Lead generation is a vital component of a company’s marketing strategy. However, it can be a difficult and time-consuming task. For many businesses, this is a big issue as they feel that they have exhausted the limit of their people. Unfortunately, many businesses are failing in this aspect. According to the ‘State of Inbound’ report by Hubspot, 63% of companies consider generating traffic and leads as their biggest marketing challenge. In fact, only 1 in 10 marketers say their lead generation efforts are highly effective.
Lead generation is vital to any business. Without it, your business won’t grow and expand. It helps give you a steady stream of new customers. Lead generation helps strengthen your sales and customer base. However, you cannot just target anybody to be your customer. There are many ways to generate leads but not all of them will be effective for the customers you are targeting. For example, a marketing campaign designed for an older market will not work for the youth market.
Is lead generation a challenge for your business? Here we provide 10 tips on how to implement a successful lead generation campaign.
- Choose Quality Over Quantity
- Monitor Your Competition
- Automate E-Mail Marketing
- Use Social Media
- Capture Information on Your Website
- Have The Right Lead Generation Tool
- Limit The Length of Your Website Forms
- Use Correct Data
- Figure Out The Right Messaging
- Conduct An A/B Test
1. Choose Quality Over Quantity
When it comes to lead generation, most businesses focus on generating quantity rather than quality leads. When they don’t get the number of leads they desire, businesses start to get worried which should not be the case. The quality of leads is more important than the quantity. 100 quality leads with a 60% conversion rate is more important than 100 leads but only converts at 10%.
By focusing on quality leads, it will be easier for you to target them because you know that they are qualified and are likely to buy your product. By doing this, your sales force wouldn’t waste their time on unqualified leads. Do your research and target the audience that has the highest chance of converting.
The more quality leads you have, the more likely they are to engage and buy your product. Knowing how important it is to get quality leads, 70% of B2B marketers cite improving leads quality as the most important objective of their lead generation strategy. Many businesses are now realizing the importance of targeting quality leads.
2. Monitor Your Competition
You need to be on top as far as your competitors are concerned. Be aware of what your main competitors are doing. Have they launched a new product or service? Do they have a new blog or website? You need to know this so that you can make the necessary moves to beat them out of the potential lead.
By knowing the movement of your competitors, you will be able to create more effective ads and implement better strategies. Monitoring the competition will allow you to identify what worked and what did not work for them. You will also be able to know the types of customers they are targeting.
How do you monitor the competition? You can do a SWOT analysis of your competitors. There are also many research tools available at your disposal like SEMrush, SpyFu, BuzzSumo, and Owletter. With these tools, you will be able to create the best results for your business.
3. Automate E-Mail Marketing
Some businesses still prefer e-mail marketing as their preferred means of communication. Statistics reveal that 89% of marketers use email as their primary channel for lead generation. If used the right way, emails can be a cost-effective way to generate new business. Focus your sights on creating an opt-in strategy so that the lead can unsubscribe if they don’t feel like signing up.
In the e-mail, make sure you have a clear call to action. Let the prospect know what you want them to do. Also, the email should link to a landing page for the lead to provide their details. Use the email to inform the prospect of relevant offers to make them feel exclusive. More importantly, don’t forget to thank the prospect and have them share your page to share and generate more leads.
When sending emails, do personalize your message as it gives the customer a feeling of exclusivity. Set clearly defined goals before executing your email marketing campaign. Whether it’s for boosting sales, driving brand awareness, or keeping your customers engaged, you should be clear with what you want to achieve.
4. Use Social Media
Nowadays, social media is the most popular channel for increasing your online presence. According to data from Statista, 91.9% of businesses used social media for marketing purposes in 2021. It is worth noting that 53% of the world’s population use social media so imagine the potential leads you can generate from Facebook or LinkedIn. Consequently, if you don’t have a social media strategy, imagine the prospects you will lose to the competition.
If you are managing a blog, social media can offer an excellent platform for sharing content and targeting the right audience. Social media can help you get your content in front of your target audience. Having a social media strategy will help direct traffic to your website or landing page. Aside from that, it will help you build a loyal and engaged following while generating highly qualified and targeted leads.
To succeed with your social media strategy, you should avoid focusing your posts on your company. As much as possible, you should interact with your followers and try to reach out to a potential lead who is ready to buy your product. Get to know your audience and share information that will establish you as an authority.
5. Capture Information on Your Website
The key to getting leads from your website is to drive traffic and make your call-to-action as effective and as clear as possible. Make sure that your target audience can easily understand what you want them to do and how the benefits they can get. Ensure that you have a compelling landing page to ensure conversion.
