5 Effective strategies to find new B2B customers

Whether you are launching a new business or working on an existing one, finding new customers is always one of the biggest challenges to face. In the B2B sector, compared to B2C, things get even more complicated, because the number of actors involved increases: decisions are not made by a single person, but by multiple decision makers and the decision-making process is longer.

In this article, we have collected some of the most effective (and tested) methods for attracting target customers in the B2B sector.

Defining the ideal customer

In order to reach potential customers who are truly targeted with the products or services that our company has to offer, we must first take a step back. One of the first aspects to consider is to have a clear idea of ​​your ideal customer or buyer persona, if you prefer.

But where do we start?

With the practical suggestions that you will find in the following sections, you will already have a basis from which to start.

Start with existing customers

If you already have a customer base, the first step you can take is to start with your existing customers. Based on these, you can segment them according to your industry, for example based on demographics or interests.

You can also submit customers to surveys or interviews to obtain more data. If you don’t know where to start, you can find in this resource from Survicate, examples of questions to insert into your surveys based on the type of interview you want to do. Some examples are:

• Customer Research (What do you use the product for? What is your role in the company?, etc.);
• Product Research (How important is this feature to you? What new features would you like to see?);
• Site Feedback (Is there information you feel is missing from the site? Is the site easy to navigate?).

Remember that your current customers are an inexhaustible source of data, to get the most out of them you can:

• Use reviews to understand how your customers talk and what they want;
• Request feedback after providing support or at the end of a project.

In these activities, the people in the company who are in direct contact with customers (for example, your pre-sales or customer success department) play a central role. It can be a great idea to meet with them to analyze the desires and discover the pain points of current customers together.

Leverage analytics systems

You can collect important data not only by directly interacting with customers, but also by collecting data through analytics systems.

If your business is completely digital and all the actions that lead to the sale and the use of your product or service are traceable, you have a goldmine of data in your hands. With systems like Google Analytics and heatmap tools including Microsoft Clarity, you can analyze the behavior of your customers and visitors to your site in detail.

In this example, the Analytics User Attributes Overview allows us to obtain information about the city, gender and interests of users who visit the site.

Furthermore, you can use the data collected to understand, for example, the interest in visiting more pages, but also to understand if there are points where the user’s path is interrupted, for example, abandoning the cart or not filling out a form for a callback. For example, in our work with Scovaventi we intervened precisely in solving user experience problems that interfered with the conclusion of purchases and therefore with cart abandonment.

Creating the ideal customer profile

In addition to existing customer data and analytics, market research can also help you. If you don’t have many customers yet or your current ones aren’t enough to collect enough data, you can collect data from your competitors and define your ideal customers in this way. At this stage, you can also use sentiment analysis tools that help you understand what customers are saying about a certain brand, product, or topic. For example, Hootsuite allows you to find mentions and do AI-based sentiment analysis.

To actually define a profile, you can start from a template or a tool that helps you create a buyer persona, like this one made available for free by Semrush.

What to Consider in B2B vs. B2C

When we define the profile of an ideal customer, we must make different considerations based on the area in which we operate.

In B2B, greater importance should be given to the role that the ideal customer plays in the company, this is because, in B2B, more decision makers are involved and purchasing decisions depend on different factors.

Defining more precisely what a certain figure does in the company helps us to have a clearer picture of the situation and to answer a fundamental question:

How much does this person’s opinion weigh in the purchasing decision?

It is also interesting to think about different aspects, often in fact:

• One or more people are essential in the purchase decision;
• Other people, however, will be the actual users of the service or product.

If the two personas don’t match, it might make sense to think about creating multiple buyer persona profiles.

Reaching customers through outreach (email and calls)

We talk about outreach with the aim of finding new customers in all cases in which we get in touch (via email, with a phone call or even through social media) with potential customers to propose our services.

By its nature, outreach does not have high success rates, just think that only 8.5% of outreach emails receive a response. (Source: Backlinko) Instead, the success rate of cold calls is 2.3% (Source: Cognism – 2025 Report).

This should not discourage us, but rather make us understand that it is important to have a solid strategy before embarking on this path. Among the essential elements that we must prepare to start the outreach machine are:

• Create a list of potential targets: creating a list of companies that are targeted with our services is essential if we don’t want to shoot blindly;
• Obtain contact data: there are several lead generation tools that help us find email and LinkedIn contacts of potential customers, including: Hunter and Leadinfo;
• Create an effective template / outline: depending on whether we want to send an email or make a call, it is useful to define a basic model to follow to make our proposal. To obtain the best results, it is important to be able to personalize the communication in order to appear more credible and not have our proposal mistaken for spam.

Create an email template for outreach

There are some essential elements that cannot be missing in an outreach email if we want to obtain good results.

