Online sales strategy in a changing marketplace

In a digital-first marketplace, relying only on referrals, trade shows, and word of mouth is no longer enough to fill a consistent sales pipeline. Buyers now do the majority of their research online before they ever engage with sales, which means your ability to show up in the right places online directly affects whether you get noticed—or overlooked.

As a result, businesses are turning to proven online lead generation strategies that can help B2B suppliers build visibility, credibility, and a repeatable flow of qualified opportunities. Learn about these methods and why joining a trusted B2B buyer network is one of the most effective ways to generate leads online and scale growth.

What is online lead generation?

In simple terms, online lead generation is the process of attracting and capturing interest from potential buyers through digital channels. It’s the art and science of creating enough visibility, credibility, and engagement online that the right prospects raise their hands and say, “I want to know more.”

In the B2B world, a “lead” usually means a business contact who has expressed interest in your product or service—anything from downloading a brochure, subscribing to a newsletter, or requesting a quote. The goal isn’t just to collect names, though. It’s to generate a repeatable stream of qualified prospects who are genuinely in-market and ready to engage with your sales team.

For many companies, this process has shifted dramatically over the past decade. Where leads used to be developed mostly through word of mouth, trade shows, print ads, and referrals, today’s buyers do their homework online. They research suppliers, compare offerings, and often make a shortlist before you ever have a chance to speak to them. That means your ability to show up online in the right places and with the right message directly affects whether you even make it onto their radar.

Done well, online B2B lead generation techniques are scalable, measurable, and efficient. They enable businesses to move away from unpredictable, one-off referrals and toward building a steady pipeline of new opportunities. And because you can track and analyze digital interactions, you can continuously refine your efforts for better results.

Who needs online lead generation—and why?

Who needs online lead generation? The short answer: nearly every B2B e-commerce company that wants to grow. Whether you’re a midsized manufacturer looking to expand into new markets, a professional services firm competing for enterprise contracts, or a distributor eager to win more share in your category, it’s now a competitive necessity.

For B2B companies, especially, online lead generation opens doors that may have been closed before. Here’s why:

• Buyers expect to find you online. Research shows that more than 70% of the buyer’s journey happens digitally before sales ever gets involved. If your company doesn’t have a strong online presence, you’re invisible during most of the decision-making process and won’t make their shortlist.
• Traditional methods are costly, location-specific, and don’t scale. Referrals are powerful, but they’re sporadic and can’t reliably deliver a consistent volume of leads. Trade shows and events are expensive, geographically localized, and often yield only short-lived spikes in activity. Online sales strategies, by contrast, create repeatable systems that globally scale with your business.
• Competition is fierce. In nearly every industry, buyers have more options than ever. That makes it essential to differentiate your business and highlight your credibility, expertise, and unique value. Digital channels give you the stage to do it.
• Digital tactics are measurable. Unlike traditional networking, online lead generation provides real data. You can see what’s working, double-down on effective tactics, and stop wasting money on those that aren’t giving you the most bang for the buck.

Nine proven online lead generation strategies for B2B

There are numerous digital tactics you could try for online lead generation, but not all of them deliver consistent results. Below are nine proven strategies that help B2B businesses reliably generate qualified leads online.

1. Optimize your digital presence

Think of your digital presence as your storefront. If buyers can’t find you online, or if what they find is incomplete or outdated, you’ll miss out on opportunities right out of the gate. Your website and profiles are often the first impression you make.

Start with your website. Make sure it clearly states what you do, who you serve, and how to contact you. Incorporate relevant keywords into your site copy and metadata so search engines can index your pages effectively. Keep product or service information current, and don’t forget to showcase customer success stories or testimonials.

Beyond your website, optimize every digital listing where your company appears. This includes business directories, LinkedIn, and supplier networks. For example, SAP Business Network allows you to create a rich company profile that buyers can filter by geography, certifications, and industry criteria. Suppliers who complete and verify their profiles gain a visibility boost in search results, making it easier for buyers to discover them.

