Lead generation is the process of filling the sales pipeline by attracting prospects to a business. Its main goal is to increase prospects’ interest through nurturing to convert them into paying customers.
What are Lead Generation Strategies?
Lead generation strategies refer to activities that aim to attract the interest of potential customers. These efforts vary depending on the nature of the company and its target customers. Companies usually deploy multiple lead generation strategies to generate enough leads and hit sales targets.
Lead Generation vs. Digital Marketing
Many people assume that lead generation and digital marketing are the same. Although these two practices are related, they are quite distinct. Here’s a quick look at their key differences:
| Point of comparison | Lead generation | Digital Marketing |
|---|---|---|
| Buying journey stage | Awareness, consideration | All stages |
| Target | Brand-aware prospects | Total addressable market |
| Channels | Website, emails, calls | All digital channels |
Lead generation strategies focus on the first two stages of a buyer’s journey, awareness and consideration, while digital marketing covers the whole buyer’s journey. These two concepts are confused with each other because some digital marketing tactics can be modified to achieve lead generation objectives.
Effective Lead Generation Tactics
Your lead generation strategy must be tailored to your buyer persona to make it effective. Here are some efficient lead generation tactics to consider:
Email Marketing
Email marketing can increase brand awareness by informing prospects about a company’s new products, services, and promotions. It can also be an excellent tool for developing customer relationships.
To deploy email marketing as an effective lead generation tactic, you must first have a high-quality email list. Most companies get their email list from lead magnets, while others purchase a lead list with a collection of names and contact info of prospects. The cost of a lead varies according to its quality, with some leads costing between $0.30 and $200 per piece
Aside from having high-quality lead email lists, investing in hard-hitting email content is crucial for a successful email marketing strategy. Here are some tips on how to achieve that:
- Design click-worthy call-to-actions (CTAs): A clear CTA can increase conversion by guiding readers on what to do next. Your CTA must be creative and intriguing to be click-worthy.
- Personalize: Personalization is a marketing tactic that engages customers. Instead of “Dear Ma’am/Sir,” you should use their names. You can also take it to another level by showing that you’ve researched them in the content.
- Keep it short: Long emails can be boring, so there’s a big possibility that readers won’t finish reading. To avoid this, keep your emails short and straightforward so readers will get the message you’re trying to convey right away.
Crafting high-quality email content is challenging, especially for those with no experience. If this is your case, you might consider hiring a professional email copywriter who’ll make your emails persuasive and compelling.
Sales Outsourcing
| Outsourced tasks | Benefits |
|---|---|
| Inbound & outbound calling | Cost savings |
| Lead identification | Higher lead quality |
| Market research | Time savings |
Sales outsourcing is a business practice in which a company hires a third-party or agency to handle tasks related to the sales cycle. Outsourced sales tasks include:
- Inbound and outbound calling: Inbound and outbound calling will fill your sales pipeline with high-quality leads who are more likely to convert into customers. Outsourcing these tasks will unburden sales executives to focus on closing deals and uncovering other growth opportunities.
- Lead Identification: Some sales outsourcing companies specialize in researching and identifying which leads to contact. They’ll provide you with a lead list that contains names and contact information of individuals or businesses that fits your buyer persona.
- Market research: Market research supplies a company and its decision-makers with valuable information about their target customers, competition, and the latest trends. To get updated information, market research must be done periodically.
Some of the benefits companies get from sales outsourcing include:
- Affordable cost
There are plenty of salespeople involved in the sales cycle. You’ll need sales executives, sales development representatives (SDRs), business development representatives, and many more.
Hiring all these individuals and paying for their salaries, benefits, and other compensations can affect a company’s bottom line, but that isn’t the case with outsourcing. Some sales outsourcing service providers charge per task, while others will bill you with a retainer fee for custom solutions.
- Access to expertise
Sales outsourcing firms have experts available to cater to your company’s needs. These sales professionals are trained and have advanced knowledge in their fields.
- Time-saving
Hiring the right sales professional can take months. Even when you hire a candidate with relevant experience, it will take weeks before they are fully functional because you still have to train and guide them through your company’s sales process.
This is not the case with sales outsourcing firms. Their sales professionals are on standby and ready to take on your tasks anytime.