• Email subject: this element is one of the decisive factors in influencing the email opening rate. The goal is to attract attention and intrigue the reader;
• First email lines: the introduction of the email must keep attention high. It is therefore important that it is linked to the subject of the email, keeping the promise made in the subject and renewing interest;
• Custom email: in the body of the email we must highlight the product or service as the solution to the problem. One of the frameworks that can be used for copy is PAS (Problem – Agitate – Solution). Furthermore, it is essential that the email is personalized and as generic as possible;
• Clear CTA: it must be clear what the next action to take is. For example, if the intent is to book a callback, this goal must be clear in the closing of the email. For example, you can insert a button that refers to a Calendly to schedule a phone call;
• Signature: The email signature is another distinctive element. In the signature, you should remember to indicate multiple contact methods, links to social media, and depending on the case, a button that invites you to book a call may also be useful. Furthermore, one of the most important things is to make sure that the information in the signature is always up to date. In this resource from Hubspot, you will find other useful tips on how to create a professional signature.

Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales navigator is a great tool to integrate to connect with potential customers. In the B2B field, relationships are essential and this platform helps us in the lead generation phase.

The key points of the tool are:

• The presence of an advanced search, thanks to which we can find people based on the role they play in the company, but also based on the size of the company itself;
• The possibility of using recommendations from the platform itself. As we use Sales Navigator, we will have suggestions on new leads that could be targeted by our business.

In addition to this, the ability to create different lists to better segment potential customers and the integration with the most used CRMs allow us to greatly speed up the search and management of potential customers.

The Power of Events (Online and Offline)

Events and networking are a great way to both attract new customers and get in touch with them directly.

On the one hand, we have offline industry events, by participating we can both grow our network of knowledge in the sector, perhaps by establishing new collaborations and partnerships, and get in touch with potential customers.

Even those with a completely digital business should not underestimate the potential of live meetings with potential customers thanks to which they can make great strides in establishing a relationship of trust. Many industry events allow startups and businesses to participate as exhibitors, become sponsors or even speakers themselves, as happens for example at WMF – We Make Future (Italian main marketing event).

The other alternative (but no one rules out that you can follow both paths) is to actively participate in online communities in your field.

To give a greater boost and attract target customers, the ideal is to decide to host online events, podcasts and webinars. For example, webinars are a very popular route in the B2B sector, and it is no coincidence that this type of content is one of the most effective distribution channels according to a report by the Content Marketing Institute.

Making the Most of Your Site to Generate Leads

Unlike platforms such as social media (LinkedIn, Youtube, etc.) that are governed by algorithms, the website is the proprietary channel par excellence and this gives us numerous advantages because we have complete management of it.

If we want to find more customers and, above all, more targeted customers, being able to optimize the site is a fundamental step to take. The road is certainly not short, but there are some suggestions that we want to give you to get started.

Optimize your site to get more organic traffic

With SEO (search engine optimization) we can increase traffic to our website.

In the B2B sector it is important to outline a real SEO strategy that must include:

• Target study: as we have seen before, defining the ideal customer is the first step to find target customers;
• Search intent study: every search that is done on search engines (like Google) corresponds to a need. Understanding what the need is allows us to build adequate content;
• Content creation: by studying the SERPs you can understand what the search intent is and what type of content is most suitable to create. Content creation and all the changes made “on the site” fall under on-page SEO;
• Taking care of the technical component: aspects such as the site loading speed, security, having a responsive design, but also using structured data are all elements that are part of “technical SEO”.

Create landing pages with a clear goal

Often, a lot is invested in creating landing pages, driving traffic (in addition to organic traffic, perhaps even with ADS) to pages that simply don’t convert. How can we avoid falling into this trap?

First of all, by defining a clear goal: each landing page should have a specific and clear goal and guide users towards an action. As we have seen when talking about the most effective lead generation strategies, all the elements that create distractions or have sections that complicate the decision-making process instead of simplifying it are obstacles to be eliminated.

In addition to this, studying the target is also fundamental: if we are addressing a general public, it is as if we were not addressing anyone, but if we are speaking to the right person, then we are truly responding to a specific need and this makes all the difference.

Leverage high traffic pages

If we already have a site up and running, we should be able to make the most of incoming traffic. For example, we could insert contact request forms, popups or CTAs in specific places on the page to lead casual visitors to take the next step and become leads.

Analyze and improve

It is not enough to create the structure of the site or landing pages and wait, if we really want to get the best out of our site then the watchword must be testing.

A/B tests (with tools like Visual Website Optimizer) can help us create different versions of the same page and measure the results. In addition, analytics systems and heatmaps (which we also mentioned before) allow us to understand where there are problems. To give a practical example, with an accurate analysis we could come to the conclusion that by reducing the number of fields in a contact form, we can obtain a greater number of leads.

Find more customers with Visilay

At Visilay we specialize in assisting B2B companies in structuring and improving the lead generation process to obtain target customers. We can help you in creating buyer personas and in the detailed analysis of the target to then define the most effective lead generation strategy from these or improve the existing one.