Lead Generation And Tactics To Get the Best Results?

85% of marketing experts say that lead generation is the most critical element in their marketing strategy. Yet only 42% of business owners have an active plan in place. If your business doesn’t have a lead generation plan, you have been missing out on a big opportunity and a lot of money.

Think about it, all type of businesses need buyers to grow. And to get those buyers, they need to market to potential ones first and capture their attention. This is where lead generation comes into play.

What’s a lead?

A lead is a person or an organization that has shown an interest in what you are selling. This interest is expressed by sharing contact information, like an email, a phone number, or even social media content.

What’s lead generation?

Lead generation designate the process of stimulating, capturing and converting people and prospects interest for the purpose of developing a sales pipeline. Nowadays lead generation uses multiple digital channels, in fact the large quantity of information existing online has led to the growth of the “self-directed buyer” and the rise of new methods to develop and qualify potential leads before passing them to sales.

In the past, buyer’s journey was primarily directed by media, advertising, and the salesperson’s process. Since the buyer did not have any access to the salesperson’s information, they had no choice but to follow their process. The salesperson was in control, holding all the cards. But these days the game has drastically changed, information’s are now easily accessible via the web. Buyers have at least 70% of the product or service information before engaging with a salesperson in order to pursue a buying decision. This means that companies needs to show authority by producing and promoting content that attracts, educates, and informs its targeting market. That is the core of inbound marketing.

Understand the lead generation process:

First, a visitor may find out your business through one of your channels, such as your website, blog, or Facebook page. He will then click on your call-to-action (CTA) — an image, button, or message that boosts visitors to take action. Then, the CTA will take your visitor to a landing page that is built to capture lead information in exchange of a valuable offer like a white book, or a free template.

Start by building your buyer persona:

There is no secret weapon for creating content that draws the right traffic to your website and generates leads in the same time; buyer personas in the other hand can come pretty close.

A buyer persona is a representation of your different buyers. Basically, who is buying your product or service? Understanding these buyer descriptions is crucial to your lead generation efforts as a whole.

A persona uses data to help content builder to concentrate on a tangible representation of a buyer, instead of an unclear, general one. If a buyer persona is created without research you can have a biased and inadequate interpretation of who you are marketing to. In fact, with the right researched buyer persona, you can eliminate speculations about if your content is right and on target. If your content is not correctly compatible with your buyer persona, it’s going to miss the target and fail to generate leads.

How to generate leads:

- Boost your content: you really need to start by building your content marketing strategy. Everybody knows that the more a visitor is pleased with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and move to your landing page. That’s why understanding your buyer persona is important; you don’t want to attract the wrong crowd.

- Optimize your social media presence: Facebook posts, Instagram stories, YouTube videos, Twitter URLs and more…They are all ways to promote your offer. One advice though, try to make your content in those platforms unified and value connected with the content in your website. And one more thing, rely on your persona to help you figure out what platform is more suitable to your target. You don’t want to get dispersed. See how everything fits together?

- Email marketing undisputed master: Email is a great place to reach the people who already know your brand and product or service. It’s much easier to ask them to take an action since they’ve previously subscribed to your list. Emails tend to be a bit cluttered, so use CTAs that have compelling copy and an eye-catching design to grab your subscriber’s attention.

- First tip; try to reach the people who already know your brand or have shown an interest in your brand, you don’t want to look like a creep; and that’s why your content and social media strategy are key elements at this level.

- Second tip; personalize your emails to the 100%. The “first name” is no longer good enough. Your entire email need to show that you get your leads and comprehend their needs. Therefore the simplest way to automate this is by segmenting your outreach list. Again use your buyer persona to make it happen.

- Third tip and this is a very important one; DO NOT BUY EMAIL LISTS. Build it yourself and make it your competitive advantage.

- Referral Marketing, old tricks are gold: referral or WOM is very useful in lead generation, just think about it. How many times have you experienced a new restaurant or acquired a product after a recommendation from a friend? I suppose a few times. Then, if you did like it, you probably shared your experience with someone else. That person then will recommend the same restaurant or product to somebody else. The referral becomes even more effective if the buyer experience and the product value are good. This is the whole principle of the referral and here why it is such a great tool:

- Trust : by nature people follow the people they trust most.

- Top notch targeting: people won’t refer a product to a wrong audience, they will only refer it to people they believe they will profit from it.

- High reach and viral: Positive reviews on social media and online are also referrals. Referrals can also come in the form of customer reviews, influencer opinions, news articles, and testimonials.

- Cost efficiency: Technically, in B2C you don’t have to spend much for customer referrals. You just have to make sure that your customers are satisfied with your product or services. Just make sure to let them know that you will appreciate if they spread a good word about your business. In B2B in the other hand, when building a referral program you need to spend. But remember whether it’s a referral fee, a discount on a future purchase, or an account upgrade, these rewards are more cost-effective than reaching prospects on your own. Although be careful, some partners may not see the value in a referral program, in this case, offer to create a co-branded content, meaning a long-form piece of content for their audience in exchange for a share of the leads generated. You can create co-branded eBooks and webinars with companies who have access to your ideal clients.

Email marketing is still king of the hill when it comes to lead generation effectiveness

Google Ads, Website forms, Direct mailing, Product Trials, Micro influencers, Blogging, Quora.com, LinkedIn and more…they are all tools and techniques that can help you create lead capture and convert. As long as you’ve built a landing page that converts, the rest will handle itself. It all depends from your content strategy and your buyer persona.