Top 5 lead generation techniques to learn from seasoned marketers

The world of online business is ever competitive and demanding. An effective lead generation strategy is crucial. However, businesses must generate and handle leads with care. Captured leads have to be nurtured continually. You never know they convert the next time you are reaching out.

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Most marketers consider lead generation as one of the biggest challenges among all other business activities. Up to 63% of marketers claim that generating traffic and leads remain the toughest part of their job.

But there are those who understand the fundamentals of lead generation better than others. Here, we share the top lead generation strategies that seasoned marketers follow - 

1: Seek and develop personalized leads -

Know your target market

It is an amateur tactic to try and get the attention of every person in the vertical, hoping some will eventually convert into customers. All businesses need to have a deep understanding of their target customers from the start.

In fact, 38% of marketers claim that limited insight into target audience is among their biggest lead generation challenges.

Once you understand your target customers, you would be able to decide on the right lead generation approach and platform to which this audience will respond best.

Sometimes your products and services may be aimed at various demographics. Here it could help to segment your posts and calls to action.

For example:

A company that sells toys will create video adverts which appeal to children. To get the attention of a child, an advertiser will highlight the fun side of the product.

He would use audiovisual material which has been shown to appeal to that particular age group.

At the same time, they can subtly offer additional information about the toys’ safety and its ability to stimulate a child’s mental development.

This will get the attention of the parent watching, who is ultimately the one who will buy the product at their child’s request.

Knowing which aspects of a product or service may appeal to which demographic, will help you choose your material closely to get the most out of it.

Personalise your selling strategy - It is about quality over quantity

Although we are living in the digital age, as many as 47 percent marketers and sales personnel rate traditional forms of selling, such as face-to-face meetings, highly effective.

Having a one-on-one conversation with your prospective client allows you to establish trust and to build a relationship. It also allows you to determine their specific needs and to tailor your sales pitch, accordingly.

While physically meeting every potential customer is not feasible for every business, it does pay to find ways to establish open and more personal lines of communication.

One of the best ways of doing this is through personalized digital correspondence, including personalized emails.

Emails that included the first name of the recipient in their subject line had higher click-through rates than emails that did not. (HubSpot, 2014)

By taking time to source leads that are more specific and to gather their information, you are able to have more personalized communication.

A lead generation software can also help with that. 

2: Use social media strategically, to capture leads -

The ubiquitous nature of social media has made it a mandatory component of any marketing campaign. Social media offers loads of benefits to businesses.

It is considered as one of the most powerful means of lead generation today.

Unfortunately, many businesses do not know how to use social media to its full lead generation potential.

Thoughtless, random postings with expectations of attracting leads are simply inadequate for businesses that are looking for high volume and high-quality leads.

Develop a relationship with users

The most profitable use of social media is as a platform for developing a relationship with your audience and your potential customers.

Social media has an edge over other forms of advertising as it offers the opportunity for a two-way conversation.

You can use research gathered to ask pertinent questions, which initiate engaging conversations on your pages.

Target leads

Most social media platforms allow you to target your advertisements to your chosen demographic and to those with interests in line with your business.

Reach out

Sending out personalised event and group invitations, as well as messages to potential leads, can help to initiate engagement and social relationship.

3: Search engine optimisation supported by a well-designed website -

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

One of the best ways to get leads is to get them to come to you. With so many competing websites, it is easy for your site to get lost.

Having strong SEO will ensure that your website ranks high in search engine searches. Investing in SEO is extremely important in an e-commerce setup. People actively looking for a product like yours come to you directly through organic searches.

SEO is a skill set on its own and requires special formulae and practices. It may be worth investing in quality SEO, even if that means outsourcing it to a vendor.

Website Optimisation

SEO will get potential customers to your website from search engines. Once on your site, the efficacy of your web optimisation will determine whether these casual visitors become genuine leads/customers or not.

Some simple examples of great website optimisation include:

a) Customer–focused web navigation, including well-categorised product listings that allow visitors to find what they are looking for with relative ease.

b) Content that aides and facilitates the purchase process

c) Multiple calls to action, including calls to purchase products, to subscribe to the web or social media content and to make contact 

4: Predictive analytics to prepare for future trends -

It always helps to be one-step ahead.

Without looking into a crystal ball, there are many ways to predict future trends. This can be done simply by analysing past data and customer behaviour. 

Benefits of predictive analytics

It can help you to alter your sales pitch and strategy to appeal to future potential leads.

You would be able to prioritize your resources and focus on the most promising leads. Profitable lead generation campaigns and tactics can be filtered out, leading to minimal waste of resources with maximum results.

For Example:

Shopping sites like Amazon have algorithms which suggest products you might be interested in, based on what you have previously bought or viewed.

Often times these suggestion are spot on. This is an example of how predictive analytics can target prospective leads.

Even without such sophisticated algorithms, you can use this logic and simply pay attention to your leads’ requirements and then offer them similar.

The web analytics tool offered by search engines and social media platforms can help you to get an idea of which of your pages are being viewed by which demographic and then to tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.

5: Close the sale-lead scoring through effective lead management

While generating maximum leads is the goal, gaining these will be pointless without most of them converting into sales. The sales adage: “Always be closing” rings true here.

Lead management logistics

As your business grows, it gets more important to implement more effective management strategies to cope with the large volume of customers and leads.

Very often, good potential leads are lost due to poor logistical management and trivial mistakes.

Follow Up

Following up with potential leads is of utmost importance here.

76% of consumers say that a speedy follow up from a knowledgeable sales rep will increase the likelihood of them doing business with the company.

Lead generation software

It can get tricky to manage all leads, from different sources and in different parts of the sales funnel.

This is why it is worth investing in a good lead management system and lead management software.

Benefits

a) It can quickly provide context about the lead, including data from previous engagements with lead, which allows the sales rep to better prepare

b) Will help facilitate and even automate certain painstaking aspects of your existing lead generation process, such as automated emails

c) A software also helps to track ROI of leads

86% of consumers would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with at least monthly, and 15% would like to get them daily. (Statista, 2015)

Features

Most content management systems offer features, which can help with lead generation too. Here are some of them -

-- Lead discovery – Automatically finds contacts that fit your target market demographic

-- Automated, personalised outreach to all leads on the database

-- Software that enables multichannel interactions of leads from various channels

-- Web forms-embedded into the site which allows you to capture the details and concerns of prospective leads, already interested in your product

-- Push notifications are equally important to communicate with subscribers and targeting those who are using your keywords

-- Various tracking models monitor ROI of leads and perform predictive analytics

Final thoughts -

We do not need to treat lead generation as a mystery or as rocket science.

Leads are everywhere if you look hard enough. It is more about offering the right people exactly what they want and then nurturing your existing leads over time.

Most of these lead generation fundamentals have not changed over the decades.

However, there are so many more technological tools at our disposal now, which can help. It is all about learning to use them to their full lead generation capacity.