Wondering, “what is lead generation?” Read this article to determine the importance of lead generation and how it can help you in digital marketing.
Lead Generation is the key to develop a relationship with a customer. It greatly impacts a business’s sales as it can affect the company’s average annual growth. This process is pretty tricky and difficult to manage, which explains why it is necessary to build a stable business model containing critical steps, such as making content, shifting, selecting, etc., to satisfy the most potential customers.
What is lead generation, you may ask? Don’t worry too much! This article will make a clear guide for you to understand what lead generation is full. Even though you are a newbie in this field, you can still create your own efficient lead generation strategy.
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What Is A Lead?
Lead is a marketing term. A lead is considered any person or organization that shows interest and curiosity in a company’s product or service in various ways and forms. A lead can be:
Someone who has zero knowledge about the product/service that your company provides.
People that have issues and need to tackle the problems with the help of your products or services.
Somebody is considering whether to use your company’s items/services or your opponents’.
People that already experienced opponents’ deals and products.
There are different types of leads in marketing. Leads appear in many stages of your business. You need to define if they are qualified leads to support your marketing field.
A qualified lead is divided into two kinds, which is MQLs and SQLs:
MQLs is a short term for Marketing-qualified leads. They are subjects that are more likely to think of buying the products in marketing. These leads are usually specified by the information that the company collected through marketing broadcasts. The information will be analyzed to make a list of qualified leads. There are many ways qualified leads can express themselves, such as registering to receive email marketing, downloading templates, ebooks, case studies, participating in an online event or a workshop, filling in a form to request the product data.
SQLs is short for Sales-qualified leads. They are potential leads that are ready to buy a product or to offer a service. At this stage, the business development manager will keep track of these leads until they have enough condition to proceed to the buying process. After defining the leads, they will be qualified to become SQLs.
Because there are different kinds of lead, your job is to utilize many tactics to persuade a lead to become your customers willingly. Not all leads have the potential to buy your product, so you must make a list of particular criteria to evaluate a lead.
Why Lead Important?
A lead is the heart and soul as a company’s growth rate depends on this person.
You have to ensure that a prospect is truly interested in your products and services by asking some specific questions.
If the leads are not qualified enough, it can cause you to waste money and valuable time on prospects that aren’t going to sell. This will have a lot of negative impacts on you or your company’s sales. Rather than marketing to everyone, it would be best to only focus on people who are implicated.
What Is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is the process of attracting and acquiring new leads for your company’s business.
For instance, you can engage them by events, brochures, coupons, website landing pages, social media marketing, or blog posts. If the prospects are curious about them, they will fill in the forms and leave their personal contact information.
After that, you have to make these leads potentially purchase from your business. Ensure that your sales team nurtures each lead so that you are not wasting money on those that won’t turn into sales.
What Is Lead Generation In Digital Marketing?
The digital revolution has changed the way our business works. We used to promote our business by knocking door to door or finding crowded places to give people leaflets and newspapers.
Today, the use of different analytical software is more beneficial for us.
Just like with x-rays, you can choose the right person to build the bridge, so it will be easier to focus on your target audience. As a result, you will not miss any of your prospects. You can accomplish your aim, which is to convert website visitors into leads and turn those potential customers into your customers.
It is a must for businesses to keep up and continuously adapt to develop their digital marketing strategies. Lead generation in digital media is super important, and social media also plays a vital role in getting brand exposure.
The cost of lead generation in digital marketing depends on what strategies you are employing. Experts believe that more than half of your budget should be used towards lead generation but only when you found the correct strategy and received good, quality returns.
Outbound Vs. Inbound Lead Generation
Outbound lead generation sends messages directly to a target audience, even though they did not express any interest. In this scenario, you are the one who chose and decided the time and place for the interaction.
Most of the outbound tactics ask for a paid delivery mechanism, which greatly impacts running any campaign. Rather than helping and educating, it focuses more on selling. Some of the tactics are considered outbound, including direct mail, cold calling, or display advertising.
On the other hand, inbound lead generation is to create campaigns that turn website visitors into leads. You can do this by using valuable content, such as making your brand discoverable on social media platforms. However, what I need to emphasize here is that with inbound lead generation, you let your buyers decide where and when to make contacts to exchange the information.
They can choose whether to do it or not. Your goal is to build trust and earn the attention of the target audience.
This scenario focuses more on helping rather than selling. You will support the prospect, help buyers define, and tackle the problems they have to make better purchase decisions. Thus, this actually creates the possibility to influence purchase processes positively. Some of the tactics that can be considered an inbound lead generation are blogging, programmatic, advertising, or live chat.
