INBOUND LEAD GENERATION
The best way to never run out of contacts
Table of Content
1. Introduction
2. What is a lead?
3. Why should you generate leads?
4. Definition, Process and Goals of leadgeneration
5. Make your own leads in 7 easy steps
- Stock-Taking
- Identify Potential Customers
- Create high quality Content
- Landingpage
- Forms
- Call to Actions
- Generate Traffic
6. What happens after you generate a lead?
7. Conclusion
Introduction
We help with Ads is an Inbound Marketing Agency based in Miami.
We are standing for fairness, honesty and transparency.
From audience research to content creation - through
cross-channel inbound marketing we ensure a sustainable increase
in your sales.
Unlike most other agencies, we work purely on a performance
basis, which means that we only earn money if the marketing
actually generates sales for our clients.
Do you need strategic advice on your lead management? Or are
you looking for support in optimizing your online marketing
strategy?
Feel free to schedule a 10 minutes strategy session here:
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What is a lead?
A lead is a potential new customer who can be assumed to be
interested in the offer - the products or services - of the company.
He expresses this interest, for example, by filling out a contact
form with customer data on a company's website. In this way, the
person is no longer an anonymous visitor to the site, but an inbound
lead.
The advantage for companies: They can adapt their offers precisely
to the needs of the potential customer and contact him or her with a
personalized approach.
If the transfer of customer information takes place on one's own
initiative, the potential customer signals a willingness to buy and a
high degree of interest in the brand. Depending on the design of
the company, the pure lead can already be measured as a final
conversion.
However, the lead usually passes through various stages of the
customer journey and, depending on the status of its qualification, is
referred to as a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) or Sales Qualified
Lead (SQL). Until it finally converts into a buyer
Why should you generate leads?
Imagine you want to inspire a potential prospect about your
products or services. The operational view is as follows: You have a
target group and now start to actively approach them, generate
appointments and enter into a sales process. You make cold calls
and trust your luck.
But such a call out of the blue will often fall on deaf ears. It is
possible that the person concerned is not interested in your line of
business and merely feels harassed by you. Such calls frustrate
both sides - customer and entrepreneur - and lead to everything
but business success. Such a cold first contact does not have to
be. Especially in the digital age, there are methods that make it
better!
A better Way
Goodbye pushy cold calling! Be prepared for future contact from and
to people you already know more about. For example, that they are
interested in your products and are already looking for more information.
The question in the context of lead management is therefore, how can
you create content that offers solutions to existing problems?
Definition of Lead Generation
After this first incentive, we would now like to go more explicitly into
what we understand in marketing by lead generation. It means the
acquisition of interested parties (leads) for one's own product or
service. This is achieved by providing targeted content and
communication measures based on the buyer's journey, which are
geared to the various touchpoints of potential customers.
Incentives are created for the potential customer to leave their
contact details with the company. The incentives are valuable and
free content such as e-books, checklists or even webinars. By
providing them, you familiarize your target persons with your
company and create a basis for future purchases. In addition,
you strengthen your perception as an expert in the respective
field through high-quality content.
Lead Generation Process
The generation of leads follows a clear process in online marketing.
After the potential customer has become aware of the content you
provide, for example via a blog article or paid advertisement,
call-to-action elements lead them to the associated landing
page. There they will find a form where they can enter their name,
email address and, if necessary, further information.
Although the data obtained does not guarantee a subsequent
purchase, it does provide your company with valuable information
on the basis of which subsequent communication can be
continued in a personalized manner.
The more individually you address a person, the higher the
probability that he or she can identify with your company, is
enthusiastic about your offer and subsequently converts to a
buyer.
Goal of the Lead Generation
Basically, with lead generation you want to generate as many
enquiries as possible and thus contact data of potential new
customers that can be processed further and from whom you
accordingly receive permission to contact them for further
measures.
Therefore, it is not, as you might think at first glance, about
generating the largest possible data sets. It is about acquiring new
customers, for which the lead to be generated must belong to the
target group and have a problem that your company can solve.
The promising lead should deal intensively with the product or
service. The constant exchange makes it possible to obtain
customer feedback in addition to the necessary data, which, in
addition to the conversion rate, can also improve the products
themselves, sales or customer support in the long term.
B2B lead generation is more complex than B2C lead
generation as it requires more research and comparison as well
as the correct identification of our target group.
1. Stock-Taking
When establishing lead management, every company has different
starting conditions. Therefore, your first step should be to take stock
of your basics. The following questions serve as a guide:
Have you already established a sales process?
How many leads are you aiming for?
How many leads can you process with the current technical and
organizational structure?
How do marketing and sales work together in your company?
Which IT systems are used and is there a customer relationship
management system?
Who is responsible for the creation of content in your company?
2. Identify Potential Customers
At first glance, lead generation seems to follow the goal of
generating a large number of contact details or data records.
