Navigating a successful sales campaign can be a challenge if you do not have good leads. Traditionally, businesses used to send salespeople to home to understand the demographic’s needs. Nowadays, with the advent of the internet, generating leads has become a tricky but a highly rewarding task. It is not only about the number of leads you have, but the quality and propensity that these leads have can be crucial to your company’s bottomline. If you are a budding entrepreneur or a veteran, lead generation strategies can help you boost up your sales and provide more revenue from all your marketing channels.
What Are Leads?
In modern-day digital marketing, lead refers to a viable business contact which has the highest possibility of being converted. Once you get hold of a lead, you can analyze their requirements and explain to them how your services are beneficial to their needs. In turn, gaining the trust of the organization and selling your product almost instantly. Even though lead generation might seem like a simple task, the complexities that lurk within this subject can only be fathomed if experienced. You might have the best product or service in the world, but you need proper leads to find the right platform to showcase your hard work among the right crowd.
Types of Leads
You can classify leads according to your ease, however, they are widely categorized under the following sects as mentioned below.
- Market Qualified Leads or MQLs: Leads that seem to like your marketing approach but would not be interested in buying your product or service.
- Sales Qualified Leads or SQLs: Your marketing efforts have left a deep impact on these customers but they are yet to be converted by your sales team, by showcasing the uniqueness of your offering.
- Product Qualified Leads or PQLs: People that have tried your product out via some free trial or offer. Their next step is to purchase your full-scale pack and rejoice in your service’s benefits.
How to Generate Leads?
There are several ways to generate genuine leads that you can sell effortlessly to. This blog outlines all the effective lead generation techniques that can be used by you, right off the bat! Keep in mind that lead generation is a process which is learnt through trial and error. We suggest using a blend of 3-4 of the most relevant lead generation strategies that you will find below. Decipher which platform your target audience hangs out more on and run lead generating funnels on those specific platforms. When you work with a digital marketing agency like Branding Experts, you will find new and exciting ways to create marketing funnels that capture genuine leads.
Lead Generation By Using Content Marketing
You can use relevant, and often bonus content to attract and generate solid leads. This is an age-old technique, similar to the traditional technique of providing your product sample. Now, in the age of digital marketing, such techniques have evolved to suit the virtual landscape.
The Art of Creating Lead Magnets
Did you ever get a very useful ebook for free, sent straight to your mail? If yes, then you have accepted a lead magnet! That means the people hosting the resource collected your data of your own volition in return for some value that they have delivered. You can also provide some little pieces of lead magnets that your target audience might like to pick up on. In return you will get a lead that can be nurtured into a potential sale. Some commonly used lead magnets for lead generation are mentioned below.
- Free webinar or courses
- Templates & checklists
- Online free tools
- Calculators, convertors, etc.
Lead magnets can be a very powerful technique to source our great leads for your sales purposes. You must understand that providing value is a very nice way of asking a person for their personal contact. In the process, they seem to gain a better understanding of your product, which can lead to a conversion pretty easily.
Another aspect of using lead magnets is to understand the stage of the customer’s journey through your product map. You can customize your lead magnet according to the customer’s product phase and you can have a very successful lead generation campaign.
Adding Value To Your Blogs
Businesses that go the extra mile for their customers tend to have a better retention rate, thus your blog content should also provide some extra buff for your readers to benefit from. You can add links to video tutorials, free courses on specific topics, etc. and draw your target audience down your sales funnel. Let us explain to you how.
Take for example, you add a free resource like free templates or whitepapers that helps your reader execute your guide, it is more likely for a person to give up their contact information. This is a sure shot way of getting the best leads since the customer is already vetted to buy your product.
Social Media Lead Generation: Knowing Your Client Better
Social media is an inevitably powerful tool for marketers to generate genuine leads. You can understand more about your target demographic when you source their leads from social media platforms. There are several intricate techniques to do so, and we have brought together some of the most effective lead generation techniques used by expert marketers.
Lead Gen With Targeted Ads
Your ideal customer profile or ICP can be easily targeted with ads that are specific to demographic groups. Social media allows you to run your ad on their platforms, and sometimes even collects leads for your use. The advantage of using this technique is that you can reach your target audience faster and with more efficiency. You can run ads on Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms and collect user information effortlessly. Later, these leads can turn out to be really reliable leads that convert like butter.
Contests To Win Leads
There has never been a better plan than hosting social media contests like selfie contests, comment fests and more. This is a great way of knowing your customer’s phase of the product journey, allowing you to pitch them better. Launch the contest and share it across your social pages, your ideal customer will come to your post and leave their impression on it via comments, likes, etc. allowing you to capture their lead. This is where a Social media marketing agency helps by allowing you to better understand your customer’s backgrounds, refining the sales pitching process.
When you host a contest, people who are inherently interested in your product, would like to interact with it. Collect information like email contact and even ask questions that can tell you more about the customer’s propensity to buy your product.
A Super Tip: LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
LinkedIn gives you a special avenue for lead generation. You can place an ad on LinkedIn, which when clicked by your prospects, brings up an auto-filled form, making it easier for them to submit it. LinkedIn Lead Gen forms have been recognized as a reckoning force in the world of lead generation because of their simplistic yet extensive effectiveness. We have brought you a little list of steps that can help you set up your LinkedIn Lead Gen forms in no time.
Step 1: Design Your Goldmine Ad!
