How to catch a lot of leads and not be left without pants
Lead generation is the process of obtaining contact information about potential customers. This information will be the top of the sales funnel, which will lead the business to the willing to pay the customer.
They, for example, can become a fly fishing enthusiast who left his e-mail on the site of the Hunter Fisherman shop to get a special discount.
Choosing a lead generation strategy will greatly influence the channels of information gathering and the methods you want to use to contact potential customers. The basic idea may seem simple, but there are many factors that you must consider if you want to see how your leads are converted into a buyer.
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By the end of this post, you will not only learn how to reach people interested in your product, but also how to keep them.
And I promise that these lead generation strategies will not ruin your marketing budget!
A lead is one who is interested in what you can offer. Lida are located somewhere in the middle of the conversion funnel - they are a step below the usual visitors who came to your site “just to see”. At the same time, the usual lead is one step behind the target lead, which somehow signals its desire to buy something (for example, puts the goods in the basket or decides to try the trial version of the service.
Here is what the conversion funnel looks like:
Lead generation is about finding potential customers and asking them to tell more about themselves.
Usually lead generation involves receiving an e-mail address from a potential client in order to be able to contact him in the future.
Depending on your needs, you may need other data:
But besides telling the leads themselves, you also need to know what made them do it.
For example. If you leave your e-mail in the shop “Fisherman-hunter” to get a free book on fishing with fly fishing, then it would be nice to remember your preferences for recommending goods and other informational materials on this type of fishing.
Now that we understand what a lead is, we need to talk about how to catch or capture them . This step is in all lead generation strategies - on it you get information about a potential buyer.
This usually happens on a landing page where a visitor fills out a form with personal information.
You may wonder why someone would leave their contact details. Usually, this leads to an endless stream of spam and phone calls from the sales department.
That is why the visitor should have some incentive. If you offer something in return, something really valuable, the idea of ​​leaving your email does not seem so silly.
This could be an e-book, an instructional video, a limited-time offer, or just a discount coupon.
If you want to see good examples of landing pages that offer content in exchange for contact information, you should contact HubSpot. They have become very, very good at creating content that is important and useful to their audience.
The landing page “ Guide to attracting 100,000 readers to your blog ” is a textbook example of how to capture leads.
But don't take my word for it. Check out their landing page for inbound marketing. It has everything you need - a clear description, appropriate graphic design, video, description of the value and form of data collection. And even despite the fact that it is long, it seems to me that people do not pay attention to it, because they want to get all the information on inbound-marketing as soon as possible.
The annual inbound marketing report from HubSpot shows that even long forms can be part of a successful lead generation strategy.
In general, the visitor needs to offer something really valuable. The best way to do this is to create content.
Before we talk about ways to stimulate a visitor through content, we need to touch on the topic of banal leads buying .
There are a lot of services and companies that will offer you huge databases that can be filtered for your needs. For example - you can try to find anyone interested in fishing. At a reasonable price, you get a huge group of potential buyers.
What are the cons? Let's see. First of all, all lead generation strategies with the participation of purchased leads will obviously be more expensive than those where you are capturing leads yourself.
Lead quality is even more important. Although you can usually narrow your search, and the leads will have an interest in the topic of your business, it is not necessary that they need your offer. And the leads that you are capturing on your website have already clearly shown interest in your business specifically.
Finally, these leads are not exclusive . Any other businessman can target the same sector and get the same list of leads as you. Depending on the competition in the market, you may encounter dozens of companies processing your potential client.
Just imagine what will happen if five different fishing stores start competing for the same customer. They will begin to “trim” each other, littering the client’s mailbox. This will quickly lead to a disastrous result for all participants - no one will win.
Buying leads can be a good solution at the start, or for those customer groups that you cannot naturally embrace, but you shouldn’t rely only on this method.
The main idea of ​​the lead generation strategy is that you need to offer something in return in order to get contact information. And this “something” must really be valuable. For example - useful content .
Creating content on your industry has several beneficial effects. First, it catches traffic to your site. The more materials on a particular topic on your site and the better they are, the higher your rating will be for the keywords related to this topic.
Secondly, you increase brand awareness . Each line of useful material on your site shows a potential client that you are truly a master of your craft.
And finally, creating content you give the visitor what he needs. This is your trump card that you can use to get contacts.
Here are some examples of incentives that can be used for lead generation:
All content you create must have a certain value. Otherwise, no one wants to leave you your address.
To add value to content - you can offer solutions to the problems that your potential customers face.
For example (returning to our fishing store) - you can prepare a training video on different methods of making bait. All who are interested will gladly leave their e-mail in exchange for knowledge. And they can get on the landing page in different ways - via the link on the main page of your site, through a post on social networks or using a targeted CPC campaign . In such a situation, everyone wins - a potential client gains new knowledge, and you - a way to communicate in the future.
