You’ve invested a considerable amount of your marketing budget as well as your time to make a website that blew management of their feet. However, is that what you were really aiming for?
If that’s your case, then your website isn’t probably what us digital marketers would call a ‘Lead Generation Machine’
Fortunately for you, converting your site to a clean, mean, Lead Generation Machine isn’t that difficult! Discover these four easy-to-follow lead generation fundamentals and you’ll be set in stone to jumpstart your company’s sales!
Firstly, you must acknowledge that 63% of marketers claim that generating traffic and leads have become their main challenges in the past four years. (Hubspot)
Quite simply because companies that generate 60% of their leads online will grow 2 times faster than those that do not have a lead generation strategy. (HingeMarketing)
The action of generating Leads represents the desire to attract and convert anonymous visitors into qualified prospects. It is a complex and strategic process that any good marketer must put in place. (See the AIDA model below for a clearer picture on generating leads in general)
So, what are the fundamentals of effective lead generation?
There is no point in knowing the reasons to having successful lead generation campaigns if you can’t first generate quality traffic to your site.
By creating relevant content that relates to your target audience, you will bring relevant visitors to your site. An effective lead generation strategy is first and foremost when it comes creating content that sells!
And for that, there’s nothing like having a well-written blog that provides sequential, educational and interesting content to generate visits to your website.
After that, share your blog posts on the social networks you use and encourage your followers to share them as well.
Only then can you engage your potential prospects and make yourself more accessible to the public.
Also, think about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), optimize your search engine positioning to appear on the first page. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes, what will they keywords will they look for on Google to get to your content? That’s the best way to use the right keywords in your blog.
Because your each potential customer seeks answers to their problems independently from one another, you must consider the different stages they go through in order to position your content to satisfy each person’s stage.
Enter Buyer’s journey! In a buying journey, your potential customer will go through several stages. Awareness, the consideration phase and the decision phase – each of which has their own set of questions that your blog will need to answer. Your blog-writing strategy must make your content fill in the gaps to as much users as possible in order to generate the highest amount of traffic.
70% of B2B marketers use a content creation strategy to generate leads. (Content Marketing Institute)
A click, a fraction of a second, will make sure you engage your target efficiently.
Called CTA (Call-To-Action), is a simple but effective button or image with a clear goal: to make its target click and fill in their contact details.
Unlike a classic link, the CTA aims to catch the reader’s eye and arouse curiosity.
It is the first strategic element in generating a lead because it gives your reader the choice to know more about what he/she is reading and what they will be getting. By the simple act of clicking, he goes from an anonymous visitor on your website to an interested reader seeking to know more about your product/services… in other words a potential customer.
A landing page is a place hidden in your website, where the conversion of a lead takes place. The landing page is created to offer information in exchange for contact detail. It only shows when the users click on a CTA button.
This is an extremely essential step which must be implemented in order to have successful conversions.
To have an optimized landing page and give your users a seamless page experience you must centralize your landing page by having a single subject, a single action and a single result.
This is done to not confuse your future lead, or even, stray his attention to something else.
Keep it simple, straight to the point and easy to navigate.
(Check the landing we made for our website below)
The more you optimize your landing page by making it clear and relevant to your content, the more likely you’ll be generating sales-qualified leads.
Just like the CTA button, a landing page must also have a unique set of characteristics that will aid in improving your conversions.
After converting visitors into leads, comes the step of converting leads to customers. A step that requires true collaborative work between the marketing and sales departments.
The premise is clear: your visitor has just signed up to have a call with someone from your team on a particular product or service that you showed them, but that doesn’t instantly make them a customer.
The key is to know how a visitor, who has shown clear interest in your content, can become a real customer.
Don’t categorize all your leads in one basket and think they’re all in the same stage of thinking!
The leads who correspond to your buyer personas and who are ready to make their buying decision, are qualified as a “Sales-qualified” and mature leads. It is only at this stage when your sales team will swoop in to take action.
By and large, these four steps on Lead Generation are some of the best and most effective ways in which you can help improve your business. Lead Generation is a key component to most businesses and must not be ignored. Just be patient, test things out and always put yourself in the mind of the reader.
Ali is our digital marketing wizard, having a bachelor’s in marketing and a minor in psychology gives him a spectactular appraoch to digital marketing.In the office, he’s always snacking on something and listening to music while writing. His favorite quote is “Manifest destiny”
