It’s the conversation I have more often than any other. A managing director tells me their agency reports plenty of leads every month, and in the same breath says the sales team won’t touch most of them. ‘We get leads,’ they say. ‘They’re just rubbish.’ Most B2B lead generation advice answers that with another list of tactics. I’d rather start somewhere else.
Usually nobody has done anything wrong on purpose. The agency was asked for leads and delivered leads. The sales team was asked to close deals and can’t close the ones they’re given. It happens one sensible decision at a time, and nobody stops to check the whole picture.
So here’s the point, early: B2B lead generation is about getting the right businesses to ask you for a conversation. Volume isn’t the goal. Ten enquiries from companies that can afford you and need what you do are worth more than a hundred that can’t.
This guide covers how many qualified leads you actually need, how to tell a good one from a time-waster, and how to fix your tracking so you know what’s working and what isn’t, before you spend another pound.
What B2B lead generation actually means
Business to business lead generation is everything you do to get suitable companies to put their hand up and enquire. That might be a form, a phone call, an email or a request for a meeting.
You’ll also see it called b2b lead gen, B2B lead marketing or b2b marketing lead generation. They’re the same thing under different names.
The distinction that matters is between a lead and a qualified lead:
- A lead is anyone who gets in touch.
- A qualified lead is someone with the need, the budget and the authority to buy from you.
In one line: B2B lead generation is the work of getting the right businesses to enquire about what you sell, judged by how many of those enquiries become qualified leads and then sales, not by how many enquiries you get.
Why B2B is different from selling to consumers
If you’ve read lead generation advice written for online shops, some of it won’t fit. B2B works differently in a few ways.
Fewer buyers, bigger deals. One good client can be worth more than hundreds of small sales. Missing a single right-fit enquiry costs far more than missing a single shopper.
Longer decisions, more people. The finance director, someone in operations and the person who’ll actually use what you sell may all have a say. That takes weeks or months.
Buyers research quietly. Most will look at your website, your reviews and your case studies before they ever contact you. Those pages are doing sales work whether you planned it or not.
What this means in practice: judge your marketing on enquiries that turn into sales, not on clicks or form fills.
Start with the numbers: how many leads do you actually need?
Most firms I speak to have never done this sum. Without it, there’s no way to tell whether the marketing is working. Without a target, any number of leads is either fine or a disaster depending on who you ask.
Here’s how I’d work it out. These figures are an illustrative example, not a benchmark. Swap in your own.
- Revenue target: you want £200,000 of new business this year.
- Client value: your average client is worth £20,000, so you need 10 new clients.
- Close rate: you win 1 in 4 qualified leads, so you need 40 qualified leads.
- Qualification rate: 1 in 3 enquiries turns out to be qualified, so you need 120 enquiries a year. That’s 10 a month.
- Budget: if a qualified lead costs you £250, forty of them is £10,000. Set that against the £200,000 they should bring in.
Now you have something to measure against. If you’re getting 30 enquiries a month and still missing your target, the problem isn’t volume. If you’re getting four, it might be.
If you’re also wondering what the overall budget should be, I’ve written about how much a £5m business should spend on marketing.
Agree what a qualified lead looks like before you buy any more
Get marketing and sales in the same room for an hour. Write down three to five things a good lead has. For example:
- the sector they’re in
- company size (turnover or headcount)
- location, if it matters
- the problem they mention when they enquire
- a budget that fits what you charge
Then list what a time-waster looks like: students, job seekers, competitors fishing for prices, suppliers trying to sell to you, companies too small to afford you.
Use both lists to shape your form questions, your ad wording and your landing pages, so the wrong people filter themselves out before they ever reach your sales team. Mentioning a starting price, or asking for company size on the form, does a lot of quiet sorting.
The trade-off: tighter forms mean fewer enquiries, but better ones. For most B2B firms that’s the right trade. Your sales team’s time is expensive, and every poor lead uses some of it.
Fix the tracking first, or you’re guessing
Conversion tracking means telling Google Ads, your analytics and your CRM (the system where you keep your customer records) when someone enquires, so you can see which activity brought them in.
