The Ultimate Guide to B2B Contact Discovery and List Building for Beginners

 

Is your list of prospects diminishing? You’re not alone – that happens to every business owner.

It’s time to re-ignite your prospecting efforts and start building an effective list of B2B qualified leads and appointments. You might know that B2B prospects are one of the closest things to a guaranteed sale — but connecting with them is a different story.

Like spiders spinning a web, marketers connect with their prospects through a steady stream of B2B email marketing correspondence. B2B startups and marketers like you are constantly exploring more efficient strategies for prospecting, nurturing, and lead generation.

However, B2B contact discovery and list building are much more challenging than your standard email collection for Business to Consumer (B2C). In fact, this is one of the biggest reasons organizations are still writing cold emails today.

It’s no secret that email marketing has hit a brick wall when it comes to open rates and click rates, so how can you take your connections a notch higher and contact these people over email? 

On average, it takes an entrepreneur seven touches through various digital and offline methods to convert a lead into a new customer. The more leads you can reach the top of this funnel, the better your chances of bringing in customers. 

This post is a practical guide that explains how to mine B2B connect data for lead generation within your network and how your list of relevant business contacts can impact your organizational growth.

 

Step 1: Contact Discovery

As a B2B marketer, you may be accustomed to thinking of contact discovery as an afterthought. Maybe you even tend to leave it until the last minute. 

To judge this, ask yourself a quick question: Are you more likely to scrounge up an existing list than build a new one when planning an email campaign?

If yes, then here’s the problem: This approach tends to lead to stale lists, poor lead quality, and low conversion rates. It’s also not a very scalable solution. 

So, what to do when your prospect list runs out?

A better approach is to think of contact discovery services as a business-critical activity that should be planned and executed as early in the process as possible. That way, it becomes part of your strategy and can be factored into both your budget and timeline.

1. The first step in contact discovery is defining your target market

You can’t just go ahead and start creating your list of contacts without knowing what your target market is. So, before you do anything, know your target audience. This includes the industry that they belong to, their job titles and positions, and other information about them. 

Be as specific as possible so you can be sure that you’re going to get a significant number of leads from the list you’re going to build.

2. Create a list of keywords that your target audience searches

This can be done by analyzing your website traffic, researching online forums, and looking at social media posts from competitors. It's important to remember that these keywords will change over time, so make sure you monitor them regularly.

Fortunately, generating leads doesn’t have to be hard or expensive. At The Lead Market, we help our B2B lead generation clients with contact delivery and qualified lead generation. Our experts offer seasoned market research for lead generation campaign designing delivering a cohesive framework that will support your growth objectives over the longer run.

Step 2: Contacting Potential Customers

The goal of contact discovery is to get in touch with contacts and set up appointments for meetings about product/program descriptions and/or follow-up calls.

So, you can contact potential customers by either of the two methods: 

Cold outreach

Inbound marketing

Cold outreach is a form of traditional marketing, where marketers reach out to contacts via email, phone calls, or direct mail. In contrast, inbound marketing focuses on getting the customer to come to you. This is done by posting content that attracts people to your website, such as blog posts and social media posts.

Step 3: Patience Is The Key

Yes! You read it right. Patience is the third and final step to getting a long list of qualified email leads that want to discuss your services or products further.

Here’s how you can do it effectively: 

Set up a separate folder in your inbox and label it 'Email Campaigns.' This will help you keep track of all the email responses from your email campaign.

If an individual responds with interest in what you have to offer, be sure to respond within 24 hours. If they are interested in hearing more about your products or services, ask if you can set up a time for you to call them and go over the details.

Begin writing down some bullet points for what you’re going to talk about during your call. The key here is to make it sound as natural as possible while still covering your talking points.

Make sure you record your calls so that you can listen to them again, take notes, and learn from your successes and failures.

Why List Building Is Important For Your Business

Building a list of contacts is one of the most important aspects of successful B2B marketing. After all, if you want to market your product to company X, you need to know who to contact at company X.

Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done.

Having the right contacts is essential to business growth. This is especially true for B2B businesses that rely on new clients to generate sales and increase revenue. 

Most of the time, leads don’t buy right away. But if you have their contact information, it will be easier for you to reach out to them and nurture them until they become ready to make a purchase. Furthermore, an email list will also help you establish trust with your target audience and increase your brand awareness.

So, if want to enjoy a good conversion rate of turning prospects to buyers through a long list of qualified email leads, contact The Lead Market today! We are a reliable and experienced company known for our impeccable pay-per-lead marketing, contact discovery, and lead generation services for IT Companies, Staffing Firms, B2B clients, and entrepreneurs.  

Get started with us today!