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Lead Generation Strategies is the best way to grow your business and get quality sales. As a marketer, your primary goal is to identify strategies that work well with your business and bring more money than what you spent.
No matter whatever industry you are in, the market will be always volatile and if you do not align your business as per the market curve than you’re going to lose.
What your customer wants now will always be different from what they wanted 5 years back, therefore, your business should be in constant lookout for better options or strategies that can help you in getting an upper hand.
Having lead generation strategies helps your business in getting quality customers. Every other person is not your customer. A defined strategy simplifies the conversion of the leads and identifies your customers.
In this article, we will help you with lead generation strategies that you can use to skyrocket your business growth but before that let’s find out how customers buy products?
How Customer Buy Products?
The buying process has changed a lot over time. Earlier the businesses had to find the customers by advertising their brand. Now, it is more likely that customers will reach out to the business if they need their services. Don’t believe me! Let me explain.
Everyone uses Google for surfing the internet. People are so used to Google that the word “Surfing the Internet” has changed into “Google it”. Now you hear more Google in the context of the internet than any other term related to it.
All our devices like mobile phones, desktops, etc. use Google as their main search engine. Google made it easier for people to use the search engine. So, whenever people need something they Google it. A business website is already listing in the Google SERPs making it a lead generation machine.
According to Statista, almost 4.48 billion people were active internet users last year, that’s 58 percent of the total population on earth. Now comparing this data to June 2010, around 1.97 billion people were active internet users.
You can see the drastic difference in the changing market graph. It is evident that the dynamic of the market has changed and so does the strategies. So, for running a business, you would need a plan that is up to date as well as versatile enough to adapt as per the market needs.
Top 10 Lead Generation Strategies
Here are the top 10 Lead Generation Strategies to skyrocket your business growth:
Analyze Your Competitors
It was Niccolò Machiavelli who wrote in his books the most famous quote.
- “Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.”
- Niccolò Machiavelli
No, you are not going to fight a war and you certainly do not need to. This quote can be translated as “Keep your business support close, keep your competition closer”. A wise way of growing your business is to do what your competitions are doing.
Your competition can teach you a lot. You can learn from their mistakes as well as what they did right. If you do not follow this advice then you are making a huge mistake. Your lead generation strategy must start by analyzing your competitors and finding what works best for you and your industry.
If someone is doing good in the market, use their footsteps and become good yourself. If they implemented a strategy and failed, do not repeat their mistake.
How do you analyze your competitors?
The very first step to analyze your competitors is to identify who your competitors are. You can do that by going on Google and typing in your product or service. To start, you can analyze the first 5 competitors.
You can use this guide on how to perform the competitive analysis to start analyzing each business inside out and finding out what are the strategies they are using.
Use YouTube Videos
After Google, YouTube is the second most used search engine in the world.
The YouTube algorithm works differently from Google. To rank higher in Google, you would need a longer SEO strategy but for YouTube, it is easy and works much faster. Your video can rank higher within the first 24 hours of publishing.
If your content is good then there will be no power in the world to stop you from ranking higher on YouTube. The best part of YouTube is, it’s free.
According to a study by Hubspot, people prefer video content by 54% compared to 18% of blogs and articles. Notice the big difference in the numbers, you can provide great value to the customer if you use video channels to market your business.
If you summarize what YouTube provides it is as follows:
- There is a demand for video content
- Huge audience base
- It helps your business stand out
- It can instantly increase your brand authority
Content Marketing
When you are a new player in the market, this strategy not only attracts leads but also creates brand awareness, authority and brand building. All you have to do is to create amazing value providing content in any format like the article, PDF, video courses, etc. and share it. Simple!
The reason why big brands do blogs is that it can attract a big audience to your website. When people visit your blog, you direct that traffic towards your business page by interlinking. When people land on the business page, some people are susceptible to buying from you, therefore, making a sale.
But the whole content marketing is focused on one thing and that is relevancy. If you do not produce relevant content than people would land on the business page but won’t become your customer. They will leave your website.
This is where analyzing your competitors would help you. Produce similar content that your competitors are producing and add more value to it. You can use these 10 content marketing tactics to grow your blog from scratch.
Now, this is what you have done on your website but, you can also do the same on other websites by guest posting, blogging, etc. by doing you can get more traffic, authority, brand awareness, etc.
Networking
Networking is creating connections with others professionally and personally. In order to become successful, you would need to have a number of connections with influential people in your industry. Having a personal connection with others makes things much easier and approachable like partnering or outsourcing etc.
