While it’s crucial for driving sales, lead generation remains a specialized and challenging task. After all, a lot of sales teams struggle with cold outreach—who answers cold calls anymore, am I right?

 

 

You’re not alone. Over half of marketers say that lead generation is the most challenging part of their job. 

 

 

That’s why most organizations outsource their needs to specialized lead generation companies. But there’s always the tradeoff of extra costs in exchange for good quality leads to deal with. 

 

 

And, of course, your in-house marketers can do everything instead. But can they handle the added task?

 

 

There’s a middle ground to all this though. And that’s going hybrid. 

 

 

You can customize your subscription package with the right lead generation company and take over everything else. This way, you only include the services you need and you keep your costs under control.

 

 

To get you started, here are the standard lead generation services, plus some recommendations on which to outsource and which to keep in house. 

 

 

4 Key Tasks of B2B Lead Generation

 

We’ve listed all the common B2B lead generation tasks you typically have to do. Go through each task and see our suggestions on whether to keep them in house or outsource them to an agency.

 

 

1. Content Marketing: Outsource

 

Content marketing is creating written materials for various media, including website blogs, product reviews, and social media captions. It’s often considered the foundation of lead generation, as these materials are the first thing your audiences see. 

 

 

Unless you have your own copywriter, social media manager, and graphic designer, it’s better to outsource this part of lead generation. While communicating sounds easy in the B2B sector, getting the words just right and capturing your company’s tone involve attention and detail and shouldn’t be skipped—regardless of your company’s niche.

 

 

You also have to ensure that your materials are search engine optimized (SEO), so your content pops up first in search engines like Google. This task requires an expertise your in-house marketing likely doesn’t have, where your content should be well-written and address current search trends.

 

 

There’s also the issue of planning your content creation strategy and managing the process from start to finish, which requires time from marketing managers. All in all, it’s usually easier to work with a content marketing team that will do all of this for you, from start to finish, rather than having to build all these systems yourself from scratch.

 

 

2. Appointment Scheduling: In House

 

A critical factor in a business’s lead generation success is nurturing its own leads. Despite that, only 22% of B2B companies keep in touch with their prospects to guide them through the sales funnel to conversion.

 

 

One of the most important steps in that process is actually getting them on the phone with one of yours sales reps.

 

 

A lot of companies outsource appointment scheduling to dedicated call centers. 

 

 

But instead of outsourcing lead nurturing to an agency, we suggest that you do it in house. It’ll require more workload for your sales team, where they’ll have to manage phone calls and emails. But your team will know more about your business than any other agency can, which will help them guide prospects into a sales call. 

 

 

Moreover, you can do appointment scheduling according to your team’s availability and terms using simple tools like Calendly. This part of the process can be easily baked into your other lead nurturing communications.

 

 

3. Database Marketing: Outsource

 

Database marketing is the systematic collection and processing of consumer data. This lead generation process requires a dedicated team to analyze, sort, and present raw data in an understandable format.

 

 

The term initially referred to the collection of new consumer data to sell to client companies. But when the volume of existing data expanded to meet specific client needs, the term grew a new meaning: making already-available information valuable to the target client.

 

 

For most startups, finding qualified leads can leave your teams stumped, which makes entrusting lead generation to a specialist a huge relief. Lead gen companies come armed with the specialized knowledge, tools and database to sort and draw from the relevant market segments.

 

 

With a reliable agency, you’ll have a shortlist of qualified, potential B2B clients. From there, you only need to nurture them with your in-house team. You’ll also have a clear direction to pursue, where you’ll have access to targeted market segments that improve your chances of successful lead conversions.

 

 

4. B2B Contact Database Building: Hybrid

 

Database building is the next logical step after developing your customer base. This aspect is unlike database marketing, which focuses on finding and curating your market from generalized consumer data. Instead, database building focuses on sorting, nurturing, and improving your leads for future reference.

 

 

Apart from name and contact details, a comprehensive B2B contact database contains extra business details like geographic location, performance or transaction history, industry, and company size. This information is crucial for lead generation—the last thing you want to do is launch a campaign only to realize that you’ve targeted incorrectly.

 

 

You have the option to outsource this task, especially if you’re looking to build a list of thousands of contacts. But doing it in house also has its perks, since many companies have built their own customer database from their years in the industry or through the use of modern tools. If you’re one of them, then you’re free to let your internal teams take over.

 

 

Apart from the cost considerations, it’s crucial to remember that proper list building requires IT capabilities, especially if you plan to integrate it with an ERP or a CRM platform. Using an agency, especially for high-volume lead gen, could be more cost effective in this sense, because they have economies of scale which reduce the price of the tools they use.

 

 

Find a Reliable Lead Generation Partner Today

 

While there’s certainly no one-size-fits-all solution in setting up your B2B lead generation system, this guide leaves you with a good place to find the best solution for your organization. See which of the suggestions above are aligned with your current capabilities and needs, and you’ll be on your way.

 

 

Whether you decide to do everything yourself or outsource certain tasks, finding a lead generation agency that meets your needs and covers your weaknesses is always a good idea.

 

 

And if you’re looking for one… Well, we’ve got you covered.

 

 

ScaleUpSales is an industry leader with the experience and skill set to provide the right solutions for your B2B company. Contact us today, and let’s work out a lead-generation strategy for you.