For a new B2B company, one of the first goals is to land its first customers, to validate the product or service and then reach break-even. This stage matters more than it looks: it is about laying the foundations for steady growth as well as making sales.
Plenty of articles give advice on attracting your first customers, but they often miss one point: not every customer is right as a first customer. At this stage, timing and fit count for more than anything else.
If your company builds B2B software, focus on finding design partners: customers willing to work with you, give regular feedback and help shape the product. These early customers validate your idea and often go on to recommend your brand.
To find them, you need a clear ideal customer profile and an acquisition strategy that combines online and offline activity:
- LinkedIn and email marketing for targeted outreach and networking
- Industry events and trade shows for direct contact
- Content marketing, SEO, Google Ads and webinars to generate good inbound leads
- Partnerships and referrals from existing customers to build credibility
Combining collaboration, visibility and the right relationships is what turns customers into long-term partners.
In this article we have collected the methods that work best (and that we have tested ourselves) for attracting your target customers.
Define your ideal customer
To reach prospects who are a genuine fit for what your company sells, you first need to take a step back. One of the first things to pin down is your ideal customer, or buyer persona if you prefer.
But where do you start?
The practical tips in the next sections give you a base to work from.
Start with your existing customers
If you already have customers, start with them. You can segment them in the way that suits your sector, for example by demographic data or interests.
You can also run surveys or interviews to collect more data. If you are not sure where to begin, Survicate has example questions for different types of survey. Some examples:
- 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? Which new features would you like?)
- website feedback (Is there any information missing from the site? Is the site easy to navigate?)
Your current customers are an endless source of data. To get the most from them you can:
- use reviews to learn how your customers talk and what they want;
- ask for feedback after a support request or at the end of a project.
The people in your company who deal with customers directly (for example pre-sales or customer success) play a central role here. Sit down with them to go through what current customers want and find their pain points.
Use your analytics
Talking to customers is one source of data. Analytics tools are another.
If your business is fully digital and every step towards a sale, and the use of your product or service, can be tracked, you are sitting on a goldmine of data. With Google Analytics and heatmap tools such as Microsoft Clarity, you can analyse in detail how customers and visitors behave on your site.
In this example, the Analytics User attributes overview shows the city, gender and interests of the site's visitors.
You can also use this data to see, for example, whether people go on to visit more pages, and where the user journey breaks off, such as an abandoned basket or a callback form that is never completed. In our work with Scovaventi, for instance, we fixed the user experience problems that were getting in the way of completed purchases and causing basket abandonment.
Create your ideal customer profile
Besides customer data and analytics, market research helps too. If you do not have many customers yet, or not enough to collect meaningful data, you can gather data on your competitors and define your ideal customers that way. At this stage you can also use sentiment analysis tools, which show what customers think about a brand, product or topic. Hootsuite, for example, finds mentions and runs AI-based sentiment analysis.
To build the profile itself, you can start from a template or a buyer persona tool such as this free one from Semrush.
What to consider in B2B vs B2C
When you define an ideal customer profile, what you look at depends on the market you work in.
In B2B, give more weight to the ideal customer's role in the company, because B2B purchases involve several decision makers and depend on several factors.
Defining exactly what a given person does in the company gives you a clearer picture and answers a basic question:
how much does this person's opinion weigh in the buying decision?
It is also worth thinking about a few things, because often:
- one or more people make the buying decision;
- other people are the actual users of the product or service.
If these two personas are different people, it can make sense to create more than one buyer persona.
Reach customers through outreach (email and calls)
Outreach for new customers means any time you contact potential customers (by email, by phone or on social media) to offer your services. These contacts are called cold because the people you are reaching have not shown any interest in your company so far.
By its nature, outreach has low success rates: only 8.5% of outreach emails get a reply (Source: Backlinko). The success rate of cold calls is 2.3% (Source: Cognism, 2025 report).
That should not put you off. It means you need a solid strategy before you start. The essentials for getting the outreach machine running are:
- Build a list of targets: a list of companies that fit your services is essential if you do not want to fire blind.
- Get the contact details: several lead generation tools help you find prospects' email addresses and LinkedIn profiles, including Hunter and Leadinfo.
