Leads are where all your money starts. That’s why effective lead generation is one of the biggest factors in succeeding with your business. But what is effective lead generation? And how do you do it? This is your quick and dirty guide.
Lead gen is the lifeblood of your business, but many marketers find it a challenge. All the channels and strategies out there can be overwhelming. We get it. However, we’ve found channels and strategies that work best. They generate leads in high quantity and of high quality. Let’s get into it.
What is a lead?
A lead is a person, business, or other entity who’s expressed interest in what your business offers. You might have known that already.
The critical thing with leads, as with all things, is information. Leads exchange information. They give you information about them—their name, email address, phone number—in exchange for information about you—a newsletter, a coupon, or even just an ad.
How are leads generated?
Lead generation refers to engaging your target audience so that an exchange of information happens, and you gain leads.
There are two types of lead generation. Outbound lead generation is proactively initiating contact using things like cold calls, emails, direct mail, and targeted ads. Inbound lead generation is using things like social media, SEO, blogs, and other content to attract potential customers and convert them into leads.
Why is lead gen important?
You probably already realize how important lead generation is, or else you wouldn’t be reading this post. Nonetheless, we think we should address that lead gen is so important because it’s the start of the sales cycle. Capturing and qualifying leads is where all of your sales start. Establishing a strategy that generates high-quality leads and is scalable is the key.
The lead generation funnel
Leads typically need to be nurtured for some time before they purchase from you. That’s why you need a steady flow of new leads, and a steady way of nurturing them. That’s what a lead generation funnel is for.
A lead gen funnel represents the path your customers take from being a lead to being a buyer. This path is paved with content. The content that leads engage with will tell you where they are in the buying cycle, and will help move them through it. Depending on where they are in the cycle, they’ll need to see different content.
The top of the lead gen funnel, or the front of the buying cycle, should be focused on attracting potential customers and building trust by offering them value. This can be done with content like social media posts, blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos. Usually, leads will see this stuff when they first visit your website or social media profiles.
The middle of the funnel, or the next step of the buying cycle, is where you use the trust you’ve built to establish a relationship. This is usually the time when you want the lead to exchange their information for some of yours. The way to do this is with gated content, or content that’s technically free, but to access it a person needs to input their name, email, and/or phone number. We recommend e-books, webinars, studies, and guides for gated content. Remember, the value of your content needs to be great enough to make the exchange worth it to the lead.
The last stage we’ll talk about is the bottom of the funnel, or yet the next step of the buying cycle, where you’ve nurtured the lead for some time, and are ready to treat them as a prospect. That means they’re now going to come to your business to have their problems solved. To convert prospects into buyers, content is still what you need. Specifically, case studies, FAQs, and comparisons will help confirm that you have what they need. Also, demos, or interactive demonstrations, are an extremely potent form of content at this stage. They’re our go-to.
Remember, every phase of content is designed to 1) give value to the consumer, 2) build trust in your business, and 3) mitigate objections. You also want to design your content to appeal to your company’s buyer personas, or idealized versions of your major customer types. Here’s an article about how to construct and use buyer personas.
How to get your content seen
The big question, then, is how to get leads into your funnel in the first place. You have the content, but how do you get it in front of people’s eyes?
This is where advertisement comes in. We have a lot of other articles on advertising strategies, so we’ll just take a brief look at some right now.
A major one, of course, is paid ads on Facebook, Google, and other sites. These direct users to your website, and if they’re well-designed, they’ll capture a lot of leads who are genuinely interested in your product or service. Ad-serving platforms let you select the demographics your ads appear to, which ensures you’re serving them to the right audience.
Another major one is SEO, or search engine optimization. This is what generates organic traffic, or traffic from web searches, which you don’t pay for. The best place to start with SEO is doing research on keywords that will help people find your site. If you have a Google Ads account, you can use Google Keyword Planner to start seeing which keywords relevant to your services have high search volume and low competition. There are a few other things you can do for on-site SEO. Here’s a good article summarizing them.
A third great way to get leads is by getting involved in your community and in events related to your industry. If you sell mattresses, and there’s a convention for sleep products happening in the next state over, why not try to be there? You’ll meet a ton of people who are interested in your products, who you can engage face-to-face, and who you can offer exclusive deals to in exchange for their information.
How to use this
Here are some actionable steps you can take to apply what was in this blog.
- Create top-of-funnel content such as videos and blogs that you can post on social media and your website.
- Create middle-of-funnel gated content such as guides and webinars.
- Create bottom-of-funnel content such as brand comparisons and demo scripts.
- Look into paid ads, and if you already have them, look into better targeting and analytics.
- Refine the SEO for your website and online content.
- Find one event you can attend in the next month that will get you leads.
Doing these things is a major part of getting more leads, and turning more of those leads into customers. Look out for future articles on how else you can generate, nurture, and convert leads.
One of the most valuable tools we’ve found to maximize lead conversion is Connect360, the all-in-one platform for marketing needs. Here’s where you learn more about how it can help scale your business.
