What Is Lead Generation Marketing

What is lead generation marketing? With lead generation marketing, you’re creating a steady flow of leads that can be converted into customers. Lead generation marketing is when you present your company or product to targeted prospects in order to get their details and begin communication.

You may have heard the term “lead generation” used to describe what a marketing team does. But what is lead generation marketing? The answer to this question depends on who you ask. In general, lead generation is a type of paid advertising that attempts to help an organization acquire new business or grow their existing customer base. Lead generation also leads directly or indirectly to a sale. Companies then use these leads in different ways, such as:

What is Lead Generation?

Where traditional marketing methods such as email blasts used to be enough to draw customers, the increase of competition and information abundance is making it more difficult for companies to track, reach, and engage with potential customers. Lead generation, the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing a sales pipeline, allows companies to nurture targets until they’re ready to buy. Lead generation can be useful for any type or size of business, and for both B2C and B2B spaces. Sixty percent of marketers state that lead generation is a key pain point for their company. Determining a good lead is more complex than just targeting people who downloaded your white paper, and it’s important that your sales reps don’t waste their time cold calling unqualified leads when there are ways to narrow down the pool.

When you implement a lead generation program, you increase brand awareness, build relationships, generate qualified leads, and ultimately close deals. The higher quality leads you direct your sales team to, the more of those leads will result in sales. In doing this, you are helping your company grow, while also growing the credibility for your marketing department by showing tangible results and proving yourself to be a valuable part of the revenue team.

Lead generation has been around for a long time, but methods have changed from simply finding a customer early on in their sales journey and sending the sales team their way. The self-directed buyer is inundated with information, so it’s vital to find new, creative ways to cut through the static and reach potential customers. Instead of finding customers through mass advertising and email blasts, marketers must rely on being found and building relationships with their buyers. In the age of information abundance, marketing is going through a massive shift.

“Customers are now smarter, more connected, more informed, more influenced and influential socially, and less likely to respond to campaign-bait. Marketing has to create content people actually want.”

5% of expert marketers say that lead generation marketing is the most important element in their marketing arsenal.

Yet only 42% of business owners have an active plan in place.

What is Lead Generation in Digital Marketing?

In the digital marketing world, a “lead” refers to a potential customer in your target audience…

…who is interested in purchasing the product or service you offer.

So in simple terms, “lead generation” is the process of attracting these potential customers for your business.

Now, to capture this lead- meaning you make them take the first step in your sales funnel- marketing agencies see value in…

…employing different marketing tactics otherwise known as lead generation marketing.

To capture these leads, we leverage many of these lead generation strategies that will make the user sign up for something online by…

…completing a form, contacting the business directly, or even walking into the store.

Why Lead Generation Marketing Is A Good Idea

If your business is not doing this now, you have been missing out on a big chunk of revenue. Well, it’s simple.

All businesses need customers to grow. And to get those customers, they need to market to potential customers first and gain their attention.

This is where lead generation marketing strategy comes into play.

These leads can then be passed on to the sales team to convert them into buying customers.

This generally involves adding them to an email list for further nurturing.

And with advancing technologies, business intelligence software can even track your product demand and…

…customer trends from the lead generation marketing data.

How to Capture A Lead

Gone are the days when your customers would see your ad in the local newspaper and call you with inquiries about a particular product.

The expansion of technology and advertising platforms has allowed customers.

Your target audience included, to shift from traditional media outlets like newspapers and television to social media and digital websites.

This has given rise to various advertising and marketing platforms online.

From selling on social media giants like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter to local online stores with delivery options on Shopify.

It sure is a marketer’s dream with so many options to choose from – for lead generation marketing of all sorts.

5 Steps For Marketing Lead Generation

1. Capture leads through website forms – We can place a simple opt-in form on your website pages and ask interested website visitors to…

…complete it in exchange for valuable content like an eBook, checklist, infographic, white paper, case study, how-to video, or a simple newsletter.

The big idea here is to blend the lead capture form with the design of your website.

Pro tip: Always look to provide something of value to your qualified leads.

Be it tips or visual content in exchange for their contact information (i.e. name, email, and phone number), time, and attention.

2. Generate leads through Google Ads –

How google ads can be used for lead generation marketing.

We can run targeted ads around important keywords on Google that capture a sales-qualified lead’s attention while…

…searching for your business keywords online.

The user is then directed to your website or a landing page where we employ additional tactics to capture the lead.

And best of it, you only pay when the user clicks on the ad!

We have helped tons of business owners kick off their lead generation marketing campaigns on Google.

And every time we help them boost sales through Google, we ring the victory bell!

3. Using direct emails to capture new potential leads – Recently we helped a home maintenance company to…

…send direct emails to homeowners in the neighborhood.

The communication piece not only announced the new local service but also gave them a 15% promo code to use.

This was a play directly from our lead gen marketing playbook and helped the business close more than two dozen local quality leads.

Talk about return on investment!

4. Use email lists to capture new leads –

In our previous blog posts, we have time and time again stressed the importance of having an email marketing campaign in your overall marketing plan.

