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We've all been there! You know, the moment you're about to dive into the best pile of spaghetti you've ever seen. And just as you're twirling your fork in the pasta and taking your first bite… the phone rings. “Can I speak with…?” the person on the phone asks. “It's an important message regarding your oven preferences.” This frustrating interruption is exactly why we're here to talk about inbound lead generation . And the question is…
What is inbound lead generation?
It's a solution that can prevent your company or organization from becoming that annoying, disturbing interlocutor who's ruining spaghetti nights for pasta lovers around the world.
Let's start by defining a lead , and then we'll look at what online lead generation is, why lead generation is needed, how to qualify someone as a lead, how to generate leads, and why inbound lead generation is far more effective than simply purchasing leads.
What is a lead?
A lead is a person who has expressed interest in your company's product or service in some way. As a lead, you would hear from a company or organization with whom you've already opened contact rather than receiving a random call from someone who previously purchased your contact information.
From a business perspective, the information any company gathered about you from your survey responses helps tailor opening communications to address existing issues.
What is lead generation?
Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into someone who has expressed interest in your company's product or service . Some examples of lead generators include job applications, blog posts, coupons, live events, and online content.
Whenever someone outside of the marketing world asks what exactly we do, we can't just say "create content for lead generation." They'd be completely lost, and we wouldn't get some really confused looks. So instead of saying that, we say "we work to find unique ways to attract people to our business ."
We want to offer just enough to get them naturally interested in the company and ultimately interested in the brand.” This typically resonates best, and that’s exactly what lead generation is all about: it’s a way to nurture potential customers into your business and move them toward a final purchase .
Why do we need lead generation?
When an outsider initiates a relationship with the company by showing an organic interest in the business, the transition from outsider to customer is much more natural. Lead generation is part of the second stage of the inbound marketing methodology .
This happens after you've attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team (i.e., sales-qualified leads). Next, as we can see in the diagram, generating leads is a critical point in an individual's journey to becoming a delighted customer.
How do we generate leads?
Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the overall inbound marketing methodology, let's look at the steps involved in generating these leads. First, a visitor discovers the business through one of the marketing channels, such as the website, blog, or social media page.
The visitor then clicks on the call to action (CTA) —an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some kind of action. The CTA takes the visitor to a landing page , which is a web page designed to capture information from potential customers in exchange for an offer. An offer is the content or something of value “offered” on the landing page, such as an eBook, course, or template. The offer must have enough perceived value that a visitor is willing to provide their personal information in exchange for accessing it.
The landing page form consists of a series of fields that collect information in exchange for the offer. Typically, forms are located on the landing page, although technically they can be embedded anywhere on the page. Once a visitor fills out the form, voila! You have a new lead! See how it all fits together?
To summarize: the visitor clicks on a CTA that takes them to a landing page where they fill out a form to receive an offer. This is when they become a candidate.
Lead Generation Marketing
Once you've gathered all these elements, you can use various promotional channels to drive traffic to your landing page and start generating leads. But which channels should you use to promote your landing page? Let's talk about the front end of lead generation: lead generation marketing .
There are even more channels you can use to convert visitors into leads. Let's dive deeper into these and talk about a few others.
Content
Content is a great way to guide users to a landing page. Typically, you create content to provide visitors with useful, free information . CTAs can be included anywhere in the content: inline, at the bottom of the post, in the sidebar… The more engaged the visitor is with the content, the more likely they are to click on the call to action and move on to the landing page.
Email is a great place to reach people who already know your brand, product, or service. It's much easier to ask them to take action since they've already subscribed to your list. Emails tend to be a bit cluttered, so it's best to use a CTA with compelling copy and an eye-catching design to capture subscribers' attention. This is the job of an email marketing service .
Ads and retargeting
The sole purpose of an ad is to get people to take an action . Otherwise, why spend the money? If you want people to convert, make sure your landing page and offer exactly match what you promised in the ad, and that the action you want users to take is crystal clear.
Blog
The best thing about using blog posts to promote an offer is that you can tailor the entire piece to your end goal. So, if the offer is a how-to video on setting up Google Search Console, you could write a blog post on how to select marketing metrics… which would make the CTA highly relevant and easy to click.
Blogging is a powerful tool for attracting quality traffic, but it requires SEO experts to research the right keywords to rank in search engines .
Social networks
Social media platforms make it easy to guide followers to take action , from the swipe-up option on Instagram Stories to Facebook bio links to Bitly URLs on Twitter. You can also promote your offers in your social posts and include a call to action in your caption.
Product testing
You can break down many barriers to a window by offering product or service trials . Once a prospect is using the product, you can entice them with additional offers or resources to encourage them to purchase. Another good practice is to include branding in free trials so you can capture other potential customers as well.
