Lead generation channels for B2B in 2025: what works in Russia

Lead generation channels for B2B in 2025: what works in Russia

Lead generation channels for B2B in 2025: what works in Russia

Current lead generation channels for B2B in 2025 in Russia: cold emails, Telegram, content, advertising, partnerships. What works, what doesn't work, and how to choose your path for attracting clients.

Nail Ginyatullin

Marketer Coldy

Опубликовано:

April 10, 2025

En
Lead generation channels for B2B cover
Lead generation channels for B2B cover
Lead generation channels for B2B cover

Lead generation in B2B is like searching for gold. You dig for a long time, find something valuable, but it's not always clear: is it a nugget or just a shiny decoy.

The year 2025 brings its own corrections. Some people still believe in cold calls, some chaotically spend their budget on targeting, while others have found their golden vein in Telegram or through cold emails. The market is changing — and leads are too. What worked yesterday gives zero results today. And what used to be considered 'second-rate' is now in the spotlight.

We have collected актуальные channels for lead generation in B2B in Russia in this article. No fluff, no 'universal solutions.' Only what really works in 2025: from cold emails to affiliate marketing.

If you're looking for clients, want to stop relying on one source, or just want to understand where to go next — you're in the right place.

Cold Emails or Email Outreach

In 2025, cold emails still work. Moreover, they are one of the most precise and manageable ways to reach the right person in B2B. No ads, no algorithms, no 'pay and maybe someone will see you,' and this has been the main channel for B2B lead generation abroad for the last 3 years.

Why Does It Work?

  • You are not writing into the void but aiming directly at a specific decision-maker.

  • Email remains the most stable channel in the business environment: it is not blocked, not forgotten, not 'cluttered with cats.'

  • Emails are easily scalable, can be automated, and can be very personal.

Who Is It Suitable For?

Cold emails work exceptionally well in these niches:

  • IT, SaaS, development

  • Agencies (SEO, marketing, PR, SMM)

  • HR, recruitment

  • Sales of equipment and B2B services

  • B2B education and consulting

What Is Important to Consider in 2025?

  • Warming up the domain. Without this, the email will go to spam. Set up SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and start with a small volume.

  • Personalization. It is no longer enough to just insert a name. You need to show that you really know who you are writing to.

  • A strong subject line. If the title doesn't catch attention — the emails simply won't be opened.

  • Minimum extra. No unnecessary links, attached files, long texts. Just the essence.

  • Clear CTA. What do you want from the person? A response? A call? Familiarization with the proposal? Write that.

Services for Email Outreach in Russia

Here’s what those who actually do outreach in 2025 use:

  • Coldy.ai — a cold mailing service with analytics, domain warming, email sequences, and AI. Well said.

  • NeverBounce, MailerCheck — for email validation

Results?

The average open rate with normal sending is 40–60%, and the reply rate is 5–15%. For B2B, this is pretty good. Especially if 1–2 replies turn into deals.

👉 10 outreach email templates

Telegram and Communities

If a couple of years ago Telegram in B2B seemed somewhat unserious — something for startups and IT people — by 2025 it has become a full-fledged sales channel. People are looking for contractors, selling services, and negotiating partnerships.

Why Has Telegram Become Important for B2B?

  • Everyone is tired of incoming marketing, landing pages, and bots with forms.

  • In Telegram, everything happens quickly and live. You can reach the right person without unnecessary layers.

  • Communities in Telegram really work. Especially in niche topics.

  • No advertising budget is needed — just be in the right place at the right time with a clear offer.

Where to Find Clients?

  • Niche chats. For example: marketing, procurement, HR, SaaS, education, logistics, etc.

  • Interest-based themes. Where your target audience sits: for example, online store owners or sales directors.

  • Author channels. Expert blogs where you can showcase yourself (through comments or topic suggestions).

  • Job chats. Sometimes leads come from where people are looking for contractors or freelancers.

  • Partner chats. For exchanging leads, cross-promotion, etc.

How to Use Telegram for Lead Generation?

  1. Observe → participate → offer. First, immerse yourself in the context, then engage in conversations, then unobtrusively mention how you can be helpful.

  2. Create an expert channel. You don't have to write every day — the main thing is that the content is useful and targeted to the audience.

  3. Personal messages. Telegram is modern outreach. If you write a personal message respectfully and with value — it works.

  4. Collaborations and partnerships. Through Telegram, it's easier to find an influencer or channel owner with whom you can launch joint activities.

Tools and Tips

  • tgstat.ru — for analyzing channels

  • Telemetr — helps find the target audience by keywords

  • LiveDune, Popsters — for tracking engagement

  • Profile = mini-landing page. Make sure that your profile description shows who you are and how you can be helpful.

  • Don’t spam personal messages without context — this gets you banned. Better start from a discussion or a specific request in the chat.

Suitable For:

  • Agencies

  • Freelancers

  • Product B2B services

  • Educational projects

  • Consultants and contractors

In Telegram, leads are not just 'incoming.' These are live contacts, personal connections, feedback on content. Everything is based on trust.

