How green tech can successfully scale with digital marketing structures

SUMMARY:
Many GreenTech companies are under enormous pressure to grow, but struggle with niche, hard-to-reach target groups, small sales teams, and the high complexity of B2B performance marketing. The article shows how our Greentech Booster helps overcome these hurdles: In just a few weeks, you can create a globally scalable lead generation system that reaches top decision-makers, fills your pipeline, and allows your team to focus on closing deals—completely performance-based and without agency costs. Read the article below or contact us directly.

About Leadvolution

About LeadvolutionWith over 160 advertising setups for fast-growing startups, exciting medium-sized companies, and over 35 global market leaders, Leadvolution is one of the most experienced social media B2B marketing consultancies in Europe. Within 4-8 weeks, we build a globally scalable social media lead generation system for very specific and complex B2B target groups, generating up to 500 leads per month.

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Niche target groups, small teams, high pressure – the biggest obstacles to growth for green tech companies

In GreenTech companies, the decision-making team often feels a lot of pressure to grow, either because the market is hot, investors are pushing, or both. Depending on what stage the company is at, different things are needed for this growth, like:

  • Pilot customers and technology partners
  • Scaling the existing customer base
  • Additional investors
  • Strategic partners, service and sales partners
  • etc.

At the same time, similar challenges often arise:

  • Very specific, possibly international target groups that are difficult to reach outside of trade fairs
  • Small sales teams, often still founder-driven
  • No experience in the team with professional, cross-channel B2B performance marketing
  • Complex products and solutions
  • Few resources and limited budgets

Successfully setting up multichannel growth marketing to ensure a steady stream of exciting leads is so complex that it is often simply not feasible with internal resources, especially if it is to be integrated effectively with the sales team.

On the other hand, there are many providers on the market who specialize in their respective channels, such as email, telephone, Google Ads, LinkedIn outreach, etc., and promise a lot. This raises a number of difficult questions for founders and decision-makers, such as:

  • Which provider should I trust? They all make big promises…
  • What should the end result look like?
  • What results can I realistically expect?
  • What prices are justified for which services?

The solution: 100% success-based, completely outsourced development of digital growth marketing and lead generation.

With over 160 advertising setups for fast-growing startups, exciting medium-sized companies, and over 35 global market leaders, Leadvolution is one of the most experienced social media B2B marketing consultancies in Europe. Within 4-8 weeks, we build a globally scalable social media lead generation system for very specific and complex B2B target groups, generating up to 500 leads per month. Our typical pilot projects range between €20,000 and €40,000.

We also want to use our expertise to do something for the planet, which is why we launched our “Greentech Booster,” which gives two selected companies each quarter the opportunity to scale with us on a purely performance-based basis without any agency costs. For us, this is an opportunity to use our expertise for climate protection and the environment, and for the companies, it is an extremely attractive model for achieving rapid growth without high capital requirements:

  • Implementation by top experts with outstanding experience (including those selected by OMR as leading LinkedIn experts)
  • We are your highly professional marketing team: Completely independent takeover of the LinkedIn channel (optionally also Google Ads) including lead qualification and appointment scheduling for your sales team
  • 0 EUR agency fees – we work 100% on a performance basis based on a sales commission, comparable to what you would pay a sales representative
  • Possible with minimal budgets
  • Full focus of your sales team on closing deals
  • High probability of success (if we don’t believe in a project, we have to turn it down, as we work 100% on a performance basis)
  • No reputation risk from uncontrolled cold calling or annoying LinkedIn contact requests
  • Extremely high visibility for your product in the market and among top decision-makers in your target group
  • Filled pipeline with no effort for your team
  • Fast growth
  • Flexibly applicable for customer, partner, or investor acquisition

“With Leadvolution, we were able to successfully establish global lead and appointment generation for our innovations in energy security.” (Oliver Reetz, Head of Marketing, Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen)

How does such a project work?

Step 1: Developing the message and identifying the target audience

To generate leads on LinkedIn, you need to take your potential customers from “I’m sitting on the bus and bored” to “Oh, that’s an exciting product! I’ll give them my full contact details because I’d like to talk to them” in 30 seconds. To do this successfully, your content needs to answer the following questions:

    • Which of my problems does the product solve for me?
    • What results can I expect?
    • Why should I trust the product?
    • In addition, common customer concerns should be proactively addressed.