Referral marketing
Referral marketing is useful for lead generation in a different way. It puts your brand in front of more people, which, in turn, increases the chances of generating more leads. Regardless of the channel you use to generate leads, you want to guide users to your landing page. Once you've created the landing page, the rest will take care of itself.
Why not buy leads?
Marketers and salespeople want to fill the sales funnel , and fill it quickly. Getting in: The temptation to buy customers. Buying leads, rather than generating them organically, is much easier and requires much less time and effort, despite being more expensive.
You could be paying for advertising anyway… so why not buy leads? First of all, any purchased leads don't really know your company. They usually "sign up" somewhere else when they register for something, and they haven't actually opted in to receive anything from your company .
So, the messages you send them are spam , and spamming is intrusive. Remember that disturbing call we got when we were trying to eat spaghetti? That's how people feel when they receive emails and other messages from people who didn't ask for news. If the prospect has never been on the web and indicated an interest in the products or services, then they're being interrupted. If they never specifically opted in to receive messages from the company, then there's a good chance they could flag the messages as spam , which is quite dangerous.
Once enough people mark your messages as spam, you can end up on a "blacklist," which is then shared with other email providers. And once you're blacklisted, it's very difficult to get off. Additionally, your email deliverability and IP reputation will likely suffer. It's always better to generate leads rather than buy them.
How to qualify a potential client?
As we explained in the first section, a potential customer is a person who has expressed interest in a company's product or service . Now let's discuss the different ways someone can express interest. Essentially, a sales lead is generated through information gathering.
This information collection could be the result of a job seeker expressing interest in a position by completing an application, a shopper sharing contact information in exchange for a coupon, or a person completing a form to download educational content.
How to measure a potential client's level of interest?
Below are some of the many ways we might qualify someone as a potential customer. Each of these examples shows that the amount of information collected and used to qualify a customer can vary.
- Job Application : A person who completes an application form is willing to share a great deal of personal information because they want to be considered for the position. Completing that application demonstrates genuine interest in the job, thereby qualifying the person as a leader for the company's recruiting team, not the marketing or sales teams.
- Coupon : Unlike a job application, very little is likely known about someone who found one of your coupons online. But if they find the coupon valuable enough, they may be willing to provide their name and email address in exchange for it. While this isn't a lot of information, it's enough to let a company know someone is interested in it.
- Content : While downloading a coupon shows that a person has a direct interest in the product or service, content (such as an educational eBook or webinar) does not. Therefore, to truly understand the nature of the person's interest in the business, you'll likely need to gather more information to determine if the person is interested in the product or service and if it's a good fit.
These three general examples highlight how lead generation differs from company to company and from person to person. You'll need to gather enough information to assess whether someone has a genuine and valid interest in your product or service; the amount of information that is sufficient will vary depending on the business.
Customer rating
Lead scoring is a way of quantitatively qualifying leads . Using this technique, leads are assigned a numerical value (or score) to determine where they fall on the scale of “interested” to “sales-ready.”
The criteria for these actions depend entirely on the company, but should be consistent across the marketing and sales departments so everyone is working on the same scale. A lead's score can be based on the actions they've taken, the information they've provided, their level of engagement with your brand, or other criteria determined by the sales team.
For example, you might rate someone higher if they regularly interact with you on social media or if their demographic information matches your target audience.
The higher a lead's score, the closer they are to becoming a sales-qualified lead —and they're only one step away from becoming a customer. Scoring and criteria can be tweaked along the way until you find the formula that works, but once you do, it will transform your lead generation into a customer generation.
Lead generation strategies
Online lead generation encompasses a wide range of tactics, campaigns, and strategies, depending on the platform you want to capture customers on. Below, we'll share some of the lead generation strategies we use in our digital marketing agency for some of the most popular platforms.
Lead generation through Facebook
Facebook has been a lead generation method since its inception. Originally, companies could use outbound links on their websites. However, when Facebook Ads launched in 2007 and its algorithm began favoring accounts that used paid advertising, there was a significant shift in the way companies used the platform to capture potential customers.
Facebook created Lead Ads for this purpose. Facebook also has a feature that allows you to place a simple call-to-action button at the top of your Facebook page, helping send Facebook followers directly to your company's website.
Lead generation through Twitter
Twitter has lead generation cards , which allow you to generate leads directly within a tweet without having to leave the site. A user's name, email address, and Twitter handle are automatically entered into the card, and all they have to do is click "Submit" to become a lead.
Lead generation through LinkedIn
LinkedIn has been increasing its presence in the advertising space since its inception. When it comes to lead generation, LinkedIn created Lead Gen Forms , which automatically populate users' profile data when they click on a call-to-action, making it easier to capture information.