Trust is a big factor when it comes to business, people buy from only those brands that they trust and what’s the better way of building trust than networking with people, getting to know them on a personal level.
- The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work. Marinate on that for a minute.
- Robert T. Kiyosaki
Event Marketing
Event Marketing is a marketing event where you promote your brand. It involves a face to face meeting with the business representative and customers. Here, you create an experience for your potential customers, that leaves a long-lasting impression on them.
There are two types of Event Marketing that you can do:
- Online Events include a webinar, Facebook live, Instagram live, YouTube live, etc.
- Offline Events include participation in trade fair, business event, etc.
This type of event helps you create a human connection of your brand with people. In events like these, you can get your valuable leads. Due to the human element used in approaching the customers, the potential of converting the leads into customers is pretty high.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is by far the oldest and the best lead generation tool after video. It is considered to provide the best ROI for your money as well as efforts. According to an eMarketer study, the email marketing ROI is 122%. That's four times higher than any other digital marketing channel.
But, how do you collect the emails?
You can use Lead Magnets to collect emails. All you have to do is to create digital content on your website. You can provide this digital content in exchange for their email. Now you have their email, making it easier for you to target that person.
You can broadcast your emails like the newsletter, offers, discounts, etc. To increase your ROI on your email campaigns, you can check this guide on the Email marketing campaign.
Engage Viewers More On Social Media
Social media is a great platform for you to get leads. In 2019, the average time spent on social media by people was 153 minutes. That rounds up to be more than 6 years of a person’s life on social media and for a social media addict, it could be 10+ years or more.
But if you are not engaging your audience on social media then you are not using social media up to its potential, therefore, you need to strategize your social media marketing to ensure you are not missing out on anything.
Advertising using Google, Facebook, etc.
If you are new to the business or you do not want to miss out on any of your customers, you might be running ads. Whether it’s Google ads or Social media ads you need a landing page for it. The landing page is specific to its purpose and that is the lead and sales.
Paid advertisements like CPC (Cost Per Click), display ads, etc. all can help you in getting the qualified lead that you need. The customers that you get here are qualified because they are searching for your product and services on Google. Therefore, they are more susceptible to buying from you.
You can learn how to use Google ads using the Hubspot Google Ads Guide 2020 and for Facebook, you can use this guide by Facebook: Facebook Ads Guide. There are different guide available for different platform, but the basic concept is same. So, learning these two guide would be enough for you to run ads on all the other platforms.
Affiliate Marketing
Sharing is caring and when you are ready to share a percentage of your sale with other than others are more likely to generate the lead for you. This type of revenue sharing model for generating leads with conversion is called Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate Marketing is the most cost effective way of doing business. It helps to broaden your audience and the best part about it is that it is a performance based lead generation tactic. You would have to pay in small commissions every time you make a sale.
You can make your customer a personal marketer who would use his outreach to make others buy your business services. In return, you will pay him a small commission. When you are paying someone for just recommending a product then why wouldn’t anyone want to have that?
So, using affiliate marketing you can grow your audience and reach new people and get more leads. It can be called “lead on steroids”. It doesn’t even have to be money. You can even pay them with a discount or virtual credit that they can use to buy products from you the next time. You can be innovative about what value to present to your personal marketer.
Use Visuals to Lure Your Customers
Visuals are very essential elements of marketing, lead generation, website, etc. Around 65% of people are visual learners making it the best source for you to influence your customers.
Graphics are also a big part of branding, and businesses that have a big name in the market automatically get many leads. The business that works on branding, get the best results over the years, all due to branding specifically visual branding.
When you are a brand people search for you, trust you and have faith in your product or service. This automatically increases the brand value, and therefore, the leads.
Our Final Thoughts on Effective Lead Generation Strategies
There are so many B2C and B2B lead generation tactics you can use to propel your business. Understanding the customer journey process makes it easier for you to implement these strategies into an actionable plan. You can optimize these strategies and come up with a new idea and value providing products.
The customer’s journey is a road map that the customer takes while he/she is engaged with your business. Having a defined road map helps you in targeting the customer better and optimizing the channel based on the customer experience.
You can analyze the customer's pain points while they are passing through different steps. You can access and collect data on which steps the customers are getting dropped. Using this data you can come up with an idea to reduce the customer dropping rate and make your lead generation strategy more effective.
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