Leads are one of the most important assets that companies have because they help produce business growth and business development opportunities.
A lead generation strategy is a combination of tactics and techniques that are used to generate leads. It can be as simple as posting a "free" offer on your company's Facebook page or as complex as running an advanced digital marketing campaign with multiple touch points to generate leads.
Our Lead Generation Process
Defining your lead generation objectives
Researching potential customer
Creating an effective hook to generate leads
Ways to engage and nurture leads
Tips for converting qualified leads into customers
The success of your lead generation strategy primarily depends on your process for generating qualified leads. The following are some of the best practices to create and execute a successful lead generation strategy.
Generating Leads Through Content Marketing
Good content is a necessity for generating leads. There are many different types of content that can be used to reach out to your customer:
Social media posts
Blogs
Infographics
eBooks
Case Studies
For instance, if you have a product or service which focuses on health, then an infographic would be the best form of content for you since it can contain visuals and statistics about health-related topics and it's easy to share it on social media channels.
A content marketing strategy is not just about creating content, but publishing it at the right time and place, as well as promoting it in a way that will generate more qualified leads for your company.
Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are tools or content that you give away to visitors in exchange for their contact information. These tools aim to provide value and help your visitors get used to you before asking for more information. There are a wide variety of lead magnets that businesses use - some common examples include free guides, ebooks, webinars, podcasts, videos, and infographics.
Often one-time visitors are not converted into leads because the company has missed the opportunity to convert them into subscribers. In order to fill this "one-time visitor" gap, companies can offer content upgrades and incentives for email signups. They can also use social media ads to incentivize signups.
Building Your First Lead Generation Funnel
A lead generation funnel is a representation of the journey that a person takes from the moment they give you their information to the moment they make an actual purchase. Marketing funnels are important for understanding what people want, what has been successful in the past, and what should be done to make future lead generation more qualified.
A lot of customers are just looking for information and want to see what you offer. Some organizations find that they have a segment of customers who aren’t ready to buy on the first contact in their sales funnel. This might be because they don't have enough information about your company, or they need more time to evaluate your offer against other options.
Others find that a segment of their customers is not interested in buying at all, or they are only qualified for certain services. In these cases, it's important for the salesperson and customer to know this early in the process so that you can save time and money.
The funnel starts with marketing channels such as Facebook ads or Google display ads where visitors are brought to your website. Once people reach your website, they will encounter different pages or offers which will attempt to get them interested in your company's product or service.
Once these visitors have reached a point where they are ready to buy, they enter into a sales process with your company and end up buying something from you. It’s important to know how many people get all the way through this funnel in order to make improvements and increase conversions. The goal of these improvements is to shorten the time it takes a customer to move through this process so that more people get all the way to conversion.
Lead Capture Forms
Utilizing Compelling CTAs
A call-to-action is a button, link, or other text on a webpage that encourages viewers to take some sort of action. The goal of a CTA is to encourage people to take the desired action. If you are running an e-commerce store and want people to buy your product, your CTA would be "Buy Now." A call-to-action should be short and concise. It should also be easy for the viewer to understand what they need to do after clicking it.
Some companies use different CTAs on their website depending on the type of visitor they have. For instance, if a visitor is on their homepage, they might use "Sign Up" while if they are on their blog page, they might use "Subscribe."
Collecting Email Addresses
Email addresses are the main source of contact information for marketers. You should only collect this information with consent from the visitor. If people are unwilling to give out their email addresses, marketers can still use other sources of data like phone numbers or social media handles in order to contact and connect with them. Collect only what you need and avoid asking for too many fields. Your goal is to get as much information as possible, but not all of it at once.
Create a sense of urgency by setting a deadline in your form, or mention that the offer is only valid for today or tomorrow. This will give visitors the feeling that they have something they need right now and if they don’t take action now they will lose a great opportunity.
Link your form with an email marketing service provider like MailChimp so that you can automatically send emails to leads with automated templates and pre-written messages based on their answers to your questions.
Lead Scoring Best Practices
Lead scoring is a component of marketing automation software that helps you decide if a person is worth your time or an unqualified lead. When a lead comes in, it will be assign points based on how they respond to your communications, such as downloading an ebook or watching a product overview video.
The score is then used to determine how much attention the lead needs and the next step in the conversion funnel that they should be introduced to. This is one way of increasing sales by being more efficient with time and resources spent on leads that are just not going to convert.
A recent study from Oracle found out that more than 80% of marketing automation initiatives fail due to a lack of accurate lead scoring models. This shows how important it can be for businesses in today’s competitive environment.
Lead Nurturing Tactics
Lead nurturing is the process of providing sales leads with assistance, information, and content that’s tailored to their needs. Lead nurturing is all about continually engaging prospects with relevant content in order to generate enough interest and awareness for your company's products or services.
Lead nurturing provides an opportunity to increase conversions and reduce the expense of acquiring new customers. The idea is to guide potential buyers through the stages of your sales funnel that lead to a sale — and beyond.
The main goal is to convert prospects into paying customers by providing useful content, building trust, and lowering objections. Lead nurture programs often include drip campaigns (otherwise known as email nurture sequences), which send automated emails based on user behavior, like opening emails or clicking links.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation software can help you automate lead nurturing based on a user’s interests and preferences. A lead nurturing tool should be used in order to nurture your leads into sales-ready leads with timely touch points. Nurturing should also include pre-emptive messaging so that prospects are aware that they are in the target market segment and will want to buy from you.
Lead Generation Next Steps
Lead generation plays a significant role in every business's marketing strategy. Think about how many websites you have visited that you will never return to again. Not only did those businesses fail to capture your attention, but they failed to reconnect with you in the future.
With your content in place, your business can begin using lead magnets, lead capture forms, marketing automation flows, and lead scoring rules to optimize your lead generation rates and create an overall better-performing inbound marketing strategy.
If you need a hand in creating or improving your lead generation strategy, don’t hesitate to reach out to a friendly and experienced llama 😊🦙
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