Content Marketing and SEO

Content is an investment. It does not give leads immediately, like targeted ads or mailings. However, once it starts working, it brings applications automatically, especially from people who already know something about you, have read, and trust you.

In 2025, content marketing in Russia is back on the rise. Companies have begun to understand: organic traffic means stability. It does not depend on advertising budgets, does not get turned off during blockages, and works in the long run.

Why Does It Work?

  • People are looking for solutions to their problems. If your content provides answers — they will come to you.

  • Trust is built through content: people read you, remember you, and then reach out.

  • A well-written article or case study works for months (and sometimes even years) — unlike ads that die after the budget runs out.

What to Publish in B2B?

  • Useful articles and guides — 'How to choose...', 'What is important to consider...', 'Mistakes when...'

  • Analytics and reviews — 'Comparison of solutions', 'B2B market in 2025', 'Top-5 tools for...'

  • Client cases — specifics, numbers, results

  • Evergreen content — content that does not lose relevance

  • Checklists, templates, instructions — work especially well as lead magnets

Where to Publish?

  • Blog on the website — preferably with a separate SEO structure, headings, and microdata

  • VC.ru, Habr, Cossa, Spark, TenChat — platforms with a live B2B audience

  • Yandex Zen, Medium — as additional entry points

  • Telegram channel or mailing list — as a distribution channel

What Is Important for SEO in 2025?

  • Human-readable text with depth. Stop writing for keywords — write for people. But keywords are still important (just do it carefully).

  • Uniqueness and expertise. Copied articles without depth no longer work.

  • Structure, headings, subheadings, lists. Readability = retention = better ranking.

  • Time on page and clickability. Behavioral factors matter.

  • No gimmicks. More and more people are forgetting about this, and rightly so. Better to create one good article than ten empty ones.

Tools:

  • Serpstat, Ahrefs, SEMrush — keyword selection, competitors

  • Tilda + blog, WordPress — convenient platforms

  • Google Analytics / Yandex.Metrica — traffic tracking

  • Search Console / Webmaster — indexing monitoring

Content is trust + expertise + organic traffic. And that's what works great in B2B, especially with long sales cycles.

Paid Advertising: Does It Work in B2B in 2025?

It seems simple: set up advertising → get traffic → close a deal. In practice, however — budget wasted, random clicks received, and not a single lead. Sound familiar?

In 2025, paid advertising in B2B still works but requires a careful approach. Especially if you are in Russia, particularly if you have a long sales cycle and an expensive product.

What's Going on with Channels?

  • Yandex Direct — remains the main advertising channel in the Runet but has become more expensive. It works if you collect semantics correctly and don’t pour traffic 'into the void.'

  • Google Ads — technically accessible, but only via VPN and with limitations (depending on the niche).

  • Targeting in VKontakte and myTarget — more suitable for retargeting and brand warming than for generating hot leads.

  • Telegram Ads — still more expensive than desired and harder to configure, but gaining traction.

What Really Works?

  • Retargeting. Remind people about yourself those who visited the site, read content, clicked on mailing.

  • Advertising to warm traffic. Through lookalike audiences, pixels, email databases.

  • Contextual advertising for specific queries. Not 'development services,' but 'custom CRM development for logistics.'

  • Promo for lead magnets. A case, checklist, guide in exchange for contact. Then — a nurture cascade.

What Doesn't Work:

  • Wasting budget on broad queries: expensive, irrelevant, wasted.

  • Trying to sell directly from advertising: in B2B, you often need to 'hook' and engage, not close right away.

How to Prepare an Advertising Campaign in B2B?

  1. Understand the target audience and their needs. Business clients click not out of curiosity. They have pain points → looking for solutions.

  2. Create a solid offer. It's better to say 'How we helped company X reduce costs by 18%' than 'We provide services.'

  3. Break the campaign into funnel stages. One creative for cold audience, another for those who have already seen the site.

  4. Allocate budget for tests. Don’t spend everything on the first day. A/B is our everything.

  5. Link the advertising with CRM. To see not just clicks, but real applications, calls, deals.

Paid advertising is not a magic button to 'get leads', but a tool to accelerate when you already have a working offer and a clear target audience. It can be used, but without a foundation, you'll quickly waste the budget.

What Doesn't Work (or Works Poorly)

There are channels that once gave results, but now — only an illusion of activity. You spend resources, and in return — silence, junk leads, and a feeling that 'B2B is not for me.' Let's be honest: if you are using something from the list below, it’s time to rethink your approach.

Automated Spam

Writing to everyone by template, without a name, without context, 'Hello, we offer...' — that’s it. This hasn't worked for a long time, and by 2025 it's a surefire way to a ban. Spam filters are becoming smarter, and so are people. There will be no response, and the domain’s reputation will quickly decline.

Buying Leads

Buying 1000 'hot' contacts for 5000 rubles? Sounds tempting. In practice — at best, outdated data, at worst — bots, fakes, and non-targeted individuals.
B2B is precision work. In this case, 'database' is less critical than context and engagement. Purchased leads rarely convert, and sometimes even ruin statistics.

Outdated Databases

If you are still sending emails to a database from 2020 that a 'marketer once collected,' don’t be surprised by low open rates. People leave, companies shut down, positions change.
A database is not a forever resource. It needs to be updated, verified, and filtered. Otherwise, your entire mailing goes into the void.

