You invest in ads, publish content, and your sales team makes call after call. Yet the pipeline stays thin. Sound familiar? Then the problem likely isn’t the number of leads, but the way you generate, qualify, and follow up on them.
Most B2B companies run into the same issue: they generate leads, but those leads don’t convert. According to Gartner research, the average B2B buyer now spends 67% of the buying journey doing their own research before ever having a conversation with sales (Source: Gartner, B2B Buying Journey). That means your lead generation strategy needs to deliver more than just volume. It needs to reach the right companies at the right time.
In this article, you’ll learn how to build a lead generation strategy that’s scalable, delivers quality leads, and adapts to the way B2B buyers make decisions today. No theory you’ve already read ten times, but a practical framework you can start using tomorrow.
Why your B2B leads aren’t converting (and how to fix it)
Let’s start with the core issue. Before you think about generating more leads, you need to understand why your current leads aren’t converting. In practice, we see the same patterns across B2B companies time and again.
You’re targeting the wrong companies. Without a clear ideal customer profile (ICP), you attract traffic that will never become a customer. Your landing pages and ads speak to too broad an audience, which fills your funnel with leads that don’t fit.
You don’t know who’s visiting your website. On average, 98% of your website visitors leave without filling in a form. That’s not an unusual number. Your analytics show how many sessions you have, but not which companies are behind them. That blind spot costs you pipeline opportunities every day.
Your follow-up is too slow or too generic. A lead visiting your pricing page today is at the competitor’s tomorrow. Yet in many B2B organisations, it takes days for a marketing lead to reach sales. And often without context about what that lead actually viewed or searched for.
You’re measuring the wrong things. Many marketing teams focus on the number of MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) rather than the quality. The result: a spreadsheet full of leads that sales can’t do anything with, and a growing gap between marketing and sales.
The solution starts with a fundamentally different approach. Instead of collecting as many leads as possible, you build a system that focuses on the companies that truly matter. A strategy that scales starts with sharp choices. Want to dive deeper? Read what lead generation is and why the traditional approach falls short.
Step 1: Start with your ideal customer profile (ICP)
A scalable strategy doesn’t start with choosing channels or tools. It starts with the question: who are you doing this for?
Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) describes the type of company that is most likely to become a customer and stay one the longest. Think of characteristics like company size, industry, decision-making structure, budget, and the problem your product solves.
Many B2B companies use an ICP that’s too broad, or worse: they don’t have one at all. The result is that every campaign becomes a scattergun approach. You generate leads, but there’s no pattern. Sales spends valuable time on conversations that go nowhere.
How to make your ICP concrete:
Look at your current customer base. Which customers deliver the highest revenue, the longest contract duration, and the least churn? Look for patterns. You’ll often discover that your best customers share similar characteristics: a specific company size, a certain industry, or a recurring problem they solve with your product.
Use those insights to document your ICP. Not as a theoretical document that disappears in a drawer, but as a living profile that marketing and sales use daily. Every piece of content, every ad, and every sales action should align with this profile.
Step 2: Choose the right channels (and engage them at the right time)
Not every channel suits every stage of the buying process. And that’s where many B2B companies go wrong. They invest everything in one channel, or they’re active everywhere a little without making real impact anywhere.
What works is a channel mix that aligns with how your ICP seeks information and makes decisions. Here’s an overview of the most effective B2B channels, and when to use them.
SEO and content marketing are essential during the orientation phase. Your potential customer is looking for answers to questions related to the problem your product solves. By being visible there with valuable, findable content, you build authority. It takes time, but the result is a steady stream of organic traffic from companies actively looking for a solution. Read how to generate more leads through your website with a strong content model.
LinkedIn is the strongest social platform for reaching B2B decision-makers. Not just with ads, but also through organic content and targeted outreach. The advantage of LinkedIn: you can target by job title, company size, and industry. That makes it one of the few channels where you can address your ICP very precisely. A useful deep dive can be found in this article on LinkedIn advertising in B2B.
Google Ads is effective when you want to capture buying intent. Someone searching for “visitor identification software” or “generate leads B2B” is actively looking for a solution. With the right landing page and bidding strategy, you convert this traffic into qualified leads. But be careful: without a clear ICP and proper follow-up, you burn through budget fast. Check out 5 steps to get more leads from your Google Ads campaigns for a concrete approach.
Email marketing and nurturing are crucial for leads that aren’t ready to buy yet. Not every lead you generate is a SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) today. Some companies are researching, comparing options, or waiting for budget. With targeted email nurturing, you keep those leads warm until the right moment. Think educational content, case studies, and webinar invitations. Read more about how to warm up cold leads with lead nurturing.
It’s not about which channel is “the best.” It’s about choosing the right combination for your situation. Start with two or three channels, measure results, and optimise from there.
Step 3: Make your website the heart of your strategy
Your website is not a digital brochure. It’s your most important conversion engine. Yet many B2B companies treat their site as an afterthought: beautiful design, but no focus on activating visitors.