Email marketing automation can be a great way to capture new leads and customers.

During the launch of one of our client’s hiking equipment products.

We helped them design and execute an email marketing campaign targeting existing customers and email lists from a local hiking club.

The email campaigns talked about our innovative equipment, launch details, and order information.

The email response, conversion rate, and sign-ups not only gave our client potential leads who may be interested in their products but…

…also helped us dissect business data like market trends and customer preferences.

5. Don’t miss out on those social media leads –

Lead generation marketing doesn’t always have to be hard.

Even simple yet effective tactics can lead to the capture of exciting, high-quality lead prospects for your business. One such platform is social media.

People spend between five and six hours a day on social media, in some way or another.

Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are used not only to keep in touch with family and friends but also…

…to share opinions about brands, whether negative or positive.

This has given tons of opportunities to business owners to listen to their current customers online and engage with potential customers.

They can engage in lead generation marketing in groups, similar pages, or even direct messages.

One such popular way to capture potential lead information is through social media contests.

We have worked with business owners- both B2B and B2C marketers, to create social content contests in exchange for some sort of a giveaway.

Users are often required to upload pictures, refer their friends, or just answer a few basic questions to be entered into the contest giveaway.

Creating a fun way to engage users on social platforms is an effective way for business owners to capture marketing qualified leads.

Examples of a good lead generation marketing campaign

We sure do believe in practicing what we preach. Our very own business development efforts are our proof of concept.

In the decade of our existence, we have helped business owners not only generate valuable leads for their businesses (983,287 to be precise)…

…but also made room in time and resources for them to concentrate on for which they started the business in the first place.

As one of our latest clients rightly put in perspective – “LYFE Marketing made it possible for our business to focus on what we do best.

Their knowledge and expertise have freed up valuable time. One of the best agencies I’ve worked with and I highly recommend them.”

We have had the pleasure of working alongside some great clients in some of the toughest industries like…

…restaurants, health and wellness, beauty, and home improvement.

We have come on top by not only generating leads for these businesses but also saving them a lot of money and time, every time.

But does this make you wonder where we get our leads from? The answer will surprise you.

Not a single client that we have today can be attributed to traditional methods of business meetings and outreach.

We are definitely not those pushy types 😉

Instead, we have relied solely on digital marketing tools and won business from potential online leads.

Inbound lead management is something we take seriously and rest assured we don’t recommend anything to our clients that…

…we have not tested and proved ourselves first.

We employ conscious and healthy lead generation inbound marketing tactics that capture information about…

…interested business owners who were having trouble with outbound advertising and marketing their businesses.

How exactly does lead generation strategies work? What are some popular content ideas to do that?

Here is an example of a lead capturing content piece we use on our blog pages.

Below you will also find the nine content marketing tactics we recommend to…

…help business owners capture leads for their business.

Top 9 Content Strategies For Lead Generation:

1. Blog – According to Hubspot’s data researchers, businesses that blog generate 64% more leads than those who do not.

Having an updated blog section on your website not only provides value to your customers but also…

…helps you consistently capture interested leads through opt-in forms with strategic CTAs.

Stay consistent with our blog writing services.

2. Newsletter – Instead of managing a consistent blog that is more frequent.

Many companies engage in creating a bi-weekly or monthly newsletter.

It serves the same purpose of capturing leads through sign-ups in exchange for valuable content.

We also offer an email newsletter service.

3. Video How To’s – If you are a subject matter expert or just passionate about your business industry.

You can pop in front of a camera to record tips and best practices.

This can then be pushed out through your online channels to capture potential leads.

This, in particular, is a great lead generation tactic used by business owners banking on video’s popularity and media consumption.

4. Webinars – If you have some time on hand, recording a live video in the form of a virtual meeting can be a great tactic too.

You can schedule webinars in advance and generate interest from your target audience…

…who will be happy to give you their information if you are solving their business problem.

Because of the live nature of this video, you can engage with a lead to know more about the problems they face.

This will help you better market your product.

5. Pop up forms – Having great content on your website is not enough if you don’t capture those interested leads.

As a best practice, we always tell our clients that if someone is reading the content on your landing page for more than 10 seconds.

Then the user is interested in your type of business.

That is when we hit them with a pop-up on the page before they can continue.An example of a lead generation pop up form

6. Exit Intent Pop ups – This is another type of pop up form but is usually triggered when someone hovers the back button.

It is safe to assume that after a few seconds of checking out your website, these users are quite interested in your brand.

So what should you do? When they hover the back button, offer them your lead magnet by using an exit intent pop up form.

Make sure that the lead magnet is relevant to the web content they are currently in.

This method is proven to be effective as according to a recent survey, using exit intent pop ups garnered 65% more leads for businesses.

7. Free Demos and Trial – If you are in the service business or of selling software.

Sometimes your customers will not sign up or purchase from you till they don’t see a proof of concept.

This is when you promote a free trial or demo to grab their attention and capture that lead.

8. Social Contests – To keep things more exciting, business owners can also create social contests on their social channels that reward people for…

…engaging in the contest (quiz, photo upload, captioning, etc.).

