Referral Marketing: What it is and How to Use it

The food that companies stock in their kitchens and the signs displayed on their office buildings are also examples of products and services purchased from suppliers. A company uses B2B suppliers to procure products and services, such as the raw materials they need for production, office space, office furniture, computer hardware and software. Every business needs to purchase products and services from other businesses to launch, operate and grow. Large purchases might involve an RFP, in which the buyer invites prospective vendors to submit proposals detailing their products, contractual terms of service and pricing. In a B2B transaction, one business, often referred to as a vendor, sells products or services to another business. In fact, the B2B market includes companies that sell software for building B2B websites, including tools, templates, databases, methodologies and transaction software.

If you’re a SaaS company, you may want to partner with a tool that fills a gap in your offering and offer customers a discount for signing up for both platforms. Consider who in your field may be looking for referrals and create a referral marketing program that benefits both parties. If you’re running a service-based business, consider offering timed service discounts. If your business sells products, you could start by offering incentives like discounts to customers who refer you to their colleagues.

✅ Employee advocacy programs deliver 8x more engagement than brand-only posts. 90% of B2B buyers prefer video content when learning about products and services. In this article, we explore how you can leverage account based engagement for more marketing revenue. AI gives you more shots on goal, more data to learn from, and more room to experiment.

An Introduction to Lead Generation

To position the brand as a thought leader and provide much-needed education about data, Lucidworks wanted to create a fresh piece of content around the provocative subject of dark data. He then worked with marketers at some of the best-known brands in B2B tech, creating content for marketing campaigns at both Jupitermedia and QuinStreet. Whether it’s a success story or a customer interview, talking to people who can sing your praises is an effective way to promote your brand on TikTok. B2B brands that drive meaningful engagement on TikTok aren’t just posting screenshots of software.

B2B marketing at the awareness stage works by providing your audience with helpful information and resources, establishing your brand as a trusted industry expert. ☐ Track metrics that matter to revenue – Monitor beyond opens and clicks to conversion rates, pipeline influence, and ultimately closed revenue attributed to email campaigns ☐ Personalize beyond the first name – Reference company details, past interactions, or specific pain points to build genuine connections that move deals forward These campaigns can resurrect relationships that represent significant untapped revenue with relatively low effort. Re-engagement/win-back segmentation matters because acquiring new customers costs 5-25x more than re-engaging existing ones, and circumstances change.

If you’re looking to get started with referral marketing, there are a few core concepts you should understand. Outreach's sales engagement legacy is the deepest in the category, with sequencing depth, dialer integration, and the Agentic AI Platform rebrand sitting on years of enterprise-scale rep-workflow tooling teams already operate inside daily. Outreach what is b2b marketing AI Agents is the product Outreach built on its sales engagement legacy following the 2026 "Agentic AI Platform" rebrand. The right fit depends on whether you want a pure data source, an ABX platform, a sales-engagement layer, or a unified GTM intelligence platform consolidating intent across the revenue motion.

High levels of competition and crowded marketplaces have made B2B lead generation a major challenge for today’s companies. Relative to the B2C version, B2B lead generation tends to be more acutely targeted. Lead generation is a central focus for any B2B organization that’s interested in driving consistent and reliable revenue. When you’re ready, you simply share the app with the users who will benefit from the insights your dashboard delivers. Be aware that some datasets use Salesforce data (e.g. the ABM dataset), therefore the ability to view data points will be determined by your Salesforce permissions.

• A healthy bounce rate is typically under 2% for permission-based email lists.
• According to research by Wpromote, 60% of B2B marketers polled in 2023 said that social media was the most effective channel for revenue — up from 50% in 2022.
• When developing a sales strategy, it's important for B2B and B2C companies to understand their customers' journeys.
• The goal is to create an emotional connection that drives immediate action, such as purchasing or sharing content with others,” wrote Socialinsider.

When you invest in lasting partnerships, you gain reliable suppliers, preferred pricing, and partners who understand your business. In education, institutions partner with technology providers and publishers to build learning platforms and create digital course materials. B2B pricing is typically customized based on volume, contract terms, and service level, and often requires negotiation. Company websites allow interested parties to learn about a business's products and services and to initiate contact. Abandoned cart and post-purchase flows remain the strongest revenue drivers. Brands using AI-driven personalization report up to 42% higher revenue, with click-through rates exceeding 13%.

How to activate first-party data across the B2B journey

When a member clicks your ad, their LinkedIn profile data automatically populates the form, meaning fewer drop-offs and more accurate lead data. Because mobile lead gen proves to be one of the biggest challenges for marketers, every aspect of Lead Gen Forms has been optimized for presentation and user-friendliness on small displays. LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are designed to provide maximum convenience for both users and marketers.