In order to implement this efficiently, systematically, and completely in successful messaging, even for very complex, technical products, we have developed the ReThink180™ methodology, which we have now successfully used with over 150 B2B customers. Our customers regularly rate this as one of the modules with the greatest long-term added value after projects. You can find out more in this article.

“Thanks to the ReThink-180™ methodology, everything clicked into place across all areas of the company. And so, in the end, everyone pulled together.” (Andreas Müller, Kampmann GmbH & Co. KG)

Step 2: Production of the necessary content

The text modules developed in messaging must now be used to produce finished content. We have defined eight different standard content formats for this purpose, which are quick, efficient, and, above all, highly likely to achieve the above-mentioned goals, e.g.

  • Testimonials: Testimonials represent the statement of a satisfied customer (as an image or video) on an advertisement. This format builds trust and (when it comes to testimonials from the recipient’s direct competitors) also creates a certain FOMO (“fear of missing out”) effect. You can find more information here https://leadvolution.com/testimonials/.
  • Expert Articles: Expert Articles address a specific customer problem in detail and present the solution provided by your product, including the likely results. You can find more information here: https://leadvolution.com/b2b-expert-articles/
  • Case Studies: Here, we generally use your existing material and simply optimize the messaging.

If you have a larger sales team, you can build even greater trust with a customized setup for each employee. To do this

  1. the content is branded to the respective employee, i.e., they are named as the author and, if applicable, even named with their name and face on the ad visuals
  2. The ads are not designed as company posts, but as posts by the respective employee, who is then advertised to their individual target group (industry, region, target accounts, etc.).

In this way, you ensure that not only your product but also your employee is known and enjoys a certain level of trust BEFORE the sales process has even begun. You can find more details and examples in our article “Social Selling as a Service for Sales Teams.”

Would you like to try out our content approach? We would be happy to implement the content for you in a pilot project.

Step 3: Targeting and campaign setup in LinkedIn

In this step, we set up the desired target groups as templates in LinkedIn Campaign Manager, either with simple LinkedIn criteria or with corresponding lists for account-based targeting. In the second step, the ads are created. This structure is reusable and enables very efficient work in future campaigns.

In addition to generating leads, LinkedIn advertising campaigns also generate very high visibility in the market, often with over 100,000 contact points per campaign, not only with potential customers, but also with partners and investors, for example. Many of our pilot customers are thus achieving truly broad visibility among the top decision-makers in their target group for the first time in their company’s history.

“The campaigns have really boosted us and our sales team and ensured that we have gained attention in the market for the first time.” (Georg Klappert, Head of Operations & Marketing, Hailo digital_hub)

We also often notice that LinkedIn allows us to reach top decision-makers and generate leads that we had previously tried to contact unsuccessfully for years via email and phone.

“With Leadvolution’s social media campaign, we were able to generate many exciting appointments in our specific B2B target group in just six weeks, including with the CEO of a converter who had been on our target list for years.”, (Sebastian Wenderdel, Global Product Account Manager, KHS)

Step 4: Lead qualification and appointment scheduling

Our customers often have a very low level of automation in their lead processing, and their systems, processes, and resources are not yet designed for high lead volumes. An explicit lead qualification process and a dedicated team for this are usually not yet in place. If leads are simply “handed over to the sales team,” the majority of them tend to fall through without any appointments being made. Appointment rates are therefore typically 10-20%. We set up a best practice process in projects and often even provide the agents for making appointments. This enables us to achieve appointment rates of 40-60% and thus 3-6 times more appointments. Details of our approach can be found in our article on the topic of “Lead Qualification.”

Schritt 5: Konvertierung der Social Touchpoints in Leads

LinkedIn ad campaigns also generate a lot of positive feedback in the form of likes, followers, and comments. Every like signals interest, but as a rule, this valuable contact remains untapped, both in organic posts and in paid advertising. Many potentially exciting prospects like your content and would potentially be open to an exchange, but at the moment they consumed the content, they didn’t have enough initiative to actually request more information. Since no one contacts them afterwards, this interest usually fizzles out.

