Top 5 Winning Lead Generation Strategies for 2024 | Boost Your SaaS B2B Sales

in this video I'm going to talk about the five lead generation strategies for Tech startups or really for any entrepreneurial type of startup but this particular formula works really well with B2B traditional Tech SAS startups so the first thing that I always like to show is kind of this visual cuz it gives us a sense of the full landscape that we're ultimately trying to build so when we're building out lead generation there's a lot of different channels that we can use and often times I see a lot of folks actually starting with the the wrong

mechanisms first right so what you're kind of seeing here in the visual is you know ultimately you know you start in the center right you have to start with local and so in the context of B Toc this is often times starting within your local community right traditional networking even some offline we do a lot of work with mortgage lenders and so in that context be you know networking with reals CPAs financial advisers other professionals but really dominating your local community in the context of a tech startup you again want to do a similar sort

of thing but in this context it is kind of your native relationships right you probably came from somewhere you came out of an industry you have an existing Network and you probably started to build a solution because you saw the need right with other folks that you're working with that's your initial lead generation really is taking sort of your natural Circle and introducing them to whatever your product or solution is getting feedback getting responses it's a friendly audience several of those people will probably buy from you so again starting u local within your network and

then from there you can leverage your extended Network inside a social media this is your community we're going to talk more about audience this is really critical sort of probably at the same time or maybe even before because it is essentially the Workhorse of a lot of this system particularly early on is the CRM and the the email component of that system that allows you to do cold Outreach and those sorts of things and sometimes there are we'll talk about Tools in another video but there are some specific tools that make this easier that that

may be adjacent to the CRM But ultimately that CRM is going to compile your database and as that database gets bigger so you can do more marketing or expend your your lead generation that it it kind of works from that Center so again we're kind of creating a flywheel we just keep putting sort of concentric or larger circles out from here to accompass more the market reach that you need ultimately So within your first kind of 100 or so you know kind of that traction element first 100 clients is going to kind of operate with

it here unfortunately a lot of people jump over into PPC Google ads Facebook ads and those sorts of things or maybe even SEO and these both of these are a lot bigger investment right and in the case of SEO it's a bigger investment and it also takes more time PPC larg investment and you're probably going to spend a lot of time sort of not converting as many as you should because you probably haven't honed in on your ICP the solution is probably not mature enough to to Really appeal to those people that are really high

intent but they already know what they need right they've got a specific solution in mind they're just looking for providers of that so these two starting points can be very costly and anyway I'm going to in this video I'm going to kind of show you how to start this part of the flywheel and then know that ultimately you will want to bring these in because the other thing that's interesting about this Visual and that I like about it is ultimately the size of the circle shows you the percentage or or the portion of your overall

lead generation ultimately so ultimately in every case I've ever worked with 2 to three years into the system of building out this lead generation flywheel um unquestion SEO will be your largest source of leads right PPC right behind that only sort of limited by the threshold of budgets and those sorts of things cuz again whether you're bootstrapping or you or you've been uh financed or invested in you again you you have some sealing there whereas SEO you don't really have that right you are making initial investment but um each piece of content um has sort

of a little bit of an exponential effect once it starts kicking in but for the purposes of this five Le generation strategies for Tech startups we're going to kind of start in this early stage of the flywheel which I think is probably most helpful for the people watching these videos okay so as we build out the the system the first thing and I kind of put it up here all by itself this is really our ultimate goal is the audience we are trying to build an audience nurture an audience leverage an audience maybe that we

already have but audience is kind of our top top level sort of objective that we always need to keep in mind the other thing that's kind of highlighted here is kind of this blue section so lead magnets are really the conversion mechanism so this is actually where I start it's good to know what the five strategies are and you can kind of see them up here in yellow social media content marketing email marketing SEO and Partnerships that's kind of where I start but truly where I start is with my lead magnets and I do a

little exercise here to build out this initial set of lead magnets and that exercise is to one clearly identify my ICP and so who is that ideal customer profile what do they look like what's the role what type of company are they operated in and then I take that very specific role and you can do this with chat GPT uh if you're not kind of totally vers in the industry that you're going after or the roles that you're going after it's a really good augmentation and I again another video I'll show you how how specifically

to kind of run this exercise um but what I do first is again I write down a list literally a list uh as many pain points challenges and this one's a little unique most people miss this objections that those folks those icps would have to my solution right and it could be a variety of different things again you're probably entering a market and a little bit of a different way so they're going to have some objections to just maybe your positioning in the market but they also might have some objections to your Solutions because it