Although both inbound and outbound lead generation aims to create demand and generate leads, they still have a big difference between who is going to decide the time and place to interact.
Outbound certainly has more risks as you do not want to waste too much time, and the costs are also much higher due to telephone work and advertising. Meanwhile, inbound campaigns have lower costs, and they are spread over a more extensive timeframe.
So, How To Generate Lead?
In this section, I will show you several smart ways to generate leads easier:
1.Blogging
Research shows that blog posts can attract potential customers up to 64%. Not only do blog pages provide valuable data for the buyers, but they also help you to draw the prospect’s attention consistently through application forms.
2.Newsletter
Source: Backlinko
Some companies create a newsletter twice a week or once a month so as to exchange information with the target audience.
3.Video How To’s
Suppose you are a professional in a typical field or simply passionate about it. In that case, you can write down tips and great methods, then post them on your website to catch potential customers’ attention. This is an awesome tactic to generate leads.
4.Free Demos And Trial
Ubersuggest Free Trial
Sometimes the buyers do not believe the productivity that a product can bring, so it is time for you to release some trials and free demos. You can be super successful as people tend to have more attention to things that are free.
5.Lists
For example, you can write a list of the 10 most useful products or a list of great services. People usually search for this type of keyword because they do not want to spend too much time looking for a suitable item. You have to try this out.
6.Slideshows
You can create slideshows to illustrate specialties in the business field to attract potential customers.
7.Social Contests
To make things a little bit more enjoyable, you can also create some contests on social media and reward the competition winners.
Adding questions like “What is your favorite type of” of “What do you think of” will make the buyers willingly provide valuable information. Furthermore, the science behind this is having a contest makes people feel less bored and gradually changes people’s minds; they will unconsciously become interested in your product.
8.Pop Up Forms
It is not enough to have great content if you can’t have the prospect’s information. Pop-ups only activate when somebody clicks on your website. You should add a pop up when someone reads your article for more than 10 seconds so they can fill in the forms with their personal data.
There are. Any types of pop-ups for you to choose from, such as exit pop-ups, entry pop-ups, timed pop-ups, or scroll pop-ups. For example, Amazon uses click pop-ups to illustrate product info through videos for the Amazon Fire TV.
Nick O’Neil is also a great example. He is a successful businessman. His blogs are about his business and are mostly published through podcast interviews. In his posts, he adds in some pop-ups and allows the customers to download a free guide. Pop-ups are not a new type of lead generation, but it is definitely useful for your business to grow.
9.Sales funnel
A sales funnel (especially Lead Magnet Funnel) can generate dozens of emails and social leads in a short period of time. Many marketers use freebies to give away and exchange contact information of potential customers.
To be more sincere, you can send your appreciation. People who want to help others who have difficult living conditions will donate and leave their personal information.
10.Facebook Lead Generation
Facebook has billions of users, and it is the biggest social network worldwide.
74% of the population said that they use Facebook for business purposes. Posting your business content on Facebook can significantly raise your business productivity and eventually earn your popularity earlier.
11.Find Leads On Twitter
There are 330 million users who activate their Twitter account monthly, so Twitter is considered to contain an enormous source of potential leads. You can reach the audience associated with your niche with the help of Followerwonk. Thus, you can analyze some aspects like followers’ information, when and where your followers tweet, etc.
12.Find Leads On Pinterest
More than 300 million people use Pinterest every month. Pinterest started in 2010 and immediately has its fame since it provides a collection of information from different websites to help people find what matches their demand easier. Posting on Pinterest is also a great way to generate potential customers.
13. Answer Questions On Quora
Quora is famous for its question and answer based social networking site. Millions of people from different countries post daily questions on this page. You can answer as many questions as you like. If the users spot your profile, they will likely check out your website.
14.Comment On Other Blogs
It is helpful for you to comment on blogs. You can eventually generate leads if you keep the comments generous and detailed about what you have to offer.
15.Create A Game App
Many statistics suggest spending more time on game apps rather than reading articles and blogs. It may be possible to bring leads to your business by a game app if you run a creative game that directly moves the web traffic towards your selling.
16.Interview Influencers
Many influencers have a significant impact on the business community. You can give it a try to interview those influencers for your social channels and blogs as many customers respect and trust them. You need to keep things simple by asking short and sharp questions that can fully expand your business content, then ask them to put your products into the presentation. Overdoing the process will make the customers feel suspicious and consider it as an unfaithful commercial.
