By The PhantomBuster TeamLove quality inbound marketing qualified leads but wish you could have a more predictable stream of prospects? Want sales to take more control?
If you said yes, you need a pipeline generation strategy for your lead generation process.
Pipeline generation is about building relevant lead lists or prospects and driving them toward a sale through intelligent data sourcing, enrichment, and targeting.
TL;DR
While lead generation is about attracting anyone who could be a prospect, pipeline generation is a sales prospecting process that focuses only on sourcing quality leads likely to convert, such as those in certain roles or those who take specific online actions.
Pipeline generation is the process sales teams use to source leads and enrich data to find ideal pipeline-generating leads that are highly likely to convert based on your current market positioning. Marketing and sales can work together to undertake lead outreach.
In sales, this involves leveraging intent-based signals for the right target and ethically scraping and enriching data before outreach.
The main challenges in pipeline generation are siloed data, lack of integration between tools, and data enrichment.
As a CRM-led approach, integration with CRM is key to pipeline generation. Most tools offer functionality for teams to collect leads in one place, but the best sales tools also integrate data.
PhantomBuster is a best-in-class example of a tool that allows teams to build lead lists and continuously flow data to a Hubspot CRM, allowing teams to engage with leads in various ways.
Pipeline generation vs lead generation
We know that b2b lead generation works, but what are some nuances between the approaches?
Lead generation focuses on gathering a large number of leads regardless of their buying intent, emphasizing quantity over quality and expecting sales to reach everyone who downloaded content.
It's usually led by separate marketing or sales teams aiming for short-term conversions using tactics like gated content and forms.
In contrast, a pipeline generation strategy concentrates on collecting high-intent leads, nurturing them through the sales process, and emphasizing quality and long-term engagement.
Challenges of successful pipeline generation
Implementing pipeline generation may present challenges. Here's what to watch for.
Siloed data
Sales and marketing teams often use their methods to generate leads or track campaign success, dispersing data across CRMs, external tools, and spreadsheets. This can lead to missed opportunities and outdated information.
You'll want pipeline generation to come into one place, like your CRM.
Lack of proper integration between tools
You'll want to easily consolidate all the data into one source of truth, usually your CRM, but many tools still don't offer proper two-way integrations for complete data.
Discrepancies could make it look like you have more leads than you do, skewing your conversion rates.
Keeping qualified lead data fresh
Enriching leads and ensuring the data is up-to-date is crucial. If a prospect changes jobs and is no longer a qualified lead or part of your target audience, sales and marketing must know promptly.
Inaccurate data can affect how the prospect perceives you and could be embarrassing!
How sales teams can build a successful pipeline generation strategy
As you can see, marketing and sales should work together to move past the old ways of lead generation into a more fruitful way of gathering qualified leads with a winning pipeline generation strategy.
Follow these tips if you want to build an excellent pipeline generation strategy.
Find your target buyer
Determine buyer personas you can target. Then, use specific criteria to narrow down a list of people on LinkedIn that match your profile.
Get the URL of the LinkedIn search and use PhantomBuster's LinkedIn Search to Lead Connection Flow to send connection requests to all the people of those search results.
You can also use Sales Navigator Search to Emails Flow to upload a search URL from Sales Navigator, and PhantomBuster will automatically gather professional email addresses from this URL.
Why implement this?
Without a target audience, you're back in lead generation territory and moving away from sales-qualified leads. Your ideal pipeline-generating leads will be people who already have some awareness of you or are highly likely to convert based on your current market positioning.
Ensure sales and marketing alignment on data with CRM updates
Most CRM systems offer functionality for marketing teams to undertake pipeline generation and collect leads in one place, and lead magnet tools can be easily integrated to support pipeline generation.
High-quality leads don't arrive solely through marketing channels; you'll want your CRM to integrate with your lead prospecting and enrichment tools, too.
PhantomBuster, for example, lets sales continuously flow data to a Hubspot CRM.