may be a little more Innovative than maybe something that they've already looked at and so it's really important to put those objections in and and build them out in your lead magnets because essentially it's helping to pre-sell that particular appointment when you get there the other thing that's important to know about lead magnets is I'm building these out I want to get really narrow right uh essentially each lead magnet should solve a very narrow problem completely right and a lot of people mess this up they go really broad like they'll Define something that is that

is really large and Broad and instead you're looking for very specific pain points very specific objections it's the the lead magnet itself shouldn't be terribly large um and but you want to completely give them a solution so they could take that lead magnet they could come in with a pain point you would show them exactly how to fix that within the the contents of that lead magnet so this got a little background on sort of what we're building here but once I have have those then I'm kind of putting in place my system right so

content marketing is I'm taking these lead magnets and I'm essentially promoting them right in a lot of different places so content marketing really has two pieces to it right it's the content and that's essentially lead magnets right to some degree you might be doing some content on the website but um even just simply lead magnets and landing pages something like convert CAD or again we're not going to necessarily go too deep into tools here but that's really all you need to start your initial traction right write out five or six different lead magnets keeping this

in mind create some landing pages and then we're just going to go out to our again our social media channels where we're already actively participating or have some presence or have some audience there's no reason to try to create something from scratch just leverage what you already have LinkedIn again for most B2B or Tech startups that's probably going to be your first stop right LinkedIn maybe to some degree Twitter but wherever you natively have just a little bit of audience you want to go out into social media platform and you want to present and promote

your content right and that's essentially these lean magnets so this is going to be your initial sort of traction um the other piece that you can do is email marketing and there are a couple components um to email marketing the one that we're going to kind of focus on here is cold Outreach and when we talk about cold Outreach again people a lot of times leap immediately towards like building a list or using some tool to get a list like Apollo Or List kit or something like that and again we're going to do that but

your sort of first Endeavor here is to assemble that natural Network so the people that are already in your contacts list that you've already talked to before and again you can approach them in a variety of different ways if you think they potentially are your ICP and would benefit from the solution you can create cold Outreach that's sort of that direct the type of cold Outreach that you're going to use against that ICP list that you'll build later that are just totally cold but this is a nice way to sort of one warm up your

email with friendlies and then also start to present the solution in such a way that you can get some more responsive feedback right those are those are friends uh people you worked with before they trust you so they going to give you some honest feedback the other component of that is just again people that are either mentors or could give you uh objective feedback that maybe aren your ICP go ahead email them as well right so that's the start of your cold Outreach and then ultimately you're going to turn this piece of the system into

true cold Outreach where you're going to you're build that list you're going to source that list um and then you're going to use kind of that similar tested format and sequences to continue to push out to cold Outreach and then sort of your first conversion mechanism for both content marketing and social media and email is this lead magnet so again you're pushing them something valuable whether that email says hey I'd like to send you this thing that I just did or directly using the link sometimes there's all kinds of debate over that ultimately what you're

doing is you're pushing them to this lead magnet because it's really hard to push them straight to an appointment right particularly as you get into cold they don't they don't know you they don't know what the solution is they don't trust you yet lead magnet can be that that value proposition it feels it feels rich with value and then they start to kind of understand you maybe even follow you and pay attention we're going to talk about again what kind of some next steps to the lead magnet can be but that will warm you up

and you'll have sort of Greater success overall with that list uh but not by not trying to push them straight to a scheduled appointment right we're going to do some sort of sales funnel activity to move them forward the other piece that you should start to work on and this could be essentially related to this is similar type of content the only difference is that you're going to do a little bit of keyword research to position these pain points Challenge and objections I can guarantee you that people are searching for that same content and you're

going to do some keyword research just so that you can essentially position this content on the web in a a way that there's a higher probability of it you know one being found because you're using the type of keywords you're maybe manipulating the content a little bit to emphasize those keywords and then looking for opportunities where there is a lot of demand but not as much competition to try to get that content um actually ranking on your website so again you become that trusted value partner who's giving out solutions that again can fully solve a

problem without even your your product but people are sometimes afraid to do that but most people don't want they're experts in whatever they have they don't need to or want to be an expert in whatever your solution is right that's just a component of business it's probably super important hopefully but it's not the core of their expertise so a lot of times they're willing to to hand that off to you but they do want to fully understand what you're going to do for them and have a high level of confidence that you'll be able to

to provide that so this is really that that confidence Builder you want them to be absolutely certain that one you have the solution they need and two you can actually deliver it and then the last of these components is Partnerships I think a lot of times people get confused here or kind of go down the wrong path there is the context of Partnerships where hey you might have an adjacent type of solution where hey they should recommend they're going to buy this from this solution provider I want to create a partnership where I say hey

