It’s never been easier, or more challenging, to find and engage with new customers. But for sustainable revenue growth through steady customer acquisition, generating leads isn’t enough.
You need to make these leads convert. And that’s where the money lies.
Before discussing the top ways to generate leads, you first need to understand that different types of leads are at different stages of their purchasing decision. According to the AIDA model, a consumer goes through these four stages within the buying process:
- Awareness: A consumer likes familiarity and comfort when purchasing a product—they are less likely to buy a product they aren’t familiar with. Therefore, your first step in lead generation is to improve your brand awareness.
- Interest: The next step is to generate interest in your product. Detail your product features and how they will benefit the buyer. Get them interested in exploring your brand and your product.
- Desire: This step makes the gradual move from being interested in your product to wanting to purchase your product.
- Action: This is the sale. You can begin to develop a relationship with your consumers and retain them for future sales.
Now that you have a grasp of the fundamentals involved in the sales process, your digital marketing strategy for lead generation should be targeted at all four stages of the consumer buying process. You can accomplish these through various paid and unpaid lead generating digital marketing opportunities mentioned here.
Content marketing
Generating content should be your first step towards lead generation. According to a survey by Demand Gen Report, 96% of b-to-b buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders, and 47% of buyers viewed at least three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales executive. Some tips for effective content marketing include:
- Produce exhaustive guides that visitors can download on your website. This also gives you the opportunity to collect customer data.
- Regularly post news, blogs and tips regarding your industry.
- Use the data to enroll potential customers into lead nurture programs and keep them engaged by sharing more about your product or service.
- Even if you create great content, it’s useless if your target audience can’t find it. So, make sure you spend some time optimizing your content for search engines.
- Promote the created content online using marketing methods such as social, SEO and email.
Paid social
Social media is a powerful tool for lead generation. If you want to use it for successful lead generation, you need to invest time and effort in building an engaged audience that you can easily convert into leads.
One effective way to boost your social marketing efforts is to invest in influencer marketing. In this powerful social marketing strategy, you collaborate with influencers within your niche on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok, whose followers are your target audience. Marketers vouch for the ROI of influencer marketing as compared to other digital marketing strategies.
Remarketing
The process of marking your visitors and then targeting them with advertising after they leave your site is called remarketing. This helps reinforce your brand in the mind of the people who have already interacted with your brand while browsing the web. Remarketing with paid ads is an effective way to bring back high-value leads to your website and convert them.
Email marketing
Email marketing is an old marketing technique, but it has not lost its sparkle. It is still a very relevant and powerful tool to reach prospects or upsell existing customers. However, you need to tailor your messaging to target specific segments of your customer database. With the help of email marketing services, you can send highly targeted emails to your potential leads and send follow-up emails with a great call to action.
Local SEO
One of the most valuable lead generation strategies is organic search. If you want to tap into the surrounding community and help people searching for you find you, you must optimize your site for local SEO. Some tips you can follow:
- Ensure your NAP (Name, address and phone) is consistent on your website as well as on your business listing across Yelp, Facebook and Google Business Profile.
- Ask satisfied customers to leave a review of your business.
- Ensure your website title tag contains a main key phrase that you want to rank for, along with your neighborhood, city or state.
- Regularly test your business by searching your keywords and seeing where you rank.
Intent-based keywords
Most websites rank in search engines for a mix of intent-based keywords and research-based keywords.
Intent-based keywords drive action. Some examples of action behind intent-based keywords are to sign up for a course, make a purchase or request a quote. Some intent-based keywords might be, “business consultants near me” or “Zumba classes in Cleveland.” Research-based keywords provide information. They include keywords like, “how to,” “what,” “when,” etc.
If you are a beginner in digital marketing strategies, keep your focus more on intent-based keywords.
Voice search optimization
Voice search optimization involves upgrading and streamlining the information on your pages to rank in voice searches. Voice search optimization aims at answering the question people ask verbally.
If you want to boost your lead generation strategy, it’s time to leverage voice search. It improves your ranking on search engines and also improves user experience.