Connect to HubSpot, map fields, and all your scraped leads will be synced with your CRM automatically.
As data comes in and is updated, potential prospects should be added and removed from campaigns without any manual work.
Continuously enrich and update leads in your pipeline
Enriched data gives you more personalization opportunities and a better chance at closed deals, and LinkedIn is the best place to get that info!
The profile page is LinkedIn's richest data source for individuals. You can use it to find contact details, customize your outreach campaigns, inform your sales prospecting, or send quality data to your CRM.
A tool like the LinkedIn Profile Scraper makes it easy to take all the data and enrich leads inside your CRM.
Use your CRM as input and LinkedIn as a source of info, and extract data on your leads.
Leverage intent-based signals for an effective pipeline generation strategy
When you have a more targeted approach to generating leads, that means you have better sales-qualified leads.
There are so many intent signals you can use to bolster your outreach.
For example, you can identify new leads based on their interest in a competitor or a complementary product and use this interest as an ice-breaker for your outreach.
Perhaps a prospect attended an event on LinkedIn, followed an influencer in your niche, or made company post comments and likes.
You can use this to build lists ready for your CRM, and move into service mode, offering interactive product demos.
A great tool for this is the LinkedIn Post Commenter and Liker Scraper.
How marketing teams can build a successful pipeline generation strategy
As part of the marketing team you need to know that pipeline generation is no threat, only a smarter way to get sales involved in the buyer's journey, moving those leads through even faster.
Here are the best ways to help take control of pipeline generation while still sourcing marketing qualified leads.
Analyse competitor social media
A great tip for your pipeline generation strategy is to find out how others attract leads through social media.
The LinkedIn Activity Extractor Phantom allows you to provide the URL(s) of the profiles you’re interested in. It then retrieves posts, likes, and comments from these profiles.
You will get the data in a CSV file, ready to analyze.
Pro tip: Use ChatGPT to analyze data.
Entice prospects with rich content marketing efforts
The B2B standard is often a whitepaper or a guide, but what could you offer that is really relevant for your potential customers?
Whether it's a matrix, a dinner reception, or a gift sent to their office, work with your sales team to identify what leads would love.
Market research is one way of developing new sales opportunities and can mean that you start attracting potential customers faster.
Track your lead metrics
Now that sales and marketing are working in harmony, ensure it stays this way!
Regularly review your strategy for your target audience using tools like Google Analytics or HubSpot Analytics. Ensure you track metrics such as lead conversion rates, engagement levels, and ROI.
For instance, if a campaign for a new product feature isn't converting as expected, analyze the data to see if the messaging needs tweaking or if a different channel might be more effective.
Why do you need an efficient pipeline generation strategy?
Marketing and sales alignment: An efficient pipeline generation strategy ensures that sales and marketing teams are aligned and working more efficiently, closing deals.
Revenue growth: A pipeline generation strategy lightens the load for everyone when teams don't waste time on difficult-to-convert audience segments or sales advice. Marketing efforts are optimized.
Consistent revenue: Building an intelligent sales pipeline generation method also helps establish a consistent and dependable revenue stream by eliminating the uncertainties of sporadic lead generation methods.
Enhanced forecasting Developing a pipeline generation strategy means you get rich customer data, which improves sales forecasting. By leveraging historical data, you can identify trends, conversion rates, and areas of the sales process that need enhancement.
A better audience experience: When you know about potential customers through detailed research over a long period, there's no hard sell, just solutions for the problems you know they are suffering from.
Conclusion
There are critical differences between the old ways of lead generation and the new methods of pipeline generation. If you get it right, real revenue growth lies ahead!
With a solid understanding, potential leads can be sourced and served what they need, and they can also experience a positive buying journey from marketing teams' content.
At the same time, sales can address those pain points and build the sales pipeline for everyone's benefit.
Ready to get sales-ready leads and real revenue?
