To continue to operate, every business needs a constant stream of new customers. The technique used to turn strangers into potential customers for your business is known as lead generation.
No, this is just another term clever marketers came up with to make themselves look smart and important (they do that a lot don’t they? 🤓😉).
Lead generation is indeed essential to business growth.
In this article, we’ll start by understanding who/what a lead is, what lead generation is all about, and how to implement a lead generation strategy for your business.
What is a Lead?
No, it’s not an abbreviation for “leader”, neither does it refer to your competitors who are in a “comfortable lead”.
A lead basically refers to someone who has expressed interest in a company’s product or service in any way, shape or form.
This could be from simple things like clicking on a link to your product, visiting a company website or social media pages, to more advanced things such as filling a contact form, sending an inquiry about your product/service, etc.
Why do you need leads?
Every business needs a constant flow of leads because when done right, a lead can turn into a paying customer – which business doesn’t need more customers?
Lead generation conversion rates can be pretty low. According to research done by Unbounce, the average conversion rate across 10 industries was 4%. That is 4/100 (4 out of 100).
However, this varies from industry to industry, some are lower, and the highest is just 6%. Click here to view the report.
What this means is, every company must consistently run lead generation campaigns to attract new potential customers in the hope of turning them into long-term paying customers.
What is lead generation?
Now that you know who a lead is, let us explore the concept of lead generation.
Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers into people who have expressed an interest in a company’s product/service in any way, shape or form.
Think about this for a second, the mobile phone, tablet, or computer you are using to read this article, how did you move from wanting to buy a phone/tablet/computer to decide that out of all the dozens of brands out there and the hundreds of products between them, it was this particular one you would buy.
Whether you know it or not, every company utilizes many lead generation techniques to get people interested in their products.
Not all lead generation strategies are born equal; some are expensive and some relatively cheap, some work best for certain markets while some are just good enough.
By the time you are done reading this article, you will have a good understanding of some lead generation techniques and how they can help you get more clients for your business.
Types of Leads
Not all leads are created equal.
There are three basic categories for grouping leads; each represents how the lead was acquired and how close they are to purchase (which is the goal). They are;
- Cold Leads: Cold leads are people who have no idea who you are or what you do. They are most likely not considering buying the product you are selling, and they are probably not even the kind of customers you want. The term cold call refers to calling cold leads.
It is not advisable to spend too much time on cold leads as they usually don’t end up buying, leading to a waste of precious time and resources.
Back in the days when companies spent money buying leads and cold calling them, lead generation was not a thing. But now that it is, why buy leads when you can generate them?! - Warm Leads: Warm leads are currently considering purchasing a product or service you offer and evaluating all their options.
When it comes to warm leads, you need to give them a reason to choose you. Going back to the example I gave earlier about buying the mobile phone/tablet/computer.
During your research, many people probably gave you reasons why you should purchase one product over the other, and you may have also visited a few websites to check out the product before deciding to buy or not to buy.
During that process, you are a warm lead. The company that could anticipate what you wanted and gave you the perfect product to meet your need was the one you eventually chose.
In the same way, you need to anticipate what the lead truly needs and have the right product for that lead. That is how you convert the lead into a paying customer. - Hot Lead: A hot lead is someone ready to make a purchase immediately and pick the next best option.
Think of a hot lead as someone who was on the street, and it starts raining. All the person wants at this point is a functional umbrella or a raincoat.
All you need to do is have a working umbrella or raincoat, and you would close the sale.
Hot leads are the dream customers because you don’t need to spend too much time converting them. However, if your product is bad, they’ll never buy from you again.
The Lead Generation Process
Now that you understand what lead generation is all about and you know the types of lead generation, it’s time to explore the process of lead generation.
Lead generation can be carried out in 4 simple (yet comprehensive) steps.
- Discovery: This is where a stranger encounters your brand asset for the first time through a marketing channel, such as website, blog post, social media, or advertisement.
- Visitor: Out of curiosity (or interest), this stranger then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA), be it a link, an image, a video, and is taken to a landing page (or wherever your CTA leads)
- Convert: After clicking on your CTA, the visitor goes to your landing page, where you do a bit more selling using good sales copy.
