Lead generation is a fairly standard process in the world of digital marketing, which focuses primarily on attracting and nurturing people interested in a type of product or service to take them through the entire sales funnel process. For lead generation to occur efficiently, all the tasks that make up a company’s marketing must stimulate potential consumers’ interest in what the business is selling. Merely having good traffic to your site or blog does not guarantee, by itself, a high volume of sales and business opportunities.
Lead generation is more critical than traffic generation since it is the only way to ensure that the investment of time and money in campaigns will be truly profitable. This article highlights the importance of lead generation in a company’s commercial strategies within the digital spectrum and those key factors and techniques on which you must rely to ensure a good ROI of your planning. You need to nurture those relationships with your visitors and bring them to a point where you can genuinely offer them solutions aligned with their needs.
Why is lead generation so important in digital marketing?
The conversion in digital marketing is the only existing way for all those strategies and planning you do to give the fruits you expect. In short, lead generation responds to the need for visitors to have sufficient engagement with their brand, business, or product to guide them towards purchase during their customer journey. With inbound marketing, it is possible to gain clients and potential buyers thanks to constant traffic to the site or blog and lead weighting processes such as SQL or MQL. The latter provides benefits such as:
1. Lasting relationships
We know that retaining a client is much cheaper than getting one. With lead generation, it is possible to create the mechanisms and provide enough value for a stable relationship between both parties. Think of it this way: it’s an effective way to get your audience interested in your products and services instead of having to search for them yourself with other marketing techniques.
2. Understanding your audience better
Now, when we talk about the target audience’s knowledge, the generation of prospects allows us to discover the interests, problems, pains, and needs and, thus, make a more efficient segmentation. How? A semi-fictitious representation of your ideal client will focus on all your materials and strategies. Moreover, it is a perfect alternative to understand the consumer’s behavior and make better decisions.
3. Making decisions based on data
Having tools and techniques at your disposal for the generation of leads will give you the possibility to enjoy a solid base of information about the things your potential customers like and dislike. For example, only by expensive and slow traditional methods can you detect products or services that may or may not work, changes in customer service, and so on.
4. Optimize financial efficiency
Another important aspect is that thanks to lead generation, you can spend every penny on planning that delivers the results you want. That is, all efforts and investments will be directed to aspects that ensure profitability and your target audience likes. In that sense, we talk about the promotion and production of your products or services and the customer service area.
5. Reducing sales cycles
In addition to the previous point, among the benefits is the ability to shorten the sales process and attract potential customers with a higher probability of conversion or purchase intent. There are several ways to classify leads according to how ready they are to buy, such as lead scoring. It is one of the most effective techniques to reduce your sales cycles, save resources, time, and generate more sales.
Critical factors for lead generation on your site
There are those immovable points that you must have on your site to attract and convert your visitors more effectively.
1. Good user experience
Perhaps positioning brings more traffic to your site, but the user experience will make them stay there longer. In this sense, the Web Presence Optimization (WPO) emerges as one of the essential vital factors for generating leads since, without a fast, safe, intuitive, and responsive website, visitors will leave the site and, perhaps, you will not see them anymore.
2. Brand visibility
Using all possible channels -aligned with your brand and objectives- is an excellent way to attract and convert as many users as possible under the right reasons and conditions to increase your digital visibility. To do this, you must take care of covering specific spaces that allow your business to reach more people, for example:
- SEO: SEO and its series of search engine optimization techniques are indispensable for lead generation. Also, appearing on Google will improve your digital presence and attract an audience interested in your brand because it uses keywords and searches aligned to it.
- Branding in social networks: Relying on social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, among others, is a brilliant strategy to expand your business name and reach, mainly those people who are not so active in search engines.
- Ads: Ads or web ads are useful – when the occasion merits – to advance the results a little more and generate prospects quickly.
Moreover, with the hyper-segmentation resources that the different ad platforms offer, it will be possible to attract users to specific pages that will bring you closer to your best potential customers. Remember, the more traffic you generate, the more chances you have of generating leads on your site, as long as your brand and its materials add value and captivate. This is why your company does not need to invest all its resources in advertising. You can generate more than 700 commercials per month at the lowest cost. The ideal scenario consists of a combination of content and ads marketing efforts, promoting specific and timely value materials with ads to generate qualified leads.
