All Steps to Build a Highly Targeted Lead Research List for B2B Sales

Over the years, the investment in outbound marketing has become a crucial part of growing any business on a large scale. One of the most important parts for any modern company that wants to evolve is ensuring proper lead list research that will result in a number of realistic contacts. The process of compiling an effective B2B lead research list shouldn’t be underestimated, as it will play a significant role in how many prospective clients your company will get. 

Create Sales Intelligence Documents: BP and ICP 

The number one step to take before you can create a working lead research list is to clearly see what your possible customers are like. There exist different approaches to defining such leads for sale, but the most widely used ones are called Buyer Personas and Ideal Customer Profile documents. With their help, it becomes possible to narrow down the business leads list and save a lot of time in the future. 

• Buyer Persona 

To put it simply, this concept is used to represent a fitting customer for your company. It should include data regarding the buying habits, psychological portraits, and any other relevant traits of both previous and potential clients. To obtain accurate BPs, it is essential to examine customers’ case studies and get as much information as you can from your marketing group. 

• Ideal Customer Profile 

As for an IСP, the focus of this sales intelligence document is on visualizing and describing a company that will be considered a suitable future customer. To compile this document, marketing teams often rely on the information obtained from their existing customer base. It should include characteristics that you are seeking in a potential customer, such as the industry, size, location, and more. 

With the help of B2B lead generation services and documents, the process of finding the best leads becomes significantly more accurate. 

Types of Research for Building a B2B Lead List 

To ensure you have a highly targeted B2B sales leads list, you should decide on the research approach that your team will use. Based on your preferences, it is possible to conduct either outsourced or in-house lead for sale research. The options include the following: 

• Psychographics 

B2B appointment setting is impossible without psychographics. This criterion includes data on the behavioral patterns, relevant interests, and career ambitions of potential customers. By knowing such characteristics, it will be possible to focus on a specific group of people that will be potentially interested in your products. 

• Demographics

In the case of demographics, a high-quality lead list needs to include basic information, such as emails, phone numbers, location, and more. 

With the help of excellent email checker software, you can ensure that a higher percentage of people see your emails and reply. The use of an email spam checker boosts the deliverability of emails and thus you can ensure that every address counts. 

• Technographics

This market research step focuses on the in-depth analysis of the used apps and various web services. Technographic data allows you to get a better idea of what your customer is like based on the examination of their technology stack. 

• Firmographics

As for firmographics, this research addresses events and tendencies in a market that can impact the sales process. 

Who Is Your Target Audience?

Source

Another step in the B2B leads data collection is accurately defining your target audience. Often mistaken for a Buyer Persona or the target market, this term refers to a specific group of people that a certain company considers future buyers of their services or products.

As opposed to the target market, which represents a wide pool of potential customers, the target audience is a narrower concept. For instance, your company could be selling video games in the sandbox genre, so the target market would include people of specific ages and interested in video games. The target audience would include people who search for similar products, such as ‘Minecraft.’ 

It is important to have a clear distinction between people who may potentially purchase your products and those who are highly likely to do so. Such specific leads have higher chances of bringing the sales volumes you are hoping for.

B2B data lead generation services include the use of such characteristics to receive valuable keywords for accurate lead research. A lot of businesses also create lists of specific companies they want to target in their outbound marketing campaigns. Narrowing your focus on a target audience will ensure that you save your effort and time

Leads for Making a Sale: Filter Through Machine-Generated Data

After analyzing all the different information, the next step is finding the actual B2B leads. One of the most widely used tools that provide the necessary results is Sales Navigator offered on LinkedIn.

The website has an effective system in place that enables advanced research of leads. All that a user has to do to get targeted leads is compile a preliminary list of the most important keywords. The words used for this purpose should include titles, locations, the number of employees in a company, and the main keyword, which refers to the industry.

By using the formula on LinkedIn, you are likely to get hundreds, if not thousands, of results depending on the chosen keywords. It doesn’t mean that all the obtained contacts can be immediately viewed as your sales leads. After the machine generation of potential leads, the marketing team should carefully filter through the obtained data and use modern research methods. This is where Psychographics, Technographics, and Firmographics become especially important. 

The sorting process is time-consuming and requires a good understanding of the target audience. Once your specialists properly filter and check the data, they can add it to a spreadsheet and then upload it to a selected sequencer or CRM for future outbound campaigns. 

Top Recommendations to Compile Precise Lead Lists

Here are the best tips to achieve success: 

• Carefully analyse all the collected data

CRM platforms are useful for managing huge volumes of customer data. It is highly important to maintain information on both leads that become prospects and those that don’t, as they can help optimize your future lists.

•  Combine both humane and software effort

When searching for leads, it is important to use the combination of machine work and human research, which makes it more sophisticated and accurate. A specialist can analyze behavioral patterns, tech stack, and other information to ensure that your lead list truly works.  

• Double-check the data

It is a good idea to use additional platforms to check information on LinkedIn profiles before sending emails. A lot of companies use email verification tools to ensure that leads can be reached. 

• Choose quality over quantity

The quality of leads is directly connected to the resources you choose and if the information is harder to obtain, it will cost more. In the case of leads, it is better to choose quality over quantity.

• Always keep your information updated
• You should ensure that you work with the data you already have. You should delete outdated contacts, group the relevant ones, and maybe even get in touch with people who were not interested a year ago.

A helpful tool for checking if your emails land in the recipient’s spam, promotions or the main inbox, can be found here:  https://www.inboxally.com/free-email-audit-tool