The best lead generation strategy isn’t one where you just throw a wad of money at a digital ad budget. These days you need to put more effort into earning potential customer’s time.
For small-to-medium-sized businesses, this means it’s time to level-up your lead generation strategy and add more value points to your sales funnels – for both you and your customers.
And, in this article, we’re going to show you 5 ways you can do it by breaking down some defining features of lead generation. Let’s get into it.
1. Lead Capture
The first and most crucial step to any lead generation strategy. Lead capture is all about providing opportunities for leads to opt-in and give their information to you.
This information can include demographic and contact data, like a first and last name, email address, gender, geographical location, age, interests and more.
Once armed with this data, and really all you need is a name and an email address, you can easily retarget and remarket to your leads via digital ads and emails.
Lead capture tools can be anything, from a form to sign-up for a newsletter, to a purchase page for tickets to webinar, to a Facebook Chatbot and more.
You should aim to have at least 3 to 4 lead capture tools, like forms, across your business website in order to maximise your chances of growing your list of leads.
Some forms you could include are (but not limited to):
- A contact form
- A sign-up form for email alerts
- A download form for a free resource
The key to lead capture in 2021 is to give first to your online visitor, like with a free download, discount or ticket to an event. You want to offer enough value that they opt-in.
2. Lead Magnets
These are the other half of the lead capture process, and the most valuable part of lead generation.
Lead magnets are free, high-quality content in the form of discounts or downloadable tools and strategies that are relevant to the needs or concerns of potential customers.
They touch on hot button topics that relate to your products or services, offering insights or savings that your potential customers will feel that they need.
They are the value point in the lead capture process that prompts online visitors to opt-in and share their information in exchange for access.
Some examples of lead magnets for small-to-medium-sized businesses include:
- How-To/Maintenance guides
- Video series
- eBooks
- Discounts or special offers
- One-on-one sessions with an expert
3. Landing Pages
If lead capture and lead magnets can go hand-in-hand, then landing pages could be considered a home for them both.
Landing pages are where an online visitor will ‘land’ after clicking on an ad for your business, a social media link or another marketing tool.
They exist separately from a business website (i.e. they can’t be located from any menus) as they are usually tied into the marketing of a specific campaign or new product/service.
The goal of a landing page is specific, but simple: to educate the visitor enough on a topic to convince them to make a purchase or opt-in and share their information.
It’s important to remember that too much information on a landing page can ruin its purpose as it can distract the reader or worse, turn them off your business completely.
When creating a landing page, you need to focus on the goal, try asking yourself these questions:
- What do you want your visitor to purchase or download?
- Who are the people who are going to benefit most from it?
- What is the most crucial information they should know about the resource?
- Can this item or resource address certain pain points? What are they?
- What are visitors going to get when they make a purchase or download?
4. Lead Nurturing
This part of your lead generation strategy is about building trust with your potential customer.
Once they’ve downloaded a lead magnet, purchased a ticket to an event, or even paid for a product or service, you want to continue to offer them valuable insights and information.
Not only does this make you look knowledgeable and reliable in the eyes of a potential customer, it also builds trust and familiarity, which can lead to bigger jobs and better sales.
Creating this unique bond between customer and business certainly takes time, but the benefits far outweigh the cost – loyalty and trust is hard to come by.
So, how do you nurture your leads? The most effective tactic is with targeted content, which you can distribute across multiple channels, like social media, email and digital ads.
You can create targeted content by making assumptions about what interests your leads based on the data you’ve captured about them.
For example, say you had a list of leads who have downloaded a resource from your website called ‘5 Proven Ways To Save Money’
Knowing this, you can safely assume the leads in this list are likely to be interested in topics related to finance management.
This information can help you to map out other, relevant, topics like: how to avoid debt, how to effectively use a credit card, growing your savings, etc.
Once you’ve got your topics, you’ve got the foundations for targeted content that will capture their attention.
When designing and writing this content for your leads, you want to create links between the insights being shared and the products or services you offer.
Remember though, that the lead nurturing process is primarily focused on information-sharing and value-building.
You want to avoid a hard sell or the salesman angle as this will likely turn leads away from your business, costing you time and money.
5. Lead Scoring
This is the last piece of the lead generation puzzle as lead scoring will help you understand what your leads are engaging with and interested in.
With this knowledge at your disposal, you can more effectively target your marketing, and promote your product or services – saving your business valuable time and money.
Lead scoring applies numerical values to the interactions leads have with the content you distribute to them, assigning different points for different types of engagement.
These values enable you to measure engagement and determine the difference between someone who is more likely to buy and someone who isn’t interested in your offerings.
Some examples of lead scoring include:
- +5 points for downloading an eBook
- -7 points for unsubscribing from emails
- +15 points for contact made by phone
- -3 points for not opening emails
- +10 points for attending a webinar
- +2 points for visiting a business website
These defining features of lead generation, can help you build a brilliant business strategy
Now that you know a little more about the foundations of lead generation, and the tools and systems that can best support it, it’s time to implement these ideas into your business.
Knowing this, and preparing for it, can be a little daunting, but you don’t have to go it alone.
Tradie Web Guys is a digital marketing enterprise that equips companies with the ultimate digital marketing tool, and helps them to build a better business as a result.
We don’t just build websites, we create an entire platform and environment for our clients to advertise their business and promote their products or services.
A huge focus of our efforts is designing and implementing the tools, systems and strategies to support quality lead generation.
To learn more about how we can help you implement the best lead generation strategy for your business, click here.
Otherwise, you can always give us a call on 1300 417 297.
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