If you’re eager to find highly targeted prospects more likely to convert, targeted lead generation is a far better choice than standard lead generation.
However, many B2B sales and marketing teams aren’t quite sure what the concept of targeted lead generation entails, which inhibits them from applying it more widely in their strategies.
In this article, we’ll break down all the essentials, helping you master the art of generating targeted business leads in no time.
Let’s dive straight in!
TL;DR
➡️ Targeted lead generation is the process of identifying and attracting high-quality, high-intent leads by focusing marketing efforts on a specific audience segment that’s most likely to be interested in your product.
➡️ It’s a more narrow and specific approach than general lead generation, as it focuses on particular, well-defined audience segments.
➡️ Targeted lead generation is generally a good choice when launching a new product, entering a new market, or looking to shorten the sales cycle, as it allows for a more targeted and personalized approach to leads.
➡️ While it can improve conversion rates, optimize marketing spend, and increase lead generation efficiency across levels, targeted lead generation also involves higher upfront costs, complex processes, and the risk of going too narrow in searching for quality leads.
➡️ There are several steps to conducting efficient targeted lead generation, including:
- Defining your ICP.
- Using a lead enrichment tool for valuable data insights.
- Creating audience segments.
- Engaging leads.
- Constantly monitoring and improving campaigns.
What is targeted lead generation?
Targeted lead generation is the process of sifting through your market to identify leads with a higher potential for conversion than “regular” leads.
In its essence, it involves segmenting your audience based on criteria relevant to your business and ICP - such as demographics, behavior, industry, intent level, etc.- to recognize leads most likely to be interested in your products or services.
So, what makes targeted lead generation that much different from standard B2B lead generation?
General lead generation involves attracting and identifying potential customers from a wide audience. Think of it as casting a very wide net to capture high volumes of leads, regardless of their actual quality.
Ideally, every lead generation campaign will result in qualified leads, but it’s rarely so in practice.
This means that your marketing team has to filter out all the “false positives” and low-quality leads from primary results.
As a result, many turn to targeted lead generation.
Targeted lead generation is a more strategic and precise approach that focuses marketing efforts on a much narrower and well-defined audience with a higher likelihood of converting.
This strategy improves the quality of generated leads and increases the chances of getting a better ROI faster while enabling you to save valuable time and money otherwise wasted on chasing and nurturing poor-quality leads.
When should targeted lead generation be run instead of general lead generation?
Another question that bothers B2B marketing teams is when is the right time for a targeted lead generation approach.
There are several scenarios and business stages in which the targeted lead generation strategy proves to be most effective.
The best way to determine when’s the right time to go for targeted lead generation is to ask yourself a few questions:
- Do I have a well-defined ICP? - Targeted lead generation can be run only if you have a clear understanding of your ideal customer profile. That lets you focus your lead generation efforts on that specific audience segment (e.g., you have a product geared toward compliance professionals at enterprise-level businesses in the banking industry).
- Am I launching a new product or service? - If you’re introducing a new product or service to the market, targeting specific segments that have already shown interest in similar offerings can help build traction and enable you to tailor your brand messaging based on feedback from a relevant audience.
- Is my sales cycle complex or long? - If your offering is highly specific and requires a longer decision-making process or involves multiple stakeholders, targeted lead generation can help pinpoint quality leads and nurture them through targeted strategies. As a result, you’ll move leads more quickly and efficiently through the sales funnel.
- Is the market I’m operating in very competitive? - If you’re in a highly competitive industry, you’ll need all the help you can get to distinguish your brand and reach the right audience. Targeted lead generation lets you focus on high-potential leads, enabling you to achieve that faster and without wasting resources.
- Do I have access to relevant data on potential leads? - Effective targeted lead generation relies on accurate and actionable data, so ensure your business can tap into relevant lead data and transform it into valuable insights to get the best results.
As can be seen from this, businesses of all sizes and stages can benefit from targeted lead generation, each in their own way.
For instance, startups can break into the market more easily and achieve ROI faster, while larger businesses can use this strategy when expanding to new markets or looking to accelerate the sales cycle by narrowing down on targeted sales leads, etc.
In the following section, we’ll summarize some key advantages of running targeted lead generation campaigns.
What are the benefits of doing targeted lead generation?
The main benefits of doing targeted lead generation are:
#1. Improved conversion rates
By focusing on a specific audience segment, targeted lead generation helps attract higher-quality leads.
These target leads are usually much further along in their buyer’s journey, making them easier to convert than leads generated by a broader approach.
Targeting a more relevant audience that consists of leads more likely to make a buying decision will increase conversion rates across levels.
#2. More effective campaigns
By segmenting your target market, focusing only on prospects that match your ICP and other relevant criteria, and designing a tailored approach for each prospect, you can run campaigns that resonate better with your target audience.
