A Guide to Lead Generation  

Example of long-form SEO blog post for a client – Originally published in 2018

If you’re a business leader who’s not constantly trying to upgrade your lead generating activities, or if you’re planning on running a business in the future and you aren’t clear on what lead generation is, this is something that you can’t afford to skip out on.

When it comes to marketing your goods and services in the digital marketing sphere, there are various ways to:

-Capture leads

-Determine whether or not they are qualifieid

-Nurture leads

-Convert leads

We’ve created this comprehensive guide is to help leaders clarify, refine and evolve their lead generating activities in order to ensure that they’re on the right track towards an optimal conversion rate.

What is lead generation? 

If you’re running a business, you should already at least have some idea of what you’re doing to find customers. But in the digital world there are so many options that you may not even know you’re doing lead generation. 

A lead is simply someone who shows interest in what you have to offer. They may come through:

·         a referral

·         a targeted offer

·         a coupon

·         an email signup

·         valuable blog content

·         an e-book

The key to knowing what you’re doing with company lead gen is truly being clear on your sales funnel in the context of your particular company. This will vary based on industry, sales cycle, sales strategies, demographics, competition, and other aspects of your business.

What’s most important is that you and your team have a standard definition with which to measure against and that makes sense for your unique business and position in the industry. 

Inbound Marketing and Lead Generation   

Lead generation falls into two categories: inbound and outbound. While there are still some outbound activities that can be effective — cold “emailing” via LinkedIn or TV ads, for instance — they are not entirely out of the picture. But they do need to be used more strategically than ever before.

This is because internet activity is about people finding you, and not the other way around. They want to choose your brand or product, rather than being sold to. They’re typically more educated and aware of the choices they do have. Plus, they can get almost any product or service they want, at almost any time.

In that light, businesses must understand how to stand out in a crowded marketplace and be the product or service that people choose.

The Lead Gen Process

So how do you find leads in the first place? Here, we’ll give you an overview, and then go into detail about the most popular digital strategies for lead generation.

The lead generation process basically follows a notion of the sales funnel and the buyers’ journey. Consider that a basic sales funnel, aligned with the buyer’s journey, looks something like this:

1. Awareness: Your potential buyer understands that a product or service you offer could solve a problem or fill a need of theirs. They ask for information or engage on social media.

2. Consideration: The potential buyer is researching different options, since they are pretty certain they want something similar to your product or service.

3. Decision: This is the purchasing or conversion stage.

4. Return: How likely are they to stick around or come back for another purchase.

Lead nurturing is simply attracting attention in the hopes of converting them into customers by bringing them from the “warm” (interested) phase of buying, to the “hot” (about to purchase) stage, and finally to conversion. And this process truly is based on longer-term relationship-building in any case, so don’t forget about the “retention” (nurturing) phase of the sales funnel.  

Which part of the funnel for lead generation?

It’s important that lead generation marketers focus on techniques in the middle of the funnel to hold their trust and attention to continuously try to “warm” their leads. This is where high-quality content comes in, as does a regular “reminder” of who you are.

You can think of this as what used to be considered a classic sales outbound sales strategy: the follow-up call(s), which is often addressed in the form of an email series leading up to an offer.

Offers, which may be, say, free e-books or templates, typically come through specifically set-up (lead-capture) forms on landing pages which are designed to collect information about customers in exchange for something of value.  

Your landing page should be optimized for lead capture. The key is understanding which are the best channels to find those leads and direct them to your landing page.   

The New Buying Process  

Long ago, the process of lead generation meant that marketers had to chase people around and convince them that they needed something. Of course, this wasn’t always done in a pushy way, but there’s a reason why the image of the “pushy” or “untrustworthy” salesperson sticks around with us.

But with the internet, people are more likely to search for your brand or product, which is why businesses have more impetus to do what they can to differentiate themselves. Added to this is the fact that there’s much more information out there than ever — yet our attention spans are decreasing.

Today, people purchasing products expected to talk to salespeople. They’re researching things — even big-ticket items like cars and houses — on their own. They’re educated and choosy, and they don’t need or want to be “sold to.”  

That’s why content marketing needs to be your main go-to when it comes to lead generation.  

Content, instead of salespeople, is used to build authority and trust and to engage audiences organically.

B2B Lead Generation Strategies

When it comes to B2B, inbound marketing takes in a bit of a different hue than it does with B2C, simply because you’re trying to generate interest of a different nature. Typically, marketing to other professionals requires a bit of a different strategy.

But inbound marketing — the process of “bringing” people to you, rather than “going” to them, is still key here.