In most accounts I look at, something is wrong. The common problems:
- page views being counted as leads
- the same form being counted twice
- phone calls not tracked at all
- no link between an enquiry and whether it became a sale
That last one matters most in B2B. The fix is called offline conversion import. In plain words, you send ‘this lead became a customer’ back to Google Ads from your CRM, so Google learns which clicks lead to sales rather than which clicks lead to form fills. It then gets better at finding more of the right people.
If your Google Ads report looks wonderful but your sales are flat, I’d check the tracking before anything else. There’s more on why conversion tracking is broken in most accounts I audit, and if you’d like to check your own account, try these nine Google Ads checks for business owners.
The main B2B lead generation channels, and when each one makes sense
There’s no single best channel. It depends on how people look for what you sell and how long they take to decide.
Google Ads search. This catches people who are already looking for what you do. It’s good for fast, measurable enquiries, though costs rise in competitive sectors. One thing to watch: Performance Max, a campaign type where Google decides where your ads appear across its search, YouTube, display and other networks. It can work, but if it’s left unchecked in a B2B account it can spend your budget on consumer traffic. Google Ads is my specialism and I’m a Google Ads certified specialist, so you’ll find more in my Google Ads management and Fractional CMO services.
SEO and helpful content. Slower to build, but it earns trust with buyers who research for weeks before they get in touch.
LinkedIn, organic and paid. You can target precisely by job title and company size, which is useful. Paid clicks are often expensive, so test with a small budget before committing. I’ll be honest that my hands-on depth is in Google Ads rather than LinkedIn Ads, so I treat LinkedIn as one part of the plan rather than the centre of it.
Email and nurturing. This keeps you in front of people who aren’t ready yet, which in a long buying cycle is most of them.
Referrals, partners and existing clients. Often the cheapest qualified leads you’ll get. Most firms don’t ask for them systematically.
Events and outbound. These work well in some sectors. Be honest about the time they take, including the time of whoever is doing the follow-up.
| Channel | Speed | Typical cost level | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads search | Fast | Medium to high, depending on sector | Buyers already searching for what you do |
| SEO and content | Slow | Mostly time | Long buying cycles, building trust |
| LinkedIn (paid) | Fast | Often high per click | Reaching specific job titles and company sizes |
| LinkedIn (organic) | Slow | Mostly time | Staying visible to your network |
| Email and nurturing | Medium | Low | People not ready to buy yet |
| Referrals and partners | Medium | Low | Warm, well-matched introductions |
| Events and outbound | Medium | Time-heavy | Sectors where relationships drive buying |
B2B lead gen ideas worth trying
A practical list rather than a long one.
- Rewrite your contact form. Add the two or three questions that sort good leads from bad, such as company size and what they need help with.
- Turn your best results into short case studies. One page each: the problem, what you did, the result in real numbers.
- Make one genuinely useful guide or calculator. Something your buyers would want to keep, rather than ten thin blog posts.
- Add a ‘book a call’ option. Some people would rather pick a time than fill in a form.
- Run Google Ads on a small set of high-intent searches. Exclude consumer and job-seeker terms such as ‘jobs’, ‘salary’, ‘course’ and ‘free’.
- Ask for a referral after every successful project. Put it in the project close-out so it happens every time.
- Follow up every enquiry within the working day. This is a sales habit rather than a marketing tactic, but it decides whether all the marketing pays off.
Common B2B lead generation mistakes
None of these are anyone’s fault as such. They build up over time.
- Judging success on cost per lead without checking which leads became sales. A cheap lead that never buys is the most expensive kind.
- Lots of disconnected activity with nobody owning the whole picture. The SEO agency, the ads freelancer and the in-house marketer each see their own piece. There’s more on turning disconnected marketing into joined-up marketing.
- Sending paid traffic to the homepage instead of a page that answers what the person searched for.
- Letting Google Ads broaden its targeting until the budget goes on searches that have nothing to do with you.
- No agreed handover between marketing and sales, so enquiries sit in an inbox and go cold.
What it looks like when it’s joined up
Rucklidge Law brought me in as their Fractional CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), meaning part-time senior marketing help that owns the strategy and the budget. They now get 30–50 qualified leads a month. You can read how Rucklidge Law reached 30–50 qualified leads a month.
The principle of fixing tracking first applies outside B2B too. The Royal Armouries shop is a retail client rather than a B2B one, but getting the measurement right was where the work started, and they’ve since seen +141% Google Ads return on ad spend and +246% Meta return on ad spend, year on year. Return on ad spend simply means how much revenue comes back for every pound spent on ads. The details are in the Royal Armouries Google Ads case study.
Should you do this in-house, use an agency or get part-time senior help?
In-house works well if you have a capable marketer who needs direction. Training and mentoring can make a big difference here.
An agency is good at delivering a defined channel, such as running your Google Ads or your SEO. Agencies are usually less suited to owning the whole strategy across every channel.
A Fractional CMO is one senior person who owns strategy, budget and measurement part-time, at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire. My prices start from £1,000 per month. If you’re curious how it works in practice, here’s what the first 90 days with a Fractional CMO look like.
There’s no single right answer. It depends on who you already have. I’ve written more on Fractional CMO or marketing agency: which you need, and you’re welcome to disagree with me.
What to do this week
- Work out how many new clients you need this year, and what that means in qualified leads.
- Write down what a qualified lead looks like, with sales in the room.
- Check your conversion tracking: submit a test enquiry and see where it shows up.
- Pull last quarter’s enquiries and mark each one good, poor or unknown. Then see where the good ones came from.
- Stop or pause one activity that isn’t producing qualified leads.
Questions people ask about B2B lead generation
What is B2B lead generation?
It’s everything you do to get suitable businesses to enquire about what you sell, through a form, call, email or meeting request.
Is B2B lead gen the same as B2B lead marketing?
Yes. B2B lead gen, B2B lead marketing and business to business lead generation all describe the same work.
What’s the difference between a lead and a qualified lead?
A lead is anyone who gets in touch. A qualified lead has the need, the budget and the authority to buy from you.
How many leads does my business actually need?
Work back from your revenue target: divide it by your average client value to get clients needed, then by your close rate to get qualified leads, then by your qualification rate to get total enquiries.
How much should a B2B lead cost, and how do I work it out?
There’s no universal figure. Work out what a new client is worth to you and how many qualified leads it takes to win one. That tells you what you can afford to pay per qualified lead and still make money.
Which channels work best for business-to-business lead generation?
It depends on how your buyers search and decide. Google Ads suits people already looking; SEO and content suit long research cycles; referrals are often the cheapest qualified leads.
Does Google Ads work for B2B?
It can work well, provided the tracking is right, the searches are tightly chosen and consumer or job-seeker searches are excluded. Offline conversion import helps Google find people who become customers rather than people who fill in forms.
Is LinkedIn worth paying for in B2B?
Sometimes. The targeting by job title and company size is useful, but clicks are often expensive. Test with a small budget and judge it on qualified leads, not clicks.
What are some practical B2B lead gen ideas I can try this month?
Tighten your contact form, write one short case study with real numbers, add a ‘book a call’ option and set up a referral ask at the end of every project.
Why are there plenty of leads but no sales?
Usually because nobody has agreed what a qualified lead looks like, the marketing is judged on volume, or enquiries aren’t followed up quickly enough.
How do I know which marketing is actually bringing in enquiries?
Set up conversion tracking properly, include phone calls, and connect enquiries to sales in your CRM. Then submit a test enquiry to check it all records correctly.
Should I hire in-house, use an agency or bring in a Fractional CMO for lead generation?
It depends on who you already have. An agency suits a defined channel; a Fractional CMO suits businesses that need one senior person to own the strategy, budget and measurement.
A free consultation, no pressure
If you’d like a second opinion, book a free consultation. Talk me through what you’re doing for lead generation now, and I’ll tell you plainly what I’d keep, what I’d change and what I’d stop. If it turns out you’re doing fine, I’ll tell you that too.
You can also email me at hello@marketingbycaroline.co.uk.