Most marketers have experienced the frustration of having a lead that’s ready to pull the trigger on a purchase – only to discover that they don’t have the clout to make that call. Sometimes you’ve invested time and effort into nurturing that lead, all of which vanishes as their boss vetoes it.

So how do you get your marketing in front of the people who can make that call?

Let’s find out! Here are our tips for reaching your target audience – B2B decision makers – and converting them.

How to Reach B2B Decision Makers and Turn Them Into Leads

Before you aim straight for the CEO, ask yourself how much decision-making power is required to decide to purchase your product.

In other words, how far up the chain do you need to aim? Well, that depends on how disruptive your product is. A good rule of thumb is the more your product will necessitate a shift in a company’s operations and processes, the higher up you need to go to find someone qualified to make that call.

1 – Nurture Upwards

When you collect a lead that doesn’t have the ability to make the purchase, it doesn’t mean they’re not worth pursuing.

After all, they converted for a reason, right? Your leads are people who feel that your product would be beneficial to them in a professional capacity, and that means that you have an opportunity to turn them into a spokesperson. They might not be able to pull the trigger, but they can make a strong case to the person who can.

That means you can tailor your messaging towards helping them make that case. If you cultivate a real one-on-one relationship with them, you can coax them into telling you what the roadblocks might be along the way to a purchase, and help them systematically dismantle them.

2 – Target Corporate Pain Points and Professional Ones

Buyer personas are a familiar, comfortable mainstay of marketing. When you understand your lead’s professional challenges, you can dramatically improve your chances of pushing them all the way down the funnel.

If you know, in detail, just what their challenges are, you can show them clearly how your product solves those challenges. However, if you can glean what their company’s challenges are, you can show how indispensable your product is at a corporate level.

For example, lets say you make a productivity app for sales teams. Your target audience is sales managers, so you tell them about how it’ll dramatically improve their ability to crush their quotas by helping their team work more efficiently.

However, if that sales manager needs approval from a higher-up, like a VP of Sales, it’s a good idea to also provide messaging around how your product makes their lives easier too. For example, the VP of Sales might be interested in boosting team efficiency, but they’re definitely invested in improving the number of deals closed per month.

Even if you aren’t hitting the final decision maker, you can still target them in your marketing by providing your leads with enough information to easily sell their supervisor on the idea.

3 – Target Decision Makers Directly

Of course, in an ideal world you could just send your marketing materials right to the people with real clout.

Except you can absolutely do that with Clickback’s Email Lead Generation software. Here’s how.

First, pick up a high-quality list of cold contacts that match the audience you want to reach. If you need to reach C-suite contacts, for example, buy a list of them.

The trick is to purchase your list from a reputable provider. You’re looking for a vendor that doesn’t scrape their lists, aggregates their data, and provides quality contacts. If you’re unsure where to find out, drop us a line! We partner with a number of great providers and we’re happy to refer you.

Once you’ve got your list and you’ve loaded up Clickback, the next step is to upload your list. Unlike most email platforms, Clickback is designed specifically for cold campaigns, and that means it’s built to handle huge lists. Let’s say you’ve got a list of 200,000 C-Suite executives in the right niche for your product.

Once your list is uploaded, the software automatically runs it through a series of rigorous, in-depth hygiene checks, filters and verification processes to clean out bad data like spam traps and honeypots.

Wait, why would there be spam traps and stuff? Even if you get your list from a top-tier provider, email lists decay over time naturally – people leave jobs, emails are repurposed as spam traps, and so on. This is true of every single email list out there, whether it’s cold or opted-in, so it’s important that you get your lists cleaned before using them. With Clickback, you don’t need to worry about that at all.

Next, you should create a landing page for your campaign. A dedicated landing page is a key part of most email lead generation campaigns, allowing you to reinforce and expand your email messaging and coax your contacts towards converting. Designing a good landing page is crucial.

Then you create a well-written campaign and send it off.

Presto – you’ve just sent off a campaign to 200,000-ish decision makers.