What Is Lead Generation Marketing?
In the world of sales and marketing, nothing will lower your success faster than a lack of new leads. These are the people interested in your products and services looking at buying from you sometime in the future. Without a steady supply of new leads, the business will soon start to lose revenue and profitability.
In today’s world, Lead generation marketing is a crucial aspect of keeping any business afloat. It is at the core of all marketing activities and ensures people are becoming interested in your business.
Today, many companies will even outsource their lead generation to a service provider who can attract, engage, and nurture future leads. These leads are then handed over to the company to take care of the initial sales calls, follow-up, and closing.
Websites like Facebook have embraced this new approach to marketing, adding Lead Ads and allowing people to collect information for follow-up.
This article covers what lead generation marketing is and how it can help your business thrive in the current competitive marketplace.
What Is Lead Generation Marketing?
Lead generation marketing is the process of creating and implementing a variety of marketing strategies that can attract and engage potential customers, also known as leads.
A successful lead generation campaign involves creating a marketing funnel that can slowly bring your new leads closer to becoming loyal customers.
From their first point of contact until they express interest in becoming a customer, everything must be fine-tuned to ensure that new leads are not lost along the way.
Also, the correct type of lead generation marketing will differ for a B2C (business-to-consumer) company from a B2B (business-to-business) company. This is because each type of lead generation has a different timeline and unique approach.
B2C vs. B2B Lead Generation Marketing
B2B lead generation marketing is focused on a business’s decision-makers instead of directly to consumers.
An excellent example of a B2B lead generation campaign is a free trial to business software through email marketing. Once a business has used the software for a short time, you are already in contact with them and can follow up to convert them into paying customers.
Lead generation marketing for a B2C company might be more personal and have a sense of uniqueness to it. For example, something as simple as creating an account to save purchases for the future or signing up for exclusive discounts can be good examples of B2C lead generation marketing.
B2C and B2B lead generation marketing campaigns will always differ according to the target audience. However, both marketing strategies share the same goal of creating customers.
All lead generation starts by capturing your target customer’s attention with a message or offer that resonates for them. After the first step, personalized communication and curated brand experiences are essential to make the person feel trust and interest in buying from you.
If you set up your marketing funnel well enough, your lead generation marketing can nurture and produce leads almost automatically.
In today’s digital world, genuine customer engagement is critical for sales, and every digital marketing channel has a role to play in improving your lead generation strategy.
Lead Generation Marketing Strategies To Try
There are many proven lead generation marketing tactics today. And although there is no perfect solution for each business, learning some of these lead generation best practices can help you achieve your business goals.
Here are the best lead generation marketing strategies to help grow new customers for your business:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Having a website that ranks for your prospects’ keywords is the ultimate form of lead generation marketing. If you want to gain new leads, then spend time optimizing your website and adding new content to ensure that the Google algorithm keeps ranking you well in the SERPs.
The downside of focusing on Search Engine Optimization is that it takes time and effort to get going. You can’t simply set up your website once and expect it to grow exponentially. Instead, you need to continually add new content and tweak and update based on essential ranking factors.
2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing
If you are looking for a quicker way to attract new leads, then paid advertising campaigns are always a good option. Whether on a social media site or Google, PPC marketing helps get you noticed by your potential customers when they are either searching or browsing online.
Keep in mind that PPC is not a permanent or low-cost option. You have to check with your industry whether it is worth spending the money to grab attention away from your competitors. If your industry is relatively low in competition, then PPC can be a viable option, alongside other strategies.
3. Link Building
Link building involves increasing links to your site from authoritative or highly credible websites in your industry. Backlinks can either be requested through outreach or earned organically through great content.
Link building is the second half of SEO and proves to the algorithms that your site is trustworthy by taking another website’s word for it.
Once again, it can take some time to grow, but you will see a spike in keywords and SERP results for your website as you do.
4. Email Marketing Lead Generation
Email marketing has come a long way over the past 25 years. It used to be that people would open up every email they received. But today, there has to be something to entice them. Your emails must have a clear purpose, and the headlines should always explain what to expect once they open them.
It’s also vital to track open rates and link clicks in your emails to know which leads are more engaged and worth connecting with.
5. Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the practice of optimizing your website or landing page experience based on website visitor behavior. This practice helps improve conversions on those specific pages. CRO marketing and CRO strategy have become a big part of how businesses increase sales and revenue in their business.
With CRO, it is essential to focus on the different types of transactions.
The first is a macro-conversion, which is when a user completes a purchase transaction representing the primary objective of your site or a specific page.
The second is a micro-conversion, which represents a completed activity like signing up for an email newsletter.
Lead Generation Marketing Should Always Be a Priority
All these different tactics will help to boost your lead generation marketing and boost the volume of new customer leads in your business. The best approach is to choose one or two of these and begin to track the success of each. Then, by multiplying the strategies that you use, you can start to see the cumulative effect.
Lead generation is a lot to handle alongside the regular day-to-day running of your business. Most companies don’t have specialized teams to cover lead generation.
For this reason, some companies can find value in hiring digital marketing agencies to expand further their ability to attract new leads to their business.
If you are looking to grow the volume of leads for your business, then Brandastic can help. Brandastic is an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Orange County. We work with companies in Orange County, Los Angeles, and Austin to enhance their digital marketing, social media ads and SEO. Contact us today about growing your online marketing success.