3. Attract the right users
There is no point in attracting people who have no interest in what you offer, right? From the buyer persona’s creation, you will know exactly to whom you can “sell” your contents and materials. On the other hand, your competition analysis can also give you the right indications of the type of user looking for what you have. You’ve got it! Now that you know what, yes or no, needs to be on your site to accelerate lead generation opportunities, it’s time to talk about those factors that will help you achieve it efficiently.
Strategies for a lead generation strategy
Here are strategies that are most recommended nowadays to generate leads, focused, of course, on those resources that online channels offer us, for example:
1. Use data collection forms
Have you noticed small windows that pop up when you’re on a site? Well, they are not there by chance. They are designed to capture the visitor’s attention and make it part of the database to feed it with more materials. There are several alternatives that you can add to your site and that will help you multiply that list of contacts you already have, for example:
- Banners.
- Newsletters.
- Downloads of materials such as ebooks or computer graphics.
- Pop-up windows.
These elements will tell the visitor directly that you are interested in providing them with more related information and that they only have to leave some data that will help them get closer to your brand.
2. Create and disseminate valuable materials
Nothing attracts a reader more than valuable and specialized information. Undoubtedly, ebooks, computer graphics, templates, among other materials, are ideal options to obtain your data in exchange for valuable content. Try to make several of these and offer them for free through attractive and well-designed landing pages so that visitors feel confident to leave their data and start their journey through the shopping journey.
3. Organize special events
Another alternative that arises to revolutionize your lead generation is creating unique events where your data is mandatory for access. These events can be webinars, masterclasses, among others, in which you can provide complete information about a specific and relevant topic for your buyer persona, which motivates them to give you their data.
4. Making product demonstrations
If your product or service has no apparent advantages or is something so new and innovative that you need to train your audience, it would be very beneficial to do so at the same time when you build your leading database. Many technology companies already do this, for example, by uploading clips of their products and services and doing demonstrations, leaving the best for last, where users have to enter contact details to continue. Besides, there are freemium business models, which allow users to obtain necessary and free versions of the solutions and products, which will enable them to know in a general way their functionalities to be better prepared to make the purchase decision.
5. Offer discounts
Sometimes, to earn more, you have to give up more, do you agree? Within a lead generation, you must motivate users to get closer to your company, and what better than giving them something “free” in exchange for their data.
6. Remarketing
If you have had a steady flow of web traffic recently and little conversion, you may want to rely on remarketing to convert those users who have visited you before. What remarketing provides is the possibility to show your ads to people who have already visited your site. Its objective is to generate a more significant impact on someone who has already shown interest in you or your product. This technique has proven to be very useful in raising conversions (especially in e-commerce), based on an elementary principal. That is, rarely someone buys something the first time they see it.
7. Interactive web pages
These dynamic platforms are a brilliant way to generate interest in your visitors, thanks to establishing a mutual communication channel with the users. In this way, it is possible to get to know your users through content adapted to a particular moment of their day. These can be:
- Computer graphics
- ebooks
- Landing pages
- Calculators
- Microsites
- Quizzes
- Videos
- and others
It’s a way to generate consistency with potential customers’ interests since you accompany them during their navigation, undoubtedly increasing conversion opportunities. In general, it represents an excellent way to provide a differentiated user experience while obtaining reliable data on the tastes, interests, needs, and concerns of potential customers. Notice that in this calculator, the company puts a resource in which it asks the user what the size of their email contact base, valuable information for them to know their prospects better and to put into practice the most precise commercial approach for each one is.
Conclusion
The benefits of creating and executing a robust strategy of lead generation and management of the prospects, through valuable spaces for them, lies in the fact that you can transform all those visits your website receives into real business opportunities. It’s also a very efficient way to create a direct and close relationship with your users to receive constant and valuable communications about materials and offers, among others, that can be made more trustworthy for the future. The most important thing to take into account in lead generation is the real value you are giving your audience, that is, focusing on providing relevant information, so they feel confident enough that you are the best option for them.