Offering targeted content will help you capture a multitude of targeted leads. These are not random people who just stumbled across your site, but your current customer base. And what's the greatest thing about it? You just told something about your business or hobby. Guess who they turn to the next time they need advice?
Chatting on the site can be a surprisingly effective way to collect leads. To use this resource you just need to ask for an e-mail during a conversation. To motivate a visitor to leave an e-mail, you can offer to send a correspondence history to this address and thereby record the results of the conversation or use one of the incentives given above.
You can also get visitor contacts through an online consultant.
Some site owners force the visitor to enter email forcibly, before starting a conversation. This is not a very good strategy - because it can, on the contrary, scare a person away from communication. You have not yet offered him a benefit, but ask him to leave the address, even though the visitor only needs to clarify some point. And he is not always ready to leave his email in exchange for an answer. Sometimes it's easier to contact a competitor.
After the chat, we are in RedHelper in contact with our target leads (who have shown some interest in the product), but do not offer to immediately start using the trial. In these letters we just let them know that they can ask any questions that we will gladly try to answer.
Sample manager welcome letters
49% of open letters and 21% of answered ones are an excellent result for letters of this type. For example, the same letters on purchased leads give only 1% of answered letters (another reason to generate leads on their own).
In addition, with the help of an online consultant, you can collect additional leads and during off-hours - using the offline form. It is enough to configure targeted active invitations for a particular section of the site, and they will automatically request the data of a potential client. Do not forget that for this method you also need to make an offer that the visitor cannot refuse.
When we talk about lead generation, it’s hard to ignore the topic of mailing lists and automated marketing .
With subscriptions, you can monetize a previously captured lead. Returning to the topic of fly fishing, someone who downloaded your book or video might want to buy something to test what you said. It's time to offer this potential client a special offer for the equipment that appeared in the book / video.
This, of course, is just an example, and you must first send a few additional materials to build trust between you and the lead. If they like fly fishing, maybe something else would be interesting for them?
This is where marketing comes into play. Marketing automation will allow not to pore over each lead manually (which is long and expensive), but to process them en masse. Tools like HubSpot , Marketo , or Autopilot will help you with this — you can use them to create a chain of automated paths that your leads will take.
From the moment a lead is captured, it ends up on a specific route (or a journey, as it is called in Autopilot), after which they receive letters based on their coordinates on the route. Usually, everything starts with sending a little material for which the lead left his email. But after a while nothing prevents you from sending him another material, closely related to the previous one.
You can also send emails using various criteria — for example, you can check whether a potential customer has opened a past letter.
Such automation is a new step in the implementation of various lead generation strategies. In the end, leads will not convert themselves, they need a little push.
Lead generation and conversion should not cost thousands of dollars. Especially if you do not buy them directly.
By creating valuable content, capturing and holding leads in a natural way, you will increase sales without using expensive methods.
Here is a brief summary of what you need to do to start lead generation and what to do after.
If you want to take the lead - give him something valuable. That is why you need to create useful content related to your business.
There are advantages to buying leads, but you have to pay for them. Of course, this is the fastest way to get customer contacts, and such a step can be a good help at the start of a business. But later it is worthwhile to focus on the natural methods of lead generation. If only because then you will have unique leads that competitors do not have.
Your landing page on the site should not be the only place where you get leads. Work with a blog, interact with the audience in social networks, collect business cards at exhibitions.
If you are using chat or another way of communicating with a client on the site, you already have a powerful tool for finding leads among site visitors who need advice. If you are not yet using an online consultant, test our service on your site for free , and you will see for yourself how many clients you can additionally get by just chatting.
In order to keep a client, you should not immediately send a product catalog to him immediately after receiving the coveted address.
It will be much better if with each mailing you give something useful to the client. Give them more valuable content, it will affect future sales, because subscribers will want to try the products or services you write about.
At some point there are so many leads that it is simply impossible to process them all manually. With the help of automatic mailing lists, you can contact hundreds and thousands of leads, and know exactly how they are converted into customers.
We can confidently recommend Autopilot , which works wonders with your e-mail newsletters. Alternatively, you can use HubSpot , Marketo , Act-on .
Surely there are other strategies that will not leave a marketer without pants. If you know and use such methods - please share in the comments!
They, for example, can become a fly fishing enthusiast who left his e-mail on the site of the Hunter Fisherman shop to get a special discount.
Choosing a lead generation strategy will greatly influence the channels of information gathering and the methods you want to use to contact potential customers. The basic idea may seem simple, but there are many factors that you must consider if you want to see how your leads are converted into a buyer.
