The Future of Business Lead Generation: 12 B2B Lead Generation Hacks for 2022

Everyone who has been in the business landscape for a while knows that B2B lead generation is an integral part of business growth in today’s world. Basically, it is lead gen that enables businesses to reach out to their potential customers and drive more sales. In order to help reach these goals, a solid lead generation strategy should span a wide set of techniques aimed at building brand awareness, acquiring new leads, retaining existing customers, and achieving a wide range of other business goals.

Common lead generation hacks include (but are not limited to) such tactics as influencer marketing, email marketing, etc. Nevertheless, since B2B marketing is an ever-changing field, the trends and hacks that digital marketers are using to drive more leads are constantly changing too.

Respectively, if you want to get the most out of your lead generation efforts, it is vital that you watch and follow the trends yourself.

After all, keeping up with the trending lead gen tactics can help your business in many ways:

1. Reach out to your target audience;
2. Increase brand awareness;
3. Boost audience engagement;
4. Expand your market;
5. Ensure business growth;
6. Create more business opportunities, etc.

These are just a few of the many benefits you can get from your lead generation strategy. But, if you want to get them, you have to ensure that your strategy is relevant and up-to-date.

In order to help you make the most of your lead generation efforts, in this article, we are going to offer you a sneak peek into the major trends of 2022. Here, we will tell you how effective lead generation will look like this year and also share a number of handy lead generation hacks that you can leverage for your success.

How Will the Key Concepts and Ideas for Lead Generation Change in 2022?

As was mentioned earlier, B2B lead generation has always been a fast-changing sector. Thus, keeping up with its ever-changing nature can be pretty hard. However, given that neither big nor small businesses can survive without generating high qualified leads because it is one of the main drivers of business growth, it becomes clear that businesses that want to succeed have to monitor and follow trends.

Although the lead generation sector has always been changing rapidly, the last few years have brought the most changes. Due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, many brands were forced to reshape their lead generation efforts forever. Due to the global lockdown, many companies shifted their focus towards running an online business, so their primary goal was to increase traffic and acquire loyal, paying customers in the online landscape.

According to a McKinsey report, nearly 90% of all sales have shifted to online channels during the pandemic.

For B2B businesses, this implied substituting face-to-face appointments with video conferences, replacing offline events with joint webinar events, and leveraging other digital tools to stay ahead of the competition. All these changes have definitely forced almost every company to re-organize its sales team to match the new situation on the market and stay in touch with their potential customers. But, the changes in B2B lead generation didn’t stop there.

At this point, the tendency towards digital tools still stays predominant in lead generation. In fact, industry experts believe that even if the pandemic is completely over by tomorrow, the changes it brought to the lead generation sector will be here to say for at least the following year. Thus, in 2022, they recommend going digital with your lead generation strategy.

Another big trend we expect to be predominant in 2022 is omnichannel marketing. According to digital marketers, there should be no more debates concerning whether it is better to use inbound or outbound marketing channels.

In fact, the best way to increase brand awareness, reach your target audience, and get more leads in 2022 is to leverage all available channels in your marketing strategy.

This implies generating new leads using a variety of channels and tactics, including: 

• Social media platforms;
• Cold emails;
• Digital ads;
• Cold calls;
• SEO optimization;
• Relevant content promotion, etc.

A separate mention also deserves another huge trend of 2022 — marketing automation. There’s a tendency towards more all-encompassing lead nurturing and generation campaigns to leverage multiple channels simultaneously is creating higher demand for effective marketing automation tools. Tracking campaigns’ success across multiple channels is getting tougher. Respectively, in 2022, we expect digital marketers to rely on marketing automation tools more than ever before. By doing this, they will be able to generate more leads and achieve greater results with less effort.

A major shift towards all-digital interactions with potential customers creates the need for building connections with your prospects on a different, much deeper level. This brings us to the next big change that we will observe in 2022.

This year, all your lead generation efforts should be more customer-centered than ever. Your target audience wants to feel that you care. They want to receive unique offers with added value.

