“You are out of business if you don’t have a prospect.” — Zig Zigler
Lead generation is a commonly used term these days with every business, big and small. Deciding the right lead generation strategy for your business can be difficult and will often involve some trial and error. But there are some proven strategies out there, which we will discuss in this article.
WHAT IS LEAD GENERATION?
Lead Generation in digital marketing is the initiation of consumer interest or inquiry into products/services of a business through online or digital means.
Lead generation is an essential part of any marketing funnel. It refers to the process of identifying and cultivating prospective customers, or leads, for your business. But it’s not enough to find these individuals — one has to cultivate a relationship with them and stimulate their interest in the product/service you have to offer.
The digital era has changed the way we do business, and marketers need to keep up with the demands of their prospects by building an efficient lead generation strategy to manage every stage of the buyers’ journey:
- Drive traffic to the company website
- Convert those visitors into leads
- Nurture those leads into customers
10 PROVEN LEAD GENERATION TECHNIQUES
Particularly for B2B enterprises, lead generation is based on demonstrating expertise and building trust. While digital marketing continues to evolve, there are some proven lead generation techniques being followed by the best online marketers out there.
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Keep blogging
Blogging is probably the most effective lead generation strategy. Without it, your SEO efforts will lose their bite.
Think from the buyer’s perspective and create blogs with more personalised content. You could do guest blogging, talk about how your offering can help businesses indepth, and create a wide range of keyword-loaded content that can be found in search engines. These blogs must then be promoted on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
The blog post is the first step in the buyer’s journey, so be sure to include CTA buttons in the side bar and at the end of the post, as well as in-text links.
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Webpage Optimisation
Since it all starts with driving traffic to your website, you need to ensure your website is functioning properly. On the user’s smartphone as well! Loading errors, lagging speed, poor user interface can negatively impact traffic.
A lead generating website is user-friendly with easy navigation and clear CTAs, designed to make it easy for visitors to search and find what they want, understand your value proposition, request a quotation, etc. This also helps you to know who visited your website so a precise follow-up conversation can be taken up by a sales rep.
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Routine website checks and keyword updation
It’s not enough to check only for bugs or when complaints come. Broken links, 404 error pages will drive visitors away forever. Routine checks are crucial to ensure the system is running smoothly.
It’s also important to make changes, improve user interface whenever required, and keep updating keywords based on researching the competition, adding long-tailed keywords, etc. to optimise content.
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Create and promote lead magnets
Lead magnets are bits of content like PDF or recorded files that can be seen and downloaded by visitors in exchange for their contact information. You could also offer a discount, free trial or gift coupon as your lead magnet. Promote your lead magnet around your website by highlighting it on the homepage as a call-to-action, in the sidebar or a hello bar. You could also promote lead magnets at the end of blog posts and pages, and create a resource library full of gated content.
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Design gated content
Gated content includes white papers, e-books, reports, courses, online tools, etc. that are accessible to users only after they fill out a lead capture form. Gated content helps to attract high quality leads that are genuinely interested in subjects related to your offerings, while giving them something of value for free.
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Create a quality e-newsletter
A value-packed monthly e-newsletter with interesting educational and informative content goes a long way in encouraging prospects to connect and stay in touch with your brand. You can also fill your newsletter with new blog posts and recommended reading from other thought leaders, announce new services, upcoming events and specific offers.
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Make online marketing videos
Today, everybody is on YouTube and Vimeo, the leading online video platforms with millions of viewers every day.We all know the power of video, so why not take advantage of video marketing for lead generation? Make videos to present your company, explain complex services, demonstrate new products, present case studies and testimonials, etc.
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Harness social media
Many businesses have benefitted by social media marketing. Social media is online networking. While the style and content may vary from Twitter to LinkedIn to Facebook, social media helps you to connect and network with the people who matter for your business. By promoting yourself on social media, you can reach many prospects.
Record podcasts, upload them on iTunes or SoundCloud. Spend on social media advertising or hire marketing bloggers to promote your company in a subtle manner. If you have a valuable lead magnet, highlight it on your social profiles. Leverage call-to-action buttons by linking them to your lead magnet instead of your home page.
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Host an online event
An online event to attract your target audience is a sound lead generation strategy. It could be a webinar, workshop or conference, and the key to a successful event is to choose topics that of interest and value for your ideal prospect. Such events will help you capture contact information through event registration, and help connect with customers so you can answer questions, learn about your audience, address their queries, share information, etc.
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Use live chats and FAQs
A live chat helps you engage with your potential customer on the spot. Live chats prompt visitors to ask questions about your products/services when visiting your website – and will help you gauge what most visitors are really looking for. By requiring users to provide contact details to submit a question, a live chat becomes a good lead generation technique.
Using customer emails and live chats, you can also compile a list of frequently asked questions and answer them as clearly as possible. This will help customers and increase trust.
CONCLUSION
Successful lead generation is an ongoing process. It does not happen overnight or even within a week. An evolving process, it needs continuous inspection and evaluation. But with the techniques suggested, you could build a robust digital marketing strategy to engage more traffic for your website and guide them through the marketing funnel with improved conversion rates.
Interics IN-DIGITAL offers an exclusive strategy for digital marketing to engage a community of professionals to drive actions that are relevant to your market and products. Interics IN-DIGITAL conducts continuous improvement, additions and optimisation of touch-points for qualified lead generation and sales nurturing.
IoT (Internet of Things) is the future of the B2B digital platforms, improving data processing and making it possible for industries to analyse and distribute the data in an approachable way.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled solutions too are revolutionising B2B marketing by converting huge amounts of customer data into actionable insight that helps improve the quantity and quality of leads generated.From chatbots to predictive analysis to extra-precise targeting for content delivery across multiple interaction points – the potential of AI is ever-growing.
Interics Digital harnesses these evolving technologies to expand your audience, pinpoint your leads and optimise digital marketing efforts.
Interics IN-DIGITAL is a full services Digital agency specialising in digital marketing solutions that cover digital brand positioning, digital advertising, website design, lead generation, reputation management, content marketing and more.