I give you you know some sort of incentive to recommend my solution as well uh as maybe a value ad or something that would help them as well I think this is misplaced because it's really it's hard enough for a salesperson to sell their own product to expect that another company is going to sell sell your product even if you give them some sort of Juicy referral bonus or whatever so I think that's a misplaced you know place to start for Partnerships again there are some situation where Affiliates and stuff like that makes sense but

I think generally Partnerships should be redefined uh especially in this initial phase and those Partnerships should really be focused on again attracting and grabbing uh and siphoning off audience from other people that already have large audiences right so that means getting on webinar with again this is where complimentary Solutions can make a lot of sense you know partner up with them help them get some content that they can add to their webinar series and then you will be able to siphon off a little bit of that audience each time you do one of those webinars

podcasts very similar uh situation look for podcasts the largest audience podcast you can get on over time as you you build these up and you do a good job at it you know more and more people will want you on there and you'll get you know on podcast with bigger and bigger audiences and then of course events this can be conferences and those sorts of things so you're again you're looking for places that already have audiences so that you can get a little piece of that pulled into your uh ultimate audience so where are these

folks going uh again you want these to be pointed at your lead magnets again and what they say on the podcast like where can they find you you want to have a a clear answer that immediately sort of links them to several of these things a lot of times that's your website in a particular place but make it obvious like wherever you tell them to go that when they hit that place maybe it's your website they have a lot of content that they can binge on right or if you tell hey find me on YouTube

or find me on Twitter or whatever you want to have a lot of content there because usually that new audience what they'll do is they'll come to wherever you've directed them and they'll want to binge they won't want just to read one tweet or see one LinkedIn post or you know download one lead backet they in quick order will want to binge and you will want to facilitate that binging right so even in lead magnets when you sign them up for a lead magnet uh as soon as you get to that thing page you want

to show them three or four other things because a lot of times they'll go and grab those extra pieces of content and you're just keeping that reinforcing that that trust that you're building and that confidence in that solution itself and so that's again a part of what you're trying to to do there right so don't forget once you do you know download this lead magnet give them some more to look at right because the more that you can do that getting close to that seven or so Impressions that it takes for them to have enough

trust to schedule that appointment that's what you're trying to to achieve the other thing thing here is not only allowing them to binge the other place that you can kind of facilitate binging is you can recommend a newsletter which you should have because this is again lead nurtury but it's also a place where they can sit on that newsletter and they can binge until they get to a point where they're you know that they're confident that again you have the that solution that they need and they trust you the other place is community this is

becoming at least in my field of view seems to be more and more popular there's better and better platforms here to get all of those people who are thinking about you into a community does two things one you can kind of showcase your your value proposition your knowledge your expertise if you're the host of the community you have this halo effect so you're just kind of like everybody in that Community becomes appreciative of how much value you're adding again if you're doing it well and then ultimately you get this halo effect like you are going

to be the person and people if they schedule an appointment will actually be appreciative of the fact that you're taking some time with them uh so that's a really powerful piece of that Community the other thing that's really nice about that Community is you get to see what the community needs that Community will become active without you they'll be talking back and forth to each other and you become just this kind of third party Observer you get to see what your ICP is try trying to figure out right you see them asking questions you see

them collaborating you see other talent in there people that are you know as smart or smarter than you that could be potentially Talent inside of your business so communities are really powerful on a lot of different fronts so this overall again was sort of a simple conversation about the five lead generation set strategies for Tech startups but I think we in a lot deeper than that um and there's a lot of value but ultimately what you're trying to do with these five strategies is create an audience development system that ultimately creates a massive pool of

icps from which you can pull that first 100 and even more uh clients to get that initial traction that you need and again you can see in the context of this we're not spending a lot of AD dollars on PPC uh we're working with communities we're working with audiences that we already have and we're building these out with a little bit of Sweat Equity and ultimately giving you an audience and again this is this is a good place to start because you may not completely have figured out your solution so but you could easily start

building that ICP and that audience and a lot of these activities particularly this community um is going to give you that feedback loop to get to product to Market fit even faster because you have this resource so hope you enjoyed that we'll see you on the next video if you want a copy of um sort of the the complete write up of this and there's some a little bit or information in here it's basically a notion page with all of this uh take a look for the description in the or the link in the description

and you can get a copy of these charts and and also a little bit more of a written out tutorial on how to use these strategies again hope to see you on the next video