What Is Lead Generation?
It is the process of generating consumer interest for a product or service with the goal of turning that interest into a sale. In internet marketing collecting a visitor’s contact information using a web form is called a “Lead”.
Lead generation is a core part of the sales funnel for many B2B companies since their products can cost thousands of dollars and web visitors less likely to buy their product or service directly from the website. Collecting leads allows the businesses to educate and nurture prospective customers through e-mail marketing, before reaching out to them directly via salespeople.
Lead generation is also important for all small and large businesses, as e-mail marketing remains one of the most effective channels for marketing online, and gathering a prospective customer’s contact information for their businesses.
How Lead Generation Works?
Getting traffic to your site and collecting contact information.
It is depending on your business goals and budget, there are many ways to start attracting prospects to your site. The following are the some of the key ways which businesses use to drive traffic:
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - a form of internet marketing, online advertising that includes paying to search engines (such as Google or Bing) to display ads in their search engine results pages (SERP).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Search engine optimization is similar to SEM, in that it involves getting traffic from search engines, but rather than paying search engines for ads, SEO includes optimizing website for search engine algorithms so that it appears top position in the organic search results.
Social Media Marketing- Social Media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn have grown to become some of the most popular sites on the web, and are beginning to rival search as major sources of traffic. It is possible to generate traffic from social media sites by posting content to the social media platforms or paying for ads that run on the networks.
Display Ads (Google Ads) - it comes in various forms such as video, image, audio or text. These ads can be inorganic way of advertising on relevant websites in order to drive that traffic to your own site.
Offline Social Events Online internet marketing can often begin offline. Events such as industry conferences and meetups can be good ways to network with prospects, inform them about your brand, and get them to your website. Such as you attend as a guest, events that you sponsor, or events that you host yourself. Once visitors start arriving to your site, the next step is to convert them into leads via an online form. This can be done in many ways but involves getting users interested in your product or service and getting them to submit their contact info, often through the use of an incentive (known as a “lead magnet”).
Generate leads for businesses:
Content is a King in Online Internet Marketing – having a high-quality content in exchange for contact information is a common practice in lead generation. Content would be in the form of a white paper or info graphic to an eBook or exclusive video. The idea is to entice the user with a piece of useful content that is relevant to your business and require them to provide their contact info before they can get access to the content.
Webinars for Online Internet Marketing - A webinar is a live video session which your visitors can view and participate in. Webinars gives us information and educational material about a specific topic. Because webinars are interactive and require a big investment in time, they can be a great way to not only create a lead but also to educate and convert them.
Landing Pages (Micro- Website) for Online Internet Marketing -The best lead generation tool of all is your product. If you have a compelling product that solves a major pain point, visitors will want to provide their contact information even without any incentives. Presenting your product in the most attractive way is often done through landing pages or sales pages, which help educate and convert prospective customers. Landing page optimization is the key to making sure you are getting the most out of these pages.
Once a lead is created, businesses need to pay close attention to nurturing the lead. This nurturing process typically involves marketing automation campaigns via e-mail with content that helps to educate and persuade the prospect. After a lead has been nurtured, a prospect can be convinced to make a purchase on the website or by reaching out to a salesperson. In enterprise sales, it is often the sales team that reaches out to the prospect to close the deal.
How To Improve Your Lead Generation
Aside from driving more traffic to your site, there are many ways in which you can optimize your website in order to drive more leads.
Since content is often a key incentive for driving leads, experiment with different pieces of content and lead magnets to determine what type of content performs the best. Beyond incentives, often a key part of the conversion funnel that can be optimized is the lead form. Although it is beneficial from a business standpoint to collect as much information as possible about a prospect, more forms field’s leads to a reduction in form submissions.