In practice, this means that B2B brands now need to focus on applying a persona-driven approach in their campaigns. This approach implies getting to know your target audience better, understanding its pain points, and promoting your products or services according to those pain points.

Finally, the last thing to keep in mind when generating high qualified leads in 2022 is that the market is expected to be incredibly fast-changing this year. Thus, many brands will have to focus more on measuring the success of their campaigns and adapting to the new rules quickly. Industry experts believe that 2022 will be the year of major changes. Thus, if you want to be able to transform your qualified leads into satisfied clients, you will have to keep up with changes and adapt to the market’s demand. Only this way will you be able to drive more sales and ensure success.

Effective B2B Lead Generation Hacks to Try in 2022

Now that you have a general idea of what this field will look like in 2022, we can finally get down to some more specific lead generation ideas. In this section of our article, we’ve gathered the most trending and useful tips on how to create and optimize your lead generation funnel and start generating lots of qualified leads with ease.

Below are the best lead generation hacks you should try in 2022!

1) Video Marketing

First and foremost, one of the best things you can incorporate into your lead generation strategy right now is video marketing. The value of multimedia elements in marketing materials is hard to undervalue. Different types of multimedia are proven to drive more attention of the target audience, increase traffic, and encourage visitors to turn into paying customers. And videos are now trending more than any other type of multimedia.

According to official reports, starting from 2020, about 70% of B2B brands began increasing their budgets for video marketing. In 2022, this tendency will stay with us.

So, the first hack you should try in order to attract more leads is to use more videos in your campaigns. This can include how-to videos, vlogs, video ads, interviews, and other types of content. The only rule is that it has to look good, and it has to be relevant and interesting to your target audience.

According to numerous studies, utilizing different types of videos for marketing purposes can be very effective. A single marketing video is 600% more effective than direct mail and print advertising combined. For a B2B brand, in particular, using videos can help reach:

1. Higher target audience engagement rate;
2. Better retention rate;
3. Enhanced results of your marketing efforts on blogs, social media channels, and other sectors;
4. More leads generated in less time;
5. And much more!

These are just a few of the many benefits your brand can get from integrated videos in your marketing campaigns. Thus, if you are not doing so yet, start investing more in video ads, how-to videos, and other video content that is relevant to your target audience, and, trust us, soon you will see real results of your efforts. In 2022, this hack will help you beat the competition!

2) Podcasts

This may not sound too obvious to many of you, but leveraging podcasts is actually a great lead generation idea. Podcasts can offer your brand quite a few benefits. First of all, there is a huge army of podcast fans who love this type of connection with other individuals and brands as well. Therefore, by integrating podcasts in your lead generation strategy, you can find additional touchpoints with your target audience and significantly expand your outreach.

As reported, B2B brands who tried using podcasts for achieving their business goals confirm that this method of outreach enabled them to touch markets they might’ve not touched before. But, even that’s not all.

According to the stats from the past year, 78% of Americans are now familiar with podcasting. Apart from this, the number of active podcast listeners has grown by 61.5% in the last three years. And it keeps growing. As the numbers suggest, podcasts will keep trending in 2022.

While it might still feel somewhat odd for marketers to leverage podcasting. This is something you should definitely try in 2022. According to experts, with the growing number of monthly listeners, podcast-based advertising can become the next big thing in the field of lead generation. It will help you reach audiences that you haven’t reached before. And, it will also help you create deeper, more meaningful connections with your prospects, especially now, when face-to-face events are still somewhat limited.

All in all, there is no need to wait any longer. With the help of podcasts, you will really take your lead generation efforts to the next level in 2022. So, be sure to leverage this hack early on to get a competitive advantage and win over the hearts of your potential customers.

3) Account-Based Marketing (АВМ)

The next one on our list of the best lead generation ideas that B2B brands should try in 2022  is account-based marketing or simply ABM. In a nutshell, ABM is a very narrowed-down marketing strategy that implies concentrating most of your attention on creating very personalized content that matches the needs of your qualified leads. Simply put, it means that you should carefully target your clients and create content that addresses their key pain points, questions, and needs.

