Did you know that efficient lead generation is vital for small and medium-sized companies wanting to maintain and produce predictable growth? But the question is: where do you begin? 

To help you cut through all the noise on this topic, we are digging deeper into the most efficient lead-generation tactics we have used over the past few years. 

If you’re ready, let’s get started! 

What is a Lead?

In case you didn’t know yet, a lead is someone who has a potential interest in your service or product. This person will have shown an interest in your brand or business in one way or another. Some examples of behavior that converts someone into a lead include:

• chatting with a live agent 

• spending time on your website

• signing up for a free trial

• providing their contact details in return for a resource (newsletter, eBook, or webinar, among other things)

Once somebody becomes a lead, they will fall inside the sales funnel. 

What is Lead Generation, and What’s Its Importance?

What is lead generation marketing? Leads are the people or companies that like what you sell and may become customers. The lead generation process involves finding these people, drawing their attention, and searching for signs that they could become efficient customers in the future. 

Mostly, lead generation falls into the hands of your marketing team and could use search engine optimization to obtain more traffic to your site, make a lead magnet for site visitors, and guide those new potential leads throughout the sales funnel. 

Lead generation supports small to medium-sized businesses to produce leads and gather more revenue. Without leads, your business lacks the opportunity for growth and risks losing business from existing customers. 

Developing sales opportunities offers your business a higher chance of long-term success. 

Four Reasons You Should Start Generating Leads

Here are the reasons why you must start investing in lead generation:

1. It helps you target your prospects

Collecting info about your potential customer's needs and preferences allows you to better target them, whatever their geographical location. That helps personalize your services or products based on their wants, needs, and interests. 

2. To boost brand awareness

Lead generation and brand awareness are different forms of marketing, but each could benefit from one another. That indicates when you invest in lead generation, you also introduce your brand to potential clients, increasing brand awareness. 

Also, investing in brand awareness campaigns helps produce more traffic to your site, boosting lead generation rates.

3. It enables your sales team to concentrate on selling 

Not investing in lead generation means your sales team will spend valuable time contacting lads who might not be interested in your service or product. That could be a setback for your business, as it does not guarantee growth or revenue.

Investing in lead generation means you offer your sales team qualified leads in your business. That makes it simple for them to close sales, increasing revenue and business growth. 

4. To boost conversion rates

Most leads you generate might not convert right away. That is why you must nurture leads until they’re ready to purchase. To do so, establish a relationship with your leads through emailing or messaging and give them the information they need to trust your brand, growing conversion rate changes. 

Main Channels of Lead Generation

There are different types of lead generation channels that you can choose from. Like other marketing strategies, the ones that offer the most benefits change. Here’s a list of marketing channels you must know about:

• Content marketing

• Social media marketing

• Website landing pages

• Email marketing

• Event networking

• Podcasts and webinars

• Paid search or PPC

• Organic search (SEO)

• Retargeting 

• Brand partnerships 

Lead Generation Strategies

You can generate leads using several strategies, including: 

1. Lead magnet strategy

Lead magnets are an efficient lead generation strategy that helps extract the contact details of potential leads. It also establishes the brand as thought leadership, keeps prospects engaged for a long time, and drives demand generation campaigns. 

2. Email outreach strategy

Building a list of your target audience and other qualified leads is an incredible way to round out any marketing plan. Email marketing is perfect, as you can use it to follow up on your other marketing strategies.

For instance, you can use an email verification service to check your mailing lists for any invalid email addresses. If hard or soft bounces keep appearing on your deliverability reports, there’s a higher chance that your database has invalid email addresses of recipients whose inbox is full. 

3. Content marketing strategy

Content marketing continues to be one of the crucial lead-generation channels. Having quality, unique content is an excellent way to attract new leads. To maximize your content, you can consider tracking which content does the best. You can then use that information to create your content calendar. 

To turn your visitors into leads, you must deliver content they’d consider relevant and helpful. 

4. Referral strategy

Referral campaigns are a great way to generate leads. That’s because they can provide an incentive to the lead in return for referring colleagues or friends to your business. 

5. Social media strategy

If your business isn’t using social media, you’re missing out on a valuable lead-generation source. Remember that social media is one perfect way to organically generate leads.

Social media posts make it simpler for potential leads to find your business. There’s also the option to run ads double your lead generation potential.

6. PPC strategy

Pay per-click strategy is another lead-generation strategy for businesses. Here, you need to execute audience targeting and keyword research. With paid ads, your website will show at the top of search results where the ads are listed first. 

You have the option to run paid ads on social media. With a bit of research, you can find the ads that work best for you. Most of those ads can benefit from your return on investment. 

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What Is a Lead Generation Funnel?

A lead generation funnel is a representation that demonstrates the lead’s journey from becoming aware of your brand to becoming a paying customer. Companies utilize this to optimize their marketing efforts, save their budget, and speed up the lead-to-customer conversion intervals. 

The Stages of a Lead Generation Funnel

The lead generation funnel is divided into different stages: awareness, interest, decision, and action.

• Awareness 

In this stage, people try to determine the problem and search for information on Google. The first result offers the solution to the issue. Now the user moves on to the next stage of the lead funnel. 

For instance, Ian has a strong cough whenever he spends a long time at home. He feels his throat dry whenever he wakes up in the morning. He suspects the dry air and dust provoked the symptoms. 

• Interest 

Ian now knows he must rehydrate his home with a humidifier. In this stage, potential customers are looking for more particular information. Ian likes to understand everything about humidifiers, and his query is “How to buy a humidifier.” 

Users normally check the results from the first page of their search. You need to ensure your brand ranks high. The future customer knows exactly what type of product they need, moving down the funnel to narrow their search.

• Decision 

People at this stage pick a particular product according to its key attributes. Ian searches for “best home humidifiers” on Google to compare humidifiers from different brands. 

This stage allows you to sell the concept that your product or brand can solve the issues better than your competitors. For this reason, you can make a landing page highlighting all technical details, present how it works, give customer reviews, and more. 

• Action 

After people pick a product, they will browse various online shops looking for the best price. You can make an enticing offer to convert a lead into a paying customer at this final stage. 

Remember that people may begin communicating with your brand at any stage of the lead funnel. Your job is to ensure your business offers quality, relevant content throughout its customer lifecycle. 

Wrap Up

We have discussed a few lead-generation strategies in this guide today. However, you don’t need to use all of these strategies for your lead-generation campaigns. Instead, you should pick the best ones for your business and your audience.

But how will you know? Track the ideal metrics, particularly conversion rates. Develop a lead-nurturing sequence to keep up with the new leads you create, and pay attention to the close rate for various strategies.

As you create a lead generation process for your business, you will need a place to monitor, engage with, and finally close those new leads. 

Remember that leads are a crucial part of your business. Without them, you don’t have anyone to sell your service or product to. Build and optimize your process for determining, qualifying, and converting leads, and you will benefit from more revenue, higher conversions, and faster growth. 

We hope this article has been useful and informative to you.