A successful online lead generation campaign starts with a website that’s designed to convert visitors. That means:
Clear landing pages per target audience. Don’t send your Google Ads or LinkedIn traffic to your homepage. Create specific landing pages that align with the search query or ad. The more relevant the page, the higher the conversion.
Strong call-to-actions (CTAs) in the right place. Not every visitor is ready for a demo. Offer multiple entry points: a whitepaper, a free scan, a webinar, or a trial period. This way you capture leads at different stages of the buying process.
Insight into your visitors. This is one of the biggest opportunities for growing B2B companies. Website visitor identification tools show you which companies visit your site, which pages they view, and how often they return. This gives sales direct context for follow-up, without that visitor having to fill in a form.
Leadinfo is one such platform. It identifies at company level which organisations visit your website, fully GDPR compliant and without cookies. This makes the 98% unknown traffic visible and gives sales a head start they wouldn’t otherwise have. You can automatically push that data to your CRM, so follow-up is immediate and relevant.
Want a concrete step-by-step plan? Check out how to convert website visitors into customers in 5 steps.
Step 4: Generate better quality leads (not just more)
Volume is tempting. More leads feels like progress. But if those leads don’t convert, you’re investing in a leaking bucket. So the question isn’t just “how do I generate more leads?” but also “how do I ensure the leads I generate are a better match for my ICP?”
Here are four principles that make the difference:
Qualify earlier in the process. Use your forms and content to filter early on. Ask questions about company size or industry in your contact form. Or use progressive profiling, where you collect a bit more information at each touchpoint without overwhelming the visitor.
Use intent data. Not every website visitor has the same value. Someone who visits your pricing page three times in a week is a very different signal than someone who reads one blog post. By combining behavioural data with company data, you can score leads based on actual buying intent.
Align marketing and sales. This sounds like an obvious point, but it’s one of the most underestimated levers. When marketing and sales agree on what a qualified lead is, not only does conversion improve, but so does follow-up speed. Schedule a monthly alignment session where you review lead quality, feedback from sales, and campaign results together.
Optimise continuously. A lead generation strategy is not a one-off project. It’s a system you keep refining. Test your landing pages, experiment with different CTAs, analyse which channels deliver the leads with the highest close rate. Use that data to adjust your budget and focus.
Step 5: Build a follow-up process that scales
The best leads in the world are worthless if they’re not followed up properly. And this is exactly where many growing B2B companies get stuck. The sales team grows, the number of leads increases, but there’s no structured follow-up process.
Automate the first steps. Use your CRM and marketing automation to automatically route, score, and segment leads. A lead coming in via a pricing page deserves different follow-up than someone who downloaded a whitepaper.
Shorten the time between lead and first contact. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that the chance of qualifying a lead drops by a factor of 7 when you wait longer than one hour to respond (Source: Harvard Business Review). Speed isn’t a luxury, it’s a requirement.
Give sales the right context. Following up a lead with “Hi, I saw you filled in our form” isn’t enough. Sales needs to know which pages someone visited, what content that lead consumed, and whether the company fits the ICP. With a connection between your website visitor identification and your CRM, this happens automatically.
Set up a feedback loop. Let sales report back on which leads were valuable and which weren’t. That information is gold for marketing. It enables you to adjust your campaigns, targeting, and qualification criteria. This way, your strategy gets sharper with every cycle.
Scalability: from manual to systematic
What makes the difference between a lead generation approach that works for 10 leads per week and one that works for 100 is systematisation. Growing companies need to make the shift from manual to automated at some point.
That doesn’t mean you leave everything to software. It means you build processes that are repeatable. A content calendar aligned with your ICP and buyer journey. Campaigns you can scale up without starting from scratch every time. Tools that share data, so marketing and sales work with the same information.
A practical example: when you connect website visitor identification to your CRM, you create a continuous flow of company insights. Sales no longer has to wait for a form submission. They see which companies are showing interest and can proactively follow up. That’s scalability in practice.
Frequently asked questions
How do I determine which channels are most effective for my company?
Start with your ICP and look at where that audience spends its time. Then test with a limited budget across two or three channels, measuring not just the number of leads but especially the quality and conversion to revenue. After three to six months, you’ll have enough data to optimise your mix.
Is lead generation the same as demand generation?
Not quite. Demand generation focuses on creating awareness and demand within your target audience, while lead generation specifically targets collecting contact details or identifying purchase-ready companies. In practice, they work together: demand generation feeds the top of your funnel, lead generation turns it into measurable pipeline.
How long does it take for a B2B lead generation strategy to deliver results?
That depends on your approach. Paid channels like Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads can deliver leads within weeks. SEO and content marketing typically take three to six months to generate consistent traffic. The combination of both provides both short- and long-term results.
How many internal links should I use in a blog article?
For SEO, it’s advisable to place three to six relevant internal links. Choose links that help your reader go deeper into the topic and ensure the anchor text fits the context. This helps not only the reader, but also search engines to understand your content structure.
