Every marketing and sales team understands the pressure to continuously generate leads and increase sales. While customer retention and delivering a seamless, top-tier customer experience remain essential for long-term success, the reality is that B2C lead generation campaigns continue to be a top priority for many companies.
But what exactly is business-to-consumer (B2C) lead generation, and how does it differ from its business-to-business (B2B) counterpart? Both focus on acquiring potential customers but, as the name suggests, B2C businesses target individual consumers rather than corporate buyers.
Unlike B2B, where decisions are often made by buying committees over weeks or months of deliberation, B2C is faster-paced. Generally, B2C lead gen involves a shorter sales cycle, a greater emphasis on emotional appeal and highly engaging and personalized marketing efforts.
So if you need some fresh inspiration or helpful tips on the latest B2C lead generation strategies, we’re covering 5 approaches that can help. But first, let’s differentiate between inbound and outbound lead generation.
Inbound vs. Outbound B2C Lead Generation
When it comes to B2C lead generation efforts, businesses typically approach it in 2 ways: inbound and outbound. While both aim to attract qualified leads, they take different routes to get there.
Inbound lead generation focuses on drawing potential customers in through content and engagement. This approach includes digital marketing strategies like content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing and even email marketing.
By creating blog posts or newsletters, optimizing their websites for search engines and maintaining an active online presence, B2C brands can attract potential new customers and guide them through the sales cycle organically.
Outbound lead generation, on the other hand, involves proactively reaching out to consumers through tactics like paid advertising, cold emailing and cold calling. While outbound strategies can generate quick results, they often require more effort to capture attention and convert leads.
A successful B2C lead generation strategy typically blends both inbound and outbound efforts. Here are a few strategies to know:
1. Prioritize Valuable Content
You want to make it easy for leads to find you. One of the most effective B2C marketing strategies for doing this is to create content that provides real value to your target audience. Remember, inbound marketing is all about drawing in potential customers. Instead of chasing down leads, attract them by offering insights, solutions and resources that address their needs.
Think about how people discover brands. They go to search engines for answers, scroll on social media and seek out recommendations from people online. In other words, they’re more likely to engage with organic content that’s helpful and relevant. This can be anything from blog posts that answer common questions to social media content created from an influencer partnership to explainer videos about a confusing topic.
Interactivity is another creative way to provide valuable content to potential customers — even if they’ve never engaged with your brand before. Take this mortgage calculator, for instance. A company could embed it on its site and have interested visitors input their details and receive a custom quote instantly.
Hint: Customize the video for yourself by clicking the lightning icon in the player.
This kind of personalized approach not only piques a potential lead’s interest but also delivers immediate value, making them more likely to take the next step of reaching out.
Gated content — like exclusive reports, ebooks or webinars — can also be used as lead magnets. This involves requiring someone to add their contact information first in exchange for the resource. For instance, if they submit their email, you can add it to your email list and nurture leads through targeted email campaigns.
All in all, the point is to get in front of people who are talking about topics related to what you offer and find ways to present engaging content that builds trust and brings them back to your brand to learn more.
2. Leverage Video
If you want to grab attention and keep it, video content is one of the most powerful tools to do so. People consume more video than ever, from online classes to TikTok videos — and for good reason. It’s engaging, easy to digest and can be used to communicate complex ideas quickly.
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More importantly, video is what consumers want. More than 8 out 10 customers (83%) want to see more video content from brands — and yet only 19% say they frequently receive it. That puts companies that leverage video at a unique advantage. Whether it’s a brand introduction, a product tutorial or a customer testimonial, video can make your brand more memorable.
From incorporating video in your social media posts to your email campaigns, a well-placed video can engage viewers and encourage them to take action, whether that’s signing up for a newsletter, requesting a quote or making a purchase.
Cedarville University’s Personalized Video is a great example. Instead of a generic email inviting the prospective student to tour its campus, the school sends a video that integrates the viewer’s name throughout, making it a personal invitation.
