Lead generation is a series of activities aimed at increasing interest in a product or service. Businesses use lead generation methods to acquire new clients and retain existing ones, maintaining a supply of quality prospects in the sales pipeline.
The assumption that generating leads must be expensive is incorrect. There are cost-effective ways to capture the interest of your target audience and drive leads.
Risks of Underinvesting in Lead Generation
Top performing businesses set aside money for lead generation in their budget and reap the benefits. Underinvesting in lead generation to save operating costs will do long-term harm to your company.
Underinvesting in lead generation causes
- Reduced revenue
Lead generation increases opportunities to secure new cutting your lead generation budget reduces the number of opportunities, and your revenue suffers as a result.
- Poor lead quality
The hallmark of lead generation is not just the quantity of prospects, but also their quality. You risk missing out on highly qualified leads with a higher chance of closing if you underinvest in lead generation.
- Low business visibility
Lead generation captures the attention of potential clients while raising business awareness. Not spending enough money on this process affects market visibility and has a ripple effect on revenue.
- Increased sales workload
Reducing your lead generation budget shifts the burden to your sales force, making them less efficient. When you invest in lead gen, the sales team can focus on qualified prospects.
What are Affordable Lead Generation Offers?
Lead gen offers are valuable content provided to prospects in exchange for their information. The best offers are the ones that attract qualified prospects through minimal resources.
Business managers often underinvest in lead generation believing it is costly and difficult to set up, but they can employ a series of low-cost tactics to increase sales.
An ideal lead generation offer should
- Draw attention to a product or service
- Identify and solve prospects’ problems
- Establish trust and position your company as an authority
- Provide free value to customers
Best Lead Generation Offers
The best lead gen offers create relevant content in different formats to attract customers and communicate your value.
There is no ‘one size fits all‘ approach to choosing lead gen offers. Sales leaders can experiment with different strategies and combine them to maximize the results.
These cost-free offers can help small businesses increase sales team performance.
Ebooks
Ebooks are formatted texts for mobile and computer devices. You can choose a topic that resonates with your prospects’ pain points to create this material.
With ebooks, sales leaders can compile relevant information and deliver in-depth insights to prospects. The content should be interactive and encourage the audience to contact your sales team.
Content marketing experts recommend PDF as the best format for ebooks, as it allows for hyperlinking and attaching images.
Blogs
Creating a blog for your business is an affordable and efficient lead generation strategy. Blogs are a great way to share expert information and establish industry authority. Select topics around your audience’s challenges and offer solutions in a friendly, reliable manner. Use SEO strategies to ensure that those who require your product or service can find you.
Sales professionals can also feature on established industry blogs as guest writers.
Whitepapers
According to Google, B2B prospects conduct approximately 12 industry-related searches before picking a company. Whitepapers capitalize on prospects’ hunger for information to assist their decision-making. To obtain lead information, request that people provide their email addresses and names to download the content.
Whitepapers are credible reports that provide education to an audience. They are more scholarly than ebooks and are usually products of extensive industry research.
Your whitepapers can include charts and infographics to efficiently communicate technical knowledge to readers.
Templates
Creating helpful templates for your prospects is a viable way of collecting their information. To accomplish this, you must understand your buyer personas and the tools that could make their lives easier.
You can build templates for pitch decks, content calendars, infographics, budgets, and worksheets. If your templates are well done, they’ll form backbones for your customer’s original work.
Kits
Kits are collections of similar content, useful as solutions for customers within the target audience. Your kit can contain templates, a comprehensive research report, and an industry glossary.
Email series
Email series are a finite number of educational emails sent to prospects that opted in. The emails are usually sent daily during a certain period, proffering solutions to common issues readers may have.
An email series should not be confused with a newsletter. The differences between them are:
| Features | Email Series | Newsletter |
| No. of emails | Defined | Undefined |
| Frequency | Daily | Weekly, monthly or quarterly. |
| Content | Educational | Informative, promotional, or educational |
Social media
Social media is growing in relevance as an important lead generation strategy. Many leads search for business pages to find testimonials and evaluate credibility.
You can use social media to amplify your business, increase website traffic, and improve lead engagement.
| Social Media Lead Gen ideas | Description |
| Optimize your profile | Use a bio that tells people what you do and add a link to your website. |
| Share testimonials | Highlight your company results with social proof from real customers. |
| Engage prospects | Answer questions and hold discussions on common issues your audience may have. |
| Host live events | Organize events to share industry knowledge and insights. |
| Promote offers | Leverage social media audience to share other lead gen offers |
Webinars
A live video tutorial on tackling particular issues produces high-quality leads for your business. Webinars also establish your authority on the subject and provide an avenue to connect with leads.
Businesses can use social media platforms and video conferencing software to host webinars. You can use interactions during the webinars to qualify leads and immediately place them in the sales funnel.
On-demand video guides
You can record guides, research reports, and checklists. Videos are often friendlier for prospects, as they give your answers a face. On-demand videos may include a popup requesting prospect emails to grant access to the content.
Affordable Tools to Enhance Lead Generation Offers
Lead generation offers require the right tools to produce the best results. Affordable lead-generating tools automate the process and reduce human effort while minimizing costs.
On-page lead generation tools
Landing pages host web forms that allow users to exchange contact information for your content via a webform. But not all affordable lead generation strategies require you to host content directly on your website.
Sales leaders can use landing pages or other platforms to promote offers as shown below.
| Lead generating offer | On-Site | Off-Site |
| Ebooks | ✅ | ✅ |
| Blogs | ✅ | 🗙 |
| Whitepapers | ✅ | ✅ |
| Templates | ✅ | ✅ |
| Kits | ✅ | ✅ |
| Email series | ✅ | 🗙 |
| Social media | 🗙 | ✅ |
| Webinars | ✅ | ✅ |
| On-demand video guides | ✅ | ✅ |
Email marketing tools
Mailing lists are a crucial asset for lead generation, and email tools help to create campaigns that nurture leads to conversion. You also need these tools to automate subscriptions to email series and newsletters.
Data analysis tools
Data tools collect and provide insights into lead data. Important features to pay attention to are demographics, devices, and the location of leads interacting with your offers.
Data analysis tools provide a lead scoring feature that lets sales teams know which prospects are most likely to become customers.
CRM tools
CRM tools manage and track leads through the sales funnel. Keeping a database of the prospects informs your strategy and helps to determine lead quality.
Video tools
You need tools to record, edit, and stream your content live. Many video tools have email-capturing features to get viewers’ contact information during webinars or live events.
Outsourced Sales For an Effective Lead generation
Outsourcing lead generation is cost-effective in the long run. It curbs the expenses of hiring additional staff, training, salaries, and other benefits. These resources can be channeled into other business areas to improve your overall profitability.
Outsourcing allows highly trained experts to leverage industry-leading technology for your lead generation process. They increase business visibility with best practices in outbound and inbound lead generation.
The experts maximize content creation, social media, and SEO for inbound lead generation while using cold calling, email outreach campaigns, and pay-per-click advertising for outbound lead generation.
The company’s experience offers an edge in lead scoring, and specialists deliver leads to your sales team. With a reduced workload, your team can concentrate on closing hot leads.
Bottom Line
The best lead generation offers are the ones that pique your prospects’ interests and establish you as a reliable company. Identifying and implementing the right lead gen strategies for your business expands your horizons and boosts your revenue.
