For a startup engaged in B2B activities, lead generation is a critical process that plays a crucial role in the success of the company’s commercial activities.

In this article, we will discuss various marketing strategies to implement in order to generate qualified leads for your tech startup.

Lead Generation and SEO

As mentioned in our previous article dedicated to programmatic SEO, it is essential to first implement a coherent and comprehensive SEO strategy to gain visibility on the terms and themes directly related to your business. The structure of your corporate website should feature simple and intuitive navigation so that everyone can easily understand your field of action and value propositions. Product pages should be well-written, with a sufficient word count to appear in search results, and feature a clean design to explain technical concepts. You can also integrate videos into your product pages to support your message or direct visitors to a demo request, sign-up page, etc.

A writing tip: get straight to the point, focus on the essentials, and avoid overloading your page with words. A product page is not an essay; it’s a distillation of your value propositions meant to attract visitors and potential leads to contact you or try your product.

Your blog, on the other hand, is the perfect space on your website to expand on your ideas without text limitations. However, try to facilitate reading by structuring your article, and illustrating concepts with images, charts, or even videos. Google’s algorithm, in particular, favors clean, informative content that meets the search interests of internet users.

It is therefore important to have a detailed understanding of the themes relevant to your business and to create an SEO content strategy that covers all aspects. Let’s take a general example: a startup developing a connected coffee machine with a dedicated mobile app. Naturally, it would aim to rank high for search terms like “connected coffee machine,” “smart coffee maker,” and “programmable coffee maker.” The company would need to list all these terms, examine the search volume for each, and create content through product pages or a blog. Tools like Ahrefs and Mangools can help perform these semantic searches. A complementary strategy would be to create an index of coffee types available worldwide, complete with definitions for each, or a directory of coffee recipes. The key takeaway is to increase your chances by analyzing your business’s thematic corpus and creating relevant content for your audience. Remember one thing about SEO: “first come, first served,” meaning the sooner you act, the better your chances of ranking high in search results. The example I gave for illustration is entirely applicable to a startup developing products for B2B. The methodology is exactly the same.

Guides and White Papers

Guides and white papers are also excellent ways to gather leads. They should be informative, providing real value to readers by addressing one or more of their needs. For example, a tech startup developing a mobile user acquisition solution could create a series of guides dedicated to mobile user acquisition, such as “How to Choose Your Mobile Attribution Technology,” “Which Acquisition Channels to Prioritize in 2024,” “How to Increase Your App Retention Rate,” and “User Acquisition and Data Collection.” These guides would help position the company as a reliable source, build trust among prospects by showcasing expertise and market knowledge, and highlight the technology’s capabilities in addressing challenges. Guides should be concise, with a reasonable number of pages, focusing on the essentials. It may also be useful to include client testimonials in the conclusion.

Let’s consider another example, again for a B2B startup, this time a company developing AI solutions for the transportation sector. A white paper could be an excellent piece of content to showcase the company’s vision in this vast field, taking the time to analyze the topic from all angles—whether it’s the evolution of AI over the years, the industries that rely most on AI, how the transportation sector compares to others, expert insights from both within and outside the company, the company’s vision, and the solutions it offers through its AI technology. As you can see, what distinguishes a white paper from a guide is the ability to delve deeper into details while limiting promotional content. The goal here is to position the company as an expert with a market vision that matters and takes all aspects into consideration, without limiting the number of pages to be written. Like guides, white papers have a dual objective: increasing lead generation and strengthening brand image.