We can then gate the contest submission process by asking for their information.

The “science” behind this is that people are more willing to provide their information if the content is fun, engaging and social.

9. Slideshows and Presentations – The expansion of this mass knowledge bank (i.e. Internet).

Has seen the rise of knowledge sharing and crowd generated content platforms that are free, easy to use and available at the click of a button.

Brands can create slides covering their subject matter expertise to capture targeted leads.

10. Lists – While recently helping a travel company capture their new leads.

We helped them create lists like top ten places to travel this summer and top five tips for saving on your vacation.

We knew that people who downloaded this list-form content were active or future travelers…

…and will be the perfect subjects for future marketing campaigns.

There are many other innovative ways we can capture useful leads.

Contact us to schedule a free consultation with our team today to go over how your business can benefit from some of these tactics.

That brings us to our final frequently asked question about lead generation marketing.

So, how much does a lead generation marketing campaign cost?

The answer depends on how willing you are to engage your audience and invest in a lead capturing infrastructure.

Whether it is a one-time tactic or an ongoing strategy. We have proven client success across all industries.

We recently helped a local gym with a lead generation campaign to generate more sign ups to their new location.

Unaware of the market and without any brand awareness, they contacted our team to help them scale and capture new leads.

Not only did we help them get more than 200 leads in a short span of time but we also achieved that at a cost per lead of under $5.

You can imagine just how much return on investment and value a campaign like this can create for your business.

And with advertising capabilities available today, we can further create lookalike audiences of people similar to the leads that have already been captured.

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Another example was an uncommon product category in a challenging and competitive market of essence sticks and scented candle flames.

Where we helped a client build brand awareness through lead generation marketing campaigns on their social media platforms.

The results spoke for itself with over 150 purchases and leads at the rate as low as $3.50.

With consistent updates in advertising platforms, it has become important to track your campaign’s return on investment and purchases.

More importantly, installing advertising tracking codes on your purchase pages can help with optimization and keeping track of ad conversions.

To be honest, there is no fixed formula to a successful lead generation marketing campaign.

The lead generation process can involve different platforms and approaches.

Bbut a free lead generation audit call with our team can help you figure out how your business can develop the most effective campaign.

And we will be the first ones to tell you if a campaign is not working and fix it for you.

Let our team explore the lead generation marketing opportunities for your business, today!

– Tim Barker, Chief Product Officer, DataSift

Common problems that lead generation can solve

Simple batch and blast advertising doesn’t appeal to the self-directed buyer, and having a solid lead generation program in place can help you navigate the new complexity surrounding lead generation. Below are a few problems lead generation can help solve.

Problem: I need to generate a high volume of leads. If you’re just starting out, a lead generation program can result in increased brand awareness, new relationships, higher quality leads, and more sales. If you’re looking to optimize an existing program, you may want to reevaluate your audience profiles, buyer journey, channels, and tactics. Keep your goals, customer concerns, and challenges in mind, deliver content that solves their pain points, and keep nurturing those relationships—soon you’ll have a funnel filled with qualified leads.

Problem: My sales team says that I’m not delivering high-quality leads. There are several reasons why your sales team is struggling to convert leads into customers. First, sales and marketing should be in agreement about what constitutes a qualified lead, and when that lead should be handed off, keeping in mind that 96% of people visiting your website aren’t ready to buy yet. If sales contacts them too soon, they may feel put off—buyers today do not want to feel sold to. Lead quality is important, but it’s a major challenge for marketers, so it may take some time to start bringing in qualified leads.
Problem: I’m bringing in leads, but don’t have a strategy around what to do next. Generating leads is just one part of lead generation. Once you bring these leads in, you must utilize lead scoring and nurturing to qualify said leads before sales can do their job. According to Forrester, buyers might be anywhere from 75 to 90% of the way through their buying journey before they contact the vendor, after they’ve completed their own research. Keep this in mind when determining what point in the funnel sales should step in.

Problem: I need to be able to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) of my marketing team. To show the impact of your marketing team, you’ll need to plan out a strategy and determine what to measure, when to measure, and how to measure. Choose metrics that show how marketing is increasing effectiveness across the board, generating qualified leads, amplifying sales pipeline velocity, and improving sales and marketing alignment through leveraging lead generation software.
Problem: My lead generation program isn’t working anymore. If your lead generation strategy has yet to catch up to the age of the self-directed buyer, it’s time to reevaluate. Using modern lead generation software can help leads find you by increasing brand visibility and capturing interest with informational content buyers can use during their own research before they’re ready to purchase.

CONCLUSION

Are you worried about where your leads come from? Wondering if you’re getting enough leads to find success with your business or website? Let’s take a look at what lead generation is, what it can do for your online marketing, and the variety of ways that you can engage with potential customers.

Lead generation is vital, but often difficult to achieve. Is your lead generation strategy effective? Are you generating leads in the way that best fits your budget and business goals? Effective lead generation requires testing and strategizing. It can be an art form when done correctly, but for beginners it can be a daunting task. The great thing about lead generation is that anyone can do it. The first step to mastering lead generation strategy is education.