')
By the end of this post, you will not only learn how to reach people interested in your product, but also how to keep them.
And I promise that these lead generation strategies will not ruin your marketing budget!
What is lead
A lead is one who is interested in what you can offer. Lida are located somewhere in the middle of the conversion funnel - they are a step below the usual visitors who came to your site “just to see”. At the same time, the usual lead is one step behind the target lead, which somehow signals its desire to buy something (for example, puts the goods in the basket or decides to try the trial version of the service.
Here is what the conversion funnel looks like:
Lead generation is about finding potential customers and asking them to tell more about themselves.
Usually lead generation involves receiving an e-mail address from a potential client in order to be able to contact him in the future.
Depending on your needs, you may need other data:
- Name - these data will make the communication more personal and less robotic.
- A phone number is certainly useful for the sales department and is used to contact after the lead email marketing campaign.
- Company - in the B2B sector is also appropriate to ask which company represents the lead, which will allow a better understanding of its needs.
But besides telling the leads themselves, you also need to know what made them do it.
For example. If you leave your e-mail in the shop “Fisherman-hunter” to get a free book on fishing with fly fishing, then it would be nice to remember your preferences for recommending goods and other informational materials on this type of fishing.
How to capture the lead?
Now that we understand what a lead is, we need to talk about how to catch or capture them . This step is in all lead generation strategies - on it you get information about a potential buyer.
This usually happens on a landing page where a visitor fills out a form with personal information.
You may wonder why someone would leave their contact details. Usually, this leads to an endless stream of spam and phone calls from the sales department.
That is why the visitor should have some incentive. If you offer something in return, something really valuable, the idea of ​​leaving your email does not seem so silly.
This could be an e-book, an instructional video, a limited-time offer, or just a discount coupon.
If you want to see good examples of landing pages that offer content in exchange for contact information, you should contact HubSpot. They have become very, very good at creating content that is important and useful to their audience.
The landing page “ Guide to attracting 100,000 readers to your blog ” is a textbook example of how to capture leads.
But don't take my word for it. Check out their landing page for inbound marketing. It has everything you need - a clear description, appropriate graphic design, video, description of the value and form of data collection. And even despite the fact that it is long, it seems to me that people do not pay attention to it, because they want to get all the information on inbound-marketing as soon as possible.
The annual inbound marketing report from HubSpot shows that even long forms can be part of a successful lead generation strategy.
In general, the visitor needs to offer something really valuable. The best way to do this is to create content.
Do I have to pay for leads?
Before we talk about ways to stimulate a visitor through content, we need to touch on the topic of banal leads buying .
There are a lot of services and companies that will offer you huge databases that can be filtered for your needs. For example - you can try to find anyone interested in fishing. At a reasonable price, you get a huge group of potential buyers.
What are the cons? Let's see. First of all, all lead generation strategies with the participation of purchased leads will obviously be more expensive than those where you are capturing leads yourself.
Lead quality is even more important. Although you can usually narrow your search, and the leads will have an interest in the topic of your business, it is not necessary that they need your offer. And the leads that you are capturing on your website have already clearly shown interest in your business specifically.
Finally, these leads are not exclusive . Any other businessman can target the same sector and get the same list of leads as you. Depending on the competition in the market, you may encounter dozens of companies processing your potential client.
Just imagine what will happen if five different fishing stores start competing for the same customer. They will begin to “trim” each other, littering the client’s mailbox. This will quickly lead to a disastrous result for all participants - no one will win.
Buying leads can be a good solution at the start, or for those customer groups that you cannot naturally embrace, but you shouldn’t rely only on this method.
Lead content creation
The main idea of ​​the lead generation strategy is that you need to offer something in return in order to get contact information. And this “something” must really be valuable. For example - useful content .
Creating content on your industry has several beneficial effects. First, it catches traffic to your site. The more materials on a particular topic on your site and the better they are, the higher your rating will be for the keywords related to this topic.
Secondly, you increase brand awareness . Each line of useful material on your site shows a potential client that you are truly a master of your craft.
And finally, creating content you give the visitor what he needs. This is your trump card that you can use to get contacts.
Here are some examples of incentives that can be used for lead generation:
- EBooks
- Documents
- Educational videos
- Reports
- Useful blog entries
- Letters
- Webinars
All content you create must have a certain value. Otherwise, no one wants to leave you your address.
To add value to content - you can offer solutions to the problems that your potential customers face.
For example (returning to our fishing store) - you can prepare a training video on different methods of making bait. All who are interested will gladly leave their e-mail in exchange for knowledge. And they can get on the landing page in different ways - via the link on the main page of your site, through a post on social networks or using a targeted CPC campaign . In such a situation, everyone wins - a potential client gains new knowledge, and you - a way to communicate in the future.
