Swing the Sales Your Way! Learn Winning Hacks of Lead Generation

A lead is more than a form fill or a phone call. It is a result. Suppose you reach your office one morning and open your computer. You check your email and find one from Apple. It is about the new MacBook, and it explains its features. You click on the icon, and you land on the sales page of Apple.

You are one of the prospective customers on the email list prepared by Apple. This is an example of lead generation, and you are a ‘lead’. This email was not sent to you by chance. You might have purchased an Apple product in the past, and the sales team at Apple thought that you fit their customer profile. You may not buy that MacBook, but someone else in that email list just might.

Leads

Lead is a result of getting in front of a captive audience, or an audience interested in what you have to offer. In the above example, if Apple plays its cards right, it can turn leads, like you, into money. The marketing efforts of a company should not only be to divert traffic to your website but convert that traffic into leads.

Leads can be really beneficial to a business. By utilising the right channels like social media, blogs and website traffic, you can attract the right type of person, who wants to buy your product.  Then once you capture their contact information, you can use other channels like emails or promotions, and turn those leads into paying customers. To do this, you have to engage the prospects with follow-up conversations.

Leads may come from different activities or sources, such as through personal referrals, digitally via the internet, or through telephone calls by telemarketers. They can also be generated by putting social media posts, creating surveys, or writing informative content. Usually, a lead is given to a salesperson to follow through, and it goes through multiple stages before the deal is won.

Lead Generation

Every business owner must know how difficult it is to find people who are interested in their product or services. Lead generation is the process of using marketing tactics to find those people, either through phone calls, or other means, and convert them to paying customers.

Loyal customers can help your business operate on a day-to-day basis. But they won’t prepare you for the future. The revenue from your current customers won’t sustain you in the future, because no one retains 100 per cent of their clients. To grow and thrive you need new business, and to get new business, you need leads. That is why marketers are depending more heavily on lead generation.

The method for generating leads can be paid advertisements, but may also be non-paid sources such as referrals from existing customers, or organic search engine results.

Lead generation is the first step of the inbound marketing strategy and is often clubbed with lead management to push prospects through the sales funnel. All of these, form a part of, what is known as ‘pipeline marketing’.

Benefits of Lead Generation

1. It makes the life of the salesperson easier. If the lead is good or qualified, he/she can follow up, set up meetings with the client, and close the deal.

2. It is good for business because it converts strangers or visitors to customers.

3. It shows up with solutions at the consumer’s moment of need.

Ways to Generate Leads

There are different lead generation methods that you can use to generate these leads and get companies interested in buying your products or services. Some of these are as follows:

1. Outbound Lead Generation

This is familiar to those who are in sales or business development. This is the process by which you reach out to another company either by using cold emails, LinkedIn messages, or cold calling. You have to get them interested, and wanting to learn more, from the very first impression that they have of you.

We are all familiar with outbound advertising. We see it on the television, or as ‘pop-out ads’ when we check social media. If consumers recognise your brand, then these ads can bring business to your company.

Outbound lead generation is difficult than the other methods because you are reaching out to strangers, without any referral from associates or friends. Try to have some kind of ideal customer profile that has a high likelihood of making a purchasing decision.

2. Inbound lead generation

This is done in a B2B environment when you use things like YouTube videos, blogs, social media posts like Instagram, LinkedIn articles, or even featured articles in magazines like Forbes. You publish some content for people who are already interested in what you have to offer. One trick is to ask for the viewer’s work email address or contact number before they can download the material.

Going forward, you can email them, or have your salesperson talk to them. Inbound lead generation is easier than outbound, because the prospects are already interested in you, and might want to know more.

3. Get traffic to your website

Traffic can be created in two ways. The first is organic traffic. In this, you don’t have to pay anything to get visitors, usually by ranking well on Google search. The other way is paid traffic, which involves paid promotions on Google or other social media sites.

4. Paid advertising

In this, you can post videos on Facebook or YouTube, and give links about your business, below the video. If people find it interesting enough, they will click on it. You can also place ads on Google or Instagram.

It is important to note that whatever lead generation method you use, there has to be a way of qualifying the prospect. If the lead is not good, your sales team can have 50 meetings with clients, with no results.

B2B Lead Generation

B2B lead generation is the process of getting businesses interested in learning more about your products or services before making a decision. It means taking somebody who has no idea who you are, and educating them and tries to engage them in a conversation. B2B business development refers to a business that wants to do some type of commerce with another business. So, it is like selling business products to business people.

• The pandemic has turned conventional marketing completely on its head. According to the State of B2B Lead Generation Report, 2021, by the London Research/Demand Exchange, more than 80% of B2B marketers are relying on online lead generation, in lieu of face-to-face events.
• When a company makes a decision to purchase a high-value item, it needs to talk to somebody before finalising the deal. This is where the goal of lead generation comes-that is to fix a meeting with the salesperson.
• As an entrepreneur, you don’t have to do only one type of lead generation, as described above. Normally people try out a combination of methods. Let us suppose for example, that you represent a software company, and you are getting some customers through cold email. Once you understand why people are buying, you can run ads and try to find more customers similar to the ones who had bought your product.

Taking from there, you can write some articles on a reputed publication like Forbes, start a blog, or do some SEO marketing to get more people down the funnel.

What are Lead Generation Companies?

Lead generation companies are those firms that help businesses by delivering promising and receptive leads to them. They normally work with a number of businesses or websites, where they place advertisements for you. If a visitor clicks on them, they are taken to a site where their contact information like email addresses are taken. The lead generation companies then forward them to the sales team of the client.

Pros and Cons of Using Lead Generation Services

There are many business owners who go for lead generation services, to buy leads. But not all leads are created equal, and not all methods of getting them, guarantee quality.

Pros

1. Lead generation is a specialised task and requires a lot of hard work. That is why many small companies are outsourcing this part to professionals.

2. Lead generation services can help you overcome slow seasons by filling in the gaps.

Cons

1. Sometimes they cost more money, than the money they bring in.

2. Some of them value quantity over quality.

If you are in sales or marketing, you cannot ignore lead generation. It is very important for attracting and converting prospects into someone who is interested in buying your products or services.

Also read:

1) Best Tips for Customer Retention for a Small Business
2) Tips to Understand Your Market while Starting a Small Business
3) Tips for Businesses to Overcome the Covid Blues - Revival Tips for Businesses
4) What are the keys to success when operating a small scale business?
5) OkCredit: All you need to know about OkCredit & how it works.

FAQs

Q. What are the most popular online channels for lead generation?

Ans. These are search engines, direct traffic, and web referrals.

Q. Is it easy to set up ads for lead generation?

Ans. Setting up ads is tricky, and requires knowledge of social media systems and Google.