3 Ways to Maximize Your Lead Gen Potential by Thinking “Outside-In”
Every day, clients come to us with lists of people they want to target. These lists are often built from three classic building blocks:
- Titles from past closed/won deals
- Firmographics and demographic profiles of companies and personas they think should be buyers
- Hypothetical targets suggested by internal stakeholders.
While this is important work and can provide a good starting point for lead qualification, it also creates a big gap in your overall lead generation strategy. These traditional methods are heavily based on 1st party data—information you’ve already captured about contacts’ interactions with your business. The problem is, they focus primarily on what you already know. In reality, there’s a much larger market of untapped demand for solutions like yours that you’re missing by relying solely on historical data.
To truly maximize your lead gen potential, you need to approach targeting with a more open mind. Based on our experience with clients across various industries, here are three key strategies to boost your lead gen results.
1. Shift from Traditional Lead Gen to Demand Identification
The typical approach to lead gen focuses on creating a strict list of accounts and contacts that fit a narrow profile, ensuring that only the most “perfect” matches enter the funnel. While this helps avoid wasting resources on unqualified leads, it also limits your ability to tap into broader market opportunities. The reality is that markets evolve quickly, and your historical data often lags behind.
Tech markets, for example, change faster than your sales data can reflect. So, if your lead gen specifications are too rigid and based solely on past success, you may be ignoring signals that indicate emerging demand or nearly-won deals. Often, these are the leads that have a higher conversion potential if nurtured correctly.
Solution: Be more flexible with your targeting. Instead of excluding leads based on strict criteria, consider “filtering in” additional signals, like multiple touchpoints from a single individual or account. These signals are often more predictive of real demand than a single lead and can reveal valuable opportunities.
2. Target Where Demand is Already Congregating
When you look at the way major B2C platforms like Amazon or LinkedIn operate, there’s a clear pattern: they are built around value-exchange ecosystems. Amazon became the go-to destination for consumer purchases because it offers something buyers really want, and in return, buyers willingly provide their data. Likewise, LinkedIn has become the primary platform for professionals to connect and share their data in exchange for networking opportunities.
As a B2B marketer, this model holds significant value. The key takeaway is that the internet is organized into places where value exchanges already happen. Some areas have a high concentration of buyers looking for solutions, while others are relatively dormant.
Solution: Focus your marketing efforts on platforms where your target audience already congregates. Don’t waste resources targeting places that aren’t relevant for what you sell. Find the online spaces where the highest volume of your target buyers are engaging, and optimize your campaigns around those platforms.
3. Leverage Existing Content Ecosystems to Reach Buyers in Context
You already know that creating high-quality content can help attract the right audience. However, creating great content and scaling it effectively can be a huge challenge. Rather than trying to build everything from scratch, a smarter approach is to leverage content that’s already being created by others in your space.
Search engines, for example, have done a great job of organizing the internet into spaces where people can find relevant content quickly. The key to more productive lead gen is identifying where your potential buyers are already consuming content and meeting them there.
Solution: Partner with lead gen providers that already have a strong, relevant audience. These platforms not only attract the right buyers but also provide the context and content that make it easier for you to connect with them at the right time. By targeting audiences that are already in the right mindset and actively researching solutions like yours, you can increase the effectiveness of your outreach.
Conclusion: Shift Your Focus to Broader Demand
To truly capture the full potential of your lead generation efforts, it’s important to move beyond traditional, inside-out approaches. By shifting your focus to demand identification, leveraging high-value content ecosystems, and targeting the right digital spaces, you’ll be able to identify and engage more qualified leads.
Thinking from the “outside-in” opens up your strategy to new insights, helping you stay ahead of market changes and reach a wider pool of potential customers. If you want to see how these strategies can transform your lead gen process, consider working with partners who understand how to tap into these networks and identify real demand.