When deciding to outsource sales, it’s recommended to be careful with the choice of your service provider. A reliable sales outsourcing firm such as SalesRoads has the following qualities:
- Proven track record: Sales outsourcing firms with proven success have fewer quality risks.
- Transparent pricing: A reliable sales outsourcing firm won’t hesitate to show how much they charge for a specific task.
- Helpful customer service: It’s natural to have questions and input when you entrust sales tasks to a sales outsourcing firm, so it’s very helpful if the firm has a customer service team that can be approached along the way.
Tweak Your Landing Page
Your landing page plays a crucial role in the buyer’s journey. Unfortunately, some companies still don’t know how to maximize the benefits of building an efficient landing page.
These are some of the tweaks and changes that you can do to optimize your landing page:
- Improve your call-to-action: A compelling call-to-action will redirect visitors to landing pages where they’ll receive specific offers based on their needs. This way, they won’t get lost on your website.
- Upgrade your headline: Your landing page headline must be eye-catching. It should also make visitors curious to know more and encourage them to browse your website.
- Add a live chat feature: A live chat can grab the attention of your website visitors, making it easy for them to reach out to you if they have questions or clarifications about your offerings.
Leverage Social Proof
Leveraging social proof is an effective way of earning the trust and confidence of a lead. It can mitigate the doubt that prospects have about your products and services. The more social proof you have, the higher your brand credibility.
There are different ways of adding social proof to your lead generation efforts, such as:
- Building a Referral Program
A referral program incentivizes previous customers to recommend your products to their circle of friends and family. Its main benefit is attracting warm leads and multiplying loyal customers.
- Highlighting Reviews
You can use previous client success stories to gain the trust and confidence of prospects. Collect these stories by encouraging customers to leave reviews for your products and services.
Invest in Lead Magnets
Lead magnets can be “gated content” or free items. With a gated content strategy, you can leverage premium content or free items in exchange for the contact information of website visitors.
The main benefit of a lead magnet is that it allows you to build an email list of prospects who have shown interest in your products and services, called warm leads. The fact that they are willing to exchange their information for your gated content means they are already showing interest in your offering. This makes it easier for them to convert than cold leads.
An effective lead magnet has the following characteristics:
- Relevance: Your lead magnet must address the pain points of the prospects and offer valuable information.
- Perceived value: High-quality lead magnets offer insider knowledge and expert insights which are not readily available elsewhere.
Lead magnets come in many forms. It could be a newsletter, whitepaper, or an eBook. For Software as a service (SaaS) companies, the common lead magnet is trial products and free subscriptions for a limited period.
Tools for Lead Generation
| Lead generation tools | Examples |
|---|---|
| Lead capture tools | JotForm, Magpi, Prospect.io |
| Email marketing tools | Boomerang for Gmail, Vocus.io, Followup.cc, Prospect.io |
| Email follow-up tools | Mailchimp, HubSpot Email Marketing, Sendinblue |
| CRM tools | HubSpot CRM, Salesforce CRM, Zoho CRM |
| Live chat tools | Zendesk, Tidio, LiveChat |
Lead generation can be time-consuming because it requires plenty of information collection tasks. Luckily, some tools can help improve the efficiency and speed of your lead generation process. Some of these tools include:
- Lead capture tools: These tools will provide you with a better understanding of your prospects. Some of them not only collect data but also have features that allow you to organize your lead list.
- Email follow-up tools: Sending follow-up emails can make your email marketing more effective because it gives you more opportunities to engage with a lead. Email follow-up tools will make the process more convenient and efficient.
- Email marketing tools: These tools facilitate email campaign management by allowing you to create, test, optimize, and send emails. Some software have additional features such as analytics to let you see how your email marketing campaign is doing.
- Customer relationship management tools: CRM tools allow you to organize lead prospect information, manage marketing campaigns, and identify sales opportunities.
- Live Chat Software: This tool can help enhance customer engagement. At the same time, it’s the easiest and most convenient way of communicating with prospects in real-time.
Are you planning on making your sales process outsourcing appointment setting tasks? In that case, Salesroads is here to help. Get in touch with us today and uncover new growth opportunities.
