7 Lead Generation Strategies that work for B2B

With a lead generation strategy you will get in touch with potential customers interested in your service or product. The goal of lead generation is to start an initial contact with potential customers, but the game certainly doesn’t end there: in fact, this is the first of a series of steps to take to be able to transform people into leads, then qualify them and understand which are the most “promising” leads and finally get to the conversion.

As you may have already understood, our goal will not be simply to attract leads, but to attract quality leads. So let’s see what strategies to use to obtain excellent leads.

What is Lead Generation and Why is it Important in B2B?

By definition, lead generation can be understood as the acquisition of contact data from leads. This activity therefore includes everything that allows us to generate people’s interest in our products or services.

The goal is very simple:

• Intercept interested people;
• Obtain contact data of these people, the leads;
• Convert their interest into a real sale.

Even if the process, defined in such a linear way seems simple, in reality it is not as it seems.

In fact, for a purchasing journey to be concluded, a single contact with a company is not enough. This is even more true when we talk about B2B in which several touchpoints are needed and a longer decision-making journey is faced. Below you can see an example of typical touchpoints in B2B.

It goes without saying that this is not a complete overview and that the single lead does not necessarily have to be contacted through all these touchpoints, but it does help you get an idea of ​​the complexity of the purchasing journey.

In such a complex decision-making process in B2B compared to B2C, it is even more important to build a solid lead generation strategy. Why to do it? The benefits are numerous:

• Obtain qualified leads and be able to invest more resources towards these leads that are more likely to convert into customers;
• Increase conversion rates;
• Improve the entire sales cycle.

Are you interested in obtaining these benefits? That’s why we have collected the best strategies you can follow to generate leads.

Lead Generation Strategies

Now that we have clarified what lead generation is for, you may be wondering where to start. There is not only a single strategy that you can apply, so we will show you in detail several tactics that we frequently use to support our clients’ activities and that you can start implementing too.

Identify visitors and find contacts effectively

There are several ways to obtain contact data from leads, one of the most effective is undoubtedly to be able to exploit lead intelligence systems.

Thanks to lead generation tools such as Leadinfo, Leadfeeder and VisitorQueue, we can trace the contact information of site visitors.

The advantage of these tools is clear:

• We start with people who are already potentially interested since they visited the site;
• We get verified contact data;
• We can take advantage of automation: these tools connect to CRM and email marketing tools, so we can export contacts immediately.

In addition to these, we can also take advantage of:

• Email contact search tools like Hunter that allow us to create contact lists from websites or company names;
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator with which we can identify decision makers and which we can connect to our CRM for data export.

Qualify Leads

Did you know that 44% of sales departments are dissatisfied with the quality of their leads? This is according to a series of statistics collected by Exploding Topics (updated to 2025).

When thinking about lead generation, you might think that the biggest challenge is getting new leads, but that’s not the case. The real challenge is getting qualified leads.

Where to start qualifying leads?

First, you need to use the tools you have at your disposal: many CRMs, such as Hubspot, have lead scoring functions that allow us to assign a score to each lead.

Furthermore, for lead qualification, we can use some frameworks (choosing the one that best suits our sector). The goal is to use the framework to be able to establish which leads are the most qualified.

An example is the B.A.N.T. framework (Budget – Authority – Need – Timeline):

• Budget: understanding the budget available to the lead allows us to understand if it is in line with our products or services.
• Authority: establishing who is the decision maker who will have influence on the final purchase decision. We should ask ourselves “Are we talking to the right person? Or should we involve another person?“. Let’s remember that in B2B there are more people involved: both the decision makers and the people who will actually use the product or service.
• Need: does our product or service respond completely or partially to the lead’s needs?
• Timeline: estimate how long the decision-making process will be and how much time (and actions) it will take to close the sale. This element varies greatly based on the type of business.

If you want to dive deeper into this framework, we recommend reading this resource about the BANT framework on the Hubspot blog, which also has some lead qualification question ideas.

Optimize lead generation forms

In practice, optimizing the tools that allow us to effectively collect contact data from leads must become our obsession. No, seriously, without going overboard, but we can’t leave everything to chance either.

Here is an example of a lead generation form that uses the activation of the free plan for 14 days as a lead magnet, in this first phase only the email address is requested:

One of the crucial elements to work on is the form that we will use to leave us contact details.

Here the watchword must be one and only one: simplify.

Nobody really likes to fill out a long form that requires a lot of personal information. The trick to increasing the chances that forms will be filled out is to streamline them so that they only ask for essential information, for example:

• Name;
• Email address.

Depending on your needs, there may be other extra fields, but don’t get carried away.

For example, in Unbounce’s case study collection, it is mentioned that ImageScape reduced the number of fields in a lead generation form from 11 to 4. Do you know what happened?

• The number of completed forms increased by 160%;
• Conversions increased by 120%.

Keep in mind that this is not true in all cases, for example adding fields could reduce the amount of filled forms, but improve the quality of leads, in this case the situation would be optimal. To have a really precise idea of ​​the effectiveness of a form, there is therefore only one solution: test and analyze results.

Leveraging Organic Traffic for Lead Generation

The website is our most powerful ally to intercept searches from people interested in our field. Optimizing content for search engines is essential to get more organic traffic.