- Write an effective template or call script: whether you are sending an email or making a call, a basic structure for your pitch helps. For the best results, personalise each message so it comes across as credible and is not mistaken for spam.
Creating an outreach email template
Some elements have to be in an outreach email if you want good results.
- Subject line: one of the biggest factors in open rates. The aim is to catch attention and make the reader curious.
- Opening lines: the introduction has to hold attention. It should follow on from the subject line, keep the promise it made and renew interest.
- Personalisation: the body of the email should present the product or service as the answer to a problem. One framework for the copy is PAS (Problem, Agitate, Solution). The email also needs to be personalised and as little generic as possible.
- Clear CTA: the next step must be obvious. If the aim is to book a call, the close of the email should say so, for example with a button linking to a Calendly page to schedule the call.
- Signature: include several ways to get in touch and links to your social profiles; depending on the case, a button to book a call can also help. Above all, keep the details in your signature up to date. This HubSpot guide has more tips on writing a professional signature.
Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a useful tool for getting in touch with potential customers. Relationships are central in B2B, and the platform helps with lead generation.
Its main features are:
- advanced search, which lets you find people by their role in the company and by company size;
- the platform's own recommendations: the more you use Sales Navigator, the more suggestions you get for new leads that may fit your business.
You can also create separate lists to segment prospects, and the integration with the main CRMs makes finding and managing prospects much quicker.
The power of events (online and offline)
Events and networking are a good way both to attract new customers and to meet them directly.
On one side there are offline industry events. By attending, you can grow your network in the sector, perhaps set up new collaborations and partnerships, and meet potential customers.
Even a fully digital business should not underestimate face-to-face meetings with prospects, which go a long way towards building trust. Many trade events let startups and businesses take part as exhibitors or sponsors, and some also give you the chance to appear as a speaker. In the UK, B2B Marketing Live at ExCeL London is one example.
The other option (and nothing stops you doing both) is to take an active part in online communities in your field.
To give things a bigger push and attract the right customers, host your own online events, podcasts and webinars. Webinars are a well-trodden route in B2B: they are among the most effective distribution channels according to the Content Marketing Institute report.
Make the most of your website to generate leads
Unlike social platforms (LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.), which are run by algorithms, your website is the owned channel by definition, and because you control it completely it gives you a lot of advantages.
If you want more customers, and above all more of the right customers, optimising your site is a key step. It takes time, but here are a few tips to get started.
Optimise the site for more organic traffic
SEO (search engine optimisation) can increase the traffic coming to your website.
In B2B you need a proper SEO strategy that covers:
- Audience research: as we saw earlier, defining the ideal customer is the first step towards finding the right customers.
- Search intent research: every search on a search engine (such as Google) reflects a need. Understanding that need lets you build the right content.
- Content creation: studying the SERPs shows you the search intent and the type of content that fits best. Content creation and all changes made "on the site" are part of on-page SEO.
- The technical side: page speed, security, responsive design and structured data are all part of "technical SEO".
Create landing pages with a clear goal
Businesses often invest heavily in landing pages and send traffic to them (organic and perhaps paid ads), only for the pages not to convert. How do you avoid that trap?
First, set a clear goal: every landing page should have one specific goal and lead users towards one action. As we covered in the article on the most effective lead generation strategies, anything that distracts, or sections that make the decision harder instead of easier, are obstacles to remove.
Knowing your audience matters here too: if you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. If you are talking to the right person, you are answering a specific need, and that makes all the difference.
Use your high-traffic pages
If your site is already up and running, make the most of the traffic it gets. For example, add contact forms, pop-ups or CTAs at specific points on the page to move casual visitors to the next step and turn them into leads.
Analyse and improve
Building the site or the landing pages and then waiting is not enough. If you want to get the most out of your site, the watchword is testing.
A/B tests (with tools such as Visual Website Optimizer) let you create different versions of the same page and measure the results. Analytics and heatmaps (mentioned earlier) show you where the problems are. A practical example: a careful analysis might show that cutting the number of fields in a contact form brings in more leads.
Reach more customers with Visilay
At Visilay we specialise in helping B2B companies structure and improve their lead generation process to win the right customers. We can help you build buyer personas and analyse your audience in detail, then use them to define the most effective lead generation strategy or improve the one you already have.
