The good news is that if you know how to use social media correctly, it can be your most effective lead generation platform. With 3.6 billion users using social media throughout the world, it’s the ideal platform for businesses to reach out and acquire new customers. It’s simply a matter of employing the appropriate strategies at the appropriate moment.
Social media marketing can be a critical component of a successful outbound marketing strategy, as it is a vehicle that helps you identify and attract people who are interested in your product or service. Social media channels also provide you with an opportunity to connect with those leads via other channels, such as email or phone calls.
Be sure and add social media channels and email to your outbound approach and make sure you sound like a human, not a company! People want to do business with people!
Use social media to like, comment, and engage with your prospects. Once you have done this, you can find a way to start a creative conversation with your prospect in Messenger and move the ball forward!
Incentivizing people to share their information is a trick that works exceptionally well on social media.
Because social media users are active deal seekers, they are often on the lookout for lucrative deals and discounts. In fact, many of them follow certain brands solely for bargain hunting.
If you become a valuable resource for your followers, you can gradually convert them from social leads to loyal customers and even brand advocates. To leverage this tactic for generating leads from social media, you can create compelling lead magnets such as gated content.
Create helpful content on topics that are of interest to your target audience and ask your audience to provide their contact information to access that content.
It can be anything from research reports to templates, case studies, and ebooks. Essentially, it should be a valuable resource that is not available freely on the web.
Content Marketing
The top-notch businesses online are the ones that have the most consistent content marketing for lead generation. It offers so many possibilities for any business, small or big. Whether you are looking to reach a wide range of audiences or build your online presence, creating content will provide that and more.
Many marketers and experts misunderstand the purpose of content marketing. They usually jump into creating an excessive amount of content, thinking it will bring results.
For example, if 88% of B2B marketers implemented a content marketing strategy, then how come they can’t succeed in lead generation.
Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing content to reach your target audience. It can boost factors like brand awareness, sales, reach, interactions, and loyalty. High-quality content is more likely to compel the user to pay attention and follow for more. It serves as the capturing magnet for their minds, especially when it’s relevant to what they are asking for.
Creating quality content will help you identify your business as a credible platform to get information. So as long as your content keeps demonstrating credibility and relevance, the leads will show trust in your brand. As a result, the audience’s trust will increase retention and attraction, bringing you a constant flow of leads.
Video Marketing
Some consumers are still skeptical about buying products or services online, but effective marketing videos can inspire their trust and deliver long-term results. They can create brand awareness, build personal connections with customers and generate organic leads.
There are numerous benefits of video marketing. Videos can help you to rank higher in search and increase traffic to your website. They can engage potential customers, influence their buying decisions and bump up your conversions. Videos are also a great addition to your email campaigns.
Using a video hosting platform that offers powerful integration, automation, and video SEO tools can streamline your video marketing and increase its effectiveness. You can utilize your usual email marketing platforms (e.g., HubSpot, Mailchimp, Marketo, Salesforce, Pardot) and automatically integrate and synchronize contact form submissions when you use Cincopa as the video hosting platform.
When you have a video marketing strategy, people get to see the people behind the company they’re interacting with. Doing it right means viewers have the opportunity to get to know you and your business in ways that other forms of content marketing can’t compete with because it more closely simulates a face-to-face interaction.
Email Marketing
An email list can boost the bottom line of any business. Whether you are an affiliate marketer, eCommerce, local business, or Saas (software as a service), if you’re selling information, services, or products, you need an email list.
Even if you find another platform that provides you with such a reach, personalizing your communication is very difficult on those platforms.
Most commercial emails would address you by your name. They are likely to send you offers, discount codes as well as promotions that are relevant to you. That is the level of personalization that email lists can provide you with.
You might be thinking, what’s the big deal about that?
The answer is that consumers simply love personalized emails. A research report by SmarterHQ states that consumers are likely to buy through personalized communication channels. Since email lists allow you to do that, it is high time that you think about building one.
Emails are the best way to communicate one-to-one with your users. It lets your users talk with you in person and ask questions if they’re into any problem. As mentioned above, an email inbox is a private space. So you can discuss the issues your customers are facing and help them to solve them. Such conversations help to build intimate relationships with your customers. Happy customers can always help to grow your business with word of mouth.
Public Relations
One of the key benefits of public relations is that it helps to elevate the reach of your holistic communications and marketing strategy, ultimately generating increased brand awareness among the masses. Since PR aims to communicate a brand or company’s innovative, industry pioneering, and future-thinking ideas, the stories tend to receive heightened levels of media attention.