2. Create high-value content marketing

Content is one of the most reliable ways to attract, educate, and nurture potential buyers. By producing blogs, brochures, case studies, or videos that address your customers’ challenges, you establish yourself as a trusted authority.

Effective content marketing isn’t about volume; it’s about relevance. Focus on creating pieces that answer the real questions your buyers are asking. Use industry data, share best practices, and provide insights that help buyers do their jobs better. Eventually, this builds credibility and creates an inbound funnel where leads come to you after engaging with your content, rather than you reaching out to them with outbound marketing efforts.

3. Run targeted e-mail campaigns

E-mail marketing remains one of the highest return on investment (ROI) channels in B2B, but the keys to success are segmentation and personalization. Instead of blasting the same message to your entire list, create tailored campaigns for specific buyer groups, industries, or regions.

Nurture sequences—a series of e-mails that guide leads through the awareness, consideration, and decision stages—are especially effective. The more value you provide at each step, the more likely buyers are to respond when your sales team reaches out.

With any e-mail campaign, be sure to pay strict attention to local data privacy legislation such as GDPR. Failure to adhere to data privacy compliance is a showstopper for your campaign, reflects poorly on your brand, and can be financially penalized in many countries.

4. Join a B2B buyer network

Perhaps the most powerful strategy for consistent online lead generation is to join a platform where buyers are already searching for new suppliers. Digital visibility is especially powerful because it opens doors to buyers outside your immediate network without the time, effort, and expense of finding and wooing them.

SAP Business Network is the world’s largest B2B network, where more than $6 trillion USD in global commerce flows annually. Buyers search supplier profiles daily, actively posting sourcing opportunities worth $90 billion in 2024. It effectively flips the script; instead of chasing leads, buyers discover you—serious enterprise buyers who are ready to transact.

With the promote subscription upgrade, you can go a step further with a verified profile, product catalog, and certifications, as well as AI-enhanced automation and analytics that help you progressively optimize your presence. An IDC study, “The Business Value of SAP Business Network—for Selling Organizations,” found that businesses selling with SAP Business Network have 54% more efficient sales administration, can send an invoice 50% faster, and achieved a 416% three-year return on investment.¹

5. Engage on social media and digital communities

LinkedIn is the cornerstone of B2B social engagement, but industry forums and niche communities can also be goldmines for lead generation. Share insights, comment on trends, and participate in discussions where your target audience spends time.

The goal isn’t just to broadcast your content but to interact authentically. In the long run, showcasing your expertise and engaging with prospects builds a reputation as a trusted voice in your space.

6. Use paid media to boost reach

Sometimes, reaching new audiences requires a paid boost. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Google or sponsored posts on LinkedIn allow you to target decision-makers with precision.

For example, you can set parameters based on job title, industry, company size, or region to ensure your message lands in front of the right people. Retargeting campaigns, which re-engage visitors who have already interacted with your website, are also highly effective in nudging prospects back into the sales journey.

7. Harness your data and deploy analytics

Without measurement, lead generation is guesswork. Analytics tools help you track traffic, conversions, and campaign ROI. By understanding where your best leads come from, you can focus efforts on the most effective channels.

Platforms like SAP Business Network provide built-in insights into profile views, catalog performance, and lead-response benchmarks. These metrics allow suppliers to refine their digital presence and continuously improve lead-generation results.

8. Build strategic partnerships

Co-marketing with complementary businesses can extend your reach to new audiences. For example, a logistics company and a packaging supplier might host a joint webinar to showcase an end-to-end solution.

Partnerships not only generate leads but also position your company as part of a broader ecosystem, which can increase trust and credibility.

9. Leverage AI for faster, smarter responses

Buyers expect timely, professional responses to their inquiries. Generative AI tools can help suppliers craft polished responses quickly and suggest ways to improve their profiles and listings.

With SAP Business Network’s add-on promote subscription, for example, AI enriches catalog descriptions and enhances responses to buyer postings, increasing your chances of making the shortlist.

