Lead Generation: A complete guide

Lead Generation

As a digital agency, Leads are our bread and butter. Lead generation is the process of captivating the prospects' interest in a product or service with the end goal of converting them into customers and increasing the overall revenue. For most B2B companies, first time website visitors are unlikely to purchase their products or services, hence they need a lead generation and lead nurturing strategy to combat this problem.

What is a lead?

Lead Generation: What is a lead

A lead is a potential customer who has an interest in your offer. With lead generation, you aim to increase brand awareness, build relationships and filter the high-quality leads to close more deals.

Why do you need lead generation for your business?

Lead generation- Why is it important?

Every organization has a specific group of people, also known as potential leads, who are more likely to buy the product or service as it is catered to solve their pain points. Lead generation is crucial because you need to be visible, credible and earn the trust of your prospects, who may not even be aware of your existence before. Read this guide on PPC campaign strategy.

1. Lead generation allows customer expansion opportunities.

When a brand creates content to communicate effectively with the audience, there is a high potential for gaining the audience's loyalty as content is a free resource. Also, focusing on the growth of a business with a content marketing approach helps you be the authority in your niche. At the same time, partnering with other non-competing brands related to your business could also help get exposure to their audience. It could be a win-win situation for both the brands. 

You could work with us, the leading digital marketing agency to assist you in lead generation.

2. Boosts revenue for your business

The most qualified leads often have no idea about your existence unless you are a multinational organization with billions in marketing budget like Amazon. With lead marketing, you get the opportunity to send the right messages, offers, and content to generate interest from your specific group of buyers or customer persona.

The growth prospect of your business in terms of revenue is on the positive horizon when you focus on your audience's interest and solving their pain points. You must ensure that your marketing message revolves around the empathy map to let your voice resonate with your customer persona. Find this resource on customer onboarding.

3. Allows you to turn the steering towards what the market needs, instead of what you assume

Slidebean, a presentation company, in its earlier stage focused on the academic teachers and students who might like their simple and intriguing dashboard and presentation software. However, this was something they "assumed" in its cocoon stage. With their experiments and lead generation strategies, they realized B2B businesses were the ones who stayed longer(reduced churn) and spent more.

Many B2B companies tend to assume their customer persona due to the lack of data. Hence, B2B lead generation helps to understand the customers and segment the ones who show more interest in the products.

Here is how to skyrocket your B2B sales.

The four major components of lead generation

Lead Generation- The four major components of lead generation

Lead Capture: 

Lead capture refers to the process of saving the information of your potential customers (leads) to nurture them further and converting them to paying customers. Generally, a lead visits the website and fills the information in your lead capture form.

Some of the best practices to keep in mind:

• Avoid asking for irrelevant and too much information.
• Employ
  AI chatbots to answer your visitors' queries, give personalized offers with sentimental and behavioral analysis.
• Use A/B testing to optimize the lead capture pages.

Lead Magnets:

A lead magnet is a marketing term for giving away a free item or service to your leads to extract their contact details. Trial subscriptions, newsletters, free consultation, e-books, infographics, etc., are some of the examples.

Some of the best practices to keep in mind:

• Include information or demonstration for the problem that your leads are facing
• Ensure that your free item is consumable and could establish your authority
• Include actionable takeaways

Find this excellent article on online reputation management to take your brand image to the next level.

Lead Qualification:

The lead qualification process focuses on segmenting out the potential customers and creating personalized offers with a dedicated call to action to the prospects who are in the position and need to make the purchase. During lead qualification, you could look at factors like the prospect's necessity level to buy the product, if the lead is authorized to make the purchase, and the money spending capabilities.

Some of the best practices to keep in mind:

• Create a customer persona and figure out every single possible detail about them
• Score your leads based on various characteristics to prioritize the right ones in your sales pipeline
• Have an eye on effective lead qualification framework, FAINT

FAINT

F- Funds, 

A-Authority, 

I-Interest, 

N-Need, 

T-Timing.