Webinars to Foster Interaction

Webinars are also an excellent way to generate qualified leads. They provide an opportunity to initiate a discussion on a relevant topic that matters to prospects and answers their questions. Therefore, it’s important to research and choose a theme that can attract significant attention, encouraging webinar registrations. It’s also beneficial to invite external speakers, such as clients, key opinion leaders in the market, or even partner companies who aren’t clients but have insights into the topic. Organizing a weekly thematic webinar on a specific day can also create a regular event where your prospects can meet you and ask questions. In my experience, webinars are an excellent, low-cost way to boost a company’s lead generation. They allow you to present your value proposition to multiple people simultaneously in a 45-minute session. I recommend preparing a brief presentation in advance to introduce the speakers, key points of the webinar, and adding a 15-minute Q&A section. You can also opt for a roundtable webinar format with 3-4 external speakers from different companies to debate a specific topic. To conclude, webinars are an excellent way to generate qualified leads and enhance your brand image in the market. You can also make the webinar available on-demand and continue to promote it through your various communication channels, allowing you to keep generating leads.

Marketing Automation as a Major Asset

Marketing automation should be an integral part of your lead generation strategy. This involves implementing a set of tools that allow you to collect leads, set attribution variables to identify where your lead came from, and use this data, such as emails or phone numbers, for follow-ups—both for future marketing communications and for the sales department. Additionally, a dedicated dashboard to track lead generation in real-time by day, month, or year, with comparisons to previous periods, is crucial for performance analysis. Implementing a CRM is therefore essential.

Personally, I find HubSpot to be a very comprehensive tool for startups. It offers a CRM and a dedicated email marketing platform, along with other features like pipeline creation, task automation, and advanced dashboards. Finally, integrating this CRM and lead generation pipeline with an internal communication tool like Slack can be useful, enabling real-time notifications through a dedicated channel for the relevant team members.

Content Promotion to Boost Visibility

Promoting your content, whether it’s an article, guide, white paper, or webinar, can be done in several ways. Social media is an excellent platform for content dissemination. It can also be beneficial to leverage the company’s network, as well as key opinion leaders in the industry, to help increase content visibility. Another option is to use LinkedIn Ads campaigns to target specific companies and job roles within organizations. Allocating a budget for promoting an email campaign through a specialized magazine’s database in your industry can also generate leads. Additionally, sector-specific Slack groups exist, and requesting to join these online communities can be a good way to promote your content and generate leads.

You can also create campaigns focused on product demo requests through Google Ads, directing users to a specialized landing page for that campaign. You’ll need to conduct keyword research, analyze search volumes, tailor the ad content, and ensure these campaign keywords are also reflected on the landing page. Google’s algorithm analyzes content relevance and the presence of keywords from the Google Ads campaign. I recommend using “Exact” or “Phrase” match types to ensure better targeting. As the name suggests, “Broad” match type is too broad; if your goals and keywords are well-defined, avoid using “Broad” match type. It should only be used for exploratory purposes. All these campaign settings and best practices have a real impact on performance, such as share of voice, cost per click, and ad positioning in Google search results.

A quick note to close this section: targeting a competitor’s brand name is a common idea. If your budget is limited, I personally advise against this strategy because the cost per click is high, and you would need to create a landing page that mentions your competitor. Additionally, depending on the country, the legal framework for competitive advertising varies, so you should consult your legal department before implementing such a strategy. This practice is particularly common in the United States. This strategy can be effective, but it’s not suitable for all companies, product maturity levels, or marketing budgets.

Conclusion

Throughout this article, we’ve covered actionable steps to generate leads online. Always keep in mind your end customers, their needs, and the current market trends in which you operate. Lead generation is a continuous process for the marketing team, involving constant testing and improvement to determine which channels work, which show promise, and which simply don’t. Every campaign is a learning experience, even those that don’t generate the expected number of qualified leads in relation to the time and budget invested. The knowledge gained has value for future initiatives. It’s also important to diversify your lead sources, both offline and, as discussed in this article, online. Finally, everything must be measurable from day one, whether it’s through the CRM, the website, or webinar platform sign-ups. This will enable you to launch lead generation campaigns with a controlled ROI. With a fine-tuned transcription of your product expertise through various types of marketing content, you’ll have all the tools at your disposal to generate qualified leads for your tech startup.