Tools and technology for online lead generation

While strategy sets the direction, technology is what makes execution for online lead generation possible. Yet many B2B companies still struggle with disconnected or outdated tools, such as legacy CRMs that don’t sync with marketing platforms or analytics scattered across systems that don’t talk to each other. These gaps create manual work, limit visibility, and slow the ability to act on new opportunities.

Effective sales lead generation requires the right technology toolkit:

• Integrated CRM systems to track leads and manage engagement
• Intelligent marketing automation to run e-mail campaigns and lead-nurturing workflows at scale
• SEO and analytics tools to optimize web visibility and performance
• Social media scheduling tools to maintain a consistent presence
• B2B buyer network platforms that can integrate directly with ERP and procurement systems so buyers can discover, shortlist, and transact with you seamlessly

Common pitfalls in online lead generation

Many companies dive into digital sales lead generation headfirst but fall into some common traps that undermine their efforts.

Beware of making missteps such as:

Avoiding these pitfalls is naturally easier when you’re plugged into a buyer network that already aggregates buyers and streamlines discovery, such as SAP Business Network. Profiles are standardized, activity can be measured, and the buyers who find you are already qualified and motivated.

How to measure success in online lead generation

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. A common mistake in online lead generation is pursuing activities without understanding their real impact on revenue. The right metrics help you separate vanity numbers like website clicks from true business outcomes like pipeline contribution.

Here are six key metrics every supplier should track:

1. Revenue and ROI: The most important metric, of course, is revenue. Calculate ROI by comparing revenue generated from online channels with the cost of acquiring those leads. High ROI validates that your sales lead generation efforts are working.

2. Lead volume and quality:  How many new contacts are you capturing, and are they the right ones? Tracking raw numbers of leads is helpful but lead quality matters more. Define what a “qualified lead” means for your business

3. Conversion rates: At each stage of the sales journey, determine how many prospects are moving forward. Useful benchmarks and some related examples include:

• Visitor-to-lead conversion (a website visitor fills out a form)
• Lead-to-opportunity conversion (sales-qualified leads that progress to pipeline)
• Opportunity-to-deal conversion (closed-won sales)

Healthy conversion rates signal that your sales lead generation techniques are targeting the right audience.

4. Cost per lead (CPL): Divide your total spend on campaigns by the number of qualified leads generated. CPL helps you identify which lead generation techniques deliver the best return, and which ones are a drag on your budget.

5. Pipeline contribution: Ultimately, the success of your online sales strategy isn’t just leads for marketing dashboards; it’s how much pipeline those leads generate. Measure the percentage of total pipeline sourced from online channels and track its growth quarter over quarter.

6. Engagement analytics: Beyond financial metrics, engagement data can show how well your digital presence resonates with buyers. Look at website visits, profile views on platforms like SAP Business Network, catalog searches, time on page, and response rates.

While traffic alone doesn’t equal revenue, it’s a leading indicator of awareness. If your numbers are growing steadily, your online sales strategy is putting you in front of more potential buyers. If traffic is flat or declining, it may be time to revisit your SEO, content, or promotional tactics to ensure prospects can discover you.

Measuring success with SAP Business Network

For suppliers on SAP Business Network, many of these insights are built-in. With the add-on promote subscription, you can track:

• Profile views by industry and geography
• Catalog performance (top- and under-performing products)
• Lead-response benchmarks compared to peers

It becomes easier to see not just whether you’re generating leads, but whether those leads are the right ones—and how effectively you’re converting them. These tools make measuring success part of your everyday workflow, and over time, analytics can help you fine-tune your online lead generation industry presence for sustained growth.

Next steps—turning strategy into growth

Online lead generation isn’t about chasing every shiny tactic. It’s about building a mix of strategies that reinforce each other—from optimizing your website and running targeted campaigns to joining platforms where buyers are already searching for suppliers like you.

Generating a steady pipeline of highly qualified B2B leads starts by ensuring your digital presence is complete and credible. Experiment with content, e-mail, and paid tactics to see what resonates with your audience. Then, amplify your reach by joining a trusted B2B buyer network and let growth come to you by being where buyers buy.