Effective Lead Generation Strategies for Better Acquisition

Lead generation is an essential pillar for the growth of any business. It is important to have your customers interested in your products and services; however, these leads only add value to the company if you can convert them.

The aim is to nurture potential users through the sales funnel, so their interests increase to the point they become buying clients. But what approach can you employ to get the best out of your lead generation campaign?

In this guide, we’ll discuss lead generation is, how you can make it work for you, and lead generation strategies for improved acquisition. Read on for more.

What is a lead?

A lead is any user who shows an interest in your business products and services in some way, form, or shape. Leads usually hear from an organization or business after interacting with you through the submission of personal information for a trial, subscription, or offer, instead of getting a random cold call from people who bought their personal information.

For example, let’s say you took an online training to learn about taking care of your car, and days later, you get an email from the company that developed the survey on how they can help you with more insights into taking care of cars.

This approach is far less intrusive than if you just received a cold call from nowhere without proper knowledge of whether you want to take care of your motor vehicle, right? Now, this is what it’s like to become a lead.

From a business perspective, the information collected by the auto company from your survey answers helps them personalize the opening communication to provide solutions to your existing problems instead of wasting time contacting users who are not even interested in motor vehicle services.

Leads form a part of the wider lifecycle consumers follow when transitioning from visitor to buying customer. However, not all leads are equally created, and neither are they qualified in the same way.

Leads are categorized differently based on how they are captured and qualified. Check out the different types of leads below:

• Marketing qualified leads: these are users who have engaged with the business’ marketing teams’ efforts but are not ready to get a sales call. A typical example of this type of lead is a visitor who fills out a form on the landing page for an offer.
• Product qualified lead: PQL are contact who have used your product and taken an action indicating that they are interested in becoming a paying client. PQLs commonly exist for businesses who offer free or limited product versions of their products or provide product trials with an option of upgrading. An example of this lead is any user who tries the free version and later asks for other features which are only available upon payment.
• Sales qualified lead: SQLs are visitors who have taken actions that explicitly show they are interested in becoming buying clients. An example is anyone who fills out a form inquiring about your product or service.
• Service qualified lead: service qualified leads are customers who have expressed their interest to your service team that they are ready to become purchasing customers. An example of SQL is a contact who informs their customer service attendant that they would like to transition to upgrade their service subscription. During this time, the customer representative would upgrade the said lead to the next appropriate level.

Understanding lead generation strategies for improved acquisition

Lead generation is the process of attracting visitors to your business and increasing their buying interests through nurturing to convert them into customers. Common ways of lead generation are through blog posts, job applications, online content, and live events.

These ways of lead generation are just a few examples of lead generation strategies for improved customer acquisition.

So whenever anybody outside the business and marketing sphere asks what I do, I wouldn’t tell them I curate lead generation content. This way, I’ll confuse them and be completely lost to them.

Therefore, instead, I’d say I work on identifying unique ways to attract visitors to my business by providing them with unique ways and special offers to increase their interest in my business so they can take the route to conversion.

This way, you resonate better with your prospects, and this is exactly what lead generation means. It is a means of warming up prospects to the business and taking them through the path of conversion.

So, why do you need lead generation in your business?

Well, when a stranger organically shows interest in your company by initiating a relationship with you, the transition of such a user to a buying customer happens naturally and easily. Lead generation comes in the second phase of the inbound marketing methodology.

It starts after you have attracted visitors and are willing to convert the lead into customers for your sales team, which also means sales-qualified leads.

Lead generation process

Now that we’ve explained how lead generation marketing fits the inbound marketing campaigns let’s see the steps involved in the process.

• First, a user discovers your brand through various marketing channels, like your business website, social media page, or blogs.
• The user then clicks on your CTA-a button, message, or image that encourages them to take a desired action.
• The CTA then redirects the visitor to your business landing page, which is a page in your website designed to capture their information in exchange for any offer, which is something of value to them provided on the landing page. This can be in the form of a course, eBook, or template.
• Once users are on the landing page, they will fill out a form in exchange for the business offer.

In summary, a visitor clicks a website CTA that directs them to a landing page where they are given a form to fill in exchange for the offer, after which they become a qualified lead.

Lead generation marketing

After putting all the steps together, you can then proceed to use different promotional channels to drive traffic to your landing page and start your lead generation strategies for better customer acquisition.

But what promotional channels should you use to promote your business landing page? Let’s understand the front end of lead generation, also known as lead generation marketing sources below;

1. Content

Content is an excellent method to guide visitors to a landing page. Usually, we create content to provide prospects with free and valuable information. You can therefore include CTAs everywhere within the content-at the bottom, inline, on the side, or in the hero.

The more excited users are with your content, the more likely they are to click your call-to-action and shift to the landing page.

2. Email

Email is one of the best ways to reach visitors who already know about your brand and the products and services it offers. In this case, it is easier to request them to take desired actions because they are already subscribed to your business newsletter.

Emails are often a little bit cluttered, so you should use an eye-catching design and a compelling copy to get your subscribers’ attention. For email marketing, you can leverage tools like Hubspot Or ActiveCampaign.

3. Blog

The best thing about using blogs to advertise a product or service is that it is easier to tailor the entire approach to the end goal.

Furthermore, incorporating video translation into your tutorial videos can broaden your content’s appeal to a global audience by providing translated versions, allowing viewers from different language backgrounds to benefit from your instructional content.

