A guide on B2C lead generation: Process, strategies & software

B2C marketers are thriving to generate leads via paid ads, social networking, emails, etc.

But, only those marketers succeed with B2C lead generation who know their customer persona and start educating their customers about their products or services instead of pitching for sales directly.

If you’re puzzled and looking for actionable B2C lead generation strategies, this guide can help you. We have covered all the what, why, and hows of B2C lead generation.  

So, let’s dive deep in.

What is B2C?

B2C simply stands for business to consumer. It is a business model where the company directly sells the product to an individual person, not a business.

For example, consumers buying clothes, people buying from MacDonalds, music lovers taking Spotify subscriptions, etc.

What is the importance of lead generation for B2C models?

Lead generation is important for your B2C business to survive in this competitive world. It mainly involves different marketing and sales strategies that help to bring your ideal customers to your business.

The main aim of generating leads is to gather the prospect’s contact information so that you can reach out to them later.

Do you know that there are various kinds of B2C business models based on their revenue-making strategy? Let’s find out what they are.

Five examples of common B2C models in the market

The B2C models below will help you to understand how they generate revenue from the business. So, let’s get started.

1. Direct seller B2C model 

B2C model where the company sells its product through online sites. Numerous businesses prefer to sell directly from online retail sites. Nike.com, H&M.com, etc., are some examples.

2. Online intermediaries B2C model

These mediators provide a space where buyers and sellers can be present together. An online marketplace like Etsy or Shopify where sellers can showcase their products and customers can choose from whom they want to buy.

3. Advertising B2C model

In this, high-quality content is offered as a freebie to attract the audience to websites. Eventually, those potential visitors will be targeted with online ads to entice them to make a purchase. Examples of this may include Daily Mail, The Guardian, etc.

4. Subscription-based B2C model

Here the businesses charge a fee for access to their services or products, which can be in a document, podcast, or video format. The best example of this model is Spotify, Netflix, Pocket FM, etc.

5. Community B2C model

Platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn that make online communities based on their interests, such as writing, photography, etc., help marketers target a community for direct selling.

The basis of target ads to reach the community are the demographics and geographical locations. 

What is B2C lead?

A B2C lead is any individual enticed with your B2C products or services and will likely become a paying customer soon. For example, if you have signed up for a one-month free Spotify subscription, you are Shopify’s B2C lead.

What is B2C lead generation?

B2C Lead generation is a segment of digital marketing that includes practices to build and capture the likely consumers’ interest in a brand, product, or service to convert them into paying customers.

What are the advantages of B2C lead generation?

As mentioned below, B2C lead generation is advantageous for companies in many ways. 

• It reduces the cost of investment in various components, such as hiring too many employees for sales and marketing teams, as you can leverage online B2C selling. 
• It helps small B2C businesses to scale as they can implement the same online marketing lead generation techniques preferred by large B2C giants. 
• It gives an unlimited market size as B2C sellers can advertise their product or service to all digital device users.
• It lets your consumers buy your brand from anywhere in the world. 
• It saves you from any middlemen or third-party involvement so you can sell your product or services directly to your potential customers.

It has some challenges when you have switched your B2C business to online. 

• The competition is higher as you and your competitors target the same customers. 
• People get an abundance of options, so it may happen that your lead will get converted by your competitor.

Hence, your B2C product or service must have something to stand out from your competitors so that your lead chooses you over your competitors.

How do B2B and B2C lead generation different from each other?

B2B leads take up the services or products to grow their business, and B2C leads are end consumers who purchase for themselves.

Here is a detailed table to understand how B2B and B2C lead generation differ from each other. Let’s have a keen look.

The center of attention for B2B lead generation are other corporations, enterprises, etc., and for B2C lead generation are individual customers; their processes and strategies also differ.

Our next insightful topic reveals some interesting stats that can help in B2C lead generation.

Eye-opening B2C lead generation statistics 

B2C lead generation statistics will give you an idea of the B2C market trend so let’s get started. 

• 79% of B2C marketers say their main goal is to generate high-quality leads for their business.
• Lead generation is considered the most challenging task by 61% of marketers. 
• For B2C companies, setting email campaigns at 12 AM on Friday or Saturday nights will give the highest CTR.
• 86% of marketers of B2C companies rely on content marketing primarily to reach potential consumers.
• For B2C lead generation, personalized email nurturing can boost customer engagement by 57% and conversion by 63%.
• 49% of B2C marketers believe SEO is one of the impacting factors for their lead generation goals.
• B2C companies which blog 11+ times in a month are likely to gain 4X leads compared to the ones that publish blogs 4-5 times in a month.