17.Add A Quiz To Your Blog
A tool like QuickBox or Clickfunnels can help you to create a quiz with just a few steps easily. Posting a quiz will draw more attention to your content. It actuates the online audience to share their feedback about the blog and article. Additionally, you can establish a more powerful relationship with your target audience, hence getting more leads in the long term.
Social Media Marketing encourages quicker purchasing decisions. You should not neglect other social channels as 84% of B2B buyers use social media to boost purchasing decisions.
Still, here are some key benefits that make social media marketing different from the other strategies:
It is easier to get exposure: your appearance on social media is the fastest way to bring your brand outside the market.
It presents your brand personality: One of the main elements to set up a relationship with your target audience is being relatable. Social media is a fascinating tool for you to express yourself. Moreover, you can attract professionals and turn them into your business icon to enhance your company’s reliability.
It is great to share your content: among other B2B strategies, social media marketing by far has the most compliments. Posting on your blog or visual content is shareable and easy for your audience to access, increasing a dramatic number of leads for your business.
You must choose which way to generate leads; just by making a small mistake, you will fail in the business field. You also have to face other stronger opponents, so you need to decide which way can support you the most based on your condition.
Lead Generation Trend
There are many trends of lead generation nowadays. Let’s have a look at the top trends of lead generation:
1.Email Marketing
Email makes money! 83% of companies and 59% of marketers admitted that email is their biggest source of ROI. If you want more leads, email marketing definitely would be an amazing support.
2.Unique research
BuzzSumo confirms that its unique research is the most successful content. This trend drove more than 150 webinar registrants, which did not include additional downloads from the website. Such a fascinating number!
3.Podcasting
Podcasting is growing stronger from time to time. Up to 700 thousand podcasts are posted, and more than 29 million podcast episodes available in recent years. Millions of people listen to the podcast every month, which explains why this has become a trend for lead generation.
4.LinkedIn Marketing
Over 30 million companies and +700 million members using LinkedIn marketing. LinkedIn can generate lead two times stronger than the regular web audience, which definitely makes a big trend to lead generation.
5.B2B Video Marketing
B2B marketers are significantly changing their ways to interactive and visual content. Research of Demand Gen Report shows that 91% of B2B buyers say that they like visual content more than tactic ones.
Ideally, B2B marketing uses videos due to the fact that all of the complex products and concepts are explained better. Besides, it is the only way to uphold context state across channels and stages. Therefore, they rely mostly on motion graphics, animation, and visualization techniques.
59% of the population said that they prefer watching videos to reading an article or blog posts. Comparing dynamic video retargeting campaigns to traditional retargeting campaigns, it is evident that the CTR and ROI are 74% and 49% higher, respectively.
These are some tips to boost your video popularity:
Tip 1: Focus on 3-5 minutes long type of questions and answers, including customer testimonials.
Tip 2: You should add captions, transcriptions, and metadata to each video.
Tip 3: Increase the use of micro-interactions. Infographic is a good idea, so remember to apply other forms of interaction on your B2B website, too.
Especially, LinkedIn has also started to catch up with this trend at the beginning of 2018 and will continue to grow further in the future. Video marketing can generate lead three to five times faster than the average websites through people with experience.
6.Modern Web Design
The investment in websites is now more important than other channel and marketing programs. If your website is outdated, you will lose a huge number of prospects and your demand gen dollars. That is a double loss.
7.Account-Based Marketing
ABM has been around for quite a time, usually used in enterprise strategies that validate the higher cost per contact. ABM quickly became a trend since B2B leads preferred the progression of marketing technology and analytics.
ABM relies heavily on info management platforms and scientific information to give innovative, prophetic insights into customer behavior across the channels and the cycle of buying by submitting a unique collaborative approach to recognize and protect valuable customers, prolong the time, and grow their lifetime cost.
ABM is not for every B2B marketer. The complexity of the product, coverage, sales productivity, marketing model, and sales channels are factors that need to be considered.
8.Adopt a Bot
In an always-connected world, AI-powered bots are becoming stronger and soon turn into a marketer’s favorite tool to help with a one-on-one conversation with the customers. The innovation of the technologies related to voices is also responsible for the application of numerous conversational bots.
These bots help you automate, manage, and raise productivity, but their real value is interacting with your buyers. Bots are considered to be a low-cost approach to make the best use of conversions.