But is it possible to exploit organic traffic to generate more leads? Yes, it is no coincidence that blogs with informative content that aim to educate customers get 52% more organic traffic and are used to generate leads in the B2B field (Source: Sender).

When we do SEO in the B2B field we must not forget that we must have a clear idea of ​​how to create a bridge that allows us to attract attention and then convert organic traffic into leads. In practice this could mean for example:

• Insert a CTA that invites you to activate a free trial;
• Insert a chatbot to request information;
• Insert a popup that appears when you scroll the page or when you try to close it (the so-called exit-intent popup).

These are just some of the inputs that can be used to generate leads interested in our business.

Finding the most effective lead magnet

How do we convince people to leave their contact details? There is no single answer to this question. If you have a clear idea of ​​the profile of the decision makers, it will be easier to generate ideas about what interests them.

The real trick, however, is not to try to immediately obtain the definitive lead magnet, but to find it there is a simpler way: test different lead magnets, see how people respond and then focus on the most effective type.

You can start from content types that work best, below are some ideas that come from the “State of Content Marketing” report by Semrush.

But here are also other ideas for possible lead magnets to use in B2B:

• Trial or demo: Timed demo versions of your product (great for tools);
• Videos;
• Webinars;
• Reports and white papers;
• Case studies;
• Industry research and surveys;
• Short courses;
• Checklists;
• Access to restricted groups;
• Access to restricted content.

How to use these lead magnets in practice? To access the downloadable resource, the course or the webinar, ask for an account registration or to leave an email address. Let’s see some practical examples.

In this example, access to the webinars available in the Semrush Academy requires the creation of an account:

This example, instead, is a Hubspot guide that can only be downloaded after leaving your email:

Use paid and remarketing campaigns

Advertising campaigns allow us to reach more people in less time, but let’s not forget that our compass must be oriented towards a specific goal:

getting more targeted leads, not simply getting more leads.

To make the most of the various ADS channels such as Google ADS, and social advertising campaigns (such as Meta ADS and LinkedIn ADS), you need to work constantly to analyze and optimize the results.

A practical tip? Focus on the coherence between the ad and the landing page. If you want to learn more, read our guide to Google ADS for B2B companies.

Don’t forget that ADS campaigns allow you to steal traffic from your competitors. For example, you could consider analyzing the keywords that bring traffic to your competitors and insert yourself in order to intercept the traffic. You could follow a strategy similar to Monday’s:

• When someone searches Google for “hubspot alternatives,” they see an ad for Monday;
• Clicking on the ad takes you to the HubSpot vs. Monday comparison landing page.

This example follows all the rules of good ADS:

• Intercept customers interested in finding an alternative solution and position yourself as the solution;
• Have a landing page consistent with the ADS and with the search intent (in this case understand if the CRM is the right solution as an alternative).

Don’t forget to take advantage of the features that ADS platforms make available to you to expand your target audience, such as dynamic remarketing for Google ADS campaigns.

Save time with automations

80% of people who work in marketing say that through automations they can get more leads and more conversions (Source: Sender).

Marketing automation allows us to save time, but it is not the only advantage. The real potential is to have greater control over data, in fact automation allows us to analyze what happens and to exploit all the information we collect to our advantage.

Today through tracking and measurement we have access to an inexhaustible source of information, but the real challenge is to be able to extract information from this data to exploit in practice.

Thanks to integrations and automations, we can make huge steps forward in this direction.

Lead Generation FAQs

What is a lead and what is lead generation?

We can define a lead as a person who is interested in a company’s service or product. The lead generation process therefore consists of acquiring leads, that is, involving interested people and collecting their contact information.

What is lead generation for?

Lead generation allows us to have a flow of new potential customers. Getting an initial contact with a lead and also acquiring their contact information is just the first step. In the lead generation process, it is also necessary to consider the phase called lead nurturing in which a relationship with the leads continues to be established.

Lead generation: inbound or outbound?

The lead generation strategies that we can follow can be classified into two large groups:

• On one hand we have inbound marketing, where people are looking for the company (more or less actively). This category includes searches on search engines, but also ADS;
• On the other hand we have outbound marketing which includes all the techniques in which the company contacts potential customers. In this category we find outreach (for example through emails or phone calls).

What are lead magnets?

Often, in exchange for contact information, a trade commodity is offered. The lead magnet can be a content such as an ebook or a report. On the other hand, a free trial of a service or registration for a webinar can also be used as a lead magnet.

How do you qualify leads?

Lead scoring allows us to focus our attention on the most potentially interested leads. In addition to the framework we talked about (BANT), there are also other ways to qualify leads, here are some examples:

• Use demographic information (especially useful when our market is focused on a specific target or a limited geographic area, for example);
• Evaluate interactions: you can both evaluate interactions with our site through analytics, and measure engagement with email campaigns (for example, by looking at open rate metrics).

Acquire qualified leads with Visilay

As a team of professionals specialized in lead generation for B2B companies, we at Visilay can help you connect with the decision makers of companies. If your goal is to obtain a constant flow of new potential customers, you need to start with a solid lead generation process.

We can help you study a defined target and implement a strategy that allows you to obtain qualified leads and thus improve conversions.