4. Product trial

You can overcome several barriers to conversion and sales by offering demos and trials of your products or services. Once your contacts start using trying your offering, you can quickly compel them to upgrade to better resources and giveaways that lead to conversion.

Another better approach is to add the business branding to the free trials and demos so you can attract other potential clients too.

5. Social media

Social media platforms help you build followers and simplify the process of nurturing them to take action that may lead to conversion, From Facebook links to the swipe-up on Instagram stories to Twitter bitly URLs.

Image alt text: lead generation strategies for improved acquisition. Social media platforms for lead generation.

Author credit: By Mark Kens from Oklahoma, USA – Social Media Cloud by Techndu, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=111094921

These platforms have social post features where you can promote your brand and include a call to action in your captions.

6. Referral marketing.

Also called word of mouth, referral marketing is very useful for lead generation in a unique way. This is true because it gets your business to a large audience, which subsequently increases the likelihood of generating more leads.

No matter the channel you use to attract visitors and generate leads, the end goal is to get users to the landing page and guide them through the process of conversion. As long the landing page is perfectly optimized to convert, everything else will fall in place.

Components of lead generation strategies for improved acquisition

An effective lead generation strategy got four major components that can help create customers’ interest in your product and services, including;

1. Lead capture

Lead capture allows businesses to gather information on their prospects. If you give people a chance to get in and sign up for your newsletter, the form they’ll fill out is the lead capture. This component provides you with vital information about your prospection, such as contact information, name, address, etc.

2. Lead magnet

As you may have already known, a magnet attracts magnetic materials. this concept applies similarly to lead magnets.

This concept refers to incentives and offers you can give to encourage your visitors to provide the information you may need to make them potential clients. Lead magnets should be strategically placed in your landing with a strong call to action. You can use quizzes as well as a lead magnet. For that purpose, you can incorporate WordPress quiz plugins to make that process easier.

3. Lead qualification

You should follow the lead qualification process internally. And when doing this, try to see if a particular lead will eventually convert into paying clients to save resources and time on those who won’t convert.

Ensure the assessment is based on the information provided from the above concepts and through any other interaction platform you might have used.

4. Lead segmentation.

This concept helps you classify every lead according to their specific persona. After this, you can go ahead to provide prospects with a better personalization angle since you can target your interactions and the materials you send them.

Determining lead segments effectively requires that you take into account every piece of information you have collected from them, including web pages they spend much time on and the type of content they like, among other things.

Best lead Generation strategies for improved acquisition

Now that we have covered the basic fundamentals of lead generation marketing let’s uncover some of the best lead generation strategies you can use.

1. Search Engine Optimization. 

SEO is one of the largest sources of inbound leads, making it the poster child of the best lead generation strategies list.

To get the best results with search engine optimization, identify the keywords your target audience is likely to search for when they are at the top of the sales funnel.

After identifying the target keywords, optimize your marketing content and web pages with them. Just ensure they appear and fit organically.

2. PPC Advertising.

PPC advertising is refers to ads businesses purchase to appear on Google SERPS. This strategy works similarly to SEO except that they appear first to people before other digital marketing methods.

This approach is particularly helpful for keywords you struggle to rank for, like the terms with high-volume competition.

3. Gated Content.

Gated content is a lead generation material that can only be accessed through lead capture methods. It can be in the form of forms, but you can also create guides, eBooks, and whitepapers for those who might need more information or in-depth analysis of your products.

Other forms of gated content include;

• Tools
• Worksheets
• Reports
• Case study.
• Info-graphics
• Webinars, etc.

4. Chatbots.

Chatbots and live chat solutions have increasingly become popular in recent years as a way of providing customer services. According to the 2019 study on customer retail spending, chatbots reached up to $2.8 billion and are expected to rise to $128B by 2024.

When visitors have questions, they not only appreciate but expect their concerns to be addressed immediately instead of sitting on hold for long or waiting for somebody to get back.

Since chatbots are direct ways to engage your visitors, you get the opportunity of encouraging them to move to the next stage of the sales funnel. The customer will be willing to know more about the business and convert if the virtual chat system does great work.

5. Email marketing.

After getting people to sign up for the email list, you already have their personal information and are already your lead.

However, email marketing works differently because it allows you to appear regularly in their mailboxes and remind them of your business. Also, you get the chance to analyze which leads are more likely to convert into paying customers.

Image alt text: lead generation strategies for improved acquisition. Digital marketing flow-cycle.

Author credit: By Dr. Ahmed Gomaa – iMediaMatrix.com – Online Marketing Firm – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1271398 

Ecommerce marketers can use email automation systems in their email marketing strategies to set up various triggers that ensure emails are sent when they are likely to be read.

6. Promotions and Coupons

Coupons and promotions are strong incentives that can be used to encourage them to hand over their personal contacts and other valuable information that can make them become a lead. For instance, you can offer exclusive coupons and promotions to your email list subscribers or social media pages.

From these incentives, you can track which ones are most downloaded and customize ways to encourage them to convert or take a better way to conversion. You can do this by going deeper into the coupon and offering free trials for the asked product or service.

Conclusion

Attracting qualified leads and building strong brand awareness are crucial for the long-term survival of your business. But most people do not know where to begin creating effective lead generation strategies for better acquisition.

Hopefully, these articles have covered enough information that can get you started on the right footing. Leverage SEO, PPC, Email marketing, Chatbots, gated content, promotions, and coupons, among others.

However, if you need a hands-on approach, you can get a lead generation expert or an agency to help you. Get in touch with us at HelpOnClick here.