What are lead generation strategies?
Lead generation tactics are strategies designed to generate inquiry leads or sales leads. It is a comprehensive plan which is build on the basis of requirements, goals, time span, budget and the changing business environments. Now, combining strategies and lead generation, we build lead generation strategies which is a plan or events that will help you generate more leads. It is a type of roadmap which will guide you step by step in the process for lead generation.
Some of the key points that we should consider knowing before building strategies and starting the process of lead generation are:
- Identification of the target audience. The target audience should be well researched and planned
- Work on quality. The quality of marketing the products and services is equally important
- Provide customized solutions and pitch to target audience in a personalized way.
Leverage Email And Whatsapp Marketing as Lead generation strategies:
Email marketing sounds boring but can be a game changer in cracking foreign clients. Email marketing is a digital marketing type through which business owners can send emails in bulk quantity to the prospective clients and pitch ideas accordingly.
It is one of the very cost effective lead generation strategies if done in an efficient manner. Master the art of writing cold emails and pitching your idea in a customized way to prospective clients as per their individual needs and requirements and make sure to solve their problems.
The conversion rate of email marketing is a bit low but it can be effective if you know that it all depends on the quality of content and how you pitch or how you tend to solve the problem of the clients.
It can also help in retaining existing clients and generating repeated leads form them. We need to remind them through emailing them about what next they are missing out. It is a very good way of customer retention.
Improve the Quality Of Your Landing Page:
This is one of the lead generation strategies where one needs to work on the base level. Working on the base level that it improving the quality of the landing page in such a way that the traffic that is viewing your landing page cannot go back. It has to be designed in such a way that it easy for the viewer to navigate through the website or the landing page.
Landing page can also be your home page but it is always better to make it a little more lead oriented. It means that it should include contact information and forms, about the business, how the business has helped their clients, clients testimonials etc. One can always add pop ups that offers discounts making it more attractive and responsive.
It can also be done through competitor analysis in what type of lead generation strategies and landing pages they are using. You can always view the landing pages of your competitors and try to make a better landing page than them which is more attractive in viewing and more easy to navigate and contact. Many people just contact the business because they were attracted by their landing pages and decided to stay their. If the viewer is going to some other page after viewing your page that means the quality of the landing page and the content provided inside is not that good.
Improve your contact Forms:
Contact forms can also be used as building lead generation strategies. The quality of the contact form should be good and it should be easy to comprehend. The form should not be complicated and it should be straight to the point. It should not be too lengthy because 80% of the people leave any form in between if they find it too long. Some people might get irritated if the form is too long or contains many fields that are compulsory to fill. Out of many lead generation strategies, we need to first work on these little things according to the user.
Some important parameters to be kept in in mind is that the form should be in a simple language that is understandable by anyone amongst the target audience. It should contain direct questions in the start like name, age , email, etc. Only relevant questions should be included in the form because irrelevant information will make it lengthy unnecessarily
One important point while designing forms and forming lead generation strategies through them is that some information an be put in the required fields like name, age, email etc. But the message boxes or the query boxes should not be compulsory to fill. Instead of this you can add an additional drop down menu question in the required field and then the message box for any addition query.
Leverage User Generated Content:
User generated content is the content written by clients or the users or viewers. It can be in the form of anything like comments, reviews, testimonials, etc. It makes the people believe that the business is more authentic. It can be done through platforms like websites, social media accounts, third party websites or apps etc.
When the prospective clients see that the product or service is liked by people, it gives a sense of unsaid trust to the clients. You can use these genuine reviews in pitching target audience. User generated content can be game changer in lead generation strategies.
Reviews or customer appreciation can be used in pitching the target audience. You can form a strategy and pitch clients based on it. It is possible in many ways. You first need to identity the problem or the need of the target audience individually and then pitch user generated content related to their needs. If you are pitching a business about your services, then you can always attach reviews of any similar type of business or a business in the same industry that you helped with your services.
For example, You are a makeup artist and you want to pitch someone for a specific occasion then, you can add reviews or feedbacks of your existing clients for whom you worked for a similar kind of occasion or a similar kind of makeup that the target customer wants.
Engage audience through Social media marketing:
Social media marketing can become one of the lead generation strategies if it done with dedication. It is a versatile way to generate leads. You can always target the pain points of your followers so that they can engage with you through messages, comments, replies etc.
It is an organic way of generating leads, thus is a continues and time taking process which requires regularity and consistency. But if done correctly one can generate many leads through social media platforms itself. It requires proper dedication and time. By starting the reels videos and images through Hooks and try to solve the problems of your viewers.
Offer Freebees
Lead generation strategies can include offering free samples for your product or service. One can offer some freebees for pitching target audience. These freebee products or services can be anything that is lower in cost. For service sectors, free services can include consultations and audit. Providing free consultations, advice or providing them with a solution can be good ways for lead generation for service sector businesses.
For product based business, one can offer some lower costs accessories that fit with the products, that you think will lead the customer to buy more of it or buy other products. One can also educate the audience about the product or provide free consultations related to the product. This is one of the lead generation strategies where, sales are generated through samples.
