Imagine taking a day off from work to binge-watch series and have an entire pizza to yourself. As you take a bit into the slice of your favorite pizza, your phone rings, and it’s a lady on the other side asking if you would be interested in getting a free trial of their latest product.
And that’s not the only call you’ve received that day. Annoying right? Well, that’s what marketers and companies call a lead. A lead is anyone who might remotely be interested in a company’s product or service.
Traditionally, leads were about calling up people to know if they’d spare a little time to take a survey or learn more about their brand or product. These days marketers have leveled up and also understand how important it is not to be intrusive. Being invasive only pushes potential customers or leads away.
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What is lead generation?
Nowadays, companies ask users to fill a form or an online survey to understand their interests and needs and then send an email describing their services or providing what their leads are looking for.
Today, you can directly focus on your target audience and research their habits using various analytics software. Businesses must be up-to-date and adapt to develop their digital marketing strategies continuously. Many opt to
Lead Generation in Digital Marketing
A lead is a potential customer from your target audience who is interested in your products or services. It’s the first point in the customer’s sales cycle, and the first point of contact is generally through marketing.
Lead Generation is also known as the sets of marketing activities that correspond with the customer’s buying journey and aim to do the following:
- Convert the leads into customers.
- Generate traffic to the business’ website to grow the business.
- Convert the website visitors into leads.
The Importance of Lead Generation
Many existing and upcoming brands underestimate the importance of lead generation as they focus on the already existing customer pool they have. But a brand can only grow only if its customer base grows.
Start with marketing your services to potential customers first to seek their attention. That is how lead generation helps your business to grow. Then, the sales team can pass on the leads generated by this idea to convert them into buying customers. With lead generation marketing data, business intelligence software can also track your product demand and customer trends.
Lead generation plays an important role in the following areas:
Website Optimization
A well-designed, professional website with an excellent user interface is the first and foremost center of attraction for every business digitally. Since your website is the primary source of driving all the traffic, you must make sure whether it is functioning correctly or not.
On the other hand, lagging web pages, loading errors, and an unsupportive user interface will drive the traffic away. Therefore, website optimization plays an important role in bringing in more leads because most leads are converted.
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is immensely beneficial and profitable for almost all kinds of businesses. It is undoubtedly one of the most effective lead generation sources, with a volume of more than 1.8 billion active social media users.
Social media not only helps in engaging or connecting with your target audiences, but it also has a strong influence on consumers’ buying behavior. According to recent studies, two-thirds of the world’s top sales experts have categorized social media as a significant lead generation and sales channel.
Many brands sell their products through their social media handles by uploading videos and images of their products and reviews posted by their customers praising their products. In addition, customers sometimes reach out to the existing pool of customers to know more about the product or service.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
Pay-Per-Click advertising is helping businesses to generate highly targeted traffic with the most probability for lead conversion. If your business is new to Digital Marketing, then PPC would be your perfect launching point because it quickly generates good results in the quickest possible time.
PPC ads are a very viable and high-quality resource for generating valuable leads. New businesses can quickly generate their leads using PPC ads. Whereas veteran digital marketers will continue to use this vital tool for generating good results that will help them achieve their goals.
Email Marketing
According to digital marketing experts, email marketing is one of the most effective tools for lead generation. Despite being an old internet marketing tool, email is used heavily by many people.
When you use proper email marketing techniques, it delivers an excellent deal for your investments. In this digital era, where information is flooding every online platform, email can still influence consumers’ buying behavior.
Here’s how you can get started with first understanding what email marketing is all about. First, here’s a beginner’s guide to email marketing; click here.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is a primary lead generation strategy. According to several reports from online marketing experts, top digital marketers use search engine optimization. As a result, it has a massive impact on lead generation for B2B and B2C markets.
SEO is ideal for generating leads through organic web searches that consumers use daily. A good ranking in search results means higher visibility for websites that create a lot of leads. There are several SEO techniques available. However, content marketing should be your primary focus on SEO.
Lead applies to both online and traditional methods of generating prospects that can be converted into paying customers. There are various ways of generating valuable leads online. However, using such expert-recommended ways of generating leads online should put your business at the forefront of developing beneficial results from your digital marketing efforts.
What are the stages of lead generation?
Here are the 7 steps of lead generation:
1. Research your target market
The one key to lead generation is conducting in-depth research on your customers and understanding them. Figure out what type of people are visiting your company and their pain points. Once you do that, connect your clients with the best offers.
2. Create an engaging content
Creating engaging content is significant when you want to convert your viewers into customers. Email marketing, social media, blog posts, websites, and ebooks are some of the ways for lead generation, which requires content that convinces your client like nothing. Try to give out solutions to the problems faced, and you get the conversion. \
3. Promote your business
SEO is indeed important to increase your website’s visibility on the search result page. However, you should just stop there. As a business owner, you must get your hands on everything that even has the slightest chance to boost your business. Consider promoting your business on social media to create awareness, allowing people to find you.
4. Nurture existing leads
While generating new leads, nurturing the existing leads is equally important. Ensure to familirise themselves with your business through emails every week. This will help you retain your clients and keep coming back to you for special offers.
5 Pass leads to the sales team
The four initial steps are about how to turn your subscriber into a lead. but when you need to get some sales, you must pass the lead to the sales team to enrich the customer’s experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. How to generate B2B leads?
When strategically employed, you can generate B2B leads in five effective ways:
- Content marketing
- Case studies
- Blogs
- Social selling
- Webinars
Q2. What are the 3 approaches of lead generation?
The top three lead generation methods are content marketing (emails mainly), search engines, and social media platforms.
Q3. What are the two basic types of leads?
There are three different lead types in sales. Here is each with an explanation.
- Cold leads: They are the leads that have no interest in your product and service.
- Warm leads: These are the leads who genuinely have an interest in what you sell.
- Hot leads: they are highly interested leads who are ready to get your products.
