In any business, there is one important element that you need to exist. That is getting customers, or leads, for your product and services. This is why you need lead generation activities because a company can’t function without new customers coming in.
You want to generate more sales, but you don’t want to dumpster dive from one marketing campaign to the next. One of the easiest ways to increase not only your sales, but also your profits is through a lead generation activity. A lead generation activity can be anything you do that increases the amount of qualified leads you receive weekly, monthly and yearly. Here are some ideas that you can use which are both free, low cost or very little time.
New Lead Generation campaigns have gradually won their way into Marketing Plans and budgets of numerous firms in their desire to innovate. This has led to greater resources being allocated to these activities which in turn are providing us with ever better results both in the medium and long term. We are now losing our fear of backing new initiatives as the ROI becomes more and more encouraging. And if we were still in any doubt, the fact that the competition is using this system has only proved to be a greater incentive.
Emailing a technological Database helps us filter contact interest quickly leading us to the point of generating BANT leads, while telemarketing finishes the job and qualifies these registers and Leads, looking for business opportunities and needs. We can also go a step further and cold call given partners and manufacturers within the framework of a specific telemarketing campaign.
However for those prospects that we know need face to face contact, Traditional Marketing offers a variety of tools such as Networking Events, which can showcase services and solutions for sales in more congenial surroundings and atmosphere complemented by well-planned/thought out fun activities. The key to the success of such opportunity generation activities based on either live or virtual events is ultimately down to how creative and original we can be in the planning stages. Because although an event is not in itself a campaign, in the future the results such events achieve may well form an intrinsic part of future campaigns.
Innovation within Lead Generation campaigns
New Lead Generation campaigns innovate by analyzing the current state of the market, the companies comprising it and the prospects, while defining new routes able to reach contacts and generate leads.
A methodology that is proving increasingly popular over recent years is that of Inbound marketing, where the idea is to create an attraction for users to check out our services or products on their own initiative. Not bad eh? The idea is to establish a mid – long-term global campaign to generate Leads via different Online Marketing channels.
A successful Inbound campaign requires a variety of Online Marketing tools: an emailing platform, a CMS, blog, Community Manager Etc. Just as well we have such a handy Automated Marketing tool as HubSpot to lend us a hand.
Inbound Marketing is content based and generation of new and exclusive value content has proved to be a bit hit with manufacturers when it comes to attracting new business. Content Marketing is based on a strategy and planning of creating materials: eBooks, Datasheets, Infographics, Videos… all of which help set us apart from the competition as we offer our expertise via a form or direct download. Like last year, in 2016 everything points to video remaining at the top of the content leader board.
Automated Marketing helps simplify our tasks. The state up and planning stages are the most complex, as we have to program the steps our workflow will follow, focusing on the most suitable and personalized lead nurturing for our Buyer Persona to enable us to successfully automate the processes required. The key is to create an automated workflow capable of making leads progress through the Sales Funnel.
Social Sales is another lead generation activity or campaign option open to us. It goes hand in hand with foresight in social networks and monitoring of social media. Selling via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. is a real challenge for long-term sales staff that have understood the need to grow their knowledge or hire tech savvy community managers, who are becoming pivotal figures within their companies.
An increasingly popular way of bringing IT sales and marketing teams up to date with the latest developments, is that of training and workshop activities held in kick off events. This offers an ideal opportunity to get all the Company staff together and train them in selling over the Internet. While it may be true that workshops themselves do not generate leads, in the mid – long term it will enable firms to win new clients or sell to those we already know through the social networks thanks to the work of the sales and marketing teams, who gained them through what they learnt in such training events.
As explained earlier, we must be aware of the Lead Generation campaigns already underway out there in today’s market and which fit out Product and Service and more than that, which are right for our Buyer Persona.
Most important – we have to get rid of our fear of innovating, get out of our comfort zone and go for new activities, which will enable us to keep a step ahead of the competition. For all your needs, contact us at PGR. We are an integral marketing agency with over ten years’ experience running new online lead generation campaigns and activities.
10 Lead Generation Activities and Best Practices to Implement in 2022
Be it a small start-up or a big million-dollar business, one common challenge for every marketer is “how to increase lead generation?” Businesses accept as an important aspect of the sales funnel and consider it as the lifeblood of the business.
Hubspot says, 74% of companies say converting leads into customers is their top priority.
B2B lead generation ideas play a crucial role in building a pipeline of high intending prospects for businesses. By following the lead generation best practices you can increase conversion rates and gain huge profits in the process.
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What is 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 interests 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.
Stages of the lead generation process
The lead generation ideas and processes for businesses differ depending upon the complexity or cost of the purchase being considered. For e-commerce businesses it could be online purchases, for some, it could be filling up forms or increasing email subscribers.
However, B2B lead generation ideas include a couple of stages that if done right can deliver a huge ROI at the fastest possible time. Marketers identify it as lead generation funnel that has four stages:
- Awareness – The first stage is to make your prospects aware of the key positioning of your business by analyzing their journey and knowing their interests.
- Education – Once you create awareness you must build trust for your products and services. With the help of consistent newsletters, events or seminars/webinars you can educate your leads in the best way. It helps you to showcase your expertise, resources, and experience.
