What is the biggest challenge before business owners universally?
Lead generation, of course!
Entrepreneurs are constantly on the lookout for ways to improve their lead generation process. If your lead generation methods are outdated and ineffective, how long can you survive before your website traffic dries up?
Not long, I’m afraid.
You need to fuel your sales process with the latest, most resultful strategies out there. And that’s exactly what I’m going to explain in this post (with handy lead generation tools and real examples).
Excited to learn more?
Then, read on.
5 Killer Tactics to Optimize Your Lead Generation Process
First things first. Understand that the leads are all out there, ready to be hunted and driven to your business. You just need to know the right ways to catch their attention, show them your value, and bring them into the fold.
But how?
1. Define Your Target Audience
Imagine a scenario.
Suppose you sell products meant for teens and tweens, but your marketing campaigns are targeting older audiences. Needless to say, such efforts will not bear fruit.
When you show your content to the right audience, there’s a better chance of generating quality leads. More lead volume means more conversion opportunities and possibly higher ROI.
So, start by defining your ideal customer persona.
Use web analytics tools to identify common characteristics in your high-potential website visitors and customers. Drill down into granular details like demographics, locations, occupations, behaviors, and interests, while ensuring full compliance with GDPR marketing consent regulations.
Gather consumer insights from multiple channels including social media and email lists. Remember, the more precise your personas, the more laser-focused your marketing efforts will be.
What else?
You can segment your audience into narrow groups and use different content and marketing tactics for different groups. A personalized, customer-centric marketing approach is bound to generate more returns.
2. Blog Regularly
Content marketing is the cornerstone of lead generation in this digital age. Publishing high-quality, useful content is a great way to build trust and generate leads.
Regardless of your industry, you can benefit a lot by starting a blog. Maintain a decent posting frequency and create a variety of insightful content pieces for your audience to feast on.
A lively blog does more than generate leads for a business.
Demos, how-tos, and whitepapers based on proprietary research help showcase domain expertise. When industry experts write guest posts, they bring their audiences to your blog. Likewise, when you publish share-worthy content, your social media presence grows. All of this brings more traffic (and leads) to your business.
A word of caution here:
Just as great content can do wonders for your reputation, bad content can undo all of your efforts in seconds.
Factually incorrect or regurgitated content can tarnish your reputation and drive away hard-earned leads. If you lack the bandwidth or resources to produce quality content, it’s wise to hire expert content writing services. A little extra investment in content development can give rich dividends in the form of leads and customers.
3. Optimize Your Landing Pages
Landing pages are the lifeblood of lead generation. It’s on a landing page that you gather valuable customer insights and contact information. If your landing pages are well-designed and optimized, you can send a steady stream of leads to your business.
To eliminate risk and save effort, you can use automated landing page builders. Most come with drag-and-drop editors that can develop slick landing pages in minutes.
But if you’re up to the task of manually designing landing pages, here are some things to keep in mind:
● Include a catchy, keyword-rich page title in the banner.
● Avoid text-heavy content and focus on visuals to keep visitors on the page.
● Place your call-to-action strategically and word it powerfully.
● Don’t disrupt the user experience with too many pop-ups or sliders.
● Convey your value proposition in compelling terms.
● Include social proof like testimonials.
Need a real example?
Video-maker Promo’s landing page has all the ingredients mentioned above, plus a few more. Since it’s a video making tool, they include tons of videos on their landing page to showcase their expertise as a promo video maker, demonstrating that they know their business.
Image via Promo
4. Take Advantage of Influencers
Influencer marketing can complement your lead generation efforts beautifully. Influencer-led traffic is typically high-converting. Even if they don’t convert at first, they’re amenable to receive more content from brands that their favorite influencers patronize. With proper nurturing, they can convert faster than random visitors.
Any catch?
Yes.
Influencers whose audiences don’t match yours can’t send the right sort of traffic to your website. A travel influencer, for instance, will. be followed by travel lovers who are of little use to a company dealing with kitchen gadgets or mobile phones.
This means you need to collaborate with influencers who have the same industry, audience constitution, and values as you. Instead of searching for a well-matched influencer manually, you can consult an expert influencer marketing agency. They have databases of influencers in most niches, with verified engagement numbers and credentials.
There are many ways an influencer can generate leads for your business. They can run contests, write reviews, and host events on your behalf. If they are thought leaders, they can write technical articles to cement your reputation.
You can even have them design exclusive product lines, just like Selena Gomez did for Adidas.
Image via Instagram
In their posts, influencers can include CTAs that redirect people to your landing pages. They can even generate loads of user-generated content from their fans and followers, which you can use on your website as testimonials.
5. Capitalize on Live Chat
Live chat not only improves the customer experience but also yields valuable leads to a business. When you use live chat tools like Intercom, you can collect contact information from your visitors easily.
How so?
People typically click on the live chat button on websites/apps when they are facing issues such as navigation glitches or problems during checkout. Live chat tools are designed to ask people for their names and email addresses before connecting them to a customer care agent. Voila, you have your lead generation database ready!
You can use the database to design email campaigns and cold call pitches. If you dig deeper into common issues faced by your visitors, you can discover hidden insights about them, such as their expectations and pain points. Use them for content personalization, which again improves your lead generation process in a big way.
Conclusion
Lead generation is not easy, I agree. But it’s a key driver for your business. In the end, it all boils down to how effectively you can get your audience to give you their information. It’s all about being super-productive. And that’s where the strategies above can come in handy.
Do you need more advice on lead generation or business development? Share your question in the comments section. I’ll be happy to answer them.
Author bio
Gaurav Sharma is the founder and CEO of Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company, and a Google Analytics and GoogleAds certified professional.
He has scaled an agency from5-figure to 7-figure income in just two years. He has increased leads by 10X, conversion rate by 2.8X, and traffic to 300K per month using content marketing, SEO, influencer marketing, landing page optimization, sales funnel, and LinkedIn.
He contributes to reputable publications like HubSpot, Adweek, Business 2 Community, HuffPost, TechCrunch, and many more. He leverages his experience to help SaaS businesses, influencers, local businesses, and e-commerce brands grow their traffic, leads,sales, and authority.