Now the visitor is really interested in what you do and wants to learn more, so the visitor fills a simple form (this step varies based on your lead generation strategy. More on this soon) - Qualification: You don’t only let your customers choose you; you need to choose your customers as well. So based on the details from the form filled, you qualify the lead according to your company’s lead qualification process.
Assuming you run an accounting firm and do a lead generation campaign to get clients in the financial industry. However, someone who owns an educational institution sees the campaign and fills the form, although the person is theoretically a “lead,” it is not the kind of lead you want at the time, hence the need to qualify leads.
Lead Generation Strategies
Since you have made it up to this point, I believe you know well enough about a lead generation to understand the lead generation strategies you are about to learn about.
It is important to understand that all lead generation strategies are based on the premise that to get a potential customer to want to give you their money, you have to give them something of value upfront (also known as the offer).
With this understanding in mind, let us look at 5 battle-tested lead generation strategies that are proven to work in generating quality leads.
- Free Reports And E-books
This is a strategy that plays to a literate audience. Once your target market is well-educated people, you can create a document that they will find beneficial. To download this document, they’d have to fill a form to collect all necessary details, which will be used in lead qualification.
Remember the accounting firm example we used earlier? Good.
Let us assume to get new leads; the firm decides to publish a report which talks about new accounting methods used by large corporations to pay less tax. Given that their target market is financial institutions, most will be interested in the said report and want to download it. Now our accounting firm would have the information about these institutions and can proceed to close them.
In practice, hundreds of companies use this method to gain new clients; companies such as Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, McKinsey & Co, etc., all issues special reports (some paid for and other free), which attracts the kind of people they want as clients.
Although I used finance companies in my example, this method is not limited to the financial industry; the same can be done for any market and industry.
Do you want to implement this strategy? Contact the experts.
2. Give Aways
People love a good give away. People love it so much that most people use it to scam others, knowing they will definitely respond to it.
This has given giveaways a bad rep on some social circles like Twitter and Instagram.
However, once done right and from a credible source, giveaways are one sure way to generate leads for your business.
In doing a giveaway, it is important that you have the right task-reward balance. If the task you ask the participants to undertake is not worth the reward, they won’t bother.
On the other hand, if the task is low and the reward is too high, some would think it a scam.
Also, let the giveaway be targeted at the right audience, so you don’t attract the wrong leads. If you are selling a high priced item, then giveaways are not the best strategy to generate leads.
Do you want to implement this strategy? Contact the experts.
3. Discount Sales
In my opinion, discount sales are among the most effective lead generation strategies in marketing and sales. This is for two main reasons;
– First of all, you get to see those who would have bought your product long ago if it was lower-priced.
– Secondly, you are likely to draw customers away from your competitors looking to switch sides but didn’t want to risk paying too much to test a different service.
Discount sales are a great way to nudge those already interested in your product but were put off by the original price to put the product to the test. If the product is any good, they will remain with you.
Do you want to implement this strategy? Contact the experts.
4. Free Trials
Just like discount sales, free trials are great at attracting new leads.
However, free trials work best for new companies looking to get people to try out their service at no risk or existing companies launching a new service and want to get people to take it for a spin.
If you have a service and want to eliminate the barrier to entry for new customers, hoping that once they test the service and love it, they will pay, then free trials are the way to go.
Do not run free trials for products; discount sales work for products and services, but free trials work best for just services.
Do you want to implement this strategy? Contact the experts.
Referrals
The greatest marketing hack ever invented is a referral program.
Referrals work because they are the best way to turn existing customers into brand evangelists and generate new leads.
People who use your product are the best people to market your product to others because people are more likely to recommend friends and family than from the company offering the service.
Also, people who use your product or service are more likely to know others within their circle who need your product.
For a good referral campaign to work, you need to amass a critical mass of users who love the product so much that they would risk their reputation to tell their friends and family about it.
Plus, it would help if you made it worth their time and effort.
Do you want to implement this strategy? Contact the experts.
Conclusion
Lead generation is a simple yet complex concept. For your campaign to work effectively, it could take a lot of trial and error, which would cost you both time and money.
If you don’t know which strategy is right for your business and need help developing and implementing the right lead generation campaign to grow your business, contact the lead generation and marketing experts.
You might get a discount offer *wink wink*.
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