The biggest benefit of this approach is that it enables brands to develop stronger, more personal relationships with their prospects by providing them with solutions to their problems. Eventually, such an approach results in lasting and fruitful business relationships.

What benefits in terms of lead generation does ABM have? Being so narrow-focused, ABM can’t really help you generate more leads. But, instead, it can help you focus on those leads that have the highest potential of becoming your clients. The effectiveness of this approach is long known. Over 94% of B2B companies already had an active ABM program a year ago. In 2022, this trend will be here to stay too.

Another big benefit of this approach is that it enables companies to align the efforts of their sales and marketing teams, empowering them to work together to reach shared goals.

Finally, one more perk of this hack is that it enables you to not only acquire new customers but also retain them. By addressing the high-potential customers’ needs and pain points, companies can create stronger bonds with them. This way, you can ensure customer loyalty. Eventually, higher retention rates and loyalty will let your brand gain even more benefits and profit in the long run.

4) App Development

If you want to get more leads with less effort, this next hack is your best bet. Many marketers have already discovered the value of app development for lead generation purposes. When releasing an application or even free tools and asking users to subscribe or register an account, you can receive hundreds or even thousands of high-quality leads in literally no time.

There is no secret that these days, people keep their smartphones and other mobile devices at hand literally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

To help you get the real scale of mobile usage in the world, there are over 5 billion active users of mobile devices out there. And the majority of them are using all sorts of apps and tools on a daily basis.

For businesses, this fact implies that they can leverage mobile apps in order to get more leads without a hassle. Developing helpful mobile apps or free tools that can solve your prospects’ problems is a great way to drive attention, build trust, and generate lots of leads on a regular basis. Many B2B brands have already recognized the benefits of this approach.

In case you are not sure how creating an app can help you collect leads, let us give you a few examples here. One of the easiest ways to attract more leads and make them want to stay with you is to develop some sort of a free tool. To do this right, take time to research your audience and identify their pain points. Then, think about a handy tool that can help them solve their problems. Eventually, having an idea for a tool that can solve your prospects’ problems, create one and make it free of charge, but encourage users to register in order to use the tool. As a result, you will have a huge base of fresh leads with their contact info.

5) Live Streams

Facebook Live, YouTube live streaming, Zoom, Instagram Live, and dozens of other video streaming tools that are gaining momentum these days clearly hint that live streaming is going to be the next big thing in the nearest time. Going live has been an emerging trend in 2022. 

According to experts, modern customers need an entirely different way of interacting with the brands they use. A faceless company is no longer interesting. People want to see other, real people standing behind large corporations. And holding live streamings is a good way to give your brand a face.

Apart from this, it is also known that users now want to interact with businesses in less official but more authentic ways. They no longer want to write a business-like email or submit a contact form. Instead, they want to have a real, lively conversation. And this is one more reason why going live is good for business.

Going live via social networks like Facebook or Instagram, as well as other streaming platforms, is a unique opportunity to talk directly to your audience. At the same time, it is a great opportunity to boost the engagement of your audience.

According to studies, live streams receive at least 10% more engagement and introduction even than pre-recorded sessions.

Thus, you can easily guess that the level of engagement during live streams is even higher compared to other forms of interaction that don’t include video.

In terms of lead generation, live streams also hold a huge value. The best part of it is that during live sessions, the audience can ask questions in real-time. Respectively, this gives you an opportunity to answer all common questions, educate prospects about your brand, get feedback, and even convince listeners to become your customers.

Throughout 2022, many B2C and B2B businesses have already discovered the benefits of live streaming. At this point, many companies are already using this hack to introduce their upcoming products, share news, cover a corporate event, and fulfill many other purposes, at the same time, driving plenty of fresh leads into their pipeline.

If you leverage this trick in 2022, your business can benefit a lot from it. It will enable you to enhance engagement, create long-lasting relationships with existing clients, and close more deals with ease.

6) Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a rather new phenomenon in the world of marketing. It has skyrocketed with the rise of various social media channels and now, it keeps growing stronger and bigger every year.

