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Generating leads is one thing your business should never miss out on. Finding ways to get more clients should always be a priority. It is not just about selling a big one or two times but cultivating a steadily increasing and loyal customer base. It is better to nurture customer relationships than using paid ads. Organic lead generation is highly profitable for the business in the long run.
For successful lead generation to happen, both
marketing and sales must work together. Marketing alone will not drive customers to a successful conversion.
What Is A Lead?
A lead is someone who shows interest in your company or brand to any degree. For instance, a person who signed up to receive your newsletter, or likes your social media page to get more updates, or answers an online survey you did is a lead. If you email them, they are more likely to convert from visitor to buyer than somebody who gets a random call regarding your company.
When a lead is the one who initiates interest for your product or service, it is more worthwhile pursuing from a business perspective than leads from cold calling.
Leads are part of the wider lifecycle of customers or sales funnel as they convert or transition from prospect to customer. Not all leads are the same. There are different kinds of leads depending on how they are qualified or what sales funnel stage the prospect is in. The different kinds of leads are the following:
MQL or Marketing Qualified Lead
MQL are those prospects that your marketing team has engaged with but are not yet ready or willing to receive a sales call. One example is a prospect who signs up for an offer or freebie on a landing page.
SQL or Sales/Service Qualified Lead
SQL is prospects who move a step further down your sales funnel by expressing intent to buy and become a paying customer. For instance, an SQL would initiate a conversation in your chat service asking how to buy your product or avail of your service. This prospect is getting hotter and must be prioritized as soon as possible. A sales call can also be made since an intent to buy is already given.
PQL or Product Qualified Lead
When your company offers free trials of your product or service, you are bound to generate PQL. These prospects were satisfied with the product or service sample and would like to become a paying customer. Your sales team needs to respond quickly to these prospects and close the sale as soon as possible.
Your marketing team also comes in handy when a PQL who has sampled a product or service starts engaging to ask about features of the product and service only available on either freemium or premium service.
4 Very Effective Strategies To Jumpstart Lead Generation
1. Have A Website
If you are highly serious about generating leads, then start a quality website today. It will be hard to implement proper lead generation without one. Since
4.54 billion people are internet users, you will miss a considerable chunk of your prospects if you lack a website. In these trying times, we are in where most businesses are moving online just to service, all the more that your product or service must have one.
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We Are Social
If you have an account on social media, that is a good start. But you cannot dispense of having a website altogether. A website establishes deeper trust with your prospects that there is a legitimate company behind the product or service they want to subscribe to or purchase. It assures prospects that they can contact you through your website if they have any questions, concerns, or if they need help to troubleshoot something.
With a website, you can also run metrics and analytics for better insight as to what lead generation techniques are working for your product or service. You can intensify efforts on those strategies that work, and drop those that do not. This way, businesses save time, money, and precious resources and generate the most ROI from their marketing and sales efforts.
Sadly, most small businesses do not think having a website is essential. Contrary to this notion, a website should be one of the first things that a business must prioritize when starting. There are different ways to
start a business website, even with limited funds. Do not skip on a bigger opportunity to connect with potential customers.
A business website also helps to gather contact information from prospects, existing contacts, and customers.
Make sure you have a compelling CTA or Call-to-Action on your website or landing page, so they can subscribe to your blog or opt-in to accept email updates or newsletters. It allows you to capture relevant data from visitors to your site.
Creating
contact pages that work also increases your chances of generating leads that are more likely to convert to customers and complete the lifecycle, even going through your sales repeatedly funnel with repeat sales or subscriptions.
2. Create and Optimize Your Sales Funnel
Again, if you want a bigger business, you need to get more leads. To get more leads, you need to have an effective marketing plan like a sales funnel or conversion funnel for effective lead-generation strategies.
A marketing funnel or sales funnel an illustration of the different levels or stages in your marketing and sales plan, from
capturing the attention of your intended audience to
connecting successfully to
converting your prospects to loyal
consumers. The goal of every business is for prospects to go down the funnel successfully, capturing audiences and generating leads.
Not all sales or conversion funnel is the same, but every funnel is designed to create a lasting impact on businesses. Sales funnels are intended to support you in growing your client base and gaining future customers’ confidence. The most common sales funnel the AIDA Model:
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Vecteezy
The gist of the AIDA model are the following:
- Awareness: This is the moment at which your prospect becomes aware of your business and what you offer for the first time.
- Interest: This is the moment at which your prospect is doing their own research about your product or service, conducting their own comparison research or shopping, and weighing reasons why they should go you’re your brand or not.