B2C Lead generation statistics can be helpful in understanding which strategy, methods, and other factors can be effective for your B2C business.

Now coming to the process of B2C lead generation. Let’s dive deep in.

Step-by-step process of B2C lead generation  

B2C consumers are much different from B2B consumers. So, the lead generation strategic approach must focus more on consumer behavior.

Please go through the step-by-step process of B2C lead generation that helps you to discover your ideal customer and their wants.

1. Discover how your consumer thinks 

B2C marketing will succeed if you can connect emotionally with your consumers. You must be able to understand the psychology of decision-making. You can discover the customer mindset through research, past purchases, etc.

2. Create content that connects and converts

Once you have identified how your consumer thinks so, now is the time to produce meaningful, compelling content to attract them to your brand.  

Content types such as entertaining or educational videos, easy hacks to overcome their problems, step-by-step guides, etc., are potent for gaining more attention.  

Try to give such resourceful content for free in exchange for their contact email address.

3. Optimize to reach a large number of audiences

The ultimate aim of customer research and content asset creation is to get more qualified leads. So, optimize your website, landing pages, blogs, etc., to rank them higher on SERPs so that your efforts get noticed by your potential customers.

This practice is highly essential for inbound lead generation.

4. Promotion through omnichannel

Make sure you are present on every social media channel your customer is fond of. Generally, B2C consumers use Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, so you should promote these channels for maximum conversion.

5. Use a tool to capture B2C lead

Your marketing team is working hard to seek the attention of your potential customers and bring them to your optimized lead generation website or landing pages, but you must have ways to capture the leads.

You must have different ways to capture leads, and a smart lead generation CRM like Salesmate can help you in this.

It offers Chat Journeys, Web Forms, and Meeting Scheduler that you can embed into your website. So, when visitors come to your landing page, they have different ways to communicate with your company.

Capture and attract your B2C leads

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6. Nurture leads and analyzes your B2C lead generation efforts  

Sending emails with a gig that is more likely to get clicked is one of the best lead nurturing practices to increase their interest or improve their engagement.

Try to give offerings such as discount coupons, inform them about sales, invite them to subscribe to valuable newsletters, etc. Such tactics will enhance your brand value.

Salesmate provides beautiful, customizable email templates to entice your consumers to purchase. With its Marketing Automation feature, you can set up lead generation campaigns, conduct split testing, and track campaign performance to know your customer response.

Your website and emails should be mobile responsive as almost all the B2C consumers worldwide check every update through their phones.

What is the average cost of B2C lead generation?

The cost for B2C lead generation depends on various factors, such as the type of lead generation strategy you opt for, hiring an agency, and working with freelancers.

But if we have to say an average cost of B2C lead generation, then it can be in a range as mentioned below:

11 Proven B2C lead generation strategies in 2024  

You must tailor your B2C lead generation strategies to turn your potential audience into paying customers to generate revenue.  

We have discussed the best B2C lead generation strategies to help you attain your short-term and long-term business goals.

Let’s get their crux one by one.

1. Leverage through video content

Snappy video format content always helps in lead generation as people love to check out relevant videos for a topic over the long form of written content.

If you know the problems of your customer, then creating a series of videos as the solution to their product-related problems can be a good strategy. 

Videos are effective for businesses as 9 out of 10 people said they would like to see more videos from the brand.

Below are some interesting topics on which you can create video content for your B2C product or services. Check them out if it is suitable for you.

Visual representation always works but don’t miss including a clear CTA in the video for lead generation. Some CTA ideas for B2C lead generation videos include signup requests, fill survey form requests, etc.

2. Content marketing and SEO

Insightful, authentic, and crisp content is needed for B2C lead generation through content marketing.

The challenge is to produce the content asset that can sway your audience and hold them for longer. It’s best if your content can make them your brand promoters. 

In content marketing for lead generation, your content should be both consumer-friendly and Google-friendly.

Though lead generation using SEO takes time to show results, it builds an irreplaceable developing position of your brand in organic search results.

Try to implement SEO and content marketing strategies such as using keywords, structured data markup, promotion through online marketplace places, etc.

Always leverage social media to market your content, as the majority of your consumers these days are socially active on such platforms.

