Lead generation is a marketers most important objective. In a nutshell, it is the process of identifying potential customers for your business’s products or services. Today, lead generation isn’t just about cold-calling or sending out a bunch of emails to bought list. It’s a complicated, inbound process that requires a diverse range of strategies, tools, and content in order to attract prospects to your company, rather than intrusively reaching out to them.
Lead generation is a crucial part of the inbound marketing methodology. When a stranger initiates a relationship with you by showing an organic interest in your business, you need to naturally transition them from stranger to customer. Specifically, lead generation falls within the second stage of the inbound marketing methodology, whereby you turn a visitor into lead. It occurs after you've attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into interested and engaged, warm leads for your sales team.
The best lead generation campaigns contain most, if not all, of these components. From a tactical perspective, a marketer needs four crucial elements to make inbound lead generation happen. These include:
Tip 1: Create irresistible offers
When an offer is exclusive, scarce, or in high demand, it becomes more desirable. Whether they are whitepapers, free trials, memberships, sales promotions, or downloads, these irresistible elements can overcome a lead’s typical friction, doubt, or concern. Why do these elements work? Because they trigger a physiological reaction that makes an offer more valuable. People need to perceive the value of your offer to be greater than what you’re asking for in return. The higher the perception of value, the more irresistible the offer.
Tip 2: Attractive CTAs
Calls-to-action (CTA) are the secret to driving people to your offers. If your CTAs aren’t effective at capturing people’s attention and persuading them to the click, then it makes the offer useless. CTAs can be used on product pages, in display ads, email, social media, direct mail and pretty much anywhere you can market your offer.
Tip 3: Landing pages that convert
The use of landing pages enable marketers to direct website visitors to targeted pages and capture leads at a much higher rate. What’s great about landing pages is that they direct your visitors to one particular offer, without the distractions of everything else on your website. Visitors should be on a landing page for one and only purpose: to complete the lead capture form.
Tip 4: Optimised forms
Forms are the key to a landing page. Without them, there is no way to “convert” a visitor into a lead. Forms come in handy when it’s time for people to sign-up, subscribe to your site or download an offer.
Tip 5: Multichannel lead generation
You need to utilise other channels in order to maximise your lead generation efforts. In this sense, a channel might be a retail store, a website, a social media platform, an email, or a text message. The objective is to make it easy for buyers to research, evaluate and purchase products in any way that is most appropriate for them.
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