- Decision: This is the moment where the prospect is ready to purchase your product or avail of your service. Since they have done their research on different brands, including yours, this is the time to make your best offer, like free shipping, discount, or giveaway products.
- Action: This is the moment where the prospect converts into a customer. At this stage, employ strategies for customer retention, like expressing gratitude via email, inviting them to leave their feedback, and, most importantly, after-sales customer or technical support.
Prospects that visit your site will not typically convert to customers on their first encounter with your business. Not all prospects also go through your website too. With a sales funnel, you can collect leads’ email and basic contact information, either from the website or from other platforms, so you can follow-up and develop that connection. Your goal is to establish trust deep enough that the prospect would want to invest more time and, eventually, resources for your product or service.
Sales funnels are also useful in keeping repeat customers. So a customer should not be dropped from the funnel after a successful conversion. Return customers are more willing to make bigger orders than first-time customers because they already have first-hand experience with your product or brand. If they leave positive feedback on your webpages or social media accounts, it encourages new prospects to trust your product enough and make a purchase.
Even prospects that drop out of the sales funnel midway can still be followed up strategically so they can get back into the process. It can be through a new promotion of your product, a discount, or a promo. Whatever the hook is, it should be interesting enough for these previously failed prospects to take another look at your product or service again.
3. Use Correct Campaign Channels
To ensure you get good leads, you need to use the correct campaign channels. If your intended market is male around their ‘30s to ’40s, for example, optimize Twitter as one of the main social media platforms to advertise products and services, with links that lead to your campaign’s landing page.
If you are on a platform that your intended demographic seldom goes to, then you will not be discoverable and fail to get the leads from your target market. If your target market is the more mature in age, then you cannot just focus on digital marketing campaigns to get leads. You may still have to place ads on newspapers, or make local billboards, or make non-intrusive sales calls.
Brands that focus on Google Shopping, for example, run Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns or links to shopping feed in their brand’s official Facebook account. Some brands nowadays give more priority for Amazon sales, while others focus on B2B or B2C lead generation. You need to know your brand’s niche and utilize the most effective channels for lead generation.
4. Optimize Social Selling or Social Media Campaigns To Get Leads
Social media can effectively push traffic to your website.
Social Selling is a very effective eCommerce strategy that drives conversions for businesses. Since social media users number almost half of the world’s population, It is not surprising that businesses employ social media for lead generation.
Facebook and YouTube ads are the most common means to advertise and to monetize posts. But other social media platforms offer monetization as well, like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Even news and information websites
stay active on social media to drive more leads for their website.
Business owners must not ignore the 3.8 billion-strong social media market. Social media can convert those follows, likes, and shares into actual sales. Using Facebook alone gives businesses access to its 2.50 billion monthly active users (MAU) and 1.66 billion people daily active users (DAU).
You need to learn the best way to market your product or service on social media because
social media marketing benefits your business.
Know that different platforms would need different kinds of content. It’s not a one-size-fits-all content creation and campaign. Each social media platform covers different demographics. For example, younger generations and younger adults like Instagram and Instagram over Facebook, while most adults prefer Facebook. YouTube is the melting pot of all different generations. That is why video content strategies boost SEO and a brand’s conversion rate.
The format of content should also be customized based on the social media platform.
- TikTok: short-form videos
- Facebook: stories, images, videos, curated content
- Instagram: high-quality images and short-form high-quality videos, more creative content
- Twitter: blogs, news, live feed, GIFs
- LinkedIn: job posts, corporate blogs, and promotions, business content
- Pinterest: Hi-resolution images, infographics, how-to photos, and short, hobbies and interests
Conclusion: People Should Be Every Lead Generation
Once you’ve learned how to generate leads online, you’ve got nothing but up. The more leads you get, the higher the selling prospects.
But do not lose sight that every lead generation campaign should be focused on bringing significant value to people. Optimizing different media strategies creating unique content for lead generation should be delivering solutions to your target audience’s most pertinent search intent or problem.
Whenever you serve the needs of your target market, it eventually drives traffic to your website, drives conversions, and organically increases your business revenue. As you keep exploring how to serve your customers best and keep customer satisfaction high, it helps your lead generation strategies work for the growth of your business.
About the Author:Mayleen Meñez worked for seven years in TV and Radio production, and also as a Graphic Artist/Editor. Finding her true passion, she devoted 15 years in NGO and community development work, where she experienced being a coordinator and teacher, travelling both in the Philippines and countries in Asia. She homeschools her three kids and reinvents Filipino dishes in her spare time. Writing has always been a hobby and pursuit, and she recently added content writing with
Softvire Australia and
Softvire New Zealand up her sleeve, while preparing for her next adventure in the nations.
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