quality content is what drives a successful SEM strategy. So, to bolster your SEO ranking:
- Include keyword-rich content, and
- Tailor your landing page for the featured snippet introduction on Google.
Don't forget about optimising the website experience, either. Ensure there are breadcrumbs throughout the user journey on your website, encouraging visitors to move between pages. This practice also improves internal linking.
- Email marketing
Email marketing remains one of the oldest forms of marketing, yet it's still highly relevant today. Technology companies can mainly use this channel to nurture existing leads.
Once you've captured new leads from other sources, sync them with your lead management software and run remarketing email campaigns. Driftrock is an excellent solution to see this through.
There are several content pieces you can share via email. Choose from:
- Newsletters
- Product highlights
- Product updates
- Special company announcements
- Brand stories
- Thought leadership content (from founders, C-suite and managers)
- Webinars or virtual product demos
Webinars may be a surprise addition to this list, but they're not unwarranted. In fact, 48% of marketers consider webinars the #1 engagement tactic for attracting top-of-the-funnel leads.
That's because webinars and virtual product demos capture more leads when they have a high purchase intent. They also provide deeper and more actionable insights into your product.
Therefore, leads captured through this source are more qualitative than others
Not just that. You can also accelerate these leads through the sales funnel to conversion faster.
For B2C, webinars work when it comes to large-scale product events. Whereas for B2B, you can regularly hold webinars and exclusive demos on a smaller scale.
To make the most of webinars and demos, leverage lead gen forms to capture contact data in a few easy clicks.
- Free trials or freemium options
Providing a free trial seems attractive. Just like a test run for cars, it's when customers can work with your product without commercials attached for a limited period.
Alternatively, you could provide them with a freemium option–access to a part of the features for free.
Free trials and freemium options make the proposition attractive to users. It's more appealing to let potential leads to experience your product for themselves and consider the value it delivers.
Capture leads by having them fill out a lead generation form on your website or social media. Once they fill in their details, you can provide access to your product.
- Social proof
Not to be confused with social media, social proof covers reviews and testimonials from existing customers. These customers are the ones who can vouch for your products or you.
46% of buyers cite product reviews as one of the most important factors when making a purchase decision.
Because these are genuine endorsements from a like-minded audience, social proof builds trust and influences other buyers to purchase from you.
Getting written testimonials certainly works. But you can go one step ahead and get videos instead. If customers are willing, shoot a quality video of their review. It builds a more personal element of social proof.
Also, use social proof in your case studies and reports—lead magnets which attract high-intent leads.
If you can't capture enough reviews, ask customers to spread the word about your product. Referrals are an inexpensive yet highly effective lead generation strategy.
Don't forget about customer testimonials on industry review sites such as GSMArena or Android Authority for B2C, and G2 or Capterra for B2B.. Acknowledge them and address any queries or ill experiences they may have had with your product.
Power up lead generation tactics with the right platform
Lead generation is critical for technology companies. So, to ensure that your pipeline is full and healthy, deploy the right strategies.
Our list of best practices is comprehensive enough for you to make the most of high quality leads.
However, you don't need to stick to just one or use all of them simultaneously. Experiment with a combination of sources and strategies to find what works best for your tech company.
Also, remember that a critical part of your lead generation strategy should include nurturing leads and measuring campaign performance.
That's something a powerful lead generation service and lead management platform can help you with. Consider Driftrock to help you capture and nurture leads to grow your pipeline.
Looking forward to getting started with your lead generation strategy? Reach out to us or get started for free.
