Online Lead Generation Like a Pro
Online lead generation is an internet marketing strategy with an aim of creating or generating interest for prospective new customers in products or services being offered by the seller. Online lead generation can be used for various purposes such as email marketing, list building, sales leads and much more. Lead generation is the first stage of the sale process. For this reason, quantity, as well as quality are important factors to be considered when generating highly targeted leads.
What are the major benefits of lead generation?
Without the online leads, it is very hard to keep an online business successful. This is why it is important to know how to generate high-targeted leads. Most marketers tend to think that a lead is a lead. This is where they go wrong. Finding cold leads and highly targeted leads takes the same time, but the latter is the better option for higher conversions. For example, if the leads are not qualified in the promotion process, you may find yourself wasting time on disinterested and unqualified prospects. This makes your sales response fall drastically, making your business revenue decline.
When the strangers and prospects are showing an organic interest in your business, they are starting the relationship with you and your business. This makes it more natural for them to trust you and want to purchase from you somewhere down the line.
In the larger inbound marketing methods, lead generation is categorized in the second stage. The lead gen occurs after you have already attracted the audience, and you are ready to convert the visitors into leads. The diagram below shows a simple way to generate high-quality leads.
How does someone qualify as a lead?
A Lead is a individual who has indicated interest in the products or services you are offering.
As previously, mentioned, online leads are generated through the collecting of information. The information may be collected from a job seeker who has interest in a position through filling an application for the job, a person filling out a form so that they can download educational content such as an eBook, podcast, kit, etc. or a shopper sharing his/her contact details in exchange for a coupon. The following are some of the ways an individual can show that interest. These examples will highlight the fact that the amount of the information you can collect to qualify an individual as a lead can vary. Let’s dig deep in each the scenarios
Job application
An individual filling a job application form is likely to share a lot of personal detail because he/she would want to be considered for the position. When the individual fills the form it shows their true interest to the job; this qualifies themselves as leads for the company recruiting team.
Coupon
Individuals looking for coupons also qualify as leads. Although the individuals do not share a lot of personal information, if they find that the coupon is valuable enough the customers may be willing to provide their name as well as address in exchange for the coupon.
Content
The download of a coupon shows that the person has a direct interest in product or service. However, individuals who download content (like a webinar or eBook) it is hard to know whether the person is interested in the service. To understand what they need, you would need to collect more information.
How to improve the quality and quantity of your online lead generation
When improving the quality of leads generated as well as growing the quantity of leads is one of the most significant lead gen objectives for business.
Source http://www.idioplatform.com/blog/quality-quantity-lead-generation-objective-2015/
So what are the Top Three Steps to Quality Lead Generation?
- Understand your intended targets:
The first step to getting quality lead is to understand the intended targets. This research clearly shows that the more efforts you direct on your intended targets, the more success you will have. This is because most people are already looking at what you are offering. To do this focus your attention to targeted classified ad submission or use the social media marketing channels such as Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and Twitter. - Track the results of your lead generation efforts:
This tracking will include adding sources codes to your URLs of your website or keep a running log of where the most responses are coming from in your advertising campaigns. For you to be a master in online lead generation, you must learn the art of tracking. This will result to having a phenomenal success at quality lead generation. - Follow-up:
Follow up is also a very important online lead generation tactic. Most leads gathered from advertising efforts has to be contacted at least four times before they can trust you enough to take the action you are hoping for. Follow up is also crucial because of the distractions that people are faced with every day. Most individuals are overwhelmed because of all the information they are bombarded with every day. Putting a quality follow up system such as an autoresponder or direct phone call will help in generation of leads.
The Crucial Mechanics of online Lead Generation
Many marketers do not have the strategies to assist them in the lead generation process. Let’s look at the actual components that helps in generating the leads
- Landing page
A landing page is a web page, which a visitor will land on for a distinct purpose. Although you can use this page or various reasons, the most useful purpose is capturing leads - Forms
In most landing pages, you will find a form hosted. The main aim of this form is to collect the visitor information in exchange for an offer. - Offers
Here an offer is a product or service of value that being offered on the landing page. This offer has to have enough value to the visitor for them to provide their personal details in exchange for access to it. - Call to action
The call to action is a message, image or button that requests the visitors to take some action. The call to action main aim is for the customer to fill the form on the landing page for them to redeem the offer.
Lay out these elements together and use various promotional channels to link to drive traffic to your landing page and start generating the leads. An Illustration of pathways for online lead generation:
Effective lead generation tactics
According to the IDG report on B2B lead generation marketing trend survey, company websites, email marketing, conference, and tradeshows are the most effective lead generation tactics to use.