Bots have evolved through time to become smart assistants that propose a voice to customer experiences. Bots can engage in momentous conversations that bring a customer towards a mutual outcome. They also allow you to keep a connection with your customers 24/7, providing you with detailed data about where the buyer’s journeys are. As a salesperson, bots can help educate and inspire your audience to decide to buy a product.
9.Make It Personalization To Win
Interactions like shopping, service experiences, and marketing are included in personalization technology. To some extent, personalization is already hammered in most marketing plans and practices. Whether its name is on a teacup, glasses, sneakers, or custom-designed hair products, people enjoy knowing that their favorite brands notice them and care about what they have experienced.
According to Salesforce, 65% of buyers say they would switch brands if they did not personalize their communications. 75% of B2B buyers noted that they hope the company will anticipate their requirements and serve relatable suggestions. There are also some tips for you to avoid mistakes:
Tip 1: Start with one to one offers, available only to an individual customer. Personalize with a single prospect.
Tip 2: You can start to personalize the customers’ experience across one to two buying stages. With tools like Visitor Queue, it is easier to track with companies.
Tip 3: If you assume that personalization is not authentically giving the resource constraints, you can shift to personalization by identifying a separate community persona and applying personalization to that persona.
10.Social CRM And Intelligence
Social CRM is supported by AI and machines that can quickly merge social data and behavior to have the most detailed information about the customers. The complexity level ranges from outline enrichment to the customer’s experience, optimizes the channel, and the buying cycle stage.
Listening to social media brings the marketers the ability to organize and optimize the touchpoints of the buyers’ journey stages to ensure the level of suitability through times.
Defining the touchpoint is important for creating a map for the customer journey and understanding the customer experience to optimize all interactions and additional conversations.
Even though listening to social media due to these two causes is predicted to be even more popular, the real purpose is to generate leads and sell products online. To this day, only a few companies have managed to do this. However, the number increased gradually when the marketers figured out that they could find people searching for the services they offer on social media.
11.Look To Revenue Attribution For ROI
Expecting the next move in a customer’s journey to conversion and measuring the interaction of the buying cycles’ channels and stages is a sophisticated challenge. The explosion of devices and platforms will continue to disturb CMOs from time to time.
Attribution is a test and usually leads to a large amount of determination for what looks like estimation. But the occupation challenge of the regular CMO and the investor’s hope for calculable ROI will persist on seeing the resource shirt towards estimating attribution and ROI.
67% of marketing influencers say that making a connection between the customer’s journey across touchpoints and channels is crucial for their marketing strategies to leap to success. A shocking 91% of performers have agreed that connecting the customer passage across touchpoints and channels can positively affect customers’ loyalty. Another 89% say the similar thing for the effect on the growth of revenue.
Driven by customers’ hope to be continuingly identified across the interaction, top influencers have great attention to the coordination of the marketing across the channel, not just the number of channels they touch. High performers are more likely to coordinate with their marketing determination across the channels substantially.
Channels included in the investigation were emails, websites, social media marketing, display advertisements, organic search, video advertising, and native sponsored content. The most effective practice for buyers’ passage mapping is that each following message builds on the customers’ behavior to develop communications in a real one-to-one encounter.
Depending on the business development, a lot of channel attribution will enlarge further responsive marketing mix capacity to take the customer insights to guess the action and catch engagement. Information granularity and new logical techniques will speed up attribution acceptance to transport hyper-targeted marketing campaigns.
In 2020, expect to have an improvement in the investment of data-driven multi-touch attribution representations. Like adaptation rate optimization, attribution optimizes existing spending strategies to ensure that a superior yield from every dollar is spent.
Conclusion
Lead generation provides lots of advantages to your business. I hope after reading this article, you can acquire a new outlook on your lead generation marketing. The goal of this article is to help you devise strategies that are logical for your business so you can create an effective, intelligent, and cost-effectively campaign. What is lead generation? I think it is no longer difficult for you to understand now.
It is hard to start in lead generation marketing all by yourself without any guide. This article has provided the tools that you surely need to increase your company’s quality leads.
If you continuously try these measures out, you can easily determine how well your company is working and how the cost will not be a bother anymore. You can also participate in some workshops to listen to the influencers’ experience and take notes to have more advantages in expanding your business.
As I mentioned above, you should look up some information on the innovation and developments in technology. They have:
A huge impact on our lives.
Lots of benefits in the marketing field as they can change how people buy things.
Modern technology might increase the sophistication, but it demands many opportunities for you to take advantage of these areas and continue to improve yourself to become a better businessman.
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