No doubt, video captures the energy of campus life in a way that static images or text simply can’t. This makes it easier for prospective students to picture themselves there, creating an emotional connection that can be the difference between passive interest and scheduling a visit.
Pro tip: Another great thing about video is that you can easily repurpose it. Clip it into shorter clips for different channels or even turn it into an infographic for easy sharing.
3. Use Giveaways Strategically
Another powerful lead generation tactic is to give something away for free in exchange for a few lines of personal information. The key, though, is to offer something valuable enough to attract engagement while ensuring that you actually collect high-quality leads. Instead of generic prizes, brands should align giveaways with their products or services.
Case in point: Don’t expect to get a high number of quality leads if you’re a fitness company giving away a free iPhone. Almost anyone can benefit from a new mobile phone, but not all of those entrants are necessarily interested in your workout plan subscription. On the other hand, if you give away a free month of premium workout content, you can be pretty confident that everyone who enters has the potential to later convert into a paying member.
To maximize impact, promote the giveaway across multiple channels. A pop-up on your website can capture visitors who are already engaging with your brand while posting the event on social media platforms can encourage shares and tags that significantly expand your reach.
4. Optimize Your Paid Advertising
Paid advertising can work wonders for B2C lead generation. Video ads, in particular, tend to perform exceptionally well, with one study revealing that Google ads with video had an 8.3x higher CTR than display ads.
If you can target users based on customer data, then even better. Highly specific ads that incorporate a user’s location, interests, behavior, demographics and more have proven to be incredibly effective. In fact, dynamic video ads have helped major brands boost conversion rates with engaging campaigns that raised brand recall by 4x and return on ad spend by 7x.
When you have a firm understanding of strong lead profiles, you can tweak your data-driven advertising on a granular level so that it speaks to the best leads with the highest likelihood of conversion.
Of course, incorporating a clear call-to-action (CTA) is essential if you want to capture leads. Your ads should drive users to a dedicated website, landing page or video where they can easily submit their information.
Pro tip: Take advantage of automation and use a dedicated AI video ad creator to streamline the process. Our groundbreaking AI, Lucas, handles everything from the script to the footage to determining the best placement for your CTA.
5. Encourage Reviews and Referrals From Loyal Customers
It’s not always what you say about your company that matters — it’s what other people say, too. Word-of-mouth is a powerful tool, especially when it comes from real people who have firsthand experience with your brand. Positive reviews not only boost your credibility but also serve as a key element in generating more leads.
As many as 98% of consumers say they rely on reviews to inform their purchase decisions — with some listing it as the No. 1 factor when considering a purchase, even above the product’s description.
When customers are saying good things about your offering, it serves as social proof to potential customers who are looking to solve similar pain points. Encourage your loyal customers to leave reviews and refer friends and family by offering an incentive, whether it’s a coupon, a freebie or discounted pricing.
And because acquisition is half the battle — what good is a lead if you fail to mature them into active customers? Here’s one last tip for keeping your leads once you’ve acquired them.
Don’t Harass People with Too-Frequent Communication
We get it, you’re excited about all the new leads you’ve generated. And you should be! But don’t let it trick you into thinking it’s a good idea to communicate with everyone daily over multiple channels.
64% of consumers and B2B buyers report feeling overwhelmed by brand communications. Empower your leads by allowing them to opt-in to blasts and indicate how frequently they’d prefer to receive emails. By including an easy unsubscribe button, you also minimize your chances of disengaging leads and being marked as spam.
Recognize that less can be more for some leads, and let them choose how and when they want to hear from you.
Ready to Transform Your B2C Strategy?
Creating meaningful, personalized connections is a game-changer for your lead generation efforts — and Idomoo can help. With our Next Generation Video Platform, you can elevate your marketing campaigns with dynamic video experiences that speak directly to individual viewers, a few million at a time.
Want to see what Next Generation Video can do for your business? Reach out to us today.
