Generating leads for your business isn't easy. But it's the bedrock of any successful sales team. Ultimately, the more approaches you're willing to try, the more likely you are to see an improvement in your closing figures.
Therefore, in this article, we explain what lead generation is and why it's important before introducing you to five approaches you need to try.
Why is Lead Generation Important?
Lead generation is crucial because it helps you convert visitors to your business into sales. It's the process of attracting prospects to your business and increasing their interest in your product or service through a process of nurturing.
There are different ways to generate leads, but the end goal is always the same - to convert someone from a prospect into a customer. The good news is that you can develop a marketing strategy that is tailored to your lead generation approach.
For most businesses, lead generation is achieved through directing potential customers to a landing page with an optimized form. From here, they input their information, which allows you to cease upon the opportunity to generate the lead and attempt to close the sale. With that in mind, let's take a look at the different types of lead generation you need to think about.
Five Types of Lead Generation - It's all about Your Content
Generally speaking, you will generate your leads from the content that you create. The key here is to produce engaging, compelling, and relevant content that is free for your prospects to access. Through content marketing, you have a blank canvas on which to tell your company's story. The trick is to think carefully about how you want to position yourself in the market while ensuring you speak in a language that your target audience can resonate with.
What's more, it should be educational in nature, but there should be relevant CTAs throughout. Remember, the key is to impress your audience with the content, not to sell right away.
After all, the more impressed they are with the content, the more likely they are to follow through on your CTA. Specifically, here are five types of lead generation that you need to take seriously for your business.
1. Email
The benefits of email marketing are widely known. Lead generation through email is a great way to reach people who already know about your product or service.
They're much more likely to take action because they know a little bit about your brand and what to expect. It's not a total cold call. The problem with emails is that they often lack cohesion and tend to contain superfluous information. So, if you're going for this approach, create an optimized email template that grabs the reader's attention from the start.
Your overall objective with email marketing should be to build a robust email list, which you can continually add to over time. This enables your company to build a resource of accurate customer data, which will help your sales team when it comes to conversion.
2. Ads
The entire point of developing an ad is to get someone to take action. Be it a social media ad or a display ad elsewhere on the internet; you need to think carefully about how it is constructed. It's not easy to appeal to a client's sensitivities with an ad, and unless you've targeted a specific segment of your target audience, it can be difficult for your ad to achieve its goals.
So, if you're investing in an ad campaign for the purposes of lead generation, you need to think carefully about your messaging and how you're planning to pitch your product to your prospective clients.
3. Blog Posts
Utilizing your company blog is an excellent way to generate leads. This enables you to create an entire narrative around the end goal. We can expand this slightly and refer to this as content marketing, as you can also develop videos and even white papers alongside your blog posts to generate leads.
The key here is to create compelling content that is tailored to your audience. You need to produce content that is likely to result in a response, as well as a CTA that urges the reader or viewer of the content to take the next step.
So many companies under-utilize the blog section of their website, which means they're leaving a lot on the table. Consider developing a content strategy with your marketing department to ensure that your posts are on point and relevant to your target audience. (Related: How to Optimize Your WP Site for Lead Generation with Popups by OptinMonster (2020 Review))
4. Social Media Marketing
Marketing your product or service via social media is an excellent way to generate leads. Statistics show that 91% of markets use social media to win business, highlighting just how important it is in the modern-day.
Just like the other tips introduced above, you need to develop a social media strategy that considers your broader business objectives. Choosing the right platform, developing some branding guidelines, and creating a content plan are all integral aspects of social media marketing.
Be careful not to stretch yourself too thinly on social media, as it's much better to be consistent and impactful on one or two platforms than it is to be visible on all but with a lack of cohesion in your messaging. But no matter how you go about it, social media marketing is a key form of lead generation in the present day.
5. Public Relations
Although viewed as a bit of an old-school approach in today's social media world, investing in a public relations campaign can pay dividends. Earned media - through the likes of newspaper articles, magazine journals, or even guest blog posts - are a great way to bolster your numbers. After all, they are produced out of an interest in your product or service and result from your hard work.
When you can link out to a trusted source like a news publication, you immediately add credence to your brand and messaging. Research founds that earned media yields conversion rates in excess of 5%, which is considerably higher than the 1% that is industry standard for paid media.
In other words, it pays to invest in a PR strategy.
Final Thoughts
The bottom line is that there are lots of ways to generate leads for your business. But some are better than others. We advocate for a mixed approach, and the key is to develop exceptional content that your audience is likely to engage with.
Too many companies fail to recognize the crucial role that compelling content plays in every marketing strategy, so don't make that mistake. We hope you're now ready to start generating leads for your business using the five methods introduced above.