How To Generate B2B Leads When Your Employer Places Brand Restrictions On You…

“Twitter bio disclaimers” on personal accounts seem redundant to me.

From what I can tell, it seems to be a request from employers…

If is clear that that the Twitter account is a personal profile (i.e. it has a person’s photo and name) then it’s a personal account and the views are their own.

There is no need to state otherwise.

People have lives outside of work.

And to expect employees to not have opinions or communicate those opinions outside of work is detached from reality and controlling.

Recently I was consulting with someone about B2B lead generation within their employment for their employer.

Their employer had strict rules about what the employee could and couldn’t communicate about the company and further wanted check everything over because it went public.

But it put this person in a bind of what they can and can’t do because B2B lead generation is part of their role…

Admittedly, this requirement really limits them.

But, this is only an issue if they concentrate on bottom-of-funnel brand awareness.

Bottom-of-funnel brand awareness is communicating to prospects things that are brand and company specific to get them to make a buying decision.

If one goes up the sales funnel to either middle-of-funnel (communicating about the range of solutions available to the prospect), or to top-of-funnel (communicating about interests or the problem your company solves), this person escapes the restrictions put on them!

Drop all the brand related communication and go more top-of-funnel.

You need to communicate about:

1. Your ideal customers interests

2. The problem your employer solves

You employer can’t control you or this as it’s not employer related.

But how does this relate to lead generation for your employer?

If you are interested in or have opinions about cheese — other cheese lovers will find you.

Eventually they will seek to know more about you.

And if they so happen to have the same problem your employer solves, lead generation will naturally happen.

Likewise, communicating the about problem your employer solves, others with that problem will also find you.

If people have the problem, they will seek to know your relationship to that problem, and again, lead generation naturally happens.

Now even though these aren’t directly related related your employers product or service and thus brand, your ideal customers will begin to associate you with being helpful around their interests or their industry and will want to know more about you.

In the age of Google, they’ll find you, and if you have your other digital assets set up property, this will lead to lead generation for you where you can start to talk about the solution your employer provides using their brand guidelines.

But practically how do you do this?

That starts with determining:

1. Who your ideal customer is

2. Where that ideal customer is located

Once you know those, keep in mind the following maxim:

“Those who are the organizer get all the glory. Those who attend the organizing get the ‘credit’ crumbs.”

Translating this is to activities could be:

1. Conducting an interview

2. Hosting a panel discussion

3. Hosting a networking event

4. Sending interesting news

5. Creating a discussion group

6. Creating an industry awards night

7. Creating an industry association

8. Making introductions

9. Curating or creating content

10. Answering industry questions

11. And so on…

All related around interests or board industry problems.

If you’d like to know how this could work for you, let me know in the comments or by private message and I’d be happy to help you apply it.