Introduction
Lead generation is a critical step towards obtaining new clients and more revenue. The biggest challenge that most companies face when it comes to generating leads is that they’re not getting enough of them.
In this ultimate guide, we will discuss why companies should start integrating lead generation as part of their overall marketing strategy and how to go about doing so.
The Importance of Lead Generation for Business Success
One of the most important factors for a successful digital marketing campaign is lead generation. But, what is lead generation, and what is its purpose?
It is a process that helps you to generate qualified prospects and increase your sales. This process can take different forms, such as social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and more.
Lead generation is critical to a company’s success. It’s also the lifeline of any digital marketing strategy.
Ways to Generate Leads Through Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is an important factor for the success of any business. Successful digital marketing campaigns help in getting higher-quality leads for your business.
In the digital age, it’s more important than ever to have a strategy that can generate leads. Without them, your sales will suffer and you’ll never be able to grow your business.
The whole point of digital marketing is to generate leads for your business. Your goal should be to identify the right audience, make them aware of your business, and get them engaged with it.
Here Are 19 Proven Methods for Generating Leads via Digital Marketing
1. Email Marketing 📧
Email marketing is one of the best ways to convert leads into customers. It helps in lead nurturing and extends the reach of a marketing campaign. Having an email list can have a great impact on the sales of your business. It can help you target specific audiences, track results, and measure performance.
2. SEO 🔎
Search Engine Optimization is by far one of the most effective ways to find new leads. The keywords you choose need to be relevant to your business and the services you offer.
SEO is all about optimizing your site so that your content is found by your prospective customers. By using the right keywords in your titles, your meta tags, your URLs, and your content or blogs, you increase your chances of being discovered and getting more visitors. But bear in mind that SEO takes a considerable amount of time to fetch results.
3. PPC
Pay-Per-Click advertising is one more effective way to generate leads for your business. PPC campaigns are built using keywords related to the products or services you sell.
When potential customers search for these keywords, your ad will appear at the top of the results page. The ad can link to your website or provide additional information about your products or services.
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4. Blogging 📝
It is an excellent way to generate leads for your business. It also helps you increase your company’s visibility and authority in your industry.
A good content marketing strategy can yield lead generation. You need to write blogs regularly and make sure that they are always interesting and relevant to your target audience.
5. Social Media Marketing 📣
It is an effective lead generation technique. By using social media, companies can build communities based on their niche.
Customers and prospects can communicate and interact with the brand through social media sites. Moreover, social media can be used to create awareness about a product or service and drive traffic to your website.
i) Facebook
With Facebook, your business can reach out to thousands of potential customers. As of 2020 Facebook has 1.78 billion active users.
There are many ways to market your business through Facebook, including advertising and running contests.
Facebook has become a very powerful tool for businesses to connect with their current and potential customers to generate leads.
ii) LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social media platform built around business professionals, companies, and recruiters. It is an ideal platform to promote your business and grow your network of contacts.
People on LinkedIn are generally very active, which makes them a great target audience for direct mail.
iii) Instagram
Instagram is a powerful platform for marketers. It has nearly 1 billion monthly active users and they can be targeted for specific actions.
Marketers are using Instagram for lead generation. This is a great way to generate leads in the shortest possible time.
6. Website Forms
Web forms can be an effective way to generate leads for your business and increase conversion rates due to their targeted approach. There are primarily two basic types of web forms, namely contact forms and opt-in forms.
i) Contact Forms 📇
Also known as “contact us” or “inquiry” forms, contact forms are placed on a company’s website and allow potential customers to submit requests or inquiries electronically.
ii) Opt-in Forms
Opt-in forms are designed to generate leads by prompting site visitors to provide information about themselves in exchange for a reward, usually in the form of downloadable content such as white papers, ebooks, or other relevant information.
Opt-in web forms can also be used to collect email addresses for direct sales campaigns.
7. Free Trials and Demos
In order to generate leads from your website, you can offer a demo or trial version of your product. You can provide this for free so that people can try it before they buy it.
This will increase the chances of someone buying your product in the future because they know what they are getting into beforehand.
Example: HellovCard.com, a digital business card creator, provides a free version of their application (with limited functionality) in order to create leads and encourage free users to upgrade to a subscription plan.
8. Social Contests/Giveaways
When you run a social contest to promote your company or product, you’ll generate leads faster than you can count.
You can create a contest on Facebook and other social media platforms using websites like sweepwidget, upviral, MailChimp, etc., to create an automatic entry system for people to sign up.
Once they do so, you can easily collect their email ID and other contact details. This will generate a lot of easy leads because people love to take part in contests.
9. Develop Gated Content
Gated content is a marketing strategy that involves offering valuable content in exchange for the contact information of potential customers.
It is made available only to people who fill out a form with their contact details. So, gated content is a type of locked content differing from blog posts or landing pages.
Some of the examples of gated content assets are e-books, guides, white papers, reports, courses, worksheets, and online tools.