Whether on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or any other social network, there are hundreds of industry influencers with large audiences and a huge influence on social opinion. These can include proven experts in their fields, celebrities, athletes, bloggers, and other popular personas who have a large following on social media. And they can really help your B2B business thrive.

The core concept behind influencer marketing is to bring together industry influencers and brands to let them collaborate to reach mutual growth.

The concept works pretty simply. Let’s say there is a B2B brand that needs more leads. This brand can find an influencer whose audience might be interested in the products or services it provides and ask him or her to promote these products or services.

Influencers, in their turn, integrate effective advertising campaigns into their daily social media activity. They keep sharing their ideas, thoughts, and success stories, in the meantime sharing personal recommendations with their followers. As a result, brands that invested in influencer marketing get access to the selected influencer’s audience and use his or her reputation and truthfulness to acquire qualified leads and, hopefully, drive sales.

To help you understand the power of this marketing approach in terms of lead generation, it is worth noting that influencer marketing is expected to grow into an impressive $16.4 billion industry in 2022. Earlier, this industry has grown from only $1.7 billion in 2016 to $13.8 billion. As you can see, this industry is showing rapid growth. So, if you are not sure what to focus on in your lead generation campaign, teaming up with influencers can be a great idea in 2022.

7) Creating a Community

There is no need to hide the fact that people are all used to being a part of a community. We need each other in real life and, now that we shift in the digital world, we still need to be a part of the community and have someone in our surroundings.

What does this fact have to do with lead generation, you may wonder? Well, though it may not be too obvious, creating a friendly online community can actually be a great way to get closer with your audience and get lots of leads! So, this is the next hack we recommend using in 2022.

According to experts, online communities are the future of digital. At this point, we can already observe a huge number of opportunities for creating strong, closely-bound online communities across different social networks and other platforms. And, we have to admit that these communities are extremely popular among users. Due to this fact, many entrepreneurs and marketers emphasize the importance of being active in online communities and building your own ones. And this is true for both B2C and B2B businesses too.

So, what does this mean in practice? Whether it is a Telegram channel, a Facebook Group, a Subreddit, or any other form of an online community, it opens up plenty of unique opportunities for your business. First and foremost, it is a great way to connect with your current and potential clients.

Online communities can consist of hundreds and thousands of the same-minded people. If you can reach out to them and bring them some real value (let’s say offer a solution to their problems), you can build trust and win over their hearts.

Apart from connecting with your audience, online communities enable businesses to collect valuable information. As we mentioned earlier, having enough data and insights about your audience is a sure way to build an effective lead generation tactic. Now, guess what? Actively communicating with your prospects within an online community can help you get priceless insights. Later, you will be able to use this data to your benefit.

Also, building an online community can help you attract lots of warm leads. If you hold conversations that relate to your potential client’s pain points and concerns (they should relate to your company’s products or services), there are high chances that other people with similar problems will find you. As a result, you will get new community members who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer them.

Lastly, participating actively in online communities can also help you keep your audience engaged and encourage it to take certain actions. For example, this opportunity can be used to ask for feedback or suggestions.

Also, you can use it to share sneak peeks into your future products, services, features, etc. At this point, it is also worth noting that modern consumers don’t want to interact with a faceless business any longer. Thus, if your activity in online communities can be linked to a specific persona, you can gain more trust and keep your clients more engaged.

8) Social Listening

The next business lead generation hack that brands should leverage in 2022 is social listening. In case you haven’t heard of it before, it is a process of tracking social media channels for conversations and mentions of your brand. The second part of the process is the analysis of the collected data aimed at defining the best opportunities for boosting brand awareness further and acquiring fresh leads with ease.

Now that you know what social listening is, the next big question is why you should even care about it? First of all, the biggest reason to leverage social listening in your brand’s strategy is that it enables you to collect more information and make more data-driven decisions. On social media, there are plenty of people who actively talk about your brand online. If you can listen and understand what they are talking about, you can:

1. Understand your audience better;
2. Take audience’s engagement to the next level;
3. Keep an eye on the industry and your competitors;
4. Collecting lots of handy insights on what works for your prospects and what doesn’t;
5. Make better connections with your potential and existing clients;
6. Fill your funnel with lots of high-potential leads.