- Evaluation – Usually, in this stage prospects evaluate your brand as a whole. You can further convince your leads with the help of demos, free trial offers, etc. and build trust for your brand. Here you need to deliver much more so that it reaches the final stage.
- Purchase – If the lead generation stages above are followed in the right way to the end result is successful conversion. You need to show your leads, how can they get the desired results with your solution.
The above framework can be used to create a perfect end to end lead generation process.
Note: The four stages of the lead generation process discussed above are to get involved in moving someone from awareness to conversion and at each of these stages, address a prospect’s evolving relationship with your business
#1. Provide real time sales assistance with live chat
The focal point of every business is to deliver real time sales and support assistance to customers to increase their sales and profit percentage. Live chat is one of the best lead generation channels and is most preferred among customers.
According to Vtldeaign, 91% of users, were invited to have a live chat with sales reps and it helped them in their product purchasing decisions and resolve their product queries instantly.
Using live chat tool can be an excellent lead generation idea as it empowers you to respond instantly to all the sales queries.
Creating lead generation ideas with live chat
- Deliver real time sales assistance – With live chat, you can instantly connect with your customers to answer their sales queries to enable them to make quick decisions.
- Shorten the sales cycle – You can proactively engage with your visitors when they have any doubt being at the product or pricing page. You can reduce the sales cycle and deliver a great live chat for sales experience.
- Reduce bounce rate – When you assist your customers at the moment when they actually need, you keep them engaged and bounce rate falls.
#2. Automate your lead generation with chatbots
Chatbots have revamped the way brands interact and engage their customers. Bots are greatly used as B2B lead generation ideas to automate the sales tasks. You can configure chatbots to prequalify leads when your sales agents are not available.
You can build an effective sales bot and train with relevant sales questions to qualify visitors. With bots, you can reach out to a large number of customers that do not hamper the effectiveness of your sales team.
Generating sales leads ideas with chatbots
- Identify your audience – Bots can help you to segment your target audience based on interests, needs, expectations.
- Prequalify leads – Bots ask questions to your visitors and provide options to prequalify them. Based on the response they can be directed to the sales team.
- Hybrid assistance – Businesses can provide hybrid support experience by using a bot for simple queries and live support for complex conversations.
- Lead nurturing – You have to nurture your qualified leads based on their entire journey for making a final sale. you need to nurture them based on their journey. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than those who buy immediately.
Health Tap, the leading technology company delivering a suite of connected health apps, created ways to generate leads with a bot to answer health related questions and created an excellent lead generation example.
The bot helps in the following ways:
- It assures accurate virtual care by immediate access to the right doctors.
- It also helps doctors or clinics looking to pre-screen their appointment.
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#3. Use social media as lead generation ideas
Social media channels can serve as one of the best lead generation channels. It helps to build the face value of your brand. Businesses grew by 24% by using social media for lead generation.
With the help of social media platforms, you can build an active audience and share relevant content with them. This will help to expand your audience and build stronger relationships with them. Social media lead generation helps to create ways to generate leads and invite them into your sales funnel.
Key social media lead generation tips
- Social media advertising – You can come across lead generation ads by the popular social channels i.e.Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can collect direct leads with targeted marketing to social media users right on the platform.
- Run contests on social channels – There are two main reasons businesses can run contests. The first one is they acquire many leads and the other one is that participants can share it with their contacts.
- Gate your valuable content – If you have valuable insights about your product or services, you can gate them and share across social channels. Thus, you will gather relevant social media leads.
#4. Omni channel support for lead generation
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. to connect with customers over their preferred communication channel.
Businesses that provide a consistent service quality across multiple touchpoints retain 89% of their customers.
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 increase opportunities to interact with customers.
Best practices to leverage omnichannel strategy
- Identify your lead generation objectives and measure the activities.
- Determine how will you generate leads by inbound marketing, buying a list, or digging new prospects.
- Develop content that is valuable and relevant to your audience.
- Track your leads and offer support across respective channels.
Bank of America, a globally acclaimed brand delivers consistent omnichannel service to its customers by creating a great lead generation example.
The bank allows for everything starting from depositing checks to scheduling an appointment to be handled by the company’s mobile and desktop apps.
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#5. Provide real-time assistance with live engagement tools
There are instances when messaging has not much impact which is why visual interaction comes to picture. When customers are on your website, they might face some issues such as difficulty in understanding the product demo video, product subscription queries or information about completing a form or application.
In such scenarios, you can wisely use the live customer engagementlike co-browsing, video and voice chat to deliver real time assistance to your customers. Aberdeen Group shows that co-browsing is helping companies accomplish far greater annual improvements to customer satisfaction, achieved by reducing customer effort in real time.
Tips to use live engagement tools for B2B generating lead generation ideas
- Guide through the form fill up process – With co-browsing solution, you can collaborate with your customer browser and jointly navigate the fields of the form or application to fill up accurately to complete the sales process.
- Provide sales demo – Live video chat or co-browsing can be used to offer a sales demo to deliver a thorough understanding of the products or services. It helps customers to make a quick sales decision.