By definition, however, every like is actually a lead – the person has proactively expressed interest (thus establishing a basis for further communication) and can be contacted directly via their LinkedIn profile. In our projects, we use a systematic process known as “social lead qualification,” which typically results in an additional 30% of sales appointments. You can find more information in our article “Social Lead Qualification.”

What results can I expect?

Typical results in pilot projects are

  • 6-digit number of advertising contacts within your target group per month
  • Approx. EUR 150 cost per qualified lead
  • Appointment rate approx. 40-60% (exclusively qualified appointments, i.e. appointments that match your target group specifications)
  • With a media budget of EUR 5,000, this corresponds to approx. 35 leads and thus approx. 15-20 appointments per month

Depending on the size of the target group and expansion to other regions, any scaling is possible within a few weeks.

“By using the Rethink180TM method, we generated over 1,500 leads in our very specific target group in just six months.”, (Christian Gamperl, Director of Marketing, Körpber Pharma)

Would you like to learn more about this model?

We would be happy to tell you more in a personal meeting. However, we can only offer this program to a select few companies. You must meet the following minimum requirements:

  • First successful pilot customers, ready to scale
  • Sales capacity available (min. 1 FTE)
  • Customer lifetime value over €30,000

Get in touch now:


Retargeting: The B2B secret weapon for your content marketing

SUMMARY:
In B2C e-commerce, retargeting is the channel with the highest interaction and conversion rates. We show you how to use it effectively in B2B business.

In B2B, retargeting has rarely been used systematically. Read this article to find out how your B2B company can implement the potential of retargeting to build valuable reach for your content marketing and generate more relevant leads. We would be happy to evaluate your individual challenges in a free consultation with one of our experts. Ready to activate untapped potential? Then read the article below or contact us directly.

About Leadvolution

About LeadvolutionWith over 160 advertising setups for fast-growing startups, exciting medium-sized companies, and over 35 global market leaders, Leadvolution is one of the most experienced social media B2B marketing consultancies in Europe. Within 4-8 weeks, we build a globally scalable social media lead generation system for very specific and complex B2B target groups, generating up to 500 leads per month.

Our servicesOur references

The “B2B paradox”: More than 90% of all B2B companies fail to leverage their most valuable target group

If a sales manager sees that an employee is not following up on a prospect, they get angry. On the other hand, if someone leaves the company website they have just visited, it is considered completely normal that they will never be proactively contacted again. In both cases, however, the aim is essentially to take a prospective customer by the hand and guide them toward a purchase decision. This difference in behavior is paradoxical. Technically speaking, it is now easy to reconnect with website visitors using freely available tools, and when implemented correctly, this poses no data protection issues.

Retargeting (often also referred to as remarketing, usually in connection with Google Ads) has been used successfully in the B2C sector for a long time. The term refers to the digital tagging of users so that they can be reached again at a later point in time. This can happen at various touchpoints, for example when visiting your website, watching one of your videos, or visiting your corporate social media page.

Behind these actions are a wide variety of people – including highly interested prospects who have not yet identified themselves, people who are already in the sales process, and existing customers. Retargeting is the most valuable digital target group for your content marketing – no other will deliver better performance. And not just in marketing, but also in employer branding and partner marketing, for example.

More than 90 percent of all traditional B2B companies have not yet implemented retargeting. These companies are losing valuable prospects every day. Only once retargeting has been implemented can they tag visitors and target them again with campaigns. Would you like to review your current setup? Feel free to schedule a free consultation with one of our experts here.

How exactly does retargeting work from a technical standpoint?

To answer this question, we need to take a closer look—because not all retargeting is the same. There are three different approaches:

  • Website retargeting means reaching website visitors again and must be implemented separately for each advertising platform (LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, etc.). A script provided by the advertising platform is embedded in the website, which sets a cookie when the page is accessed after the user has given their consent via a consent banner or (in the case of Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn) alternatively determines the user’s ID with the respective provider. If the user is recognized at a later point in time based on this cookie or ID, you can deliver relevant advertising campaigns to them. As a result, B2B companies can then reach visitors to their website via many advertising platforms in a wide variety of formats.
  • On-platform retargeting means reaching social media users who have had certain touchpoints with you, such as watching a video, following your page, or opening a form. No confirmation of a cookie notice is required for this, as the responsibility initially lies with the respective network. This means that the recognition rate is 100 percent and target groups can be built up much more quickly. In return, reach is only possible on the same platform – i.e., after someone has viewed a video on LinkedIn, they cannot be reached on Google.
  • Account-based retargeting: Here, company lists, e.g., from your CRM or generated by IP analyzers such as Salesviewer or Leadinfo, are uploaded to LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Based on this data, you can then reach all users registered on LinkedIn who are relevant to you and who work at these companies.

