Ken FlandersBy Ken Flanders

What’s the secret to business to business lead generation? Excellent keyword research combined with understanding your marketplace. You know your offerings. Can you communicate those offerings in the language your audience use and is ‘thinking in’ and just as importantly the language they use when searching

the internet?

Say you offer widgets to a certain business segment. Your widget is durable, well-made and state-of-the art. That’s likely NOT what people are searching for. They might be searching for a widget that will save them time, save them money, makes them more efficient. Do you see how the game (and the resulting language) changes depending on whose point of view you’re looking from? For example, say you market lead generating software. If I’m looking for lead generating software, I might search for more leads or increasing sales or sales productivity. I might not yet be aware that software like you market exists.

If you regularly spend some time researching your marketplace, your competition and the related keywords, you can put your company and your brand head and shoulders above your competition when it comes to B2B lead generation by providing content on your site that is very specific to the audience you most want to reach.

Let’s be a little more specific about how this works. The search engines are constantly analyzing every bit of data on the internet. As sites prove to have more and more relevant data for any given topic, they’re given better and better rankings. Interest in your site improves rankings as well. That includes how often your site is being visited and how many links other sites have to your site.

Therefore, if you know what people are looking for and you provide it well and often, then when people are looking for what you offer, you are more likely to be more easily found because you’ve been ranked highly for relevance and the search engines have moved you up in their listings, making you easier to find. As you do this consistently over time, you build value for your prospects by adding meaningful content to your site. At the same time, you become easier to find. It’s win-win and a great long-term strategy because unlike advertising, you’re building value.

The key to doing this effectively is knowing what people are searching for. There are some great and easy-to-use keyword tools that will tell you exactly what people are looking for, what the most commonly searched terms are and you can find out what your competitors are using that’s working well for them. You don’t need to copy their content and we wouldn’t recommend that you do – but by knowing what’s working for them and for their clients, customers and prospects, you can put that knowledge to work for you and use it to get better rankings for your site. Business to business lead generation needs to be specific and focused as your audience is generally very targeted. Creating great rankings by using some of the organic methods we’ve mentioned will enable you to generate more leads that have real value and meaning to your company, your sales force and your bottom line.