The Jargon of B2B Lead Generation

Gone are the days when the marketing expenses of companies are spent on a number of ads with no definite assurance of a return as more B2B marketers recognized the value of lead generation. The trend is to target businesses who are likely to make bigger purchases and offer a higher rate of return for a company’s efforts. Additionally, marketers are becoming smarter and more efficient by using lead generation or filtering the market for only potential customers, in order to focus their efforts on people and companies that are highly likely to fill the company’s coffers.

Difficulty of Navigating the Field

Although the idea sounds appealing, lead generation and marketing, is difficult. The use of the internet makes information available to everyone at such a quick pace. The attention span of people are shorter, and most would just move on the next website or app without giving out information that you can turn into leads. Creative ways and effective calls to action are needed to succeed in lead generation. The task is made even more difficult with the use of highly-technical words when dealing with other businesses or other marketing counterparts. Here is some basic B2B lead generation jargon that you should know.

Basic Terms You Need to Know to Understand b2B Lead Generation

• Business-to-Business (B2B Marketing) – This is the type of marketing or exchange of transactions that takes place between businesses, from one company to another, as opposed to a business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing which is created for individual buyers. It is important to take note of the difference because the approaches to each should be different. B2B marketing means that certain decision-makers (called BANT leads) buy on behalf of the company. They typically do more research before reaching a purchase decision and you have to be more meticulous in addressing their needs.

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• Always Be Closing (ABC) – The first term that your marketing needs to understand is ABC.  The aim of salespeople is to close sales and turn leads into solid invoices and income for the company.

• Lead – A lead is a set of contact information of a person who has the potential to be your customer either because he fits your target market or he has previously responded to your brand’s marketing effort or showed interest in your company. The information of people who inquired about your products or participated in marketing events, or even past customers of a related business can be your leads. A lead will typically include a business/person’s name, corporate address, personalized corporate email, phone number, and other information such as website or LinkedIn profile. Leads are the starting point of any potential sale.

• Cost per Lead (CPL) – Cost per lead is a coined term to describe the pricing model for lead generations. This means that a certain number of leads will be delivered at a certain cost per lead. The number of leads multiplied by the cost per lead represents the “campaign value.” For example, buying a database of 1,000 leads for $100 means that each lead costs $0.10 and the entire campaign is priced at $100. Cost per mille, on the other hand means the price for a marketing campaign that can make a thousand impressions on different people.

• Qualifier – A qualifier otherwise called a qualifying question is used to create a definite set of parameters to limit the audience of a campaign. It is used to filter lead so that they fit a certain target market. For example, when designing an online survey targeted for female young professionals, before asing for any other question, the first qualifiers will be the age group and gender of the respondents. Only those who answer “female” and certain age groups will proceed to the next set of questions to make sure that all the survey responses are useful leads to your campaign.

• Blog – Any marketer should know what a web blog or simply blog means. These are online websites which constantly host content. One of the surest ways to generate leads is to create an engaging blog which has a lot of traffic. For further ideas, you can always check out blog where we constantly share business educational content: VSynergize Blog.

• Bounce rate – Tracked by the website system, the bounce rate represents the percentage of a blog visitors who actually do not stay on the blog for more than a single page. The aim is for visitors to view other pages on the website. If your bounce rate is high, you have to rethink your content.

• Conversion rate – This represents the percentage of your web visitors that are actually turned into leads. Again, leads are potential customers, and the more leads you get from your content and blog, the better chances you have of closing sales.

An ecommerce site is visited by 100,000 people during the month of April. During that month, 2,000 users purchased something from the site. Thus, the site’s conversion rate is 2,000/100,000 = 2%.

• Profiler – A profiler on the other hand, is not a question to set the parameters, but one that is designed to make it easier to segment the leads later on. Profiler questions are also useful to gain more information about leads so that the marketers can have topics to start conversations with.

• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) – A sales qualified lead is a means by which marketers identify leads as the strongest potential customers. There are usually lead scoring techniques (e.g. asking for past purchases within the last few months or so) that will signal that these leads are strong candidates for closing a sale. These leads are the ones that need the quickest follow up because they are most likely looking to buy ASAP.

• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) – While not as strong as a lead identified as SQL, marketing qualified leads are those who have shown quite an interest in the products or services of a company by downloading whitepapers, FAQs, ebooks, or other collaterals from the company website. It is important to have means to monitor the audience and users of your company’s whitepaper and other collaterals because these leads can be potential customers if properly nurtured.

