Summary: Looking to generate leads? Learn where you should focus your lead generation efforts and what lead gen techniques can help you get a healthy pipeline.
Lead generation is a critical driver in your business’s growth, which is why marketing and sales teams dedicate so much time and resources to it. Of course, in the perfect world, you would always have high-quality leads coming in; but we all know that getting those high-value leads is easier said than done.
Not to say there’s a shortage of lead generation strategies—there are quite a few. But the difficult part is figuring out which ones you should implement and which will work best.
This blog will discuss where you should focus your lead generation efforts and what lead gen techniques can help you get a healthy pipeline of customers going through your sales cycle.
Make the Most Out of Social Media
Social media is one of the most potent yet underutilized marketing tools available. That’s because many companies think of social media as something they can only use for branding efforts. Still, social media has significant lead generation potential for your sales teams and should be a key element in your marketing strategy.
Some helpful social media-driven lead-generation strategies include:
- Rethinking your Connection Requests: LinkedIn is already filled with generic, irrelevant, and spammy connection messages. You don’t want yours to be more of the same. You need to optimize your profile to convert views into conversations, create a series of connection messages with a personal touch, and send daily connection requests to a narrowly defined group of target customers.
- Start Answering Questions on Online Communities: Forums like Reddit and Quora offer many opportunities for conversions because there are many people with questions that need answers. You can find online communities or questions about your services and respond with a well-constructed, informative response. Long-form answers with relevant images, critical data, a link to your website, and even links to helpful resources can assist in building trust and guiding potential customers to your web pages.
- Long-Form LinkedIn Updates: Carefully crafted, long-form LinkedIn updates are a very effective lead-generation tool. Make sure to keep your context compelling, value-driven, and authentic. Keep your paragraphs short so the update looks visually appealing as well.
Tip: If you want to improve your post’s engagement, add a link in the first comment rather than the actual update.
Prioritize High-Quality Content
This tune is sung on repeat throughout the marketing world, but that is because it is essential. Content really is king when it comes to filling your sales pipeline with good leads. That’s because you need to understand your target market and construct your content with their needs in mind.
This means having well-written content for every stage of the sales funnel, content that hooks readers from the get-go and answers their questions with relevant, factually accurate information.
However, there is so much competition online that you really need to think outside the box if you want to stand out. That means you need to step up your content marketing strategy by including infographics, downloadable templates and guides, instructional videos, and even audio content such as podcasts and audiobooks.
Interactive quizzes or assessments are also great ways to boost your engagement and target the part of your audience that needs more time to read longer pieces of content. Once they have finished answering the questions (try to stick to between 8 and 10 questions), ask them to fill out a small form with their name and email address to get access to the results.
Tip: Offer your best content pieces in a gated format. That means that your most valuable content, such as whitepapers or guides, requires your readers to fill out a form to download it. Be careful to include only a few questions on your forms, or people will likely not fill them out.
You Need to Post Content Regularly
Search Engine Optimization is one of the foundations of digital marketing. And if you are not ranking on the relevant search engines, then no one will see your content (no matter how good it is!), and you definitely will not get leads from what you post.
Your website and your blog are one of the best ways to improve your SEO efforts and overall lead generation. On average, companies with blogs produce 67% more leads per month, and 60% of people are inspired to seek out a product after reading content about it, according to Demand Metric.
Start with a well-researched SEO plan that includes the keywords you need to target and construct your blogs around the necessary keywords. Ensure that every piece of content has a clear call to action. Consider what your customers will likely ask and write blogs around those scenarios.
And the most crucial part is ensuring that the content that you’re creating is helpful and crafted to help the human being on the other side of the screen, not just the search engine algorithm. In fact, because of the recent Helpful Content update, the more useful and valuable your content is to the reader, the better your page rank!
Be Careful When Using FOMO to Increase Your Conversion Rate
It’s a fact of life—people want what they can’t have. So one of the oldest marketing tactics to help increase conversion rates is to apply scarcity or FOMO (fear of missing out) to your marketing efforts.
But let’s be real. Your website visitors are savvy internet users, and they can spot fake offers relatively quickly. This, in turn, has the opposite effect that you intended and is a sure way to lose trust and conversions. And those who don’t notice a fake offer will feel deceived if the offer continues to run after they have made a purchase, which can be detrimental to your reputation.
Like with anything, you need to find the right time to apply FOMO because the tactic can work—when used strategically and sparingly. For example, if you are running a limited offer, if a product is running out of stock, or if you’re hosting an event and there are only a few tickets left.
Pro Tip for Out-of-Stock Items: Add a small form below an out-of-stock item that encourages customers to get a notification (text or email) when the product is available again. If you know exactly when that will be, another strategy could include a countdown to the expected arrival date.
Conclusion
Generating leads is a never-ending task for any business owner or marketing team. But with some forethought and strategy (and the help of your friendly neighborhood WSI Consultant!), you can lead gen like a pro!
WSI takes the time to learn about your organization and your customers so we can recommend a marketing strategy tailored to your industry and individual business needs. If you’re looking to improve or implement your lead generation strategy or have any digital marketing needs and questions, contact a WSI expert today.