Offering targeted content will help you capture a multitude of targeted leads. These are not random people who just stumbled across your site, but your current customer base. And what's the greatest thing about it? You just told something about your business or hobby. Guess who they turn to the next time they need advice?
Use an online lead collection consultant
Chatting on the site can be a surprisingly effective way to collect leads. To use this resource you just need to ask for an e-mail during a conversation. To motivate a visitor to leave an e-mail, you can offer to send a correspondence history to this address and thereby record the results of the conversation or use one of the incentives given above.
You can also get visitor contacts through an online consultant.
Some site owners force the visitor to enter email forcibly, before starting a conversation. This is not a very good strategy - because it can, on the contrary, scare a person away from communication. You have not yet offered him a benefit, but ask him to leave the address, even though the visitor only needs to clarify some point. And he is not always ready to leave his email in exchange for an answer. Sometimes it's easier to contact a competitor.
After the chat, we are in RedHelper in contact with our target leads (who have shown some interest in the product), but do not offer to immediately start using the trial. In these letters we just let them know that they can ask any questions that we will gladly try to answer.
Sample manager welcome letters
49% of open letters and 21% of answered ones are an excellent result for letters of this type. For example, the same letters on purchased leads give only 1% of answered letters (another reason to generate leads on their own).
In addition, with the help of an online consultant, you can collect additional leads and during off-hours - using the offline form. It is enough to configure targeted active invitations for a particular section of the site, and they will automatically request the data of a potential client. Do not forget that for this method you also need to make an offer that the visitor cannot refuse.
Subscriptions and Auto Marketing
When we talk about lead generation, it’s hard to ignore the topic of mailing lists and automated marketing .
With subscriptions, you can monetize a previously captured lead. Returning to the topic of fly fishing, someone who downloaded your book or video might want to buy something to test what you said. It's time to offer this potential client a special offer for the equipment that appeared in the book / video.
This, of course, is just an example, and you must first send a few additional materials to build trust between you and the lead. If they like fly fishing, maybe something else would be interesting for them?
This is where marketing comes into play. Marketing automation will allow not to pore over each lead manually (which is long and expensive), but to process them en masse. Tools like HubSpot , Marketo , or Autopilot will help you with this — you can use them to create a chain of automated paths that your leads will take.
From the moment a lead is captured, it ends up on a specific route (or a journey, as it is called in Autopilot), after which they receive letters based on their coordinates on the route. Usually, everything starts with sending a little material for which the lead left his email. But after a while nothing prevents you from sending him another material, closely related to the previous one.
You can also send emails using various criteria — for example, you can check whether a potential customer has opened a past letter.
Such automation is a new step in the implementation of various lead generation strategies. In the end, leads will not convert themselves, they need a little push.
What kind of lead generation strategy should you use?
Lead generation and conversion should not cost thousands of dollars. Especially if you do not buy them directly.
By creating valuable content, capturing and holding leads in a natural way, you will increase sales without using expensive methods.
Here is a brief summary of what you need to do to start lead generation and what to do after.
1. Change contacts for useful content.
If you want to take the lead - give him something valuable. That is why you need to create useful content related to your business.
2. You do not need to buy all the leads.
There are advantages to buying leads, but you have to pay for them. Of course, this is the fastest way to get customer contacts, and such a step can be a good help at the start of a business. But later it is worthwhile to focus on the natural methods of lead generation. If only because then you will have unique leads that competitors do not have.
3. Find new lead search sites.
Your landing page on the site should not be the only place where you get leads. Work with a blog, interact with the audience in social networks, collect business cards at exhibitions.
If you are using chat or another way of communicating with a client on the site, you already have a powerful tool for finding leads among site visitors who need advice. If you are not yet using an online consultant, test our service on your site for free , and you will see for yourself how many clients you can additionally get by just chatting.
4. Mailings should not be only for sale
In order to keep a client, you should not immediately send a product catalog to him immediately after receiving the coveted address.
It will be much better if with each mailing you give something useful to the client. Give them more valuable content, it will affect future sales, because subscribers will want to try the products or services you write about.
5. The future of marketing automation
At some point there are so many leads that it is simply impossible to process them all manually. With the help of automatic mailing lists, you can contact hundreds and thousands of leads, and know exactly how they are converted into customers.
We can confidently recommend Autopilot , which works wonders with your e-mail newsletters. Alternatively, you can use HubSpot , Marketo , Act-on .
Surely there are other strategies that will not leave a marketer without pants. If you know and use such methods - please share in the comments!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/298756/
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