Clicks 'n Conversions Blog

This article was first published October 8, 2008 on the Tatum Marketing blog

This is the second of a series of articles on Online Lead Generation for B2B companies appearing Wednesdays in this blog.

If you read the first article in this series, you know the reasons you want to be highly visible online. Now the question is: where should you be visible?

The answer is as simple as figuring out where your prospects are going and what they’re likely doing online.

Search Engines

Your primo group of prospects is made up of those who are actively searching for you. And if you’re selling B2B products or services, this group almost certainly exists. The vast majority of buyers begin their buying process by researching problems and searching for solutions online.

The good thing about the searchers group – besides the fact that they are actively looking for you – is that they’ve at least entered the buying cycle. They may be in the earliest stage – only just now realizing they have a problem or a need; but that puts them ahead of the guys who don’t even know there’s a problem yet.

We’ll talk more about search marketing in other articles. For now let’s keep looking at places you might find prospects.

Professional and industry websites

In addition to using search engines, your prospects may go to niche websites such as industry associations and online magazines covering their industry or profession. For example, www.purchasing.com is a good place to find purchasing managers. The Association of Corporate Counsel www.acc.com is visited by in-house legal staff. Modern Healthcare, www.modernhealthcare.com, would be of interest to those trying to reach healthcare executives.

If you want to find industry-specific sites like this, B2B Online (a marketing news & strategy site) has a vertical markets section that is a great source for finding industry-related associations, online publications and other resources. Give them a try.

Local business groups and chapters

For local businesses, such as a local IT consultant, chambers of commerce and local chapters of national associations are worth checking out. Many of them run websites that draw substantial traffic.

Blogs

Then there are the blogs. Nearly every industry has multiple blogs covering it and your prospects may be reading these blogs. Technorati and BlogCatalog are among the several websites that allow you to search for blogs by category or by topics of recent posts.

Forums

Certain types of prospects will also be hanging out in forums, news groups and other specialized communities where they exchange experiences and recommendations, answer each others questions and generally share knowledge. Both Google and Yahoo have a large number of groups that are easy to find.

Communities

Some of the social networks, in particular LinkedIn at this point, offer opportunities for lead generation. Facebook is coming on strong. And social connectors such as Twitter are getting a lot of attention right now. I expect to see these options take on greater significance in our current economy. We’ll be writing about this in greater detail later.

But where do you start?

That’s easy. You start with your customers, of course. Where do they go online? Ask them. Ask your sales people. Ask your technical support team and anyone else who has contact with your customers. Your best current customers provide a good understand of your greatest potential prospects.

Next article takes a look at search marketing.