With B2B lead gen, the process will go something like this:

1. Someone finds out about your business via a certain digital or other channel

2. The person finds a call to action on your website and decides to click

3. They are then directed to a landing page where they are asked for their information in exchange for a free or inexpensive offer of value to them. This could be anything from an in-depth webinar to a simple template; the point is that it has to offer enough value for this particular exchange to be worthwhile. 

4. They receive a few informative emails, the third of which succeeds in convincing them to purchase your software program on a trial basis

What you need to do is create something of value that people want to engage with. This might be informative, educational or entertaining — the point is that it has to be meaningful and in the right place.

Types of Lead Generation Activities

We can divide lead generation activities into two categories: organic versus paid. Organic lead generation activities drive traffic without paid ads. General social media, blogging, content marketing, and video are all example of organic lead generation tools. Paid tools, on the other hand, include pay-per-click ads and social ads.

For the organic side, content marketing and lead generation go hand in hand. This is because content is one of the best ways to engage, inspire and inform people in an organic way.

Here’s a rundown of some key categories of lead generation tools and how they’re best used. 

Blogging

Blog posts are wonderful ways to interact with buyers. They’re super valuable because you can do whatever you want with them: create evergreen posts, create long form pillar content, create snippets out of existing posts, or even create simple, short clips you can use to intrigue readers into following you of more detailed information.

A few keys to making sure your blog stands out:

·         Be sure to advertise it on the appropriate social channel (s)

·         Make sure it’s SEO-optimized

·         Include an intriguing call to action at the end (e.g.: subscribe or follow)

·         Make sure it’s well formatted for readability (e.g.: large font, plenty of white space)

SEO

SEO goes hand-in-hand with content marketing and both are used together to drive traffic to your website. This is, in part, because your SEO value will be based on the overall quality of your content.  

Content is nothing without SEO and lead gen is (almost) nothing without content, so the three must work together to:

·         Establish a reputable online presence

·         Offer your customers information of genuine value

·         Create a trust-based relationship with potential buyers

·         Highlight and differentiate your brand and products

Remember that content comes in a variety of formats, and a careful balance of visual and written is key here, as is using the right social channels and marketing techniques.

Email Marketing

Email marketing shows a consistently high ROI through various industries and types of marketing. It’s effective because it’s not only versatile, but it’s direct without being overly invasive. Email has the potential to attract people in a fairly personal way, and this is one of the reasons why it works. 

Display and Pay-Per-Click

These are the main types of paid lead generation activities for digital and they’re based in search. They may be extremely effective because they can be highly targeted in publications and in Google searches.

Events  

Events are the tried, tested and true lead-generating activities across the board, for B2B and B2C. It’s not news that networking in-person is great for meeting people to see and understand you.

Though this is sometimes considered an outbound strategy, it works to get valuable attention. Today’s events typically have a digital component (think ted talks) so getting on as a speaker, for instance can have a far-reaching effect on your brand and business.

Lead Generation with Social Media  

One of the tricks here is to have a clear understanding of how much energy to focus on the first two phases (lead generation) versus nurturing and retention.

Many new leads won’t be ready to purchase, so it’s crucial that sales teams and managers have a handle on how to build trust — and social media is essential for brand building, awareness, and trust. 

Sometimes, though, companies that spend too much time at the top of the funnel get in the cycle of lead generation but then never actually convert those customers. Thus, it’s important to have a clear picture of where your own “cold – warm – hot” phases are and how they happen.

Refining this continuously should be a key part of your digital strategy, no matter who you are.

The point is that you want to track everyone so that your leads aren’t lost to the competition

Truth be told, social media is usually thought of as something that sits at the top of the sales funnel, with its primary purposes leaning towards brand awareness and engagement rather than literally capturing or even nurturing leads. But the right social networking strategies, and the right choice of platform, when directed to a target audience.  

Facebook / Instagram / Twitter

Generally, social media will have a lower conversion rate than advertising strategies like pay-per-click (PPC) or even SEO. However, new tools like Facebook Lead Ads and Instagram for Business are making it easier and easier to use social for lead generation, especially if a high percentage of your traffic tends to come through mobile.

In Facebook, you can also add a call-to-action button directly on your page. Twitter too has Lead Gen Cards which pulls people content information and allows the to submit it directly

B2B and Social Media

When it comes to B2B, most experts agree that the most effective lead-generating strategies are (in no particular order) 

·         Social networking

·         Content marketing

·         Search marketing

·         Email marketing

Across pretty much every industry, email stands out as a versatile and budget-friendly means to generate brand awareness, educate and inform your audience, and send offers, and this is especially the case when utilized in combination with marketing automation. 