However, this is not the case. Behind each of these data there is a
customer who needs to be enthused about your company.
Buyer Persona: Do you know your future leads?
If you want to implement your campaign in the most targeted way
possible, you cannot avoid knowing your potential leads in
detail. One way to achieve this is to define the buyer persona, a
fictitious generalized representation of your desired target person.
It thus represents your ideal lead, whom you want to convert into a
customer. Once you have defined your buyer persona, the content
production can be precisely tailored to the needs, wishes and
goals of the target person. The more suitable and relevant the
content is for the potential customer, the higher your conversion
rate and closing rate will be. |
Why do you need a Buyer Persona?
Unlike the classic target group definition, the buyer persona does
not only include demographic information of a group. Instead, the
description is based on the ideal type of customer. In the
course of this, you can also determine more concretely what type of
lead is to be generated and whether you want to focus on quantity
or quality…
If you need help with creating your buyer persona, feel free to jump
on a no obligation call with us:
https://calendly.com/wehelpwithads-philipp/10min
Exclude unqualified leads with the negative buyer persona
In addition to defining your buyer persona, you should also address
its counterpart - the negative buyer persona. Unlike the previously
presented variant, it does not represent your ideal customer, but
rather a potential customer with behavioral or demographic
characteristics that disqualify him or her.
Once you have defined this, you can reduce the number of
unqualified leads in the long run and target your marketing efforts
more effectively. In this way, you will save costs and effort and
will be able to address your target persons more easily. It also
relieves the burden on sales, as only relevant leads reach them.
Know the stage of the Buyer's Journey
You already know that lead generation success is based on
addressing different touchpoints. So you need to know at which
stage of the buyer's journey your potential lead is in order to help
them in the best possible way.
3. Create high quality Content
Once the potential customers are identified, the provision of
high-quality content begins in order to convince the target group
and turn unknown website visitors into leads. At the beginning of
the process, the buyer persona usually does not know the solutions
available on the market for their problem, so it is important to
provide adapted content at each stage of the buyer's journey.
The offer is therefore an indispensable component for which the
visitor must be prepared to provide his contact details. In this
context, we also speak of lead magnets.
Conditions: How to turn content into a lead magnet
In order for these magnets to develop their full appeal and captivate
the buyer persona, high quality, incomparable added value and the
solution to the problem must be offered.
This means that the visitor must receive information through the
reception that was previously unknown to him. Moreover, he must
be willing to exchange his contact details for the purchase of the
product. A freely accessible blog post can be the basis for the lead
magnet by presenting and offering it as a supplement to the content
your target group has received before.
There are countless formats that can act as lead magnets. For
example, the following are suitable for lead generation: E-books
Checklists, Webinars, Templates, Studies, Whitepapers, Video clips
Make sure that your content is always oriented towards the
information needs of the buyer persona and not towards your own
offers. This is the only way to address your potential leads in a
targeted manner. Furthermore, when planning your content, it is
always about the content first and only in the following step about
the formats.
Content must not only fit the buyer persona, but also the phase
within the customer journey.
E-Books
Free e-books are ideal for lead generation - especially in the B2B
sector. They are made available free of charge on the company's
website after data submission. This gives companies the
opportunity to establish themselves on the market as an expert,
thus improving your reputation and increasing your brand
awareness. On the other hand, you help your target group to solve
their problems and thus gain their trust.
3 tips to generate leads with e-books:
• It should answer the most important questions on the topic and
not overwhelm the reader with information.
• Maintain call-to-action elements to continue the customer journey.
•Make sure your content is professionally implemented and
up-to-date
4. Landingpage
If your customer has become aware of your content, you will refer
them to a further page - the landing page - with a call-to-action
element.
Therefore, we first deal with the creation of this web page. The aim
of the landing page is to draw the visitor's attention to a specific
product. It has a compact design and high usability and is dedicated
to only one specific topic. Therefore, it is often detached from the
structure of the website and does not offer the possibility to access
the main navigation of the website.
Instead, it contains information on how to download the offer. The
success factors of a landing page are a meaningful headline, an
informative text and a simple form.
It's very important that the Landing Page is mobile optimized,
because the majority of the users are coming from smartphones.
5. Forms
Forms must request the information needed for further processing
of the lead. This primarily includes the first name, last name and
the email address. Future communication takes place on a
personal level via the name. You need the email address to be able
to contact the lead in the future via email marketing campaigns. It is
often a good idea to ask for the professional position or the
industry of the company. This then allows you to address the lead
type in a tailored way and gives you a better understanding of who
the leads are.
Tips for optimizing the forms:
The less data you request from your customers in the order form,
the easier it is for them to fill in the fields. Therefore, only select the
data that you actually need.
Ask questions and talk to your customers. This will encourage
them to contact you.
Mark mandatory fields and make input errors clear.
Apply your corporate design to the contact form as well.