Here are the top online lead generation and customer acquisition strategies:
Company website
Your website is one of the best online lead generation platforms. You can convert the audience into leads by encouraging them to sign up for your newsletter or fill a form to get a certain offer or coupon. The most important thing to do here is to optimize your website for converting the visitors to actual leads. Include forms, call to action and pay attention to the websites design layout and content.
Email marketing
Email marketing is the backbone and a key component of any marketing campaign. In fact, it is one of the sexiest marketing tactics and one of the most effective way in moving leads through the sales funnel. Whether you are prompting a new product or service you are offering, sending out a new piece of content or hosting an event, email is one of the best forms of communication. You can also use the email to stay in touch with your customers. It is very important to remember the basics of creating a great email that has an engaging subject line, has relevant image, makes it concise and integrates social links.
Social media
Various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace and Instagram that are directly attributed to information abundance. Through these social networks, the potential buyers are able to research and gather information regarding certain products and services. Besides using the social networks for online lead generation, the networks can be used for branding and buzz generation.
SEO and content
Content is the foundation of your efforts in marketing efforts. Research done by Content Marketing Institute shows that content marketing it an effective marketing technique that creates and distribute useful content to attract, acquire and engage a target audience with an objective of driving a profitable customer action. When you create high-quality content, you will earn the trust of your buyers and start making a profit.
Direct mail
Direct mail is a flexible medium that gives you access to some otherwise inaccessible prospects for various purposes. With this strategy, you can sell your products or services, generate sales leads, get more business from current customers, follow up inquiries and stay in touch with former customers.
Pay-per-Click Ads
Pay per click ads (PPC) you will have to pay for each click on your ad, which is displayed on a search engine such as Yahoo, Google, Bing, or on a website. These ads are very good way to draw attention to the latest products and services being offered. These ads are also highly targeted so that they can generate high-quality leads.
Telemarketing
Telemarketing can also be used effectively especially when combined with other types of marketing. This strategy works well with direct mail since it allows you to identify prospects and reach them directly. This strategy also helps you to keep advancing your relationship and leading your prospects to a purchasing decision. This can boost your sales by up to 10 times! Telemarketing also helps in implementing extensive campaigns as well as filling in spare time by generating more business. Besides that, this platform gives you immediate feedback from customers and prospects. This will allow you to find out exactly what the customer needs.
83 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing for lead generation.
It is also worth noting that about 74 percent of marketers spend about $5 for every lead generated with 5 percent spending more than $ 1,000.
Mastering online lead generation needs you to become a jack of all trades. You need to be somewhat flexible and have the ability to attract customers to your sales funnel and write informative and persuasive content. Every step of generating the lead is very crucial; this creates a good experience with you the seller. Regardless of whether you are a newbie of an expert in the various stage, these tips will help you in generating the leads online using different mechanisms that will provide sales for the long term…
Attracting prospects to the funnel
There are many things you can do to attract prospects into your funnel. Here are a few things to get you started.
Creating a good headline
A good headline will make a good impression about your business, put thought and love in your headline. Work to find that “magnet” that attract people to click on your headline. Here are some ideas
The ‘Best’ Headlines
- The ‘What We Do When…’ Headlines
- The ‘It’s a Race’ Headlines
- The ‘Make My Life Easier’ Headlines
- The ‘If I Were You’ Headlines
Check out Headlines 101 for more great headline writing tactics.
Besides using the headlines in your blog post, you need to think about your headline for landing pages, social media post as well as longer form content.
Invest in the creative
Do not underestimate the power of a great visual when it comes to promotion. Thankfully, today you do not have to spend a lot of money creating slick looking images for your campaign. You can use tools such as Canvas to create simple yet something eye catching. Do not stop there, create GIFs and short promotional videos. The promotional videos for various sites such as LinkedIn will result in a far higher engagement across the social media in comparison to static images. Check out our Top 10 Free Stock Image sources.
Think about promotion before creating an asset
One of the biggest mistake marketers make is obsessing over the content before laying down strategy to promote the content. After nailing down whatever your content piece is going to be, it is the high time you plan your promotional plan. You can do this by experimenting with different channels and tools. This will help you in finding a way you can create your content asset in a manner that it will be more suitable for a channel that you know will work well.
Remember to flip the content process on its head. This will help you to uncover more ways to attract more leads into your funnel. Relying on the same online lead generation for every campaign will limit your potential audience.