A positive brand image greatly ties into the credibility of the company. Another key benefit of PR is that brand credibility is reinforced when someone else speaks positively about your brand. PR strategies are developed with this in mind - to create positive talk (from the media and public) about your brand so that credibility is enhanced.
As PR starts developing your company’s credibility and reputation, your market position will start to enjoy the added benefit of new and qualified leads. This is because well-planned PR strategies make you more discoverable by sending the right messages and call-to-actions to the right receivers.
Lead Generation Best Practices
One of the lead generation best practices could be adopting an Omni channel approach that connects all the channels like phone, email, in-app, website, store, etc., connecting with customers over their preferred communication channel.
Omni channel communication strategy helps to gain insights into how the customers have interacted with the brand so that you can use customer journey maps to meet or exceed your customer needs. Thus, delivering optimal omnichannel customer care and increasing opportunities to interact with customers.
Identify your lead generation objectives and measure the activities.
Determine how you will generate leads by inbound marketing, buying a list, or digging for new prospects.
Develop content that is valuable and relevant to your audience.
Track your leads and offer support across respective channels.
Marketo research found that 93% of B2B companies say content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing strategies.
Content marketing is more effective for your business, and smart content marketers know that diving in with a clear strategy is key to your success. But your success depends on the kind of content you are able to produce on a regular basis. When the content is interactive, it will engage your customers and capture interested leads.
Here is a roadmap for creating content that generates leads and sales:
Know your target audience – If you try to create content that appeals to everyone, you will end up appealing to no one. So, it is vital to identify your target audience to create content that is relevant to them.
Identify the right content – There are different types of content, but you need to focus on lead and traffic-generating content. Traffic generating content like social media posts, blogs, videos, infographics, etc. Lead generating content webinars, discounts & coupons, free trials, etc.
Select channels for content distribution – You can shape up your content plan by distributing it in the right channels. The two distinct channels of distribution are organic channels such as Facebook and Twitter and paid channels like social media paid ads, Google AdWords, etc.
Create high-value content – You must focus on writing high-converting content that can be made effective by maintaining the standard length, making it educative & useful, using visuals, and incorporating keywords.
Benefits of Lead Generation
You get it — leads are essential to the sustainability of your business. But how exactly does lead generation benefit your organization? Here’s a look at nine reasons you should focus on lead generation.
Boost Online Presence
Maybe you’re a startup that recently launched without much buzz. Or you’re an established business that’s operated behind the scenes for years. And now you want to get more eyes focused on your company.
Creating visibility and awareness is vital to turning the tide in your favor. You can do this by creating content your audience cares about and sharing them on the channels they frequent.
Increase Following
Content creation and communication are a big part of lead generation efforts. It consists of crafting quality content and starting conversations on social channels. The goal is to share valuable content with your target audience so as to position you as a thought leader in the industry.
In turn, this builds a community of professionals who like and follow your brand. Some will become customers, and even more, may turn into brand advocates. And who couldn’t use more of those?
Revenue Increase
When done correctly, lead generation can maximize your brand’s ability to reach target prospects. This requires using the right messaging, offers, and content to generate interest from these specific groups.
In doing so, you’ll find it easier to capture the attention of qualified leads, which makes it easier for sales to convert them. The revenue growth potential is great, especially when you’re focusing on interests and pain points your audience cares about.
More Opportunities
Lead gen doesn’t only help with finding prospects. It can also present business opportunities. Maybe a non-competing brand in your industry can reach out to host a webinar together. And by teaming up, you gain access to their audience (and vice versa).
Lead Generation Strategies
Investing in the most effective lead generation channels is crucial to ensuring the future success of your business.
Webinars
87% of marketers who run webinars say they're an effective way to generate leads.
We already know that B2B buyers engage with content before making decisions, and webinars are another effective way to engage with leads in a personal, authentic way. They can also be repurposed into sales videos, turned into blog posts, or even used as podcast episodes.
Hosting a webinar positions you as an authority and helps you stand out from your competitors. Also, people want to do business with people they know, like, and trust.
Unlike sharing a video or publishing an ebook, webinars allow you to interact with the audience, build rapport, and put trust-building on the fast track. You can address any question or concern on the spot, show the audience your unique perspective, and pull those who are drawn to your approach further into the funnel.
A/B testing
A/B testing (aka split testing) is a randomized experimentation process where two or more versions are being sent to different target users at the same time to determine which one makes results and influences the desirable business action.
Whether writing a sales copy, sending an Invite to Connect on LinkedIn, or launching a new website, it is tricky to rely solely on your gut feel. It could cost you time and money and some valuable leads, for that matter. On the other hand, there is A/B testing, a reliable path to making a data-backed decision.
