Without reaching the target audience your business will fail, all-the-time, every time! Having the best product doesn't guarantee you success in the market place. This is why lead generation and lead management is critical. HubSpot’s statistics found that 54% more leads are generated by inbound marketing tactics than by traditional paid marketing.
Marketers all around the globe are constantly on the lookout for sustainable techniques for lead generation. A quality lead is the lifeline of your business, more leads mean more sales, more profit and a successful business. In fact, according to the 2018 State of Inbound report, a marketer’s number one priority is converting each sales lead into customers. This means the content surrounding your product needs to be the main focus. Although many aspects of B2B lead gen have become synonymous with B2C, every lead generation process needs to use a customized approach to generating leads from a target audience whether they are B2B leads or otherwise. This blog post will help you by going over a few tips that can help you get your lead generation strategies rolling in the right direction. So let's get started!
Establish Content-based Thought Leadership
Content creation is the first step in your lead generation strategy. Data indicates, 88% of consumers research their buys online before making a purchase. Therefore it is critical that you surround your products with high quality marketable and persuasive content marketing to hasten your lead generation process. Regularly post blogs, news, and tips regarding your industry. Also, produce extensive guides that visitors can download on your website. This allows you to collect data from people that download your guides so you can enroll them into lead nurturing programs and keep them engaged by sharing more about your product or service. You may even turn them into customers. Don’t forget to engage in SEO, social for enabling high-quality organic searches, and other inbound lead generation efforts. You can even use content syndication to your benefit when it comes to B2B lead generation to increase your conversion rate with each potential lead. Your next lead generation campaign can use marketing automation to your benefit to sort through all the data you have to collected via your content.
Use Paid Social Media
92% of small businesses will increase their investment in social media this year. More than two billion people use social media every day. The average person spends 135 minutes per day on social networks. Also, the number of small businesses advertising on Facebook has doubled to 50 million in recent months. Paid social media advertising is very different from traditional outbound marketing. Big data and machine learning allows you to find, target, and reach your audience to increase your conversion rate with ease. Social media coupled with a great landing page is an ideal way to distribute your best content. According to Sprout Social, 73.4% of users follow a brand because they’re interested in its product or service.
Nurture the curiosity of your followers with educational content that will transform them into your next qualified lead. Every good B2B marketer should look to KPIs such as clicks, comments, and profile visits to determine if your ads are creating an impact. Social media lead generation can create a smooth customer journey for your potential customers and your lead generation funnel is memorable and measurable.
Email Marketing
As of 2019, email marketing can be considered as a traditional method of marketing, but don’t underestimate just how significant it is to include this in your multichannel approach. With the evolution of marketing automation along with big data, the latest CRMs allow you to use latest data to funnel your marketing strategy to target specific segments of your customer database and target audience. Your email strategy could include follow-up emails with great content and a CTA (call to action) to subscribe to your blog. This allows you the opportunity to not only generate leads but further nurture them towards becoming a customer. Your landing page will have a big impact on conversion rate so ensure that it is tailored to the buyer persona you have identified. According to Forrester Research, companies that nurture their leads see 50% more sales-ready leads.
Offer Free Downloads
One of the features a good lead generation technique can have is some sort of free download. This can be an e-book, whitepaper, infographic or other helpful resource that people can fill out a simple form to download. The content you offer should be a quality piece that is helpful to users and can stand on its own. Once people have downloaded it from your landing page, you have their information from the form. So, you can follow up with them about your other offerings.
Send out a Newsletter
The newsletter has long been a mainstream strategy for generating leads and getting them in the sales funnel. While e-books and blogs are an essential part of your content marketing strategy, newsletters actually catch people in a place they’re more likely to check — their inbox. Plus, those who are interested enough to sign up to receive your helpful content are also more likely to be interested when you update them about that new product or service you just launched.
There’s no one right way to generating leads or finding a new lead online. Every marketing team has a different target audience and communication style. Some marketers swear by using a lead ad or Facebook ad, while others have found more success by hosting webinars. Lead generation marketing is not a complicated process especially if you use lead generation software or an agency that provides lead generation services to reach your prospective customer. Your lead generation process can use a modern lead generation tool or combine outbound lead generation methods that work hand in hand with your demand generation strategies. Whichever you choose to experiment with next, be sure you keep testing. This will help you gain an in-depth understanding of how to effectively strategize and implement digital marketing campaigns in order to move the bottom line.