• Marketing campaign – Or simply a campaign means a means of organizing marketing efforts into one coherent whole. It consists of several marketing collaterals, marketing tools, advertisements that all use a central theme. At the end of the campaign, leads have to be sold on the product or service offered because of the repetitive message or value that you projected in several marketing tools.

• Asset – An asset is a piece of content that you can promote to encourage traffic and generate leads. This can be content pieces such as videos or online articles, or even livestreamed events where you can generate leads from comments.

• Content – These are messages in various forms such as text in online articles, ebooks, whitepapers, blog updates or press releases, or video or streamed materials. This is the main vehicle for any marketer to deliver a message to leads.

• Double touch leads – These are leads who have viewed, downloaded, or used your content at least twice. Coming back to your content is a great sign of interest by a lead and needs following up.

• Retouch message – Simply stated, a retouch simply means a follow-up. This is a messge in a content piece that gets shown to a lead again after several days. This is a great strategy to maximize recall on your leads and make sure they remember your brand.

• API Integration – Application Programming Interface (API) Integration means having a dedicated software application that can record the leads and post them in a customer management software (CRM) so that the sales or marketing team can follow up on these leads, apply lead nurturing, and eventually close a sale. It is an efficient way of generating maximum leads.

• Customer Relation Management (CRM) – CRM is the company’s system to manage relationships with customers. Normally, company’s must keep track of customers’ birthdays, buying preferences and other relevant information. Giving them freebies on their birthdays or founding anniversaries – in case of companies – is a way to stay in the customers’ good books and make them likely to maintain the transactions with the company.

• Budget, Authority, Need and Timescale (BANT) – A BANT lead means that the person identified as a lead is actually the person who is authorized, or likely authorized to make decisions on the budget allocation and purchases. A BANT lead must actually need your product or service within a certain timeframe (usually 6 months to one year) which means the BANT lead is likely to make a purchase of a product or service you offer within the span of a year.

• Call-to-action (CTA) – Perhaps the most important component of any marketing campaign, a call to action gives the leads a signal to do something like download content, sign up with their emails, like your social media accounts, and other such actions which can enable you to track the leads later on. Popular CTAs are signed up pages for updates, save-the-dates, and email registration. Here is an example of a good CTA created by Wizzair:

• Buyer Persona – This term means the profile of outline of demographics you make of your target customer. If it were a person, it will contain information on the profession, age group, gender, location, buying preferences and income, and similar information. For B2B marketing, however, this normally entails knowing the size of the company, its capitalization and leadership, its target market and objectives. Creating buyer personas is a perfect way to really define a target market well so that your marketing campaign is planned well.

• Buyer’s Adoption Process – This represent the stages prior to a purchase that every buyer goes through. The first stage is the Awareness stage which means the lead learns of your product or service or exhibits signs of needing your product or service. The Consideration stage is when the buyer is researching and considering where to buy a product or service. This is the crucial point wherein leads are turned into actual sales. The Decision stage is when the buyer has already decided which provider to pursue.

• Inbound marketing – Inbound marketing means drawing your customers, whether companies or individuals, to your companies. You generally want to be found by the buyers. This is why SEO is a big deal. You want leads to identify your company as possible answers to their needed product or service. This is distinguished from outbound marketing or cold-calling potential customers and telling them about your products and services and making them realize that they need you. Cold calling is highly unsuccessful these days, the trend is to create meaningful messages that make customers realize your value so that they turn into leads.

• Landing pages – When a person clicks on a link using a CTA, this the first web page that they see. This should contain an offer or a fill-out form where you can collect more information on leads.

• Pay-per-click (PPC) – This is an advertising model where another website or advertiser is only paid when your website is visited as soon as a user clicks an ad. It is a great model to ensure that your marketing expenses actually translate to traffic and possible leads. Here is an example created by Google Adwords:

Knowing Jargon can be a show of competence

There are many other B2B lead generation marketing terms used by professionals but understanding those above will give you a working knowledge to at least start your own B2B lead generation campaign.

While the use of terms must be in moderation as too much use of jargon can befuddle your market and actually turn them off, knowing the basics is a show of competence and expertise on the matter. Take time to familiarize yourself to speak the word of the trade.

Now you know the jargon and how to talk business like a pro, VSynergize is your next one-stop destination for getting closer to your potential leads and partners. Thanks to our telemarketing, appointment setting and content syndication. Get in touch with us now and knock the door of endless opportunities.