Visitors come to your website to either make an online purchase or make an inquiry. However, there are instances when the prospects who go to your website are not yet ready to buy. They simply want to browse more information first. You can use the information your customers leave on your website for converting them into customers.
There are many ways you can get the contact details of your website visitors. You can use email newsletters to communicate with prospects and boost your sales. You can also organize competitions where visitors can join and win a prize. If they know that they will get something in return for visiting your website, they will gladly share their details with you.
6. Have The Right Lead Generation Tool
The best measure of a successful lead generation campaign is the return on investment. Data reveals that 34% of today’s marketers consider lead generation as their biggest challenge. They have tried the latest techniques and strategies but still aren’t getting their desired results. Maybe they aren’t using the right tools.
Aside from the right strategy, having the right tool can help you track the progress of your campaign. You would want the tool to be easy to use and does not come with a lot of “chores.” It should enable you to automate your processes and not require you to make complicated codings. The more intuitive and user-friendly the tool is, the better.
A good example of a lead generation tool is Google Analytics. It will provide you with an analysis of your website traffic and a report of traffic behavior. A CRM will help you manage customer relations and prospect interactions. Having the right tools will help you allocate the right budget for attracting leads and turning them into customers.
7. Limit The Length of Your Website Form
Asking customers too much information before they are able to purchase from your website can contribute to customer churn. As much as possible, keep your form fields to the minimum. Reducing the number of form fields from 11 to 4 can result in a 120% conversion rate. Most customers don’t like filling up plenty of information. Reducing the number of fields on your website to a minimum will surely drive conversion.
Making your prospects fill up several fields is not best practice and creates friction in the user experience. Less is more when designing web forms. A minimalist data collection approach is most recommended. Removing all unnecessary fields is a surefire way for ensuring conversions. At best, you should limit the form fields to between 3 – 5 fields. Ask only what is necessary. According to research by Eloqua, every additional question reduces conversion rates by roughly 7%.
Asking people too much sensitive information can put customers off. The initial capture of data and new lead generation should be quick and simple. Limit your website forms to five fields or less. Anyway, your sales team can ask for more information once they have established trust with the customers.
8. Use Correct Data
Customers should be your first priority. For this reason, you need to have their correct data. Knowing your customers is crucial to being able to effectively work with them. You will be able to personalize your strategy to suit your target demographic. According to a LinkedIn report, 42% of customers consider the lack of accurate data as one of their challenges in lead generation.
Having the correct customer data will allow you to get key customer insights. Having enough information will help you leverage information for generating more qualified leads. Integrate techniques that will help make it easy for your customers to share their data with you. In turn, you can use the data to keep customers engaged with your business.
Armed with the correct data, you can create your desired buyer persona and segment your audience. Using customer data helps facilitate the relationship between your sales team and the customer. Data management can help prevent erroneous results which can be annoying to customers and result in a 25 percent reduction in potential revenue.
9. Figure Out The Right Messaging
When it comes to lead generation, there is no such thing as “one size fits all” in messaging. What may be working for a certain segment of your customers may not necessarily work for another. Knowing the exact words and phrases for your message is crucial to effective lead generation.
Next to finding the right communication channel, you also need to convey the right message. It should be able to touch them and speak to their needs and desires. An effective message not only conveys the promise of what your business will deliver but also compels them to take action. The message you will send depends on the lead generation channels you are using.
With the right message, you should be able to attract attention and create the right impression. In addition, the right message should give the prospect a convenient way to respond. Crafting the right message takes time to perfect. Test which method works best and learn to adapt your methods along the way.
10. Conduct an A/B Test
Never assume that your lead generation is perfect. In fact, you should be constantly monitoring and tweaking it from time to time. As the trends and market shift, so will your customer needs. Ensure that you are ahead of the curve and A/B test your landing pages and emails according to the trends.
With A/B testing, you test two different variables and test which is the most effective. It is designed to provide actionable, measurable, and immediate results. Examples of marketing aspects that you can subject to A/B testing include your headline, email marketing, number of form fields, color and design, and others.
Keep in mind that what may be effective may change along the way so make A/B testing an ongoing process. A/B testing will give you the knowledge for future application. In the end, the results of your A/B testing will have an impact on your bottom line.
Lead generation is crucial to customer acquisition. These 10 tips will help ensure that your lead generation campaign will produce the results that you desire for your business.
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When you have a great product or service, one of the hardest things to do is to find buyers interested in what you’re selling. To fill this gap, airisX offers lead generation – our staff research your business and target end-users and create email/contact lists for you to reach out to pitch. We offer lead generation for any business model – B2B, B2C, SaaS, consultancies, outsourcing companies (like ourselves!), ecommerce, etc.
We build your email list totally from scratch, or if you already have a list, help you find contact information for pre-targeted companies.