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LEAD GENERATION (The First Step To Get More Sales)

Lead Generation : An A-Z Guide For Beginners

Lead generation is one part of marketing that is mostly overlooked by customers and business owners,

 

Although It is the most important part of marketing that generates results relating to sales and potential customers.

lead generation is an objective of a marketing team that has to be done right in other to get the desired result.

In this post, I will be explaining what leads generation is, how it should be done, and also why every business needs to be generating leads and also take part in various lead generation campaigns. And at the end of this article, I will be giving out an e-book you can use to generate continuous leads for your business and it works for whatever business or niche you might be into.

In digital marketing, lead generation is one part most people trying to earn online forget to do before they try to sell. Introducing a new product to a prospect in a first encounter is a big mistake most do make.

But coming from the side of solving a problem of a customer from a different perspective, this might just be the key to getting information about the prospect, which might be the key to later selling such product, this information gotten makes the prospect a lead.

Now from the expression above you can see that a lead is a contact of a prospective buyer. But it is certainly more complicated than that, although now a conclusion can be drawn that lead generation is gathering and compilation of prospective and promising customer contact through solving a particular problem or delivering a particular value.

Lead Generation explained

The lead generation now according to the view of digital marketing has to do with using digital techniques and platforms to acquire prospective customers’ contact and information to nurture them into a paying customer.

In some cases, lead generation services end when the marketer successfully captures a lead which might be in terms of the prospect filling a sign-up form.

There are various ways to generate leads in digital marketing which will be discussed subsequently

So, Why Lead Generation

Here are some of the advantages and reasons why lead generation is important.:

  • Lead generation helps the company in building a better and healthier relationship with customers.
  • Lead generation serves as an anchor that connects the organization with customers in order for them to set-up a mutual relationship.
  • Lead generation helps in the improvement and optimization of return on investment (ROI). When lead generation is implemented it assists in better realization of a profitable ROI unlike before.
  • Lead generation saves the marketing funds of a company whereby new customer acquisition gets easier with the past effort of generating leads.
  • Lead generation Increases the profit margins of the company if implemented.
  • Lead generation drives the conversion rate of the marketing funnel.
  • Lead generation builds a better and stronger brand identity for the business.
  • Lead generation gives the customers a better understanding of the company thereby avoiding future conflict e.g. in company terms and conditions in lead generation email and landing pages.

Ways to generate leads in Digital Marketing

1. Blogging

Blogging is a method digital marketers use to generate their leads, blogging can be used to generate leads by writing and giving out information about the specific niche the company is into.

For example, if I were to be selling a weight loss pill, I can create a blog about how to lose weight, which will attract people interested in losing weight, and through this, prepare a newsletter capture form or a signup form offering the visitors something in exchange for their email addresses.

For instance, the heading of your signup form might read, be the first to know when we have a new post on our blog or receive a useful tip to help you lose 30kg in just 3 months, so this an example of an heading you can use as a strategy to capture leads through a blog.

Though capturing leads might be more complicated than this but once you can write well and drive people’s emotions with few words of a blog post, such people will always want more of what you can offer them. This is why they will leave their emails for you to get more of what you can offer, and you as a marketer has successfully captured a lead interested in weight loss.

2. Social Media

SOCIAL MEDIA-FANTASTICONNECT.COM

Another way to acquire leads is through social media, social media today has over 3 billion users all together which is indeed a cool number that a digital marketer can generate lots of leads from.

Through Social media, one can acquire leads in a different area of life/niche, and it takes effort and work to achieve that.

This is not to scare you but social media lead generation can be quite complicated because it takes different approaches in other to get a user’s attention, that is why it is called a passive form of advertisement since the users are not there to buy your products or services, meaning, their attention has to be grabbed.

And with social media consisting of different advertiser offering the same product in the same niches, it can be quite a challenge, so one has to do something unique in other to attract them.

So generating leads on social media can either be paid or organic, paid in terms of running a social media ads to a target audience who might be of interest in your product or service and using the desire or issues they have to get their contact information, and voila! Like magic, they have become your leads.

This is similar to using a contact form as discussed under blogging but here you are not writing any kind of blog whatsoever.

