What have been the most successful ways to generate B2B leads? Considering that the company is small, does not have strong brand positioning, and aims to generate a high volume of qualified leads?
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Short-term: Ads. Google is cheap but also rather un-segmented. LinkedIn for my company works surprisingly well, still.
Long-term: content. It takes time to position your content and get it to perform organically. However, you don't want to pay for your leads forever but eventually want to establish a powerful organic-inbound motion.
Content. Highly targeted to your ICP that you then promote across various channels. Focus not on value propositions or things like that but establishing your brand as a thought leader and creative solution architect. When promoting the content LinkedIn is obviously a great place to start as you can hyper-dial in an audience, but it is expensive from a CPM perspective, so consider other options like Reddit or even something more specific to your buyer (could be display advertising on trade publications or developer networks, etc.). Depending on your product, webinars and educational series are also great ways to generate content and leads, so you continue to get the most mileage possible out of your efforts. Happy to share more if this is helpful.
In early stage startup it is all about founder-led selling and utilizing your own or early investors' network. As a former VC, one of the 1000 dimensions of a startup that I always looked at was how deep does the founding team network go into the industry or segment they aim to start their wedge in the market. Further more, many startups make the mistake to hire sales people too early. Until you have figured out the basic sales motion, you really need more of a trial-and-error, hunter-style business development person / co-founder material to go and figure out the GTM. Sales can do little until you have an ICP defined, a sales story that holds, and a product that can pass at least a PoC. Although there are always exceptions...