Conduct Webinars and Workshops:
Conducting webinars and workshops at a minimal cost that everyone can easily afford if a very interactive way of generating leads for your bigger projects, services or products. Through these workshops you can enlighten people with your knowledge about the subject or services.
People are often searching to upskill themselves at lower or no costs. Educating the people about something new or something that you are offering is the first step in making them aware. Provide some value to them with high quality education and specialization. Out of all the lead generation strategies, this is one is highly favorable for education sector.
At the end of the webinar you can explain your services or products. In this way the audience is convinced that they need the services, or they ae interested in a particular filed. This makes them clear about their needs and requirements.
Market Your Case Studies:
Case studies about what type of problems your existing clients faced or the prospective clients are facing and how you helped your clients in overcoming it. Preparing proper case studies with facts and figures help potential clients to make a decision and choose your business.
These case studies should be in a proper format and form proper lead generation strategies using case studies which should include the following information in and details:
- Needs, wants and requirements of the existing clients, previous clients and prospective clients
- Facts and figures about the previous clients while stating their problems
- How you helped them through your strategies and what tools and services you provided.
- Results and outcomes of your provided services and products. It should include details on how it helped the clients with facts and figures. It should be in both qualitative and quantitative terms.
- For example We, as a digital marketing agency, “helped our client by exploring the new target markets and gaining 4 times more customer base in just 6 months”. This contains the time span, figures, result in measurable format, and the strategy. This is one of the most used lead generation strategies because it providers the viewers with social proofs.
Initiate referral Programmes
Lead generation strategies can also include initiating referral programes. One can build incentive programs or referral programs through which people can refer and earn. Through this practice people will suggest your product or services to other people and will gain benefits in cash kind or discounts. Ma y businesses and educational institutes work on this scheme and get more lead conversations.
Leverage SEO
Leverage SEO or search engine optimization on your content to derive traffic to your website organically. It is a bit time consuming process and is to be done consistently and continuously. SEO success means ranking a webpage on search engines like Google an generating organic traffic on websites.
This makes the people believe that the website or the business is more authentic because it is ranking on Google on the first or second page. It builds indirect trust in the mind of the viewers. Know more about how SEO is one of the lead generation strategies.
Case studies:
Nykaa: Lead generation strategies
Nykaa as an E-commerce brand needed to stand out and compete with more brands in the retail sector providing similar type of products. This was the major challenge for them. They leveraged lead generation strategies and gained a good result.
Nykaa leveraged email marketing and targeted campaigns. By targeting users on the basis of their interest preferences, past purchases, engagement etc. they generated may leads in the competitive retail market as a E-commerce brand. It target Emails to segmented users offering discounts and samples helped it generate sales.
Their personalized emails on special events like black Friday sales, birthday month discounts, valentines day sales, etc. The results of these campaigns were that it lead to boost in 50% of repeated customers which means client retention.
Zomato: Lead generation strategies
Zomato as a new venture and a whole new business idea with a challenging competitor like Swiggy. It aimed to increase the download of its app and increase engagement on the app. They followed a number of lead generation strategies like email marketing and landing page creation and designing.
Their strategy with email marketing was to provide catchy taglines and catchy hooks with offering discounts for which the customer would fall to download their app. The taglines are so convincing that the user downloaded the app and availed discounts.
The launch the campaigns like “monsoon meals” or “we can deal” encouraging their target audience to download their app and check relevant discounts for them. They included proper call to action buttons which had a timeline and create a limited offers. These campaigns or lead generation strategies helped them gain more app downloads.
Another thing that Zomato did was create dynamic landing pages and the attractive and convincing interface of their app. Their landing pages were interactive responsive and provided them with deals which led the viewer to downloading the app and not leaving the page.
UrbanClap (now Urban Company): Lead generation strategies
Urbanclap had high lead generation rate through focus landing pages and Google ads. Their challenge was to increase the lead generation rate in this highly competitive market in the service providing industry where every service provider ranges from small to large service providers. They also used a number of lead generation strategies like:
There strategy was to optimize their landing pages through on the page search engine optimization techniques. The landing pages were easy to navigate and included a proper CTA which encouraged the people to book services or avail free consultations.
Urban lab also tested different fonts headings and CTA buttons and see whether which type of landing page was giving them higher rates of conversion and lead generation.
The result was they had a 30% increment in their leaked generation with their focus on landing pages and Google ads
Conclusion:
Lead generation tactics are the strategies that we as a business build to attract customers and interact with us in any form for example filling the Google form, filling any contact form calling us or having a chat with us.
This can be done through multiple ways but some of the concrete ways that have helped many businesses in lead generation are email marketing with targeted segmented audience and customized cold email strategies, creating dynamic landing pages which are responsive and include relevant information reviews and call to action buttons, improving the quality of the contact forms, leveraging user generated content like comments, reviews and testimonials, marketing case studies and conducting webinars and workshops.
Some organic means can be leveraging search engine optimization and social media marketing which is time consuming.
Some of the businesses which has benefited with these techniques are Zomato Urbanclap, Nykaa and many more