Another way to generate lead is through the organic way meaning you won’t pay but, put in some work, for example, a digital marketer may go-ahead to create a social media page to be posting issues that relate to what he is doing or trying to sell, through this way he may be able to attract people interested in his offer to interact with his page or post.

Both paid and organic mode of generating leads in social media can be through the customer liking or subscribing to the marketer page or him filling a lead capture/sign up form, messaging on a Facebook page or outside of it. The point is, once a bridge of communication can be made they have become leads.

3. Customer Relation Management (CRM forms)

One good way to also generate leads is through CRM, customer relationship management is a system used to know your customers better in other to improve the way you serve them.

For example, most of us will have been to a website that will question them if they have any complaint concerning their services or asking question about what they can improve on, a customer inquiry form, filling a quotation form, all this are also a way to generate leads for company who can utilize the strategy well, it has high potentials because the type of leads that would be coming will tend to be a warm lead or will become a buying customer in no time.

A website that has good traffic can adopt this system and use it well to their advantage.

4. Landing Page

A landing page is a stand-alone web page that is used to acquire quality leads. A landing page is a single page system that is created for a single purpose, and that is to generate leads.

This type of page is carefully crafted in order to purposely capture the visitor details such as email, names, and contact numbers.

The forms on landing pages are referred to as lead capture forms, and the offers on such pages are referred to as lead magnet.

Other ways to generate leads through digital marketing include

  • Search engine optimization (S.E.O):- this has to do with optimizing your webpage in order to be ranked higher on search engines such as Google or Bing in order to acquire more leads for free.
  • Paid search:- Instead of working hard to rank higher on search engine results you can as well buy your way to the top of the list by doing a paid search campaign that can as well generate quality leads that are directly searching for product or service you offer.
  • Free webinars: Hosting free webinars is also a good way of getting and generating leads. A webinar is a video tool used to record a live event for training. On most occasions, the invitation to most webinars requires registering with your emails.
  • E-mail marketing: e-mail marketing is a good way to generate lead due to its flexibility, with e-mail marketing one can effectively deepen the relationship with lead and optimize the lead into another level.
  • Display ads: Display ads are the kinds of ads you see everywhere on the internet today in form of advert banners and pictures display on websites. Display ads can as well be used to generate leads in digital marketing.

Lead can be generated through other ways and it is not only limited to all I discussed above. You can do more research on it personally but if you can master some or even one of the above ways, you will be satisfied with the results you will be getting.

There are different levels or types of leads in Digital Marketing

1. Cold lead.  A cold lead is a prospect that is targeted by the marketer due to one factor or more that suggests such a person will be interested in your product or service.

 

2. Warm lead: a warm lead is a lead that shows interest in a particular product or service, this gesture interest is normally determined by the customer providing his email/contact information. This can also be shown by him following, liking, sharing, commenting, subscribing to your page on social media, or directly making contact with you, this very action makes him a warm lead which shows that, he is already aware of your product and want to learn more about it or better still wants to buy it

 

3. Hot leads: a lead becomes hot when he/she purchase your goods or services. And even stands out as a promoter of your brand through his reviews, testimony, and recommendation of your products. A hot lead now can be classified as a customer.

 

4. Blazing leads: a blazing lead is a lead that has gone from buying your product once to buying your product on and on again. It might also be a lead that upgrades from one buying position to a higher one or buying your upsell product. E.g. a lead subscribing from basic to premium on your pricing plan

Final Words

Lead generation is a must for every business because leads are the ones that are going to help you grow your brand. It should be a tradition for you if you want to be making recurrent and assured sales. Let me be frank, leads generation saves you a lot of ads budget from doing campaign time to time in other to get sales.

To start generating leads for your business, you should consider GET RESPONSE. This is a tool for a good experience and a relatively affordable cost.

I personally use GET-RESPONSE to generate leads for clients that have no domain and hosting, and if they do, I use WordPress plug-in Elementor page builder to generate leads

You can download my free e-book on how to use GET-RESPONSE to generate leads here.

In conclusion, take good advantage of lead generation today, to experience endless streams of sales and customers.

My question for you is knowing which method you are going to adopt first, in your business to start generating leads?

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DO YOU WANT TO START GENERATING QUALIFIED LEADS FOR BUSINESS TODAY ?