The Top Lead Generation Strategies for Your Business
The average lead conversion rate comes close to 3% around the world. This means most businesses’ return on investment comes up short when generating leads.
This conversion rate can improve if you know the right lead generation strategies and how to use them. It’s important to watch for the quality of the leads generated as much as you look to the number of leads you find.
If you find yourself with a small conversion rate, you want to make sure you’re using the top strategies to generate leads online as well as offline. With the right tools, you can double your leads and increase your ROI.
What is Sales Lead Generation?
Lead generation involves the use of online and offline tools to find potential customers. By offering quality content and offers you can gather leads that might convert to customers if you pay attention to follow-up.
Lead generation requires offering information that will grab interest. You do this by creating an offer they can’t refuse, answering questions, and sharing your success. In fact, you’ll want to make use of recommendations from customers as well as case studies to show how your product or service will help your leads.
Top Lead Generation Strategies
An effective lead generation strategy requires planned action. This involves a marketing plan, but also a plan for interaction with leads. This also requires research as you need to know what you want to accomplish to determine what options work best for your business.
Plan Your Budget
To generate leads you need a willingness to pay for them. You also want to make sure you know how much you’re willing to pay to generate these leads. This means setting a budget and sticking to it.
Before you start putting plans into action, make sure you know exactly how much each option will cost. Also, make sure you know how much you’re willing to spare per lead. This will help you make decisions about the strategies you use.
Regular Blog Posts
The easiest and cheapest option requires regular blogging. This helps keep your website updated and shows expertise in your industry. This also helps build up SEO if you take the time to find and use keywords that people are likely to use in a search.
Make sure blog posts stay on topic for your industry and provide value. This includes providing links to other pages on your website and other industry experts. Make sure you include a clear call to action to grab the lead’s attention.
You also want to post regularly so you stay visible. More blog posts per month increase inbound leads as your SEO increases.
Take Advantage of Social Media
Social media gives you the opportunity to connect with leads more personally than a website. Success with social media depends on how you use the sites though.
You need to make sure you share your own and other experts’ content to get noticed and show your expertise. Remember the 80/20 rule of social media though. Success involves 80% interaction and 20% promotion.
You want to build relationships with leads on social media. This means posting regularly and interacting with others’ comments and questions. You can also use ads to reach more leads on the different social sites.
Face-to-Face Networking
While the internet makes connecting easier, there’s still something to say of face-to-face interaction. To find these lead generation opportunities, look for conferences and other networking events.
This gives you the opportunity to understand your leads as individuals. This also makes it easier to present the benefits of your product or service.
If possible, you should also give a presentation at these events. Make sure you leave room for questions though. Remember, sales involve 70% listening and 30% talking.
Email Marketing
All these strategies involve generating potential leads but you need a follow-up strategy to make generating worth your time and money. Email marketing offers the easiest way to provide this follow-up.
This starts with capturing the emails through your website, social media, or networking events. This requires offering something of benefit to grab attention and make them want more. This can include a free item or valuable content.
You want to make sure the leads will want to hear from you before taking the time. Once you validate leads, use emails to follow-up with other offers. You can also use this to answer questions and concerns.
Other Lead Generation Considerations
The best way to move leads through the sales funnel starts with getting a yes. Your first yes involves getting the person willing to hear from you again. To do this you need to make them interested in hearing from you again.
What you offer will affect how easily you get to that first yes. This requires research to understand the concerns, needs, and wants of potential customers. By understanding what’s important to them, you can determine the best content or offers to provide for lead capturing.
An Offer Worth a “Yes!”
You want the content to give real information. If you provide fluff, people will lose interest quickly. If you provide enough information to show you can help them, they’ll stick around to hear more.
With offers, you want to provide discounts or freebies that provide value without giving everything away. A free demo or presentation can prove useful in these circumstances.
Timing Your Interaction
If you ignore leads they’ll forget you. If you seem too pushy, they’ll ignore you. This means you need to time your follow-up carefully.
You want to follow-up as soon as possible after capturing the lead to keep you in their mind. After this, you want to schedule follow-ups based on where they are in the sales process. This timing will depend on the individual leads, but giving a couple of days between follow-ups will keep you from annoying them.
Advertising: From Website to Social
Lead generation strategies require a marketing plan that includes regular tracking of your different advertising attempts. This tracking and tweaking can take up valuable time. If you need help to keep up with your lead generation needs, check out the marketing services offered.