Lead Segmentation

Lead segmentation process segments prospects and customers into groups based on various parameters and insights, for example demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and geographic segmentation. Lead segmentation allows you to discover the problems that your customers might be experiencing so that you can establish values for your goods and services.

Some of the best practices to keep in mind:

• Have an analytical approach to your customer segmentation
• Don't include segmentation bias of any kind
• Prioritize your goals

Here is a guide on voice search optimization.

Lead Generation Strategies: 5 tips you can't overlook at all

Lead Generation Strategies

1. Ensure that the landing page is not distractive and easy to take action on

Lead Generation: Landing pages are crucial

• Plan your layout and keep the copy concise
• Know the goal behind a landing page
• Avoid distractions on your page or exit opportunities. Keep the offer concise and ask for the required information. It's that simple.
• Keep the page visually appealing.
• If the page looks spammy or people don't find the exact offer, they may bounce back.
• Spend time on crafting an attention grabber headline. The headline must tell the readers what the product or service is all about
• The sub-headings must be persuasive and concise.
• Visual content is important as the brain processes images faster than text.
• Add a short explanation about your offer.
• Mention the pain point to grab the attention of your customer persona
• Mention contact information or legal information about your business to maintain your legitimacy

2. Lead Generation with social media advertising is an effective way

Lead Generation - social media advertising

Facebook ads allow you to target a very specific audience who match your customer persona criteria. Facebook also offers lead ads to help you capture more leads and also allows you to have a simple call to action button at the top of your Facebook page, allowing you to send followers directly to your website. 

For B2B companies, Twitter could also be a great option as it has Twitter Lead Gen Cards, which allows you to generate leads within a tweet without sending the visitor to the website. LinkedIn, the number one platform for B2B professionals and marketing, also allows lead generation marketing. It has a lead generation option that allows the people who see your ad to fill a form and directly share their contact information. LinkedIn's lead Gen forms also have the auto-fill option, which aims at reducing the effort by the ad-clicker.

Read here on hotel trends and hospitality industry trends in 2022 to create a holistic marketing approach.

3. Create offers for people at all the stages of the marketing cycle using digital marketing funnel

Lead Generation - social media advertising

The worst assumption you could make is that all the people are ready to talk to your sales team or see a demo of your product. The buyers at the beginning or awareness stage want to know more about their pain point, solution, and offer. In such a case, you could leverage lead nurturing by targeting these people with a valuable digital asset like an e-book or infographic with actionable tips and a call to action.

Many tools allow you to create personalized messages for your customers. It would be best if you leveraged personalization as it is a great way to remain in the minds of your people and be a step ahead of the competition.  Here is a guide on Amazon listing optimization.

4. Your call-to-actions must hyperlink to a specific lead-gen page

Lead Generation - Call-To-Action

Let's assume that your customer visited your website and was intimidated by your call to action, and wants to be a lead for you. In such a case, there must be a direct communication channel. Like in our scenario, it could be a hyperlink to the highly dedicated landing page that captures the lead's information with all the instructions mentioned above. Here is how to create a digital marketing strategy.

5. Referral marketing is one of the prominent ways to generate leads

Lead Generation - Referral Marketing

Credits : OBERLO(image)

Referral marketing focuses on the word-of-mouth promotion of your brand, which establishes your authority and credibility. The first step towards a successful referral program is having an exceptional offer in the form of your product or service that surpasses your customers' expectations. You must always put your customers first and think about adding value to them in all the possible ways. Ensure that your marketing goal is clear and use strategic promotion of your referral program to earn more referrals and credibility. 

Do you know how you would tell your customers about your program? If not, it is high time to find solutions. You could use email blasts to your email subscribers and use paid advertising to spread your program. Use catchy headlines and make it easy for people to refer you. Also, implement analytics and tracking for a data-driven approach.

Conclusion

The lead generation process aims at winning audiences' trust and attention with the end goal of making a sale. Lead generation is crucial for the success of your business, and hence you must have a proven lead generation strategy to excel.

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- Digital agency,  

- Amazon marketing agency, and

- Magento Developer

Feel free to contact us to see an unprecedented growth of your business.

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