3. Target with personalized email marketing

As a customer, you don’t entertain unrelated emails, but seeing your name on a subject line will surely get your attention.

So, personalization makes your email relatable to your consumers.

You can do email personalization in many ways, as given below.

• An automated thank you response if someone signs-ups your form.
• Personalize your subject line by adding the name of the receiver.
• If you have any, try to include the company’s name or related information about your consumer.
• Understand your customer behavior and send the email at the most suitable time.
• Discuss the pain points of your customer to connect with them.

4. Paid advertisement

You must have experienced that when you search for a particular product or service online, similar product/service ads appear on other websites and social media platforms you visit.

It happens because markets target you through paid ads based on your interests, past searches, or preferences. So, paid advertising is a fast B2C lead generation strategy as you can be on the top results of your consumer search through ads.

5. Gated content strategy

A gated content strategy simply provides helpful content in exchange for your consumer’s contact details. See the example below.

People encourage free resources and don’t mind filling out a web form, subscribing to a form, etc., if they find the content valuable.

For example, a novice copywriter subscribed to a newsletter by Alex Cattoni.

6. Website optimization

Not having an optimized website or landing page can be the specific reason for not getting desirable leads, so make sure your visually perfect landing pages must be technically sound.   

By website optimization, we mean that it must have a fast-loading time, clear CTA, optimized on-site content, using quality images, testimonials, authentic backlinks, and many more.  

All your efforts turn ineffective when you miss the optimization of your website. You can create highly effective lead generation landing pages by optimizing your website.

7. Cross-promotion with social media marketing and email marketing

You have an email list of your target audience, but you don’t know their interest in your particular product or services, so if you set an email campaign but the email list and get a mixed and unclear response, how will you ensure the result?

In that case, you can cross-promote email marketing with social media to boost engagement and overall performance.

Cross-promotion with social media and email marketing simply means connecting the two platforms. It is done by placing subscribing links and shareable buttons. If your product has the power, then cross-promotion can generate a long ideal consumer list.

8. Influencer marketing

If a product is suggested by your friends or some authoritative figure, it has a higher chance of being purchased by you.

Well, influencer marketing is an excellent strategy for lead generation as people look for reliable options in society before making their decision.

Customers have become smart today, so content referred by a trusted source will beat an advertised content marketing strategy.

It would be better to take support of influencer marketing for lead generation. You can contact and build relationships with famous influencers to gain customer trust.

9. Chatbots

Chatbots can save you from missing any important lead as they will be 24/7 available company reps.

The natural language process has enabled it to respond like humans, so your website visitors will easily respond to any query.

It will do two things simultaneously: lead generation and discussing customer needs or problems.

Talking via chatbots is preferred compared to filling out web forms.

10. Quora marketing

As mentioned before, the customer looks for the most suitable answers before jumping to any conclusion regarding a product or service type. Hence, using Quora marketing is a good option for B2C lead generation.

Using Quora marketing, you can find out the most relatable questions about your product or services, answer their queries, build trust and increase customer engagement.

11. Invest in CRM for exact analytics

If you are getting a lot of traffic but not leads, then there can be many reasons for this, such as:

• Have you attracted an irrelevant audience? 
• Are your visitors not able to navigate through web pages? 
• Have an unclear product description? 
• Is your CTA missing?

A customer management tool will help identify the loopholes and give all insights to improve lead generation through visual reports.

Make sure you follow a lead generation strategy that is powerful enough to drive outcomes for your B2C business. So, choose and implement it accordingly.

Social listening can benefit B2C lead generation

You must know what people think about your brand, their suggestions, likes, dislikes, comments, etc., as everything matters in lead generation. Social listening can flourish your business as you’ll be aware of market trends.

Social listening is helpful in many ways as you can identify the ideal customer for your business and your competitors, promising social media platforms, effective marketing strategy, and much more.

7 Top B2C lead generation software to scale up the company revenue

Lead generation will be ineffective without the right software. Below I have listed the top seven lead generation software that can help you improve your lead generation efforts.

1. Salesmate

If you want to miss potential leads once they land on your website, then Salesmate CRM can help you with this. It is a unified customer platform that provides all the features required by your marketing and sales team for a progressive business. 

Salesmate can be considered the best CRM for website lead generation B2C as it offers features such as:

• Live Chat/Chatbot support to generate qualified leads through customer interaction. 
• Web Forms to generate leads for specific targeting.
• Meeting Scheduler to set up instant meetings for prosperous discussions.