By using A/B testing, you are researching the best way of presenting yourself and your product on the market.
Maybe you will find out something you did not know before. Maybe you will find out that leads are reacting more to certain qualities, not even considering your unique selling point in the first place.
Use A/B testing to experiment and market those characteristics. This way, you will provide your customers with a better experience and breed trust and confidence in your brand and company.
Once your customers find that you provide value, your conversion rate will skyrocket.
Landing pages
A landing page is solely used to collect users’ information which includes a form for a website visitor to fill in. It is a must-have element for your landing page as it provides a targeted platform that helps convert a huge percentage of visitors to leads.
A landing page shows the visitor exactly what you want them to do and why they should do it. Homepages are great for direct traffic, but when you can control how visitors get to your page, a landing page is the best option. The main objective of the website is to generate leads. Landing pages are hell-bent on getting exactly that. Using marketing automation software helps test and create landing pages which save a lot of time.
Ad copies
Ad copy is important because it encourages people to move towards your call to action, such as checking out your website or making a purchase. Good ad copy shows people where they need to go and engages them at the same time.
Ad copy is usually not the first thing people see when looking at your advertisement. For example, on Instagram and Facebook, ads are visually appealing, utilizing images and videos, which is what people see first. However, the ad copy is still crucial, as it’s words that will determine whether a user will read on and click on your call to action. The image is casting the fishing rod, and the copy is reeling it in. In the case of Google Ads, the copy is even more important as it’s all you’ve got.
Remarketing
Remarketing is one of the most important tools for maximizing the ROI of your paid advertising spend. However, this snazzy little PPC feature can a lot more than bring previous visitors back to your website. Typically only a small percentage of consumers will convert the first time they visit a website. Your digital marketing campaign is more likely to bring positive results if you offer prospective customers a second chance to become actual customers. Remarketing gives you the opportunity to speak directly to potential consumers who have visited your brand’s website. It allows your brand to “follow” these users around the internet by displaying more ads on the websites and platforms they use most.
Attract High-Quality Leads to Your Business
Attracting high-quality leads is essential to any business. There is a myriad of ways to do so. Figuring it out all by yourself can be time-consuming and distracts you from your core responsibilities as a business owner. Universal Creative Solutions offers marketing consulting and marketing operations consulting services to provide the right strategy for your business. By optimizing your lead generation strategy, you can attract the right customers into your business. Schedule a free consultation today to learn how we can help.
Take a second and think about the number of advertisements you see in just one day. When you take into account all of the billboards, social media advertisements, and online banner ads targeting you throughout the day, the number is probably somewhere in the hundred range. Yet, consumers, including yourself, are getting better than ever at ignoring these blatant marketing tactics. So much so that seeing becomes ignoring.
So, where does that leave today’s digital marketer? The answer: Refocusing their efforts on lead generation channels. Learning how to effectively maximize lead generation marketing enables you to bring high-quality customers into your business. To generate successful leads for your sales team and reach a constantly evolving and elusive audience, marketers must be investing their resources in the most effective lead generation channels. To help you reach your target audience and keep that lead bucket full, here’s a look at the most effective lead generation marketing channels your business should be investing in.
Types of lead generation
The lead generation process embodies actions of identifying and targeting potential new customers with the intention of cultivating their interest in what your business has to offer. It involves understanding the customer journey and developing interest in prospects by providing them maximum information about your products or services.
Actually developing the interest to such an extent that customers will contact you to get more information and perhaps even end up with a purchase. Creating lead generation ideas is crucial for effective sales and marketing. This is where businesses get their precious pool of prospects that can eventually become loyal customers. Below are the types of channels used to generate leads:
Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing
Inbound marketing, or pull marketing, leverages content to attract and draw customers closer to the brand. Outbound marketing, or push marketing, uses content to interrupt customers during other activities. It takes longer to enjoy the results of inbound marketing, whereas results may come more quickly with outbound marketing.
With inbound marketing, the content encourages customers to come to you. It “pulls” them in without you having to go directly to them. In the example above, we see this can be done with content like paid search, content marketing, and emails people have opted-in to receiving.
The benefits of inbound marketing include:
No disruptions to customers; they come to the content
Less of a rush to see results; it’s understood this comes with a longer lead time
Nurtures customers in various stages of the buyer journey
Outbound marketing, or direct response marketing, has its own purposes and upsides. In fact, the benefits of outbound marketing include:
Targets new leads and customers
Gets you in front of customers right away
Conversions are delivered very quickly
More control over the timeline and what your customers experience