10. Create a Good Quality Newsletter
The key to successful lead generation is to create a high-quality newsletter that will be sent out on a regular basis. A newsletter is an excellent way to keep your leads updated on your latest products and services.
It should be informative, entertaining, and provide value to the reader. Your newsletter can include information about special offers, upcoming events, and updates about your products and services.
11. Webinar
Webinars are a great way to generate leads. It is a live online seminar that allows people to participate in the event from any location.
They are also a good way to educate potential customers about your product or service. You can use webinars to introduce your company, tell the audience about the benefits of your product or service, provide a demonstration, and answer any questions that they might have.
It is a great strategy for lead generation because it allows you to reach out to your target market and capture their contact information while they are engaged in the event.
Once you have their contact information, you can follow up with them via email or other offline channels.
12. Give a Coupon or Discount Offer
In order to generate leads, you need to offer something that your target audience is interested in. This could be a coupon or a discount.
This strategy works best when it comes to online shopping platforms where they can offer discounts on products and services they sell.
13. Boost the Visibility of Your Lead Magnet on Your Website
Make sure your site’s navigation is designed to help visitors get to the lead magnet, whether it be a free report, e-book, or another form of content.
And don’t forget to add call-to-action buttons, which direct people to click on the content that’s most relevant to them and their needs.
14. Create a Simple yet Effective Call for Actions
Make sure your website’s call to action (CTA) is as simple as possible. If there is a reason why people should sign up for your freebie, tell them exactly how and when they can get it.
You can make the CTA more prominent by using colors and bold text, or you can use visual design elements such as buttons, icons, and videos.
15. Retarget Those People Who Have Shown Interest in Your Brand
Retargeting is one of the most successful strategies for keeping in touch with consumers as they move through the sales funnel.
Customers may visit your website, take a look around, and then go away without buying. Retargeting with Facebook ads or google ads is a way to retrace your steps and try again with your audience.
It allows you to show ads to people who engage with your brand’s website or social pages. This gives you the opportunity to try again and to show people exactly what they should expect from your brand if they come back to your site.
16. Focus on Top-Of-Funnel Keywords
One of the ways you can increase traffic to your website is by creating a strategy that is based on the information from keyword analysis. You can do this with the help of tools like Google AdWords and Google keyword planner.
By creating a list of keywords related to your content, and by developing a campaign that targets those keywords, you can increase your SEO rankings and bring more people to your site.
17. Develop a Referral Rewards Program
A referral rewards program gives your customers a reason to recommend your product to their friends, who might just become your future customers.
Encouraging customers to recommend your brand to their friends is one of the most powerful ways to grow your business.
To do so, you can create a referral rewards program where your customers earn points for referring others to your business.
This can be a huge win for your company because it incentivizes customers to refer to their friends. Not only will this drive new sales, but it can also drive them to share their own experiences with others in the form of reviews and social media posts.
18. Use Web Directories for Generating Niche-Specific Leads
If you want to generate niche-specific leads, use a web directory. Web directories are lists of websites with information segmented into different categories by popularity, location, or any other relevant parameter.
They provide not just links to web pages but also contact details, so you can use them to carry out cold calling campaigns or postal marketing.
You can even use them to get information on the target audience and do some research on them. The main advantage of using web directories is that you don’t need to do any hard work in order to get a list of websites that are relevant to your niche.
If you want to generate leads for, say, software development, all you have to do is search Google for “software development websites” and you’ll find a number of web directories with hundreds or thousands of relevant sites listed in them.
You can use these lists for generating leads in multiple ways such as to find and contact businesses that are interested in what you offer.
19. Use Web Scraping Tools
Web scraping is the process of extracting data from web pages and converting them into a structured format, such as a spreadsheet or database.
You can use this technique for lead generation by collecting the email addresses of different businesses. To do so, you can use tools like Scrapinghub and Scrapebox to collect data from hundreds of websites in just one click.
Once you have the email addresses, you can contact the leads and inform them about your products and services.
5 Benefits of Lead Generation in Digital Marketing
1. Builds Brand Awareness
Lead generation helps to build brand awareness, which is extremely important in digital marketing.
When you are able to get your brand in front of your target audience consistently, they will start to recognize it and become more aware of it. This leads to more sales opportunities when you do have a new product or service to offer them.
2. Increases Revenue
One of the biggest benefits of lead generation is an increased revenue. More leads typically mean more conversions, which means more sales for your company. This increase in sales can lead to an increase in profits.
3. Increases Reach
With an effective lead generation strategy, businesses can reach customers all over the world, which can lead to more sales.
With a well-developed list, business owners will be able to develop a target audience for their products or services.
4. Lead Generation Increases Customer Satisfaction
If you are able to convert leads into customers, you will have an increased number of repeat buyers and increased sales volume.
This can also lead to better customer satisfaction ratings and more word-of-mouth advertising for your company.
