As an ERP Value-Added Reseller (VAR), breaking into lead generation for software solutions and consulting services can feel overwhelming—especially for newcomers to the industry. ERP lead generation companies like SmithDigital know this challenge all too well.
The ERP landscape is fiercely competitive. Industry giants such as Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle pour billions into sales and marketing initiatives, while a crowded field of ERP channel partners vies for potential customers' attention.
This reality—combined with limited marketing expertise and long sales cycles—makes it incredibly difficult for VARs to generate new leads while also supporting existing clients.
This blog post is designed to equip you with actionable strategies and valuable insights to jumpstart your ERP lead generation efforts with greater speed and success. For a more hands-on approach, explore our ERP lead generation services tailored to VARs and consulting firms.
Here's are the four primary areas we see ERP resellers struggle when it comes to ERP software lead generation methods.
Let's explore each of these briefly:
Many ERP consultants are frustrated by the lack of meaningful lead support from the software publishers they represent. Without a steady flow of qualified leads, generating new business becomes a constant uphill battle for ERP VARs.
Even if you’re fortunate enough to receive leads through your ERP ecosystem, relying solely on that source puts your pipeline at risk. If that referral stream dries up, your business could be left scrambling. That’s why it's essential to build your own capability to generate ERP software and service leads independently.
Additionally, many ERP vendors—such as Oracle NetSuite—have invested heavily in growing their internal sales operations, with hundreds of Account Executives (AEs) and Business Development Representatives (BDRs) focused on direct selling. With so much effort going into maintaining these internal teams, fewer resources are available to support the partner channel with leads. For that reason, developing a reliable, self-sustaining lead generation strategy is no longer optional—it's vital.
A large share of ERP sales begins with online research, where search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo serve as critical entry points. Google alone dominates the market, making it the most important platform to focus your visibility efforts on.
To capture qualified leads, your ERP product or service needs to rank on the first page of Google—ideally within the top five results. Research from Backlinko shows that the top three listings account for a staggering 75% of all clicks.
Adding to the challenge is Google's ability to deliver “instant answers,” which often satisfy users’ queries without them needing to click through to any website at all.
If your site is SEO-optimized and attracts solid traffic but still struggles to convert visitors, low form submission rates may signal a poor user experience or excessive friction in your digital funnel. In the next sections, we’ll share actionable tips to streamline that experience and boost your website’s lead generation performance.
Consistent content creation—such as blog posts, case studies, or whitepapers—is critical for improving keyword rankings and boosting visibility in Google search results. Google favors fresh, regularly updated content, and chances are your competitors are already investing in this effort.
While juggling content production alongside day-to-day operations can feel overwhelming, making it a strategic priority is essential. Without it, your digital presence risks falling behind in an increasingly competitive ERP market. Treat content creation not as a one-off task but as a sustained effort that drives long-term SEO value and brand authority.
Effective keyword research is a cornerstone of successful ERP lead generation. By uncovering the search terms your ideal customers are using, you can significantly boost your visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). But success isn't just about stuffing content with popular keywords—it requires a deliberate and strategic approach.
Overemphasizing high-volume keywords that are extremely competitive can waste valuable resources if you lack the authority to rank well. Conversely, focusing exclusively on low-competition long-tail keywords might not bring in enough traffic to drive meaningful results. The key lies in crafting a balanced keyword strategy—one that combines realistic ranking opportunities with high lead-generation potential. Done right, this approach positions your content to attract and convert the right audience.
As an ERP consulting firm, you understand that selling ERP software solutions is not the same as selling commodity products and services. The ideal ERP buyer is highly knowledgeable and selective in their product choice, as the credibility of the software they choose directly affects their daily work life.
Furthermore, ERP systems tend to be incredibly sticky, often staying with a company for 5–10 years or longer. Given this, it is essential to have a deep understanding of your target audience, including their desires, fears, and objectives when it comes to this significant investment.
To help you start generating leads for your ERP software business, we have outlined seven steps you can take advantage of today.
These steps will help you reach and engage your target audience, build credibility, and establish yourself as a trusted advisor in the ERP space.
Conducting thorough keyword research is a foundational step in generating ERP software and services leads. This involves identifying the specific search terms your target audience uses when researching ERP solutions and understanding how those keywords relate to business outcomes.
A helpful framework for ERP software VARs is the “Big 5 Themes,” which outline the key areas of interest ERP buyers tend to focus on during their search journey. These themes serve as a powerful starting point for selecting and organizing your keyword strategy:
Price or Cost – Prospects want to understand the financial commitment upfront.
Examples: “ERP implementation cost,” “NetSuite pricing tiers,” “How much does ERP software cost?”
Product Comparisons – Buyers compare solutions to make informed decisions.
Examples: “NetSuite vs. Acumatica,” “Best ERP for manufacturing vs. distribution,” “Dynamics 365 vs. SAP Business One”
Customer and Analyst Reviews – Trust-building content can sway skeptical buyers.
Examples: “Acumatica customer reviews,” “Gartner Magic Quadrant ERP 2025,” “Top-rated ERP for small business”
‘Best of’ or ‘Top’ Lists – These formats are popular and generate strong search traffic.
Examples: “Top 5 ERP systems for 2025,” “Best cloud ERP software,” “Top ERP vendors for SMBs”
Problem-Solution Queries – Buyers often search based on specific pain points they want to resolve.
Examples: “ERP for inventory management issues,” “How to fix order tracking inefficiencies,” “Software to streamline multi-location operations”
Using these five themes, you can map out relevant keywords that align closely with the needs, questions, and concerns of your ideal customer. This will not only improve your content’s visibility in search engines but also make it more useful and engaging for prospective buyers.
Once you’ve developed your target keyword list, the next step is to assess how well your website ranks for those terms. Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can help you evaluate your current keyword performance, identify opportunities for improvement, and fine-tune your overall SEO strategy for maximum impact.
Upon completing your keyword research, it's essential to align your chosen keywords with the content you plan to create or optimize, utilizing an editorial calendar. This calendar serves as a roadmap for your inbound marketing strategy, keeping you organized and on track to meet your publishing and revenue objectives.
To keep your team organized, start with a basic Google Sheet template or consider using tools like HubSpot's SEO tool to visually structure and link your content.
In the industry, it's common to encounter marketing professionals who create excellent content without proper search engine optimization (SEO), or SEO professionals who write solely for search engines. To achieve successful content marketing, striking a balance between writing for human readers and search engines is vital.
Creating Content for Real People:
When crafting assets for your target audience, ensure the content is engaging, readable, and relatable. Overly technical or formal content can lose the reader's attention, failing to achieve the desired impact. Aim to captivate your audience by delivering information in digestible, enjoyable segments.
Content for Search Engines:
Writing content exclusively for human readers differs from writing for search engines. Search engines have evolved to detect content written solely to manipulate their algorithms. In the past, marketers could rank high in search results by overloading their pages with keywords.
This tactic leads to poor user experiences and high bounce rates, adversely affecting your Google ranking. While on-page optimization of target keywords remains crucial, search engines now also consider factors like page load times, linking page authority, and dwell time when ranking your page for specific keywords.
On-page optimization refers to the array of techniques employed on a website or webpage to enhance its visibility and ranking in search engine results. Factors such as keyword selection and usage, title tags and meta descriptions, link structure, and page speed all contribute to effective on-page optimization.
By closely examining and optimizing on-page elements, you can maximize your website's exposure on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. To improve your online presence, it's important to prioritize these factors.
In this section, we will focus on two primary metrics: dwell time—the duration visitors spend on a webpage—and bounce rate—the percentage of visitors who leave a site without engaging with the content or interacting with other pages.
Dwell Time: A Crucial Metric for Google Rankings
Dwell time refers to how long a visitor remains on a specific page. A longer dwell time is a positive ranking factor for Google, while a shorter dwell time can be detrimental. The reasoning is simple—if your content is valuable and engaging, readers will stay on your site longer.
There are several ways to increase dwell time, including adding more content to your pages. This not only keeps readers engaged but also offers more opportunities for them to interact with your site. Incorporating video content into your blogs is another effective strategy. Videos provide a quick, engaging overview of the blog topic and help retain visitors for longer periods. You can create videos in-house or collaborate with a video production firm. Additionally, videos hosted on platforms like YouTube are indexed by Google, which may enhance your rankings—even if your blog or webpage itself doesn't rank highly.
Another way to improve dwell time is by adding chat functionality to your website. Chatbots offer instant responses to visitor questions, reducing bounce rates and increasing user engagement by keeping people active on your site.
Improve Your Bounce Rate for Increased ERP Software Leads
Bounce rate is a critical metric that reflects your website’s ability to deliver relevant content and retain visitors. A high bounce rate suggests that visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for and are leaving without further engagement. This can hurt your website's performance and potentially damage your brand’s credibility.
To reduce bounce rate, consider creating or updating calls-to-action (CTAs) that engage visitors more effectively. Offer enticing incentives on key pages to prompt action—such as navigating to a landing page in exchange for contact information. If your current CTAs are limited to simple hyperlink text at the bottom of your pages, consider upgrading to more visually prominent buttons or graphics placed higher on the page. Tools like HubSpot offer entry-level solutions for designing CTAs and forms, making it easier to convert visitors and reduce bounce rate.
You can track and analyze bounce rate using free tools like Google Analytics, or access the data through page-specific analytics if you're using marketing software such as HubSpot.
Site Performance
Google PageSpeed Insights is a valuable tool for measuring your website’s performance. It assigns a score from 0 to 100, with 100 indicating optimal performance. This score helps assess your site’s speed, which is an important factor Google uses to determine search rankings. Therefore, improving your page speed is a key element of effective SEO.
Google’s Lighthouse tool is another excellent resource. It’s an open-source, automated tool that audits your website and provides actionable suggestions for improvement. Use Lighthouse to identify areas that need optimization, then test your updates using Google PageSpeed Insights to measure their impact.
Even simple changes can significantly improve your website's speed, enhancing user experience and boosting SEO. You can test your site performance here: https://pagespeed.web.dev
Regularly Monitor and Update Your Content
To maintain your website's relevance and search engine visibility, it’s essential to regularly monitor and update your content. Keeping your information fresh, accurate, and engaging not only improves your rankings but also positions your site as a reliable resource for potential ERP software leads.
Create a content audit schedule to review existing materials periodically. Check for and remove outdated information, fix broken links, and replace obsolete data with current insights. Also consider updating visual elements—such as images and videos—to keep your site looking modern and relevant.
Google cares about more than just keywords—it aims to surface the most authoritative, trustworthy websites for each search. That’s where domain authority (DA) comes into play.
DA is a score (on a 100-point scale) that reflects a website’s credibility and ability to rank in Google’s search results. The higher your DA, the better your chances of outranking competitors for valuable keywords.
One proven way to increase DA is by obtaining backlinks from high-quality, authoritative websites. Google views these backlinks as “votes of confidence,” signaling that your content is credible and valuable.
A highly effective backlinking strategy is guest posting on respected industry blogs, news outlets, and other relevant, influential domains. By contributing useful, insightful content that links back to your site, you can build a diverse portfolio of inbound links from trustworthy sources.
However, success in backlinking depends on more than just getting links—the context and anchor text matter too. Aim to align your anchor text with your target keywords and ensure that the surrounding content is relevant and natural. Tools that help automate outreach and manage anchor text density can speed up and scale your efforts.
Link building takes time, but it’s a critical long-term investment in SEO. The more backlinks you earn from reputable domains, the more signals you send to Google that your ERP content is authoritative and deserves to rank. If you’d like to explore how backlinking and domain authority improvements can enhance your organic visibility, let’s connect.
Once your ERP website begins ranking for key search terms, the next step is turning that organic traffic into marketing-qualified leads (MQLs). Avoid relying on static forms that overwhelm prospects with too many required fields—this friction often drives them to competitors offering a smoother, more user-friendly experience.
Instead, focus on delivering an engaging and interactive journey. Replace clunky forms with dynamic tools like Typeform, which adapt questions based on user responses. Offering gated assets—such as whitepapers, toolkits, or guides—in exchange for contact information creates a mutually beneficial exchange: visitors receive value, and you capture lead data.
Interactive elements like quizzes, calculators, or self-assessments that directly address prospects’ pressing questions can also drive meaningful engagement and boost conversion rates. Make it as easy as possible for prospects to access personalized insights and guidance.
To help identify anonymous website visitors, tools like Leadfeeder, HubSpot (via Clearbit’s buyer intent data), and RB2B can be highly effective. When combined with intent signals, these platforms enable you to tailor outreach strategies and convert unknown traffic into known, sales-ready leads.
The key is crafting an experience that speaks directly to each visitor’s needs and intent. With the right combination of interactivity, personalization, and incentives, you can transform your growing organic traffic into a steady, qualified ERP lead pipeline.
If your goal is to generate truly qualified ERP software leads, website traffic alone won’t cut it. To uncover the best opportunities, you need visibility into which companies are actively evaluating ERP solutions—long before they fill out a form or request a demo. That’s where buyer intent data becomes a game-changer.
With access to high-intent buyer data, your team can time outreach to align with demonstrated interest. A Business Development Representative (BDR) can follow up with more qualified conversations—addressing specific pain points and clearly articulating how your ERP solution can meet the prospect’s needs. This level of personalization consistently drives better response rates than traditional cold outreach.
To support scalable growth, consider integrating a buyer intent platform with your CRM. This allows new opportunities to flow directly into your pipeline in real time. By combining intent insights with CRM automation, your team can efficiently identify and nurture high-potential leads at the right moment—ultimately boosting sales productivity.
The bottom line? Buyer intent data is a powerful tool for generating more qualified ERP leads. If you’d like to explore how to apply these insights across your sales and marketing strategies, we’re here to help.
For ERP providers, close alignment between sales and marketing teams is critical to consistently generate qualified leads. When both teams collaborate effectively, they can define target buyer personas, map the customer journey, and develop messaging that truly resonates with decision-makers.
Enabling this collaboration requires a shared platform that supports unified workflows. Tools like HubSpot offer integrated capabilities for lead generation, email campaigns, landing pages, CRM, and sales enablement—all within a single connected system. This provides both teams with complete visibility into how prospects engage with content and how they progress through the funnel.
The result is powerful synergy that accelerates growth. Marketing can fine-tune assets based on direct sales feedback about what resonates most with buyers, while sales can leverage insights from marketing to engage in more informed, relevant conversations that shorten deal cycles.
Ultimately, integrating sales and marketing through a unified platform ensures a seamless lead hand-off process. This allows marketing to deliver a higher volume of sales-ready ERP leads, and equips sales with the knowledge needed to convert those opportunities efficiently, thanks to a shared understanding of target accounts.
Generating ERP software and services leads on a consistent basis can be a real challenge—but the financial rewards are well worth the effort. With our expertise, we’re proud to rank among the top ERP lead generation companies in the market. We have a proven track record of helping ERP resellers drive more web traffic, generate more sales-ready leads, and win more customers. You can explore real-life examples of our success here: Inbound Marketing Examples.
If you're serious about growth and need a team that deeply understands the ERP industry—and knows how to consistently deliver more ERP leads for your sales team—we encourage you to request a meeting with one of our marketing specialists. Let us show you how we can bring immediate value to your ERP consulting practice.