- Personalized conversations – Live engagement tools allow the face to face interaction that develops personal communication with the customers. You build trust with your customers and vice – versa.
#6. Create valuable content to generate leads
Marketo research found out 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 trial, 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, 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, use visuals, and incorporate keywords
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#7. Make your Call To Action (CTA) stand out
Have you ever come across a “Sign up for a Free Trial” or “Add to Your Shopping Cart” button?
I am quite sure that you have seen it. These are a call to actions or CTAs that act as prompts for your visitors to do specific tasks.
The orange button in the below image below represents a clickable CTA.
If you notice, WordStream uses contrasting colors with their CTA to make it stand out against the entire blue site. They also reiterate the fact that their product is free to use twice further enticing you to try it out.
CTAs should be prudently used across the website to boost customer engagement. You can direct your visitors to comment on your articles, ask them to subscribe to your email list. You can also ask them to connect with you via social media.
Best practices for an effective CTA to increase lead generation
- Color matter a lot so stand out with contrasting colors
- Make sure about the shape and size of the button. It should be able to draw the attention of the visitor instantly.
- In order to grab the attention of the user tailor CTA copy with unique words.
- Include the element of value proposition in call-to-action button
For e.g., incorporating value proposition elements like ‘Free Guide’, ‘Save up to 25%’ in a call to action button clearly explains to the visitor what they are going to get in return for their action.
The key to making your CTAs stand out is using the right language according to situations and consider their placement carefully. The business profits and revenue greatly depend on the judiciously using CTAs.
#8. Introduce an educational webinar
Webinars are a great tool for B2B lead generation. It is a very good medium for sharing and retaining knowledge. With the use of webinars, you not only reach your target audience better but also deliver a database filled with leads.
Research has shown that there is a 75% better chance of people watching a video than reading a text. 79% of buyers say they will share information in exchange for webinars.
Some other benefits of webinars are that they are much cheaper to organize in relation to physical events. Using webinars saves on travel and accommodation costs.
Key effective webinar formats as lead generation ideas
- Webinars – Educational webinar provides action steps to solve the problem of the prospect. Assets.cdn getgo research shows webinar titles containing a list or the words “how-to” drive higher attendance rates, showing the power of practical information to garner new leads.
- Case studies – Case studies are an effective webinar format because sales-ready leads look for concrete details on product ROI and benefits. Case studies provide social proof that your product can deliver. 42% of B2B buyers find case studies to be valuable in the buying process.
- Product demos – Prospects expect more in-depth information about your product. Product demos can engage those leads by showing clear solutions to their queries.
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#9. Use email lists to reach your target audience
Email marketing remains one of the best ways for small businesses to reach and engage their audiences. It is still the most effective way to market your products, services, and getting the word out about your business.
According to Marketing Sherpa, 72% of U.S. adults prefer to communicate with brands through email as opposed to other marketing channels.
One of the reasons why email marketing remains so effective is that consumers are comfortable with this marketing channel. In fact, many actually enjoy getting email communications from their favorite brands. You can easily communicate with your target audience through a reliable channel.
Lead generation ideas via emails
- Qualify whom to reach to create email lists – You have to identify your target audience whom you can reach out with your emails to educate and engage them about your product or services.
- Segment email lists by buyer personas – You can use different types of email subscriptions or attributes like industry, use cases to specific segments of your marketing personas.
- Personalize your email communication – Usually, the recipients are likely to click through emails that cater to their specific interests. If you personalize the emails, you will increase the chance that visitors will subscribe to one of them.
- Follow-up emails – Once you send the email it is crucial to follow-up, at least 2-3 times weekly.
#10. Create exciting popups to engage with your visitors
It is vital to use the latest technology to engage your visitors. Popup technology can help you learn what engages your visitors. It is one of the best practices for capturing the attention of your prospects.
Using the latest popup technology allows you to fine-tune your popups so they don’t bother your visitors. You get a chance to learn about your audience or promote an ebook, and you never have to worry about annoying your visitors.
Best practices for using pop-ups as lead generation ideas
- Push your visitors towards your goal – You can employ pop up as a tool for navigation, sharing exciting news or updates your visitors would need to know about.
- Clear CTA or value proposition – How fast your visitor understands your offer or value proposition depends upon the speed and design of your pop up. The quicker your visitor understands the message of the popup the better. Confusing language or multiple offers on a single popup is confusing and will likely lead to a quick exit.
- Pop up timing is crucial – Timing is very important in sales and holiday marketing ideas. Approaching the customer too soon or too late impacts the decision. 40 seconds for a timed popup is effective by marketing pros. It’s an appropriate amount of time for your visitor to take a look around and get a good sense of what your website is offering.
CONCLUSION
Lead generation activities involve a number of techniques that can be used to attract new customers for a business or organization such as email leads, online leads, telemarketing leads and even print ad leads. These activities typically focus on one of the most important things that is expertise in offering products and services based on specific needs of your target market.Search engine traffic to your website is not the only way to generate leads. In fact, it’s often not the cheapest. This post will cover the many other lead generation activities you can utilize in order to generate leads without relying heavily on search engines. This guide will touch on some of the following topics