5. Lead Generation Allows for Better Targeting
When leads are generated from different sources, there is a greater chance of finding leads that are truly interested in what you can offer them.
You can then target these leads specifically, instead of wasting money and time on people who do not have an interest in your business.
These 30 Free Lead Generation Tools Will Help You Acquire More Leads
- FindThatLead: By just entering a company’s domain name, you can quickly find their email addresses using this tool.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: With the help of this tool, you can easily find the right kind of prospects. With search and filter features, you can pinpoint and reach your prospects and leads more easily.
- D7 Lead Finder: D7 Lead Finder can help you find B2B leads in any industry and in any region. Moreover, you can also export your leads in a variety of formats.
- Email Finder-GetProspect: With this GetProspect Chrome extension tool, you can obtain free email addresses of your LinkedIn acquaintances or any other person from LinkedIn. By clicking on only one button in users’ profiles, you can quickly find out anyone’s email address and generate LinkedIn leads.
- Discoverly: With this free chrome extension tool, you will be able to view Facebook and work info of your leads on your gmail account.
- People Finder: People Finder is a prospecting tool for locating sales leads and searching for individuals in a massive database of millions of business professionals. Based on your search phrases, it can assist you in locating a customer’s contact details and comprehensive profile.
- Skrapp: Skrapp is a free chrome extension tool which helps you to find email IDs of professionals at any company.
- Hunter: Hunter is an app which allows you to find professional email addresses in seconds. It’s a powerful tool to connect with customers and prospects.
- Sumo: This is a free lead capture software which helps to collect contact information from your site visitors so that you can convert them into leads.
- HubSpot: HubSpot is all-in-one free cloud-based marketing software that helps you generate more qualified leads.
- Flowlu: Flowlu is a free lead-capture software that allows you to leverage your website’s traffic and easily generate powerful lead capture forms for both your web applications and websites.
- Hellobar: This tool provides a lead capture bar at the top of your website to quickly collect new leads. It allows you to insert a banner on your site that visitors can interact with. It’s easy to add and customize.
Here Is a List of Some of The Free SMTP Tools
- Sendgrid: SendGrid is a cloud-based SMTP solution that lets you send email without having to worry about maintaining email servers. With their free plan, you will be able to send 100 emails per day.
- Mailjet: Mailjet is a cloud-based email delivery and tracking service that lets users send both marketing and transactional emails. You will be able to send 200 emails every day with their free plan.
- Mailgun: Mailgun is an email delivery service that uses API to send, receive, and track emails.
Here Are the Email Marketing Tools to Help You Find Leads
- Mailchimp: MailChimp is an email marketing platform that helps you manage your mailing lists and create email campaigns.
- Hubspot: With this tool, you can set up an SMTP server in minutes and customize to fit your needs.
- Boomerang: You can schedule messages to be delivered or returned at a later time with Boomerang. You can write a message and send it whenever you want, even when you are offline.
Here Are the Free Email Validation Tools to Make Sure that Your Email Does Not Appear Spammy
- Mail Tester: Mail-tester is a useful tool for examining specific emails and their content to check whether they appear spammy.
- IsNotSpam: The IsNotSpam spam checker helps you in testing email and newsletter content and alerts you in case it is likely to activate spam filters.
Here Are Some of The Free Proposals and Invoicing Tools
- Fivver Workspace: With this useful tool, you can create proposals easily and invoice your customers.
- Hello Sign: HelloSign is an embedded eSignature and storage solution that allows you to send, sign, and keep your most important agreements in one simple workflow.
- Invoicely: You can create and send invoices and estimates, manage time and expenses, and accept online payments with invoicely.
- Slimvoice: With Slimvoice tool, you can create invoices quickly and easily.
- Wave: Wave provides small business owners with bookkeeping and payment solutions.
- Invoice Generator: Invoice generator allows you to create invoices easily using invoice templates right from your web browser.
- Loom: Loom is a video messaging app that allows you to quickly share videos to spread your message.
- Dubb: Dubb is a video sales and marketing platform that allows you to produce, distribute, host, and track video in a variety of formats to help you develop your business.
- Calendly: Calendly is a calendar app that allows you to schedule appointments, meetings, and events. Its purpose is to eliminate the unnecessary time spent in scheduling meetings.
- Hubspot Meeting Scheduling: Through a shareable link or an embedded calendar on your website, HubSpot’s scheduling software allows you to effortlessly plan appointments with prospects and customers.
Pro Tip💡:
Identifying pain points helps you generate leads, because once you know what a prospect is missing, you are then positioned to provide a solution that solves the problem, and puts your foot in the door to turn that prospect into a customer.
As discussed above there are many ways to generate leads, but if you hone in on the emotional needs of your prospects, you can implement your marketing through the customer pain points, and boost your bottom line.
If you are finding it difficult to generate leads through google and facebook ads, then we are here to help you! Talk to our digital marketing specialist here, or you can email us at support@onecity.co.in