In turn, this increase in efficiency will lead to a better ROI by:
- Increasing conversion rates.
- We'll see below how you can spend your marketing budget better.
#3. Optimized marketing spend
Targeted lead generation allows you to allocate your marketing resources more efficiently.
Directing resources towards segments with higher buying potential minimizes the waste of time, money, and effort on less relevant prospects.
#4. Personalized customer experience
Because targeted lead generation focuses on specific audiences, all its tactics and activities must be tailored to that audience segment's needs and interests.
As a result, targeted sales leads will be provided with a much more personalized experience across channels, making them feel valued and appreciated.
Personalizing leads’ experiences with your brand helps with a number of things, including:
- Building trust and rapport.
- Increasing engagement rates, as leads are more likely to respond and interact with tailored messages and content.
- Enhancing the chance of conversion.
#5. Reduced sales cycle time
All these benefits combined result in one significant advantage - shortening the sales cycle.
By identifying and attracting target leads who are already interested in your product or need a solution similar to yours and creating a tailored approach for each lead, you’ll be able to close deals more easily and in less time.
Disadvantages of targeted lead generation
Although targeted lead generation is a powerful tool for efficient lead targeting and generating better-quality leads, it comes with a few disadvantages.
#1. Higher initial costs
Implementing a targeted lead generation process requires:
- More investment in data analysis, as you’ll need a clearly defined ICP with all the relevant data attributes.
- Sophisticated marketing and lead enrichment tools that enable you to identify potential leads that match relevant criteria and contact them.
- Personalized content creation because you’ll have to provide relevant and tailored resources and messaging across levels.
These upfront costs are higher compared to general lead generation approaches, which might make targeted lead generation cost-prohibitive for smaller businesses or companies with tighter budgets.
2. Complexity and required resources
Targeted lead generation can be more complex to manage, as it involves a variety of processes, such as:
- Segmenting your audience.
- Crafting tailored messages.
- Continuously analyze data to refine your approach as your business expands.
This complexity requires additional resources, including skilled sales and marketing professionals and advanced technology, to efficiently execute targeted lead generation campaigns.
3. Risk of a narrow focus
While targeting highly specific audience segments can be beneficial, it also comes with the risk of excluding potential leads who might not fit perfectly within your defined criteria but could still be valuable customers.
Setting a too-narrow focus might lead to missing out on opportunities from leads who fall outside your primary segments but are interested in your products or services.
How to do targeted lead generation
There are several steps to follow to ensure you’ll generate more targeted leads with your lead generation strategy.
#1. Define your ICP
First things first - you can’t run targeted lead generation without defining your ICP first.
To do that, you should:
- Conduct thorough market research, including current and past trends, competitors’ performance, etc.
- Analyze your existing customer data (e.g., best-performing deals and champions from your CRM) to find common traits.
Once you’re done, compile those common characteristics and attributes - such as industry, company size, job roles, geographic location, pain points, needs, etc. - into detailed buyer personas that will help you pinpoint which audience segment to focus on first.
#2. Invest in a lead enrichment tool
A lead enrichment platform is one key tool for efficiently conducting highly targeted lead generation campaigns.
Namely, lead enrichment platforms help you collect relevant data on each potential lead, enabling you to score, segment, and qualify leads accordingly.
However, data enrichment software comes in all shapes and sizes, so make sure you choose the one that’s both capable of accurate lead targeting and the best fit for your needs.
For instance, if your website is one of your main lead generation channels, Warmly might be the ideal choice, as it’s designed to capture and enrich targeted leads on your website.
The platform:
🎯 Identifies website visitors, including both companies and individuals.
🎯 Enriches them with B2B data (contact details, technographic, job roles, etc.), allowing you to contact them and personalize your approach accordingly.
🎯 Detect buying intent, meaning it enables you to identify website visitors who are most interested in your product from the get-go.
As such, Warmly is perfect for running targeted lead generation campaigns, as it provides you with all the essential insights into your website traffic, including:
- Who’s visiting your website right now.
- What pages they’re looking at.
- Details of their digital buyer’s journey, such as researched topics, interactions with competitors’ ads, etc.
All this helps you understand who your hottest leads are right now, enabling sales teams to prioritize and engage them while they’re still hot.
Pro tip: Warmly can help you build your ICP as well. By identifying website visitors and enriching them with relevant data, Warmly lets you get a better idea of who’s visiting your website the most, what they have in common, etc., enabling you to create a more detailed and precise ICP.
3. Create audience segments
The entire point of running targeted lead generation is to generate leads by focusing on specific audience segments that are most likely to convert.
Therefore, the next step is pinpointing high-possibility segments within your audience and focusing on them first.
You can do this by:
- Analyzing CRM data.