Lead generation through PPC
When we say PPC ( pay per click ), we're referring to ads on search engine results pages (SERPs). Google receives 3.5 trillion searches a day, making it a prime location for any advertising campaign, especially for the senior generation. The effectiveness of PPC campaigns relies heavily on a seamless flow of users, as well as budget, targeted keywords, and a few other factors.
Lead generation through B2B
B2B is a unique business model that requires a unique approach to lead generation. SEO is the primary resource for capturing leads, closely followed by email marketing and social media. Not to mention, effectiveness varies by channel.
Tips for generating customers through campaigns
In any lead generation campaign, there can be many moving parts. It can be difficult to know which parts of the campaign are working and which ones need fine-tuning. Here are some tips for creating lead generation campaigns.
Use the right lead generation tools
In any lead generation campaign , there can be many moving parts. It can be difficult to know which parts of the campaign are working and which ones need fine-tuning. Here are some tips for creating lead generation campaigns.
- CTA Templates – 50+ free, customizable PowerPoint call-to-action (CTA) templates that can be used to create clickable CTA buttons on your blog, landing pages, and other website content.
- Form Scraping Tool – A form scraping tool that collects submissions from existing website forms will help you automatically consolidate all your leads into your contact database, regardless of which form was submitted by website visitors.
Create amazing offers for all the different stages of the buying cycle
Not all website visitors are ready to talk to the sales team or see a product demo.
At the beginning of the buyer's journey, someone might be interested in an informative piece like an eBook or guide, while someone more familiar with the company and near the end of the journey might be more interested in a free trial or demo.
It's important to ensure you're creating offers for each phase and providing CTAs for these offers throughout your website. Yes, it takes time to create valuable content that educates and nurtures potential customers, but if you don't offer anything to visitors who aren't ready to buy, they may never return to your website. If you want to take personalization a step further, which will help increase your conversion rate, try using smart calls to action.
Smart CTAs detect when a person is in the buyer's journey—whether they're a new visitor, a prospect, or a customer—and display calls to action accordingly. Personalized CTAs convert 42% more visitors than basic CTAs.
Keep the message consistent and deliver on the promise
The highest-converting lead generation campaigns are those that deliver on their promises and create a seamless transition from ad copy and design to the product itself.
It's important to ensure you present a consistent message throughout the process and provide value to everyone involved in capturing leads. The aspects of your lead generation campaign should reflect everything else on your website, blog, and the product you'll eventually try to sell. Otherwise, you'll struggle to gain a foothold in the next stage of the lead lifecycle.
The campaign should be about more than just getting an email address, it should be about developing a new customer.
Link the call to action to a dedicated landing page
This may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many marketers don't create dedicated landing pages for their offers. CTAs should send visitors to a landing page where they can receive a specific offer. Don't use calls to action to drive people to the homepage, for example. Even if the CTA is about the brand or product (and maybe not an offer like a download), you should still send them to a specific landing page that will convert them into a lead.
Get the sales team involved
Remember when we talked about customer scoring? Well, it's not exactly feasible without the sales team's input. How will you know what qualifies a sales lead without knowing if their defined proposals are successfully sold?
Marketing and sales teams must be aligned on the definitions and process of moving a marketing opportunity to SQL to opportunity before they even begin capturing leads.
Additionally, you need to be open to the evolving nature of your relationship with sales and how you guide prospects through the funnel. Definitions will likely need to be refined over time; it's just important to make sure everyone involved is up to date.
Use social media strategically
While marketers often think of social media as the best for marketing, it can still be a useful and low-cost source for lead generation, as shared in the lead generation strategies above. The key is to use social media strategically to generate leads.
It's best to link directly to the landing pages of high-performing offers from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media posts. Tell visitors you're sending them to a landing page. That way, you'll set expectations.
You can also do a blog lead generation analysis to find out which posts generate the most leads, and then make a point of regularly linking social media posts to them.
Another way to generate leads from social media is to run a contest . Contests are fun and engaging for your followers, and they can also teach you a lot about your audience. It's a win-win.
Stay flexible and constantly iterate
Your lead generation strategy must be as dynamic as the people you want to target. Trends change, behaviors shift, opinions transform… so must your lead generation marketing.
Use A/B split testing to see which CTAs work best, which landing pages convert best, and which copy captures your target audience. Experiment with changes to the layout, design, content, and advertising channels until you find what works best.
Conclusion
The basic principles we've discussed in this blog post are just the beginning. Continue creating great offers, calls to action, landing pages, and forms, and promote them in multi-channel environments.
Remember, it's important to stay in touch with your sales team to ensure they're consistently delivering high-quality leads. Last but not least, never stop testing.
The more you modify and test each step of your inbound lead generation process, the better your lead quality and increased revenue.
