As a demand generation marketer focused on quality leads, creating a solid lead generation strategy should be at the top of your “to-do” list. In fact, you might already have something like this in the works. However, there’s a chance that your lead generation plan needs to pivot, or evolve over time with your targeted buyer persona. This means taking a look at what lead generation even means for your business.
Generating leads for your business
Your lead generation strategy needs some basic components, including:
Lead capture – gathering information from a lead. The lead’s name and contact information, as well as pertinent qualifying facts about them or their company, may be included in the data (e.g., business name, position, employees).
Lead magnets – incentives that encourage potential customers to become new leads.
Lead qualification – a method of determining how probable a lead is to purchase based on the information provided by the lead.
Lead segmentation – segmenting leads based on their information, habits, and actions such as their job title, the lead magnet they wanted, the site pages they visited.
Some of the lead generation strategies to consider are explained below. Please note that you are under no obligation to implement all the strategies. In reality, it would almost certainly be a terrible idea because no two businesses are the same. While these lead-generating methods have proven effective for some businesses, they may not be for yours.
Examine each one carefully in light of your company’s revenue, resources, marketing objectives, and competitive environment. As effective as these lead-generating methods are, there is no uniform recipe for growth.
Make Chatbot Conversations Work for You
Lead generation demands time and effort that you may not always have if you are a busy marketer, so it might be time to enlist some assistance.
Chatbots can potentially help to generate a lot of leads. The technology is ideal for starting conversations with prospects since chatbots are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Set them up to reflect your brand’s personality to act as automatic marketing and sales agents.
When visitors interact with a chatbot, they learn more about what chatbots are and how they work. After the chatbot has given the user value (in the form of information), they request a meeting schedule for further discussions. After the chatbot has finished its task, the conversation is transferred to one of the business’s professionals.
Develop a High-Value Newsletter
Creating a must-read newsletter that encourages interested prospects to engage and remain in contact with your business is another approach to utilize content as a lead magnet. This allows you to remain visible to your consumers while also sharing product and service offerings that may move prospects farther down the buying funnel. The following items may be included in your newsletter: latest blog entries, special offerings, products and services updates, upcoming events, and suggested reading from thought leaders.
Develop gated content
Gated content is online only available after a user fills out a form and submits the required information. The content is “restricted,” unlike regular blog entries or landing pages. To get the material, visitors must first fill out a lead capture form. This lead generation approach works because it provides free value to the audience while generating high-quality leads interested in subjects relevant to your brand or services. Gated content typically includes white papers, e-books, guides, reports, worksheets, courses, and online resources.
Organize an Event
Lead generating techniques can be online and offline. To attract and service your target market, host an in-person or online event and capture their contact information with event registration. Live events allow you to interact with consumers in real-time, answering questions, responding to concerns, know more about them while actively moving them down the sales funnel. Some of the options to consider include webinars, seminars, workshops, conferences, and meetups.
Provide a Discount or Coupon
Coupons or discounts can serve as a lead magnet to help you convert prospects who have indicated an interest in your offerings. This draws in both long-term and short-term prospects. Ultimately, you would have drawn in someone who wants to buy from your company and expect bottom-of-funnel prospects to turn into customers immediately. An example is offering a 20 percent discount for new members or visitors, encouraging them to fill out the lead capture form.
Free trial or a freemium product works
Offer a free trial or a freemium product to turn interested and qualified prospects into leads. Free trials and freemium goods entice qualified prospects who are still deliberating on making a purchase. Once free trial users register, you can use tempting premium features and drip email marketing to highlight upgraded accounts’ advantages and convert them into paying clients later. Another example is to provide a free version of their product (with limited capabilities) to create leads and encourage free users to upgrade to premium plans.
Invest in Social Media Marketing
One of your lead generation tactics should be sponsored social advertising. Use the sophisticated targeting tools on Facebook and Instagram to display advertisements to individuals who are most likely interested in your goods or services. The options for targeting could be macro (demographic attributes) or micro (behavioral and psychographic attributes), which makes it possible to engage with a highly targeted audience. You can also use social media ads to send target prospects to your gated content.
Use Top-of-Funnel Keywords
Create a strategy to target the keywords that prospects search for to attract them and push them to your lead magnets. Perform keyword research and find words your ideal customers are looking for at the top of the sales funnel. After that, target those keywords with methods like:
- Create evergreen content optimized for the target keywords.
- Create an on-site blog strategy based on the keywords you want to target.
- Use pay-per-click marketing to target specific keywords.
- Submit guest blogs on sites that are an authority on desired keywords.
To increase your chances of being on page one, follow SEO best practices. Getting good search visibility gives your business more attention and traffic from prospective leads.
Use retargeting
Stay hopeful, even if prospects do not convert on their initial encounter with your brand. Retargeting allows you to reconnect with people interested in your brand but has not taken the next step.
Retargeting enables you to show advertisements to individuals who interact with your brand’s website or social sites. Since prospects may need to see your brand a couple of times before deciding, retargeting is a smart method to keep them moving down the sales funnel.
You would have seen retargeting at work if you had gone to a website and start seeing ads from the same brands in a few hours. Retargeted advertisements are regular ads, but they only target those who have already have a form of interaction with the business.
Create a Referral Reward Program
Start a program that rewards consumers with a perk or discount in return for bringing you leads. Customers appreciate and trust recommendations from their peers, so getting current customers to spread the word about your company may be an effective method to fill your lead funnel.
In conclusion
You might not know, but more than 55 percent of B2B companies set apart over 50 percent of their marketing budget for lead generation. Businesses that have integrated lead generation into their marketing strategy have increased lead conversion rates and turn prospects into loyal customers. Also, increased lead generation means a boost in revenue. And since they tend to cost less than other marketing strategies, lead generation tactics can ensure a positive ROI.