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How Much Does B2B Lead Generation Cost?

Adding new leads and customers is crucial for your business’s continuous growth, and B2B lead generation marketing is a signnificant part of that process.
Leads come from various sources of activity. For instance, your potential leads may come digitally via the internet or through personal referrals. You can also use online and offline events and advertisements.
Cold emailing, though it sounds like an old-school marketing tactic, is still widely used today. A 2018 B2B study found that nearly 90% of respondents cited email as the most-used medium for lead generation, followed by content marketing, SEO, and events.
Online lead generation tactics are also popular, and the top online channels for generating leads include:

  • Direct traffic
  • Web referrals
  • Search engines

This post will walk you through the ff:

  • B2B lead generation strategies (SEO, social media, paid ads, etc.)
  • Free and paid lead generation services
  • The costs of different lead generation services

What Is Lead Generation?
Lead gen is the process of:

  • Identifying the right audience to engage
  • Nurturing identified leads to turn them into interested customers
  • Converting visitors into prospects

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No matter what you sell or the marketing technique you implement, generating leads is crucial to your marketing campaign. That is how you fill your sales pipeline consistently and generate sales continuously.
High-Quality Leads on a Low Budget
There is such a thing called quality leads or high-quality leads. These are leads that are qualified and have a high probability of purchasing. Meaning, you ought to go after quality leads to generate high return without incurring a high expense.
The way to do that is by:

  • Tailoring your products and services to your ideal customers
  • Building trust and confidence
  • Utilizing strong CTAs (call to action)
  • Promoting a personalized template, etc.

Low Budget Lead Generation
With all the costs of putting up a business, growing your sales with budget limitations is challenging. If you are a bootstrapped startup, the best recourse is to try out low-budget lead generation methods.
According to a lead generation marketing company, the top three strategies for low-budget lead generation are:

  • Referral
    The average conversion rate of referral is 10.99% (three times higher than inbound marketing). Ask for referrals from your existing customers. It is free.
  • Partner or Cross Promotion
    By joining with other businesses, you can expand through your partner’s customer base. It is a cheap lead generation strategy that can help grow your revenue in months with little to no investment. The average conversion rate for cross-promotion is 4.54%.
  • Inbound marketing
    Inbound marketing can grow your revenue by 3.82%. The goal is to create content that aligns with your audience’s interests and interact with people to offer value to them for free.

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Inbound marketing use tools and platforms to drive traffic, including:

  • Content creation and marketing
  • Segmentation
  • Social media engagement
  • Analytics
  • SEO

Lead Generation Cost per Industry, Revenue, and Company Size
The average cost per lead is $198 for all industries. Costs differ based on the industry, target market, and competition in the sector where your business belongs.
Check out these per-industry figures:

  • IT and IT Services: $369
  • Healthcare and Medical: $285
  • Financial Services: $271
  • Industrial and Manufacturing: $235
  • Media and Publishing: $191
  • Consumer Products: $182
  • Marketing Agencies: $172
  • Education: $65
  • Nonprofit: $43

By company size:
The larger the company size is, the higher is the cost for generating leads. Those with more than 1000 employees shelled out $348 per lead in 2019, while those with 50 employees or less paid $146 per lead.
By revenue:
Companies that generate higher income accrue higher costs for lead generation. In 2019, businesses that earned $500 million or more averaged $429 per lead. Those that earned less than $1 million paid $166 per lead.
Outbound Cost per Lead Generation Approach:
Lead generation cost per lead also differs from approach to approach. For B2B businesses, the type that works best is outbound marketing, wherein the product vendor initiates the conversation with the target audience.
In inbound marketing, you look for potential customers, not the other way around. You reach out to businesses that may not know your existence or your product and introduce your product or service to them.
Email Marketing
An example of inbound marketing is cold email marketing. If you ask B2B cold email specialists, they’ll tell you that emailing is one of the greatest and most cost-effective strategies for a B2B company to create excellent leads.
We are not talking about just mass emailing here. You want a targeted approach that ensures you will not waste your time. Here is a surefire way to do that:

  • Carefully research your prospects and handpick the most qualified leads among them. These are the people that you want to contact first.
  • Craft an appealing and personalized message. Offer the best value you can offer.
  • Connect with them to build a meaningful relationship. Do not overly think of closing a deal right away. The best approach is to build relationships that last.

Do not email everyone listed on a customer database and hope that someone will respond because the cost is proportionate to the number of emails you will send per month.
If you choose to delegate an email campaign to some digital marketing lead generation services or agency, you will have to shell out $300 – $500 per month for that.
Review your customer database regularly. Targeting uninterested leads or leads that do not operate anymore wastes your time and money.
Social Media Marketing
Targeted social marketing also works. You place ads on these platforms, and for every click that your ads get, the platform charges you a fee.

  • Facebook – Cost per click (CPC) is $0.97
  • Pinterest – Maximum cost is $1.50 per engagement.
  • LinkedIn – $5.26 per click
  • Instagram – $3.56 per click
  • Twitter – Promoted tweets for $0.50 to $2 per action (retweet, like, or follow); promoted accounts for $2 to $4 per follow

Forum Participation
Participating in forums like quora.com and startups.com is free. Give answers to common questions your target audience asks, and lead them to come to your website afterward.