- Drilling down on intent data, which lets you identify high-intent leads on your website, social media, etc.
Segmentation is also important because different lead groups require different sales and marketing approaches tailored to their needs, behavior, and common traits (such as industry, seniority, job role, etc.).
Separating quality leads into specific segments helps you create unique campaigns that are sure to resonate with them and nurture them into conversion faster and with less effort.
4. Engage and nurture leads
Engagement is key for guiding leads to conversion, so you can’t afford to miss out on this.
It’s best to engage quality leads while their interest is at its peak, as time to lead is often a crucial factor in successful deal closing.
With Warmly, sales reps will get a real-time Slack notification when a lead fitting into your ICP or exhibiting high-intent behavior lands on your website or a relevant web page.
This allows reps to react in time by contacting these leads via video or text chat straight on your website. Moreover, they can use insights Warmly unearthed to craft unique messages, tailored to each lead’s interests, behavior, requirements, etc.
Moreover, Warmly lets you automate outreach and engagement by:
- Automatically adding leads that match predefined criteria in personalized LinkedIn and email sequences.
- Setting up AI-powered chatbots on your landing page or other web pages that send contextual messages, answer questions, book meetings, etc.
This way, no targeted lead will be wasted, as Warmly’s automated and semi-automated capabilities ensure that all quality leads are engaged with and nurtured in a way that’s most likely to resonate with them.
5. Rinse and repeat
Finally, repeat these steps with some adjustments over time for the best results.
Of course, you’ll have to tailor your targeted lead generation efforts accordingly as your business grows and expands or changes its initial offering to ensure you’re always targeting the most relevant audience.
Monitor your website and other channels to see who’s most interested in your offering, analyze existing customers, look into retention and churn rates, etc., to see what’s working and what should be enhanced.
You can use the insights you uncover to fine-tune further your targeting criteria, messaging, and channels for your high-value leads.
5 Tips for more effective targeted lead generation
Here are some tips and best practices for running efficient targeted lead generation that will turn you into a targeted leads generator in no time.
1. Leverage data and analytics for advanced segmentation
You should use data-driven insights to improve and adjust your targeting strategies.
Analyze past interactions, relevant demographic data, and buyer intent.
However, you’ll need to go beyond basic B2B demographics to better understand your audience and create more precise segments. Make sure to analyze data such as:
- Past interactions with your reps.
- Web search history.
- Interactions with your website and other owned channels, etc.
This is exactly why you need lead enrichment tools like Warmly, as they enable you to get relevant and accurate lead data, allowing you to build more nuanced segments and create bulletproof targeted lead generation strategies.
2. Personalize your outreach
Personalization is key to capturing the attention of your target audience. Craft tailored messages and content that speak directly to each segment's specific pain points and needs.
Personalized communication not only enhances engagement but also increases the likelihood of converting leads into paying customers by taking notice of their concerns.
3. Optimize your website and landing pages
Since your website is one of the first things potential customers come in contact with when getting to know your brand, you should make sure that it’s customized to match the needs and interests of each audience segment.
Ensure that your website and landing pages feature targeted messaging, compelling calls-to-action, and relevant content, as this will both improve user experience and increase the possibility of lead conversion.
Pro tip: To check how your leads interact with your website and identify potential churn areas and hidden opportunities, go to the “Warm Calls” section of Warmly’s dashboard and monitor their web sessions in real-time.
4. Streamline lead nurturing and engagement with automated workflows
Automate lead nurturing and engagement processes to maintain their interest throughout the buyer’s journey and build trust.
Implement automated workflows that send personalized outreach and follow-up emails and LinkedIn or chatbot messages based on leads’ behavior and interactions.
This ensures that leads receive relevant information and proper engagement at the right time, helping to guide them toward conversion while saving your sales team time on manual tasks.
Pro tip: Warmly’s Orchestrator lets you include specific audience segments in tailored outreach cadences based on the criteria you define. Learn more about it here.
5. Engage through multi-channel strategies
Make sure to reach your target audience through a combination of channels to reinforce your messaging and increase engagement.
Consistent messaging across channels is important as it helps position your brand and increase its visibility and enhances the chances of engagement.
Use everything from email marketing and social media to content marketing and other relevant channels to ensure your message reaches your audience wherever they are most active.
Wrap up
Successfully running targeted lead generation campaigns that result in high-quality leads isn’t that difficult when you know what you’re doing.
When deciding whether to use targeted or general lead generation, remember to weigh its pros and cons against your specific business objectives, size, and stage, as it’s not the best fit for everyone.
If you decide the time is right, remember our best practices and pro tips, based on the methods we tested and tried ourselves, and you can’t go wrong.
Want more help with your targeted lead generation campaigns?
Subscribe to Warmly’s free plan and start revealing high-intent leads on your website today.