How to Generate
Qualified Leads
in 2024

As B2B buyers and buying groups continually evolve in line with the shifting market and tech landscape, so must an organization’s lead generation and lead qualification process.

Generating qualified leads requires carefully orchestrated marketing and sales strategies implemented across a diverse channel mix in line with buyer priorities and needs.

This article explores a variety of processes and B2B demand generation initiatives to support high-quality lead generation and a steady pipeline of sales opportunities to empower your growth. 

B2B leads are typically categorized into the following four groups, depending on their characteristics and the method of lead qualification involved:

The specific details of each lead qualification type depend on the lead definitions established by each organization (see more in step one below).

B2B lead qualification is an integral part of efficient lead management, and by extension, B2B marketing campaigns and sales strategies.

Lead qualification helps teams avoid targeting leads that are a poor fit, as well as targeting B2B marketing leads with sales materials before they have been adequately nurtured. Given the tightening of marketing budgets and the emphasis on marketing supporting sales goals, lead qualification is an essential process for ensuring that performance goals are met.

In short, lead qualification helps anchor strategies with the right approach and enhance targeting to avoid wasted resources and drive higher client value.

Securing high-quality, qualified leads to fuel your pipeline and growth is a complex, multi-faceted process that requires departmental collaboration and detailed planning.

Below are seven B2B demand generation strategies and sales initiatives to help your lead generation efforts yield necessary outcomes to support your objectives.

Quality lead and demand generation requires a focused approach that is accurate to the specific needs of your target market. As a result, both strategies should be based on a clearly defined and understood target market to inform lead qualification and lead follow-up. Below are a range of techniques for establishing your target market.

Data-driven marketing strategies that effectively engage the core segments of your total addressable market (TAM) can be informed by the following three buyer attribute types:

Lead definitions are the parameters that determine what constitutes a lead based on its characteristics and the qualification method(s) an organization follows. Creating lead definitions is therefore a key element of guiding the lead qualification process.

These definitions should be informed by your target market and include the behavior triggers that indicate buyer intent and categorize leads into their various types.

Lead scoring is a system of assigning numerical values to actions taken by prospective buyers. While this aspect of scoring is similar to the lead definition process, the cumulative lead score serves both as an indicator of the lead’s progress through their buyer’s journey and of its quality.

These triggers should align with your lead generation goals and the typical buyer’s journey you have established. Detail is important here, as not all actions should be treated equally in terms of buyer intent. For example, a whitepaper download should not carry the same weight as a demo request.

Given its complexity, leveraging predictive lead scoring models can be highly beneficial. These utilize data from your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database to determine the hierarchy of the data variables being tracked. Predictive lead scoring can also analyze buyer behavior in combination with data to determine which leads are most likely to complete a purchase, delivering insights that can be used to inform future strategies.

As such, lead scoring serves as the launching point for lead qualification, by indicating lead value to inform the process in general.

All of these techniques are invaluable for guiding the lead qualification process and should be routinely evaluated to assess their accuracy.

Generating qualified leads requires strong interdepartmental alignment between sales and marketing teams to facilitate data flow and a seamless buying experience.

As such, open communication is a must to allow both teams to navigate buyer behavior and adjust key elements of the sales process. This includes lead definitions, how leads are qualified, and finally, their hand-off to sales as they progress from the MQL to the SQL stage.

Sharing insights that allow for this process to be optimized is essential. Create an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing feedback, opinions, and constructive criticism to enable strategies to yield the best results.

True alignment is an essential and valuable aspect of the lead qualification process, helping companies drive higher client lifetime value (CLTV).

While it is essential to avoid prescribing how your prospects interact with your brand, scoping out your buyer’s journey is valuable for shaping a positive buyer’s experience according to the preferences of your target market.

This also supports lead qualification, as touchpoints should naturally be designed in line with the specific buyer behavior triggers established as part of lead scoring and qualification processes. Your average buyer’s journey should also be based on a solid foundation of lead intelligence and campaign performance to ensure that your budget yields the best possible results.

