David Gutierrez
August 15, 2017

Advanced Tips for Effective Lead Generation

Effective Lead Generation

The driving forces for any business – converting leads to customers, growing traffic to the website and increasing revenue derived from existing customers – have remained constant for many years. However, there has been a lot of interesting shifts over the years in the way companies pursue these goals.

Is it really important to pay for effective lead generation today? Or is the time we take building relationships with customers a much better investment? Regardless of the channel you are using, according to HubSpot’s ‘State of Inbound 2017’ report, 54% more leads are generated by inbound marketing tactics than by paid ads. That’s why it is time to refocus your lead generation campaign towards more advanced practices. Let’s go through several tips you should prioritize to create more success in lead generation.

Tips for Effective Lead Generation

Capture Lead Data

Imagine that only 1% of the total marketplace is a hot lead, and only 10% of these hot leads might be interested in you. Let’s say 100,000 people in your area are aware of their needs in your product or service, and only 1000 people make it to a hot lead. It means that you have a marketplace of 1000 well-qualified, educated hot buyers that you can develop content for.

The best way to grab the attention of these potential hot leads is to provide them with free educational content that has a very high-perceived value and is hyper specific to their needs.

Remember that your offer should be:

  • Compelling and content based
  • Something that will help them to understand their problems and requirements
  • Solve those problems and requirements
  • Help them come to a greater understanding of who you are and why your company is the best choice.

To convert website visitors into leads, inbound methodology uses Call-To-Action buttons that lead to a landing page with a special offer. It must only be accessible through a sign-up form where your client can get a webinar, a video series, e-book, infographic, etc. Once you’ve traded this content, you have created a win-win with a visitor that results in a fresh lead. They have permitted you to contact them with content they want.

Launch Lead Nurturing Campaigns

If users discover your product for the first time, they probably don’t want to read a cumbersome ten-page document comparing you with competitors. Instead, they might be interested in high-quality introductory video, or an informative infographic illustrating the problems your product or service tackles. You have to identify the information your customers are interested in depending on a stage of the buyer’s journey. And you must develop content that matches.

Once you’ve collected contact details, now it’s time to send them a follow-up email that both promotes your company and provides additional value to them as readers. So once they sign up for your campaign, they immediately receive an email with the offer attached to it.

Lead Nurturing Tips

If you’re ready to launch a lead nurturing campaign, here are a few tips to ensure success:

  1. Involve your sales team in content development. Your sales team works with customers every day. That’s why you should ask them about customer’s problems, fears, and challenges. This information is priceless regarding creating content for your blog or social media accounts.
  2. Invest in quality content. Planning and executing campaigns may take months of diligent work. As a result, you cannot be responsible for creating content. That’s why it is more efficient to find someone who understands your industry and has excellent writing skills.
  3. Use numbers to measure lead behavior and adjust your campaign. For example, if you notice a small email open rate, it is a sign to change the topic of the newsletter as it is not catchy and intriguing enough. Also, pay attention to the unsubscription rate. If it is high, it is time to send fewer emails and try to approach your customer from a different angle. Be more informative and less pushy.

Score Your Leads

Lead scoring is a methodology shared by sales and marketing that ranks leads to determine their sales-readiness. Leads are systematically prioritized in your database depending on the different interactions a potential customer shows on your website.

For example, if a user has visited your site’s buy now page recently, it may be a signal that this person is much closer to purchasing than someone who regularly reads your blog. If you develop a pattern of your recent leads that have converted into customers, you will see a significant advantage when you try to identify your most valuable and ready-to-buy leads.

Lead Scoring Rules

In order to create an effective lead-scoring system, you have to follow several rules:

  1. Establish the minimum criteria for turning a lead into a client. For example, your customer must live only in the USA and be above 18 years of age.
  2. Identify the qualities that your target market possesses. If you are not new to your niche, you should know who your customer is, and be able to list their various attributes. The purpose of this step is to find prospects who are similar to your existing customer base.
  3. Next, you need to find out the features of your perfect customer. Whether you are hunting top management or millennials, you have to know which lead will purchase in a shorter timeframe.
  4. Now you should shift from features to the behavior of the lead. Consider listing the following possible behavior that leads might engage in:
    1. Email clicks
    2. Social media shares
    3. Free trials
    4. Product demos
    5. Web page visits, etc.
  5. Distribute your points. Begin by assigning a maximum value to categories of rules. From there you can distribute points to individual rules in each category. If you continue to make changes in your lead scoring system, it will improve eventually. It is better to create a schedule for reviewing its performance and set a 30-day timeframe.

Takeaways

Technology is making traditional marketing techniques less efficient and more expensive. Whether it is cold emails or interruptive ads, these methods are convenient for the marketer but not a great experience for a user. Inbound marketing flips this model on its head.

Instead of interrupting people with ads, they might create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads, they can create a business blog that people will look forward to reading. And instead of cold emails, they create useful content so that prospects can contact them when they want more information. That’s why building a solid infrastructure for a powerful inbound marketing methodology help optimize your lead generation campaigns.

Over To You

Which aspects of Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing or Lead Scoring have you used? How did you test and improve your techniques? Please share in the comments section, below.

 

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David Gutierrez

David Gutierrez started his career as a web designer in 2005. In 2012 he founded a creative design agency. Now it serves clients all over the world across multiple industries with a specific focus on FMCG and Fin-Tech.