The best inbound lead generation is indistinguishable from genuinely useful content. Buyers reach out because you have already demonstrated you can help them.
Inbound lead generation attracts potential buyers to your business rather than reaching out to them directly. For B2B companies, the most effective inbound channels are LinkedIn thought leadership, SEO content, email newsletters, and referrals. Unlike outbound, inbound compounds over time: content published today generates leads six months from now. The tradeoff is that inbound takes longer to build but produces higher quality leads at lower marginal cost.
For B2B companies targeting senior buyers, inbound leads come overwhelmingly from three sources. LinkedIn thought leadership from founders and senior executives generates inbound messages, speaking requests, and warm introductions from people who have been following the content. SEO content that ranks for queries made by potential buyers during their research phase generates inbound enquiries from people who are actively looking for a solution. Email newsletters that deliver consistent value to a subscriber list generate inbound from warm prospects who have been nurtured over time.
The common thread is authority. Inbound leads come to you because they already believe you can help them. The content you produce is the mechanism through which that belief is formed. Read about demand generation as the system that creates inbound.
This is where many companies get frustrated. Inbound does not produce immediate results. LinkedIn authority builds over months of consistent posting. SEO takes six to twelve months to compound. Newsletter subscriber bases take time to build to meaningful scale. The companies that succeed with inbound invest ahead of the returns and run outbound alongside it to generate pipeline while inbound compounds.
The worst approach is to start inbound activity, expect results in four weeks, and stop when they do not materialise. The best approach is to run outbound sequencing to generate near-term pipeline while building inbound authority simultaneously, so that by month six the inbound layer is generating warm leads that require no outbound activity at all. Read about how SaaS founders build inbound leads.
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