Faceless Landing Pages

'We are a team of professionals with an individual approach' — this says nothing. B2B audiences want to see:

  • what sets you apart from 100 similar companies,

  • what problems you solve,

  • what cases confirm your experience,

  • and, most importantly, why they should contact you now.

If a landing page is just a business card with stock photos and vague chatter, no advertising will save it.

Cold outreach, advertising, SEO — all of this works. But not in isolation and not without thought. Before scaling, it’s important to eliminate what drains resources and gives false signals. Because poor lead generation is not the absence of leads. It’s the illusion that 'we are doing everything and there are no results.'

How to Choose Your Lead Generation Channel

Lead generation is not about 'there’s one magic method, and it will work for everyone.' In B2B, everything hinges on details: who you are, who you're selling to, at what price, and how quickly the client is ready to make decisions.

Therefore, there is no universal answer. But there is a logic by which you can choose your channel (or better — a combination of channels).

What Does the Choice Depend On?

  • Type of product. If you have a complex IT service or consulting — probably, direct sales through advertising won't work. But outreach, Telegram, and cases could work well.

  • Average check. The higher the check, the more you need to warm up and explain. Content and a personal approach.

  • Length of the sales cycle. Quick decisions → need quick touches (Telegram, advertising). Lengthy decisions → need long warming (content, nurture chains).

  • Team. No one can manage a blog — don’t bet on content. No technician — don’t go for SEO without a contractor.

  • Budget. Small budget — do it manually (outreach, Telegram, expertise). Have resources — consider targeting, automation, partnerships.

Table: Which Channel — For Which Task

Task

Suitable Channel

Find your first clients

Cold emails, Telegram, partnerships

Sell expert B2B products

Content, cold emails, webinars

Reach large customers

LinkedIn, cold emails, cases

Quickly test an offer

Telegram, advertising, cold emails

Strengthen the funnel and increase trust

Blog, SEO, social networks, public speaking

Expand reach and audience

Paid advertising, affiliate marketing

One Strategy — Two or Three Channels

In B2B, there is no stability in one source. Today Telegram works, tomorrow only email, and in a month, you might suddenly get incoming leads from the blog. So:

  • Start with one or two channels

  • Quickly test

  • Compare costs and results

  • Keep the best, disable the rubbish

  • Gradually scale up

Example

You have a B2B marketing agency. What would work:

  • Cold emails → directly to decision-makers

  • Telegram chats → participation in discussions and personal messages

  • Blog → cases and articles with examples of work

  • Retargeting → for those who have already 'seen you somewhere'

The choice of channel is not about faith but about testing. Formulate a hypothesis → test → see where the leads come from and which ones turn into money.

Lead Generation Channels in B2B: Frequently Asked Questions

The deeper you dive into lead generation, the more nuances and 'how does this work?' pop up. Below are short and direct answers to the most popular questions that we are asked both in private messages and during consultations.

Which lead generation channel is best for B2B in Russia?

The best one is the one that fits you best. But based on popularity and stability, in 2025 the following tend to work best:

  • Cold emails — if you can write and segment.

  • Telegram — if you actively participate in chats and communities.

  • Content and SEO — if you are ready to invest in a long game.

  • Retargeting — if you have a website and a funnel.

Almost always, a combination of 2-3 channels works better than just one.

Is it worth using cold emails in 2025?

It’s not just worth it — it’s necessary. It's still one of the most targeted and manageable channels for lead generation in B2B.

The main thing is not to confuse cold mailing with “copy-pasting from a database.” Warm up the domain, write humanely, personalize, don’t bombard people with offers without context — and the emails will be opened, read, and even responded to.

Where to Find Clients on Telegram?

Where they already reside:

  • Niche chats: search by keywords in Telegram (for example, 'B2B marketing', 'logistics', 'SaaS', 'HR').

  • Author channels: join, comment, respond to authors — connections are quickly formed there.

  • Job and outsourcing chats: requests for contractors often appear.

  • Platforms like TGStat and Telemetr: will help you find the right channels and chats for your target audience.

Telegram is networking. Don't spam, but integrate into the dialogue.

How to Avoid Email Blocks in Mailings?

Here’s a quick checklist:

  • Use a warmed-up domain (not a brand new one).

  • Be sure to set up SPF, DKIM, DMARC.

  • Don't add a ton of links and attachments to emails.

  • Don't send the same email to hundreds of addresses — segment and personalize.

  • Monitor bounce rates and complaints — high bounce rate = signal to mail servers.

  • Use email validation tools (such as NeverBounce).

And most importantly — write emails that don’t look like spam. Use a lively language, with respect and benefit.

We Will Help You Launch Cold Mailing

Understanding channels is half the battle. But launching everything manually, selecting a database, writing emails, avoiding spam, and building a funnel — often requires support. Especially at the start.

After registering, you will receive a free consultation where we will:

  • analyze your product and target audience,

  • advise on how to compose an email that people actually read,

  • and together we will launch your first outreach mailing.

👉 Register — and attract B2B clients with great emails.