As prospects progress through their buyer’s journey, the process increases in complexity as more decision makers become involved. As a result, ensuring that they receive the correct buyer enablement on the channels they frequent is essential.

Indeed, planning and refining this buyer’s journey with a diverse range of marketing channels aids qualified lead generation, as leads are actively encouraged to progress to the MQL and SQL stages, all the way toward a conversion.

This is also another example of a strategy that benefits greatly from sales and marketing alignment, as sales feedback can help shape the accuracy of marketing activities on each channel.

Investing in a strong, multi-faceted content marketing strategy is integral to fueling your channel mix, and therefore, generating qualified leads. If relevant to the needs of your target buyers, your content marketing can act as a primary way of delivering value to prospects and driving conversions as a result.

Below are four core aspects of developing a content marketing strategy to support lead qualification:

For more details on how to craft a B2B content marketing strategy that enables performance, read our Definitive Guide to B2B Content Marketing.

As your channel hub and a key conversion point (especially for SEO traffic), your website plays a critical role in your buyer’s journey and ensures that your strategies yield qualified leads and a strong base of demand generation. Therefore, optimizing and maintaining your website is a high priority.

Below are four tactics for enhancing your website performance:

Given the multiple functions your website will perform (including the main contact point for your brand), one of the most important website optimizations you can implement is facilitating navigation and improving its general user experience (UX).

Employ an adaptive, user-friendly design that allows prospects to access your site on their preferred device (mobile optimization is particularly important) in short load times. Be sure to develop your design elements with this in mind to support messaging, without harming UX.

When it comes to the navigation of your website, consider the different types of intent that users may have as a guiding principle for creating different sections. Below are some examples:

Based on the types of intent that you define, you can then create navigational elements to allow users to find what they are looking for. This encourages users to spend more time on your website and increases the likelihood that they will navigate to a broader range of pages, increasing the performance of your website and its capacity to drive qualified lead generation.

Increasing organic traffic to your website and its content is a key strategy for B2B demand generation and growth. While search engine optimization strategies are usually long-term and a lengthy process, they have the potential to decrease bounce rates and increase dwell time.

Start by aligning your strategy with your target market’s search intent. This will allow you to optimize your website copy with keywords to match this intent and improve the overall ranking of your website and content.

Include long-tail keywords to reflect the specific needs of the segments within the audience you are targeting. Another important aspect of SEO is performing competitor analysis to identify competitive strategies to displace their pages in favor of your own.

In general, SEO should not be prescriptive. The greater the accuracy of keywords to the interest of your buyers, the greater the likelihood of supporting qualified lead generation and brand awareness that supports a strong basis for lasting demand.

Your website is likely to receive a broad range of visitors. To ensure that the messaging and content of your website do not come across as generic, consider creating landing pages for different audiences within your target market.

These can feature personalized messaging focused on the pain points and objectives of each target audience, serving as hubs for buyer enablement materials that sales teams can share with prospects. The performance of this strategy can support lead qualification while demonstrating a keen understanding of buyer needs and providing prospects with value.

Therefore, making landing pages to suit the unique needs of your prospective buyers is a powerful strategy for improving the function of your website—as well as generating qualified leads and demand.

A crucial element of adding credibility to the core messaging of your website is showcasing social proof. This can include a combination of reviews, either directly made on your website, or from review platforms you are using (such as G2 or TrustRadius), in combination with more detailed case studies.

Implement tracking on reviews, and add lead contact forms to case studies to further qualify the buyer intent of B2B leads. However, it is important to note that gating case studies should only be leveraged if there is depth to the content and a detailed overview of the strategies and results achieved.

Finally, social proof can also be supported by applying for well-recognized awards in your industry. Strategize campaigns and content projects that align with your award objectives to streamline the resources necessary for completing multiple applications.

Regularly testing the performance of strategies and fielding feedback is essential for consistently generating qualified leads. Below are a range of techniques for both initiatives: