Small B2B startup teams wearing too many hats with limited time and tight budgets often have the biggest challenge in generating leads for their business. 

In fact, 41% of marketers believe that attracting quality leads is a major stumbling block for them. 

You don’t have the luxury of waiting months to see what works and what doesn’t, do you? You also can’t risk draining your limited resources on the wrong approach. 

Therefore, in this guide, we break down the best B2B lead generation strategies for startups to help you grow smarter and faster.

What Does “B2B Lead Generation” Actually Mean for Startups?

B2B lead generation is often misunderstood with definitions that vary depending on who you ask. At its core, lead generation means identifying and attracting potential business customers (leads) who show interest in your product or service.

But for startups, especially in complex B2B markets, it’s far more than collecting email addresses or filling the sales funnel. 

It's essentially the process of building a sustainable pipeline of high-quality prospects that can eventually convert into paying customers.

Some see lead generation as step one in a simple handoff between marketing and sales: marketing pulls in leads, and sales closes the deal. 

But quite often, the strategy falls short. Why? Because not every lead is a good lead. 

And when sales teams complain about missing revenue goals, leadership thinks the solution is to ramp up lead-gen efforts, which leads to a flood of unqualified leads that waste time and resources. 

Successful startups adopt a more precise, demand-driven approach to B2B lead generation. 

This means two things:

1. Demand generation, which creates awareness and interest in your product through educational content, events, and thought leadership.
2. Demand capture, which focuses on converting active interest into sales opportunities.

Finding the best B2B lead generation tactics to balance this approach is where the real struggle lies.

Lead Generation for Startups: Top 8 Strategies for Successful Leads

Lead generation for startups is not a numbers game. It’s a strategic, customer-focused process. When done right, lead generation fuels predictable growth and transforms your startup into a revenue engine. 

Here are some of the most effective B2B lead generation tips for startups. 

1. Get People In Your Ecosystem

A genuinely helpful offer not only hooks potential leads but also brings them into your ecosystem for the long term. And no, you don’t always need to rely on discounts to attract leads as a quick fix.

Discounts do provide a temporary spike in leads, yes, but they also create a cycle where your customers become reliant on them. Then, they expect bargains that undermine the value of your product. 

In the long run, discounts are more like a drug. Used too often, they lose their effectiveness and leave you stuck in a cycle that’s hard to break free from.

Your offer should communicate the true value of your product/service while also providing a catchy glimpse of what users can expect from it. 

It could be a free trial or a freemium model (one of the most popular B2B lead generation strategies) or access to a limited version of your product for free that allows users to experience its value firsthand. 

2. Cold Email The Right Way

Cold outreach remains one of the most effective B2B lead generation strategies for startups. But to do it successfully at scale, you need a smart strategy, and that’s where scrapers come in. 

You can build cold email lists that target highly relevant businesses by scraping information from forums, directories, and business listings. Once you've compiled this data, you will need to verify it. 

Obtain accurate contact details for key decision-makers at these businesses using lead databases like Apollo or ZoomInfo. Also verify that the email addresses are valid to minimize the risk of wasted outreach. 

After verifying the emails, you’re ready to scale up your cold email outreach. Just set up multiple domains and email accounts to send a higher volume of emails without running into deliverability issues. 

With the right setup, you can easily send out up to 2,000 emails per month. Even if your business operates in a niche market, believe it or not, there are still 200,000 to 500,000 potential leads you can target.

3. Focus On Targeted Channels

Mainstream social platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram have massive audiences. But in most niches, they are oversaturated. 

These platforms are so crowded that getting your message seen by the right people is a real struggle for startups. 

There are three channels where it’s comparatively easier to make your place: LinkedIn, Reddit, and niche communities.

LinkedIn is an absolute powerhouse for B2B lead generation when used correctly. If you’re serious about getting in front of the right decision-makers, invest in LinkedIn Sales Navigator at least for a month. 

With Sales Nav, you can narrow down your search to the most specific audience possible, say, people who have posted in the last 30 days. 

Reddit users value authenticity and advice, so you don’t want to push a hard sell there. 

Instead, provide helpful insights and establish yourself as a knowledgeable resource. The organic engagement is far more valuable than any promotional post could be.

Niche communities on Discord and Slack offer a more direct way to engage with a highly targeted audience. Much like Reddit, these spaces allow for meaningful conversations and genuine interactions. 

4. Feature Your Audience In Your Content

A fairly simple way to involve your audience in your content is to produce content that is highly relevant to your ideal customer and their business. 

Then, reach out to your audience with a genuine email request asking for their input or expert opinion on the topic at hand. But here's the key: this is not a sales pitch. 

Right now, you don’t want to sell anything but to offer them the opportunity to be featured as an expert in your content. 

In exchange for their insights, you'll provide a brand mention and a backlink to their business in the article. It's a win-win for both, your article becomes more authoritative, and they get exposure to your startup.

You could do the same through podcasts. You don’t pitch your product during the conversation. Rather, you interview industry experts and subtly introduce it naturally. 

Your guests will likely share the content with their networks which will give you even more exposure.

5. Show Up At Trade Shows And Tech Conferences

Attending trade shows and tech conferences is a no-brainer for B2B startup lead generation. You can’t expect connections to magically happen if you don’t show up. 

Many of the best connections are made outside the conference halls, often in places where people’s guards are down, such as the hotel bar, breakfast areas, or coffee/drink lines. 

Get into the coffee line not because you need caffeine but because it’s a prime spot to chat with fellow attendees one-on-one.

Another key move at conferences is to befriend veteran salespeople who have attended the conference for years. 

Ask them for advice. Most experienced sales reps love giving tips and are usually more than happy to help someone who’s earnest about learning the ropes. 

To maximize your efforts, plan ahead. Create a list of people you want to meet and gather their LinkedIn photos so you can easily recognize them. 

6. Use Your Nps To Get Referrals

A lot of business comes from simply asking for referrals from customers who already value your service.

And we’re especially talking about those who have shown genuine satisfaction and rated you highly on NPS (Net Promoter Score). 

It is primarily a gauge of customer satisfaction, but you can turn it into a referral tool.

Look at your NPS scores and focus on customers who’ve rated you a 9 or 10. 

These are the people who are most likely to advocate for your product. If someone’s happy with your service, they’ll often be more than willing to pass it along to their network. So why not ask?

Most people, by nature, genuinely want to help others. If you’ve established a good relationship with your customer, they’ll often be more than willing to connect you to their network. 

7. Video Content Is The Way To Go

Remember when Oppenheimer premiered in June 2023 and the mix of opinions that followed after? 

A lot of people couldn’t sit through it, but others, myself included, were completely hooked. 

The same goes for video content, especially webinars. If the content resonates, people will stick with it, no matter how long it is.

Video content is an opportunity to humanize your brand. Get in front of the camera and show people the face behind the product. 

If you’re running a startup, your product is likely complex or new. Use webinars as a thought-leadership platform to provide insights into industry challenges and explain your strategies to solve them. 

Once the webinar is over, send out the recording, follow up with those who couldn’t attend, and nurture the leads who engage with your content. 

You can even repurpose parts of your webinar into shorter video clips or blog posts to spread your message even further.

FAQs

How do startups generate leads?

Startups generate leads in two ways: 

1. They actively reach out to potential clients via cold email 

2. Potential leads find the startup through a piece of content on the internet. 

Is lead generation a SEO?

SEO is one component of a well-rounded lead generation strategy. Engaging content when optimized for the right audience can hook a lot of potential new clients, though it's a long-term game. 

How do I start generating leads?

You can start generating leads through active outreach while also investing a portion of your time into creating content that will show your clients the value of your product. 

What is the fastest way to generate leads?

The fastest way to generate leads is targeted, direct outreach. The more people you reach out to with your offer, the more chances you have of converting some of them into paying customers. 

Generate Leads Using Opps AI!

Opps AI makes lead generation for startups smarter and faster by combining AI-driven insights with a massive data marketplace. 

You get access to high-quality contact information of leads you can potentially reach out to. 

Opps AI also offers Valet, which is an AI assistant that pulls out exactly what you need, that is, profiles that match your ideal customer avatar, from a database of 174M+ records. 

Once you have the right data, you can easily launch email sequences or LinkedIn campaigns from within the platform. 

Valet AI can also be used for personalized messaging during your outreach efforts. 

Try Opps AI today!