With Salesmate’s Email Builder, you can create captivating emails which can be used for lead nurturing. You can send bulk emails and use highly responsive customizable templates offered by Salesmate.

It provides Marketing Automation that will help you to create different automation journeys based on various triggers and conditions. Moreover, you can track your email campaign performance and perform A/B testing to improve results.

With drag and drop email builder, you can also craft appealing lead generation email campaigns.

Salesmate is end-to-end software that can boost the productivity of your sales and marketing team. So, try out Salesmate for your business with a 15-day free trial now!

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2. Keap

Keap is software that provides features that can help to enhance the task of your marketing and sales teams. CRM, marketing automation, sales automation, and many more features so that you can get more leads, convert clients and boost your business. 

Keap’s advanced campaign builder can be helpful in various functions, such as capturing new leads with tagging options and sending lead nurturing emails. It has automation to fasten the process and save time.

Read more about Keap alternative.

3. HubSpot

You can leverage HubSpot’s various free and premium tools to capture and manage your leads. It offers a powerful marketing automation tool through which you can manage contacts, find new leads, engage with them, and much more to boost the marketing process. 

With HubSpot landing page builder, you can create high converting landing pages which will catch your visitors’ attention and allow you to capture leads through accessible web forms, live chats, or meeting modules.

Read more about HubSpot alternative.

4. Yieldify

Yieldify is a customer journey platform that helps to generate an extensive number of leads and offers advanced options such as email targeting and enriching user data.

Yieldify’s lead capture forms are a perfect blend of creativity and actionability capable of driving the best outcome by sticking to your brand identity. 

You can heighten your messages’ impact, including a promotion with a unique value proposition, discount coupons, and exciting referral bonuses through Yieldify’s highly optimized lead capturing form.

5. OnePage CRM  

OnePage CRM is a cloud-based solution for customer relations management. With Lead Clipper of OnePage CRM, you can instantly capture leads from various other platforms such as web pages and social media. 

You can enrich the contact profile with their social data such as email and social media accounts, which will be helpful in the lead nurturing process for sales.

6. Drift

Drift is a live chat app that will enable you to generate quality leads once you set it up with your website. It will let your reps answer the queries of the website visitors.

The main motive is to qualify the leads, nurture them with genuine help, can have a highly personalized conversation to capture quality leads for your business.

7. Leadformly

Leadformly can help you in lead generation with its customizable lead generation forms. They call it conversion-optimized forms as they will fetch every detail of your potential customer.  

To save you from indulging in complex designing of the email campaign, they offer captivating customizable email templates that are potent to boost your email campaign success rate and drive more qualified leads.

So now you have a list of B2C lead generation tools to pick from; all are efficient and unique with their features and functionality. You don’t need to buy every tool, but you must finalize the most suitable one.

Investing in lead generation tools such as Leadformfly or Drift, which offer a single feature, is not smart.

You should invest in one software that offers all the tools for lead generation and sales and marketing automation that will skyrocket your business.  

You can go for all-in-one software like Salesmate. It offers a 15-days free trial.  

Try Salesmate and see if this goes well for you!

13 Interesting ideas for B2C lead generation that will lead to more conversion

1. Create a video testimonial of existing customers. 

2. Engage the audience by creating enjoyable quizzes based on your brand with a reward for top participants.

3. Make insightful case studies that cover tackling a problem from start to finish.  

4. Use personalization as an ingredient to get noticed faster.

5. Collaborate with relevant influencers.

6. Use affiliate and loyalty programs to get repeat customers.

7. Target your existing customers with referral offers to gain high-quality leads. 

8. Use safe language such as 100% safe or trustworthy for your brand. 

9. Create purpose-driven landing pages and optimize them.

10. Update testimonials and customer reviews for trust building.

11. Social listening to know what people think about your brand, their suggestions, likes, dislikes, comments, etc.

12. Offer a free trial or demo of your product or services.

Understanding how you want to proceed with your marketing plan and what idea will work to drive the maximum output of your lead generation efforts is essential.

Conclusion

B2C lead generation success will be possible with the right process, impactful strategy, and effective tools. All these collaboratively help provide a fantastic customer experience that will make your B2C brand rise and shine in the market. 

Your product, marketing, and business should be top-notch to benchmark in your domain, and eventually, it will give more leads, conversion, and revenue.

B2C lead generation FAQs