Content marketing works across the board and may involve a number of strategies, including e-newsletters, whitepapers, video blogs (vlogs) and webinars. Many B2B marketers are directing information towards audiences in very targeted fields, which means that people are more likely to be looking for more detailed, factual information. That’s why case studies and whitepapers, for instance tend to work better for B2B.

B2B also is more likely to have a longer sales cycle and thus establishing long-term relationships is crucial.

SEO and social media certainly need to be paid attention to for B2B in just about every sphere. Anyone can tie social media activities to blogs and landing page-based lead generating actions. And B2B marketers will want to have a clear understanding of how to use professional social media sites like LinkedIn to draw in leads. This is especially the case through, for instance, LinkedIn ads. 

Measuring Lead Generation

Metrics for measuring lead generation are crucial for success and should be integrated into the marketing plan as early as possible. When determining lead generation metrics, here are some important points to consider:

·         What are you measuring?

·         When are you measuring?

·         How are you measuring?

·         What is your main audience base?

·         What social channel has the most engagement? 

·         Who in your company has a clear understanding of lead metrics?  

Remember that the metrics themselves are really just sets of numbers. What you really need to understand is how these numbers are specifically showing the progress of your marketing and sales activities.

Some Basic Metrics You Need to Know Before Measuring Leads 

One way you can measure how your business is doing when it comes to lead generation performance is via KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Once you understand these basic metrics, you can then use them to inform more details about your sales strategy, and what’s going on throughout the entire sales funnel.

These are just a few of many metrics you need to get a grasp on before moving on to lead scoring and related metrics.

·         Click-through-rates (CTR): This is a basic but important part of all email marketing strategies. It generally measures how well your call to action (CTA) in your email is doing at moving people from your email messages over to your landing page. Though most marketing automation tools will measure this automatically, the calculation is number of clicks divided by number of visitors.

·         Conversion rates: Everyone wants to know their conversion rates, and of course this is crucial for any company’s bottom line. Use it in relation to (for instance) how many visitors you’re getting and your specific marketing campaign goals.

·         Time to conversion: If you have a complex or long sales cycle, this will affect your lead generation activities.

·         ROI: Everyone needs to know their return on investment, of course. But the reason it’s a key metric mentioned here is that you want to understand the ROI in terms of specific lead-generating activities — for instance, your ROI for a specific ad campaign type or your ROI in relation to a specific social channel.

When used in the right way, all of these basic metrics can help you understand how your sales funnel works and will eventually lead you to a clear picture of your cost-per-lead, as well as the time it takes to capture and convert them.

Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) / Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)

The above KPIs will end up giving you a general idea of which activities tend to point leads in the right direction. They are connected to your business activities as a whole. However, you will also want to be measuring the leads themselves – that is, whether or not they are “sales qualified.”

This is crucial for businesses which have separate sales teams which are not necessarily responsible for lead generation or lead generation activities. The purpose of qualifying leads is to understand which leads to send to the sales team. 

Lead scoring is simply a term for understanding and measuring those who appear to be interested in your product. It’s the part of your sales funnel that comes after lead generation but before conversions.

In this part of the funnel, you’ll need to observe metrics that allow you to measure lead quality and lead-to-conversion rates, such as:    

·         Quality of SQLs

·         Quantity of SQLs

·         Conversions of marketing qualified leads (MQL) to sales accepted leads (SAL) – conversions

·         Conversions of SAL to SQL    

Your sales qualified leads (SQL) is the last phase in the funnel which lead to conversions. 

Involving Your Sales Team is Crucial 

Your sales team to have a solid understanding of not only lead gen metrics but also lead scoring metrics – in other words, what factors are primary when it comes to moving leads along the sales funnel. 

They should be constantly observing what factors are in place when it comes to converting marketing qualified leads to sales qualified leads, as well as what gets in the way of this happening. 

Everyone involved in leads and sales needs to be on the ball when it comes to the definition of a lead and an SQL. This will vary between companies and will even change over time.    

Automation Is Key

Businesses need to have customer relationship management (CRM) systems set up in order to manage their contacts and understand the lead generation and conversion process. This is a crucial part of growing their lists, managing contacts, and simply keeping track of everything to do with lead generation. 

HubSpot CRM tools are a great way to do this, and for those just starting out, with smaller companies and smaller budgets, there’s even a free tool. 

A Constant Process of Improvement 

When it comes to inbound marketing, finding high quality leads through a strategically developed lead generation strategy is essential for any sized business. Fortunately, today we have access to plenty of tools and information to help guide us through the process. 

Having the right lead generation software, constantly analyzing and improving your process, and maintaining a clear dedication to understanding your customer’s deeper needs will inevitably lead you in the direction of optimal conversion rates.

*This post was originally written in 2018 for https://www.thinkfuel.ca/lead-generation/