These are only a few of the many things you can do with the help of social listening. All in all, if used right, it will provide you with a huge competitive advantage.

But, how to leverage it to your benefit? Probably the easiest way to do this is to start using specialized social listening tools. Such tools can be incredibly helpful. They can turn social listening into a simple and stress-free matter. So, all you need to do is to find a tool that works best for you.

To help you get on the right track, some of the options you can consider in 2022 include Mention, Talkwalker, Hootsuite, Adview, etc. Each of these apps has been tested with time and proven to be effective. Thus, if you decide to start leveraging social listening to the benefit of your brand, be sure to give these tools a try, and we are confident that each of you will find something to suit their needs!

9) Informative Lead Generation Newsletters

The email has always been known as one of the oldest and, thus, the most time-tested channels for acquiring lots of qualified leads. Marketers have been using it as a powerful tool for lead generation for decades. And, even now, no matter how old-fashioned this method may seem, it is still incredibly effective. Of course, if you know how to use it right.

One of the best lead generation ideas that you can use via email in 2022 is sending informative newsletters. Sending newsletters generally has many benefits for businesses. First and foremost, email newsletters enable you to reach out to a larger number of potential customers. There are 2.91 billion active users on Facebook, 1.386 billion people who use Instagram, and 732 million users of TikTok. If that sounds impressive, you need to know that the number of global email users is over 4 billion and is predicted to reach 4.6 billion in the next two years. These numbers imply that the largest number of your potential clients are using email. Thus, if you manage to reach out to them, you will boost the number of leads you generate and get a chance to enhance your sales.

Apart from expanding your outreach, email is a powerful tool for building your brand’s authority and credibility. It is low-risk and rather inexpensive. Yet, the ROI and conversion rates of email marketing are significantly higher compared to other channels.

Email newsletters can be used as long-term add-ons to your overall marketing strategy. And they are pretty rewarding too. The only thing that needs to be mentioned is that brands need a wise content upgrade in order to start gaining real benefits from the newsletters they send.

By saying “content upgrade” we mean that you need to change the way your newsletters’ content looks in order to get the best results. The content of your newsletters needs to be relevant, informative, and help your prospects solve their daily problems. To help you get started, some of the most effective content types for lead generation newsletters include success stories, case studies, expert tips, how-to guides, industry news, etc.

10) YouTube

YouTube was founded in 2005 and quickly gained popularity among users of all ages and from all over the world. Being one of the oldest social media platforms existing today, YouTube didn’t lose its popularity even by a bit. So, in 2022, it will remain among the handiest and most effective tools that will enable you to generate leads like a pro.

Given the wide popularity of this platform, it is pretty clear that these days, running a YouTube channel can be extremely beneficial for B2B businesses. To name a few, YouTube exposes your brand to a huge audience of 2 billion people of all nationalities, ages, and statuses. Apart from this, running a YouTube channel allows B2B businesses to acquire lots of qualified traffic, boost conversion rates, and, of course, generate lots of high-potential leads. With the help of highly-customizable ads, YouTube also allows you to reach an even larger number of prospects with ease.

Lastly, it is also worth noting that positioning higher on YouTube will have a positive effect on your positioning on Google. This basically means that the more popular your videos get on YouTube, the easier it will be for prospects to find your brand on Google and other search engines.

Millions of companies are already leveraging this platform to capture plenty of fresh leads. And you can do the same! To get things right, you need to brand your YouTube channel so that it is easy to recognize.

Also, you will need to leverage powerful CTA’s and relevant keywords to help prospects find you easier. Finally and most importantly, you will need to deliver relevant and valuable video content regularly in order to gain the trust and attention of your followers.

If you do all these things, you should be able to find lots of leads that have high potential to convert into actual customers. So, don’t hesitate to use this hack in 2022.

