These IT lead generation ideas are some of the best ways to produce tremendous ROI and to support your sales team. Proactive lead generation cannot be an afterthought for your IT marketing team.
As any good salesperson knows, it’s a numbers game: the more people you can pitch to, the better the chances you have of landing a sale. The more leads you get, the more times you’re able to make that pitch.
In B2B, and more specifically in IT sales, a single deal can yield hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for decades.
So, while you may be an expert on cybersecurity or cloud computing, that’s not enough; business development for IT services that isn’t leveraging a solid flow of marketing generated leads is only half-complete.
But don’t worry: lead opportunities are abundant, and IT services firms are especially well-suited to profit from these opportunities.
Keep the ideas below in mind when working on lead generation for IT and you can get returns that will leave your competitors in the dust.
1 – Make Relevant Offers to Maximize MSP B2B Lead Generation
Not all eyeballs are the same – you need views from people ready to buy.
You work in IT. That means your services specifically cater to people facing IT challenges or looking to upgrade/streamline their IT networks.
That’s a very specific audience to whom you’re marketing.
Hootsuite data shows that most lead generation in B2B services is from ‘other’, with organic search, social media, and email marketing being the next best options for B2B.
Once you know where and how best to reach your audience, the next step is to make them a relevant offer that piques their interest.
Specific offers like a cybersecurity audit, cybersecurity risk assessment, remote productivity audit, vulnerability assessment, are all valuable offers that will pique the interest of prospective customers in search of IT solutions.
You’re also playing to the fear of your customers. Remember – people are motivated more by loss aversion than they are by benefits.
What that means is that people would rather not be hurt than score a win.
In IT, triggering that fear of loss of money from stalled productivity due to a cybersecurity breach is a valuable pain point that can drive IT services lead generation. Your company has to spark that concern in the client’s mind, and then put it at ease by offering a solution.
And as with all content, remember a key aspect of Information Technology marketing: the second you begin to create any sort of friction between the customer and their experience with your content, you immediately decrease the likelihood of them becoming a lead.
B2B IT lead generation is all about delivering your prospective customer content they want to experience, in other words.
A Google study found that those involved in the B2B buying process are already 57% of the way down the path to a decision before they’ll perform an action on your site.
By ensuring you don’t waste their time with bloated content, you can more effectively transition them from roamer to lead to sale.
The same Google study shows that the average B2B buyer has already done 12 searches before they reach your site. They have consumed multiple pieces of content and are educating themselves; therefore it’s critical to have content and offers that cater to all their questions and concerns.
No business wants to deal with a disaster caused by a cybersecurity breach or a poorly constructed IT infrastructure; that’s a powerful sales pitch.
2 – Gate Your Content to Maximize Conversions and MSP Sales Lead Generation
Once you know your target audience and how best to reach them, the next step is to create meaningful content they can interact with and use that content to harvest leads.
Gated content is a wonderful method to do just that. Simply put, content is “gated” when a user is required to provide their contact information (name, email, etc.) to get access.
“Ungated” is free content (like blogs) that anyone can access with a simple click of a link, nothing else required.
Gating content like whitepapers, eBooks, and market studies often serves a twofold purpose: bringing leads in and establishing your company as an authority in the space (something we discuss below).
At the end of the day if you’re not producing content worth viewing for the customer, they won’t stick around. Simple as that. And the longer they stick around, the more likely you are to generate a lead, which in turn you can later convert to a sale.
Having relevant content relating to cybersecurity in the form of a buyer’s guide checklist, for instance, not only shows that your company is well-versed in IT. It also helps to quickly parse out which customers would benefit from your product and which perusers are wasting time – theirs and yours.
Always remember that the content you produce can often be the first interaction you have with the client. Your whitepapers and eBooks (and blogs and website pages) need to be immaculate, direct, clear, and easy to navigate.
Case studies are another persuasive tool. They demonstrate mastery of the solution to the pain point that IT customers are looking for. Here’s an example below of one we developed for a client:
3 – Use New Media to Spur Lead Generation for Managed Service Providers
You may not think that B2B buyers are the video-watching type, but the Google study once again surprises: 70% of B2B buyers are watching a video during their search.
New media like video, podcasts, interactive website content, all of it can be critical to converting a roamer into a lead.
With videos, it’s often better to keep them on the shorter side. The length of a video can trigger a subconscious aversion, so keep things brief and direct.
This B2B video demonstrates how traditional marketing materials like testimonials can be converted and leveraged in video format for higher impact.
4 – Leverage Your Current Customer Base for the Best MSP Lead Generation Idea
Here are some great tools to leverage on your current customer base to facilitate further lead generation for IT companies:
- Testimonials
- Surveys
- Webinars
- Reviews
Many of these can even serve a dual purpose: not only will reviews, for instance, help lend credibility to your company in the eyes of prospective customers, but also help for SEO ranking.
Your current customers are also great for referrals and spending more on upgraded services – don’t disregard them!
And it doesn’t stop there.
Keeping a database of prospects and customers will allow you to reach out and keep your brand at the top of their mind via educational content that they’ll want to interact with.
The more you’re in their view, the more likely you are to generate a lead.
To this end, email marketing is a very effective tactic for B2B IT lead generation.
It allows you push out timely and relevant content. For example, you can send content that highlights recent breaches in the market that could cost the customer potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue if not dealt with quickly.
These types of pain points and use of loss aversion psychology is a great way to nurture leads.
Using email marketing automation tools can also help you nurture your existing database and push out content.
As your database grows, you will continue to bring in people that are interested in replying (again, it’s a numbers game) and their lead scores will increase (meaning you’re that much closer to making a sale).
Webinars are another great tool for re-engaging existing clients or bringing in new leads that can then be converted to sales.
And throughout the entire process you can continue to retarget these customers with ads and your growing reservoir of gated and relevant content.
5 – Become an Authority in the Space
This is a key point to remember throughout the process.
The marketing game is a persuasion game. You’re trying to convince people you know what you’re doing and can help their business succeed.
Companies can make persuasive offers like ‘Ultimate Guide to . . .’ for a number of key services in the IT sector such as cybersecurity or cloud migration.
The above guide we developed for Power Consulting has an enormous amount of information packed in, topped off with charts, facts, figures, and a clear demonstration that this took both time and expertise to craft.
These types of longer, in-depth, comprehensive pieces are not just longer blogs. They are only doing their job if they are able to adeptly show the reader that you know what you’re talking about and you know how to help relieve their pain point.
The purpose of these pieces is to demonstrate knowledge, experience, and mastery of a subject, inculcating trust in the reader. That means being technical where you need to be, while also maintaining readability throughout.
These pieces can dramatically help shorten the sale cycle by getting prospective customers to trust your company much earlier in the sales process, expediting the move from the top of the sales funnel to the bottom.
How to Generate IT Leads
IT lead generation requires a multi-pronged approach. When people ask themselves how to get IT business leads, the answer is a layered, comprehensive IT marketing strategy that involves several lead generation ideas and tactics including those mentioned here.
Each step may seem small, but when you put it all together it can dramatically improve your lead generation, which in turn is fantastic for your bottom line.
With a unique specialization in the IT space, Jumpfactor has generated over $250 million in revenue for IT and MSP companies. If you want to get the most out of your marketing budget, Jumpfactor will get you up to 5x faster lead generation than your competition. Get in touch today for a complimentary audit.