This includes colors, fonts and font sizes.
6. Call-to-Actions
Of course, you could insert your form directly below your blog post
and encourage data retrieval. But because of the confrontation at
first glance, readers will probably quickly leave the page again. A
better approach is to use call-to-action elements (CTAs).
Along with the offer, the landing page and the forms, they also
belong to the four main techniques of lead generation, because no
matter how good your content is, you will not generate any leads
without asking for data.
Therefore, consciously direct the attention of the website visitor to
further high-quality content and call for action with the help of the
button. In our example, this would be a click on the CTA with the
associated forwarding to the landing page. To optimize your CTAs,
you should check all contact points to see how you can improve
these interfaces so that you encourage your potential customers to
actually get in touch with you.
7. Generate Traffic
Once you have implemented all the techniques, you should look at
generating traffic. For this, it is best to use the various channels
that are already established in your company. For example,
each of your blog posts should contain a CTA to your landing page.
In addition to using your existing traffic, you can also get traffic
through paid advertising channels such as Facebook and
Google Ads. It is important that the language of the ad is tailored to
the stage of the customer journey.
In the next pages we are talking about what happens after you
generated a lead
Congratulations!
You now have a guide at hand to successfully establish a lead
generation process in your company. In the following pages, we
would like to take another look with you at the coming steps of lead
management
Lead Nurturing
Lead Nurturing is the term used to describe the cultivation of
contacts or leads. The aim is to strengthen the relationship with
the previously acquired leads and to build a long-term basis of trust
with the company. For your company, this means that you qualify
and develop the lead step by step. In the course of lead nurturing
campaigns, the prospect is offered further high-quality content
that exactly matches their information needs. In this phase of
the process, the lead is a so-called Marketing Qualified Lead
(MQL).
If they are more interested in the company and its products and
services thanks to the information you provide, they are ready to
hand it over to the sales department.
This includes visiting the pricing page or the references several
times. But also downloading further e-books or case studies. At this
moment, the MQL becomes a SAL, a Sales Accepted Lead.
The sales department now checks whether the lead offers sufficient
potential for a sales outreach and the subsequent conclusion of a
sale. If this is the case, the prospect, now titled a Sales Qualified
Lead (SQL), is made an initial purchase offer.
In terms of inbound marketing, however, the customer is not seen
as the end product of the nurturing measures, as is usually the
case, but rather at the center of them.
Through active referral marketing, buyers contribute to the
generation of new leads. The central instrument of lead nurturing
is email marketing (CRM), for which the use of automation software
is ideally suited.
Lead Scoring
In order to know when a lead is ready to be handed over to the
sales team, you should develop uniform criteria in your company
between marketing and sales. These criteria serve to filter already
qualified contacts on the basis of an evaluation. In this context, we
speak of lead scoring, a point system that reflects the level of
interest.
Lead Routing
Lead routing means the transfer of the lead from marketing to sales,
which was already mentioned in the course of lead nurturing. It is
the last phase of lead processing and should now convert the lead
into a customer. The biggest challenges in lead routing are, on the
one hand, to identify the right time to pass on the lead and, on
the other hand, to secure the process organisationally. For the first
hurdle, your lead scoring serves as a basis. To avoid mistakes in
the second aspect, we recommend taking a look at our checklist
Is a suitable sales manager assigned?
Has all data including lead history been forwarded?
Is the sales representative able to contact the lead personally
as soon as possible?
Has the lead been separated from all marketing activities to
avoid disruption?
Lead Controlling
One thing must not be missing from every process within marketing:
quality control. Lead controlling is a check of lead generation, lead
nurturing, lead scoring and lead routing based on selected KPIs. In
the first step, you should check whether the lead generation has
produced the desired number of leads.
To do this, measure the number of completed forms, for example in
relation to the number of clicks on the landing page. Was the
conversion goal met at this point? Where is there potential for
optimisation? What costs are associated with the lead management
process?
The cost-per-lead provides information about the amount of
budget used per qualified lead. The KPI of the sales cycle can be
used to calculate the average sales cycle duration and then subject
it to optimisation measures. Keep in mind: only with data you can
see whether your efforts are actually paying off.
Conclusion
In the future, you don't have to worry about catching potential leads
on the wrong foot through unstructured activism. Inbound lead
generation enables your ideal customers to establish a
relationship with you on their own by convincing them with
high-quality content.
Build your content strategy systematically from the start, using the
four main lead generation techniques (offers, landing pages, forms
and CTAs), and you will convert more leads into satisfied and
long-term customers.
This E-Book will give you the first hand on how to do this. If you
would like to exploit the potential of lead generation in your
company and save not only a lot of time but also money, we are
a suitable partner at your side.
Feel free to book a no obligation call with us to find out, how we
can help you double your revenue in the next 90 days with our lead
system:
https://calendly.com/wehelpwithads-philipp/10min?month=2023-02