11) Chatbots on Landing Pages

Landing pages have always played a big role in every company’s lead generation strategy. And there are quite a few reasons for that. In a nutshell, a landing page is the first thing a potential client sees when entering your website. At the same time, a good landing page is also a place where brands concentrate nearly 100% of their marketing content and answer all common questions that new visitors might have about their business. So, it is pretty clear that creating such pages is crucial if you want to generate leads like a pro.

The importance of landings will remain high in 2022 too. However, the way B2B brands will leverage them is going to be slightly different. Using helpful chatbots on your landings is a new big trend of this year. And there are plenty of reasons to use this hack.

Placing helpful chatbots on your landing page has several goals. Namely, they are used to:

1. Build up awareness;
2. Educate your site’s visitors about your brand, products, or services;
3. Support the decision-making process and help prospects convert into buyers.

Apart from fulfilling all these purposes, lead generation chatbots are also used to help businesses collect valuable data about their leads. Such chatbots collect critical data about your site’s visitors to help you know your audience better, identify their problems and needs, and, eventually, use the collected information to identify the most high-potential leads and throw all your effort into turning them into your clients.

By leveraging chatbots for the success of your lead generation strategy, your brand can create more sales opportunities and close deals faster. Chatbots will make your leads feel like they are being taken care of. Eventually, this will help boost their trust and loyalty for your brand. So, if you are still not using this trick, be sure to start ASAP. After all, experts claim that chatbots on landing pages will be trending throughout the entire 2022 and, maybe, even beyond 2022.

12) Referral Programs

Finally, the last one on our list of the best lead generation hacks for 2022 is referral marketing. These days, it is already quite hard to find a B2C business that doesn’t have a well-established referral program. But, when it comes to B2B businesses, the situation is the opposite.

For a long time, B2B marketers didn’t really consider the opportunity to integrate a referral program into their strategies. But, things are changing a lot in 2022. This year, referral programs are going to be among the most trending lead generation ideas. So, you should really give it a try too.

One of the biggest benefits of referral programs is that they enable you to gain lots of high-value customers who trust your brand by default. As you may already know, referral programs work the following way — someone who is already a customer of your company uses his own experience with your brand to attract more clients for you. Such an approach helps enhance the level of trust in your company. Your prospects first connect with someone who is a customer of your brand and get a chance to learn more about your products or services from a first-hand perspective. Customers who come to you like this will have more trust in you. And, respectively, they can be more loyal.

What about other benefits? Apart from helping you earn the trust of your prospects, a solid referral program can also help you increase the precision of your targeting, help measure the level of customer satisfaction, expand your outreach, build up brand awareness, identify your most loyal customers with ease, and, also, boost your conversion rates.

These aren’t all the benefits of referral programs for B2B lead generation. But, these are the most significant ones.

Lastly, it is also worth noting that referral programs give you a unique opportunity to generate fresh leads and boost sales with almost no effort and time investment on your side. This is the case where your existing customers will do all the job for you. In the meantime, your team can focus on other lead generation tactics. So, as you can see, there are quite a few reasons to leverage referral marketing in 2022.

The Bottom Line

In today’s world, it is no longer a secret that generating lots of highly qualified leads is the key to success in the B2B business. To keep it simple — the more leads you generate, the more profit you can gain. The only question that is still there is how to adjust your marketing strategy in order to drive lots of highly qualified leads that have the potential to convert?

To build a killer lead generation strategy that will take your brand to the next level and drive more sales, it is crucial that you learn to recognize trends and quickly adapt to the changing rules of the game. We’ve all observed lots of massive changes caused by the global pandemic. But, even though the Covid-19 issue is gradually getting easier on us, there still will be plenty of changes in the B2B lead generation field in 2022.

Luckily, after reading this article, you should have a better idea of what key trends of 2022 to follow in order to get more leads. All the lead generation ideas and hacks that we shared with you here are time-tested and proven to bring real benefits to business owners. Using them will help you revamp your overall marketing strategy and start getting even better results.

Need extra help with finding qualified leads? The team of Belkins is at your service! Book a call and our representative will help you leverage all available tactics and channels in order to reach the best results. So, if you want to get more leads with less effort, don’t hesitate to entrust the team of qualified experts to do it for you!