Depending on the platform, retargeting campaigns require a minimum target group size of several hundred to 1,000 people. B2B companies first have to build up these visitor numbers, which is why retargeting can often only be used in a scalable and meaningful way in combination with campaigns to acquire new customers.

B2B companies that have not yet set up retargeting are losing valuable prospects every day. This is because they can only tag visitors and target them again with campaigns once retargeting has been implemented. Would you like to review your current setup? Feel free to contact us for a free expert evaluation.

Retargeting reaches all purchasing decision-makers on the customer side with 50-100x greater reach than any email newsletter.

Many B2B companies lack a workable concept for reaching prospects in a scalable way beyond email and phone calls during the customer journey. Even if they have a well-maintained CRM (which is usually not the case), companies often only know a fraction of the people involved with the customer personally and have their contact details. The other people, who are equally important but unknown to the company, cannot be communicated with at all via traditional channels such as email and telephone.

Retargeting offers the perfect target group for “always on” communication:

  • 50-100x higher reach than any newsletter, without the need for double opt-in
  • Much higher visibility, as the content does not have to be opened first, as is the case with email
  • 100% automated delivery
  • Exciting, multimedia content formats
  • High ad contact frequency of, for example, once a week is no problem – try that with email or, even better, by phone

With retargeting, you can reach the relevant decision-makers at active companies in your CRM (the so-called “buying center”), as they have usually either visited your website or interacted with your social media content. Alternatively, you can even proactively target all relevant job positions/functions at your existing CRM companies via LinkedIn Matched Audiences (account-based targeting), even if they have not visited your website.

Retargeting is therefore the perfect channel for cross-selling and upselling and can generate attractive additional revenue in the service sector. This is particularly true in periods of low investment, when fewer new machines are being purchased. We would be happy to send you a case study in which we used a retargeting approach for a leading mechanical engineering company to generate over €4 million in potential service revenue with a LinkedIn campaign.

Retargeting offers attractive forms of content advertising across many exciting digital channels.

With a small media budget of just a few hundred dollars a month, you can use retargeting campaigns to proactively reach a highly attractive target group that is usually many times larger than your newsletter audience. The unique quality of the target group will significantly increase the relevant reach of your expensively produced content and lead to a noticeable increase in the number of leads.

Depending on the occasion and your goal, you can choose from a wide variety of digital advertising platforms with many attractive content formats, such as:

  • LinkedIn (sponsored posts, newsfeed ads)
  • Facebook / Instagram (sponsored posts, newsfeed ads, chat)
  • Google Display (ads on websites)
  • YouTube (content videos and trailers)
  • etc.

A wide variety of content formats can be selected to achieve different effects, from trust & brand (testimonials, case studies) to education (webinars, expert articles) to lead generation (lead ads).

Retargeting has long been standard practice in terms of data protection

A common question is, “Is this allowed under data protection laws?” The answer is “yes” – provided you formulate your privacy policy clearly and implement the cookie notice (the information window that initially informs users about the use of cookies on websites) in such a way that retargeting scripts are only played after the user has confirmed their acceptance. “On-platform retargeting” and “account-based retargeting” are not an issue anyway, because either the data remains on the respective platform (“on-platform retargeting”) or no personal data is transferred at all, only company names (“account-based retargeting”).
In B2C companies, retargeting has been common practice for several years and is used without further discussion – even though case law is significantly stricter in the B2C sector than in the B2B sector. Paradoxically, concerns about its use are generally much higher in the B2B sector.

Simply request a free consultation with an expert:

We work with you to evaluate individual retargeting target group potential and possible complementary content approaches for lead generation for your company.