Make an appealing ad that directly resonates with your target customer’s mindset. Using relatable memes or wordplay can also have a positive effect. Your main aim while creating the ad should be to ensure that your genuine customers cannot resist clicking the ad. Once you have set your hook, now is time to pull in the line.
Step 2: Attach A LinkedIn Lead Gen Form
Customize the linkedIn Lead Gen form to serve your campaign’s needs. You will get multiple options to modify the form on the platform itself.
Step 3: Trap Your Honey Leads
Now it is the perfect time to lay in wake as your target demographic provides you with their leads, automatically!
Step 4: Track & Manage
LinkedIn provides you with ample tools, insights and options to track your lead generation status. You can keep track of specific leads, take actions based on their insights, all while keeping a proper overview of the whole marketing campaign.
Even though LinkedIn’s simple interface makes this process exceedingly seamless, having a digital marketing partner like Branding Experts can help you streamline your operations. Their creative lead generation techniques integrate within themselves, providing the perfect flux of the most receptive prospects.
From Visitors To Leads - Banking On Your Website!
If you have a website that has regular visitors frequenting it, you can turn your site into a lead generating machine quite skillfully. Here are some of the ways that your websites can serve as a funnel for bringing you the best leads in the marketplace.
A Perfect Landing!
Designing a beautiful landing page that clearly showcases your offering and why individuals should buy it can be a great way to reach your customers. Dedicated landing pages for each marketing campaign can help you segment your customer base efficiently, without giving them too many products to consider. Here are some quick tips to improve your landing page performance.
- Add clear & understandable CTAs
- Provide lead magnets
- Testimonies
- Keep the content focused
- Create a problem solving persona
Ads that lead to such offer landing pages provide you with the most organic leads for your sales campaign. Ensure your page keeps a person scrolling till the end and avoid adding too many distracting elements.
Exit Pop-ups
User experience has come a long way. Now you can raise a pop-up when your customer is about to leave your webpage. Offer them a coupon, a quick email discount and get a hold of their precious lead. You can later nurture the lead into a sale, after analyzing the buyer’s intent. For example, if you offer a coupon as an exit pop-up, which the customer will receive in their email, it is most likely for them to return to your website and try your product for a discounted price. By using some of the techniques we have mentioned below, you will be able to vet such leads and nurture them for the long haul. Branding Experts can help you strategize such innovative lead generating techniques like direct placements on major channels, allowing you to reach a larger stratum of your target audience.
Choosing The Right Email Marketing Campaign!
Email marketing is probably one of the oldest forms of digital marketing. Nowadays, marketers have come up with innovative new ways to use email campaigns for various business purposes. You should definitely generate leads with mails if you plan on driving sales with email marketing. Here are some of the modern email marketing techniques that can help you generate a vast number of leads through the path of emails.
Plan Out Your Drip Campaign
A drip campaign is a series of emails that are sent to your leads or potential prospects to nurture and convert them into active sales. Drip campaigns have been in the industry for more than 20 years and their impact is always powerful. Consider using a drip campaign for your leads and vet them for your product with ease.
Mail List Segmenting: A Touch Of Personalization
Segmenting your email list will allow you to reach various demographics of your target customers with more efficiency. You can address your target’s pain points easily and also feel more relatable to them. This creates an interaction of marketing languages and has been known to provide stellar results.
Other Ways to Generate Leads Effortlessly!
We have now covered all the wings of your marketing operation and how you can generate leads through them. If you are on the lookout for a digital marketing team that can help you reach your optimal leads easily, consider choosing Branding Experts. Their team has an accumulated experience of more than 15 years in the digital marketing domain. You can easily trust their services, when it comes to generating leads. You can take that from the thousands of happy clients that they have garnered through their company’s journey. You can learn more about them by checking out their website.
ChatBots: A New Way To Automatically Collect Leads
Consider getting a chatbot for your website and you can keep on capturing leads whenever someone tries to initiate a conversation. This also provides the customers with a 24/7 assistant support bot, allowing them to know about your work in a more interactive way. Chatbots are now widely popularized and you can ask your digital marketing agency to just set it up for you. A best pr agency like Branding Experts will have it up and running in no time.
Webinars and Events Online
Online events are a great way to draw in leads from a verified funnel. People signing up for your free webinar or course are likely to have keen interest in the solution that you are presenting. Take the time to funnel them properly and collect leads by providing lead magnets throughout the course. You can focus on customers in various stages of their customer journey with a more channelized approach when you provide lead magnets through the course of your webinar.
Refer A Friend: Quickest Lead Gen!
Ask your customers to provide you with verified leads in exchange for reward points, extra discounts or other lead magnets. This is a verified method of signing up new leads from the old ones.
Strategize Your Partnerships & Collabs
You will find a great deal of leads by partnering up with agencies and other business entities. This is a collaborative effort where you can get introduced to your new client swiftly. Keep an eye on any avenues of lead generation when you are collaborating with companies like yours. Approach the leads with calm caution and provide them your value to convert them into your clients.
Quiz Games: Your Interactive Funnel
Setup little trivia games via social media or other content marketing outlets and let your target audience reach out to you with the answer. We recommend this technique of lead generation since it has such potential for scouting out the right leads for your business. Having a digital marketing partner like Branding Experts, you can use multiple channels of marketing to entice excitement from your targeted strata.
Conclusion As A Guide
Generating leads can be a swift task, provided that you choose the right channels of lead generation for your business. We have given you the list of the best lead generation strategies known to modern marketers. Now go ahead and use the right blend of these techniques to find your perfect customer!