If you work in internet businesses, you must have heard many terms: sales funnel, Lead, lead customer, interested customer, potential customer, and real buyer. Today, we will examine one of the common terms of today’s business called Lead and then explain one of its sub-categories called Lead Generation.
What is Lead?
Although the definition of a lead is very simple, it is one of the most controversial issues between marketing and sales. In simple terms, a Lead is a person or organization interested in buying the products or services of your company or startup. This interest is usually expressed by exchanging email addresses phone numbers or following your brand pages on social media.
Collecting leads means that you have passed the first two stages of the sales process called prospecting and cold-calling, and you have entered the warm-calling stage. Hot contact has more advantages than cold contact; Some marketers even believe that the cold call technique is completely obsolete, and business owners should communicate with hot leads.
In other words, to sell a product, marketers need to talk to leads who are interested in buying that product and are now waiting for what they have to say. When you contact a lead, you will satisfy them by providing a set of sales information. Still, to attract more leads, you must follow the Lead Generation strategies that we will introduce in the following.
What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is the process of engaging target audiences and then persuading them to share their information with you. The mechanism of the Lead Generation process is such that by directing the targeted traffic and then attracting visitor information, they turn them into real buyers of your products. This process is the first step to building a meaningful relationship with potential customers.
Importance of Lead Generation
90% of B2B businesses end after one month, while 10% last more than a year. Lead production is one of the main pillars of B2B business, which along with the sales cycle, leads to the success and growth of a business company.
Getting information from potential customers at the beginning of the sales process is the best opportunity to influence them. Especially since there are many distracting factors (competitors’ advertising and marketing) in front of the customer, you should maximize your impact on them. Also, after receiving information from leads, you will be able to categorize them by competency and focus your time and energy on profitable leads. You will achieve more sustainable growth if you attract quality and profitable leads.
Lead Generation Funnel
At first glance, it looks like potential buyers are making a random purchase. It means that sometimes they buy your products, and sometimes they refuse to do so, but the reality is different.
Although customers use different methods to buy a product, marketers can influence their decision-making by inventing a lead generation funnel. B2B companies have acknowledged that buying is a long-term process, with 48% of business owners surveying believing that a lead requires a long cycle before making a purchase. So your company needs to have a patient approach to sales.
In fact, unlike B2C businesses that do the sales process instantly, B2B companies need to take a long-term approach to the process to offer their services or products to customers after they have been categorized and prepared. Unfortunately, 68% of companies still do not clearly understand the lead generation funnel, so we will continue to examine the Lead Generation funnel.
What is a lead funnel?
The lead generation funnel represents an individual’s path from presenting their information to a company to the purchase process. According to reports, 50% of qualified leads are not ready to buy products in the first contact, so the Lead production funnel should provide a way to persuade business owners.
The word funnel is used because, at any stage, people, for various reasons, stay away from the company or distance themselves from your company’s services. In the end, only a handful of the initial leads remain a real buyers. The most important factor in maintaining as many leads as possible in this process is content, which we will examine below.
The Importance of Content Marketing in Lead Generation
Content marketing is the main part of the Lead Generation funnel, which can turn leads into customers and then real buyers and can be used in blogs, Ebooks, articles, instructional videos, etc. The feature of the content index is the division of people in the shopping process. By providing unique content, visitors can be accompanied in different purchase stages.
In addition, by using the automation system of marketing and retargeting (Retargeting), you will be able to solve the problems and needs of the customer through the appropriate content and move him forward. Remember that unique content at every step of the Lead Generation funnel will attract more quality leads.
Top of the production funnel (TOFU)
Lead generation starts when your audience first visits your website. At the top of the lead generation funnel, you need to attract potential customers. Your main goal at this stage is to create awareness and trust in visitors, regardless of your products. Many tactics are used to attract the audience:
- Online magazines
- Purchase guide
- Social Networks
- podcast
- video
Your content should be valuable enough to create a space for visitors to interact; In other words, the content at this stage must convince the audience to provide you with their information.
The middle part of the lead generation funnel (MOFU)
In the middle of the Lead Generation Funnel, the audience becomes the Lead. Although in the previous step, the main goal was to establish a personal relationship with the visitors, in the middle of the Lead production funnel, the main focus is to establish a business relationship between yourself and the Lead. Therefore, for the visitor to provide you with his information, you must provide content that completely solves his needs and problems. This content can be one or more of the following:
- Ebook
- Scientific Papers or White Papers
- Webinars
- Newsletters
- Tool
The type of content you choose depends on your resources, target audience, and business offerings.
The end of the lead generation funnel (BOFU)
When the leads enter the end of the Lead Generation funnel, they are the prospect. Because your company’s products or services provide solutions to their problems and needs, therefore, the Lead you want will be accepted as a reputable company. However, you need to help him overcome negative arguments through the right content.
- Case Study
- Comparative content
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Demo Show
- Reviews Articles
In other words, the leads have fully trusted you at this stage, but you also need to reassure them to make the final decision to buy.
How to generate leads?
After getting acquainted with the basics and strategies of Lead Generation, you will reach the attractive stage of lead production. Statistics show that 63% of people working in marketing, traffic generation, and Lead see the biggest challenge. The lead production process is divided into five general parts.
- Understand the customer persona
- Generate engaging content
- Identify and attract the right audience
- Get audience information
- Determining the eligibility of Lead customers
Appropriate strategies for lead generation
After building a lead generation funnel, understanding the customer persona, and producing the right content, it’s time to drive more traffic to your website. Of course, as mentioned earlier, generating Leads and increasing traffic is one of the main challenges for marketers and business owners; Therefore, in the following, we will introduce the methods of generating and attracting traffic in a list.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Paying attention to the SEO tips will cause more organic traffic to flow to your business.
- Specify a set of keywords
- Generate optimized content
- Lead Magnet
2. Generate content on LinkedIn
With over 660 million highly knowledgeable business users, LinkedIn is the best choice for generating leads for B2B businesses.
3. Co-Marketing
The goal of affiliate marketing is to connect effectively with companies that are not your competitors but are relevant to your audience. In fact, through this technique, you will attract qualified audiences to your website.
- Identify your partners.
- Attractive content generation ideas
- Promote each other’s content
4. Email Request Forms
Email request forms are one of the best ways to generate leads, but keep in mind that the amount of information you want from the customer should be completely transparent; Especially when it comes to gaining the audience’s trust.
- Communicate with the audience.
- Avoid asking for unnecessary information.
- Take the forms out of the official mode and make them visible to the audience as part of the content.
- Use the Conditional Logic template in writing your forms.
- Use Pop-Up wisely.
5. Website chat room
Launching an online chat room and chatter on the website allows visitors to communicate well with you to resolve their doubts and problems.
6. Website visitor identification tools
Software like Leadfeeder can identify website visitors; Even if visitors have not filled out any of the website forms, it is still possible to track and identify them through such software.
Conclusion
Lead generation is one of the most important steps in creating a sustainable sale in a business. By producing content on websites and social networks, you can increase the number of leads generated and experience more sales. So based on the tips and strategies mentioned in this article, go to lead production for your business as soon as possible and see the amazing results in your sales in a period of 6 months to a year.