Imagine you are on a date. You are having an amazing time. She laughs and your eyes meet hers. At that very moment, your phone rings. You reluctantly answer the call and the telemarketer starts blabbering about some new offer on some new post-paid plan…blah…blah…blah.
We bet you will never ever use their services no matter how good an offer they give you. To rescue marketers from being that annoying and interruptive cold caller who frustrates the hell out of a potential customer, here comes Inbound Lead Generation.
Simply speaking inbound lead generation is the process of attracting people to a brand through unique ideas. The trick is to provide them with just enough information and incentive to get them naturally interested in hearing from the brand and eventually making a purchase.
Just as shown, each stage calls for specific efforts to make the inbound lead generation strategy effective.
But why go through the hassle of generating leads? You can just buy them, right? Wrong! However tempting this may seem, don’t give in to it… Though buying leads are easier than organically generating them, the people on such a mailing list haven’t ‘opted in’ to receiving communication from you. For them, the mails you send them are actually spam and eventually you are just being an intrusive marketer again. If people report it, you will definitely be blacklisted, harming your brand's reputation adversely.
Hence it's always, always, always a better practice to generate organic leads and grow it with various promotion channels.
Generating Leads and keeping them warm
To start with, let's go through the steps in the lead generation process –
Visitor clicks a CTA that takes them to a landing page where they fill out a form to get an offer, at which point they become a lead.
After understanding the process, the challenge of which channels to choose for landing page promotion remains. Let’s discuss some of them.
- Product Trials
When people try your product, they will experience it first-hand. All their doubts about both, product quality and price will be cleared. Then all they need is a good offer to entice them.
- Content
To guide users to the landing page, dispensing relevant and informative content is vital.
- Emailers
Since users on your email list have already opted in to receive your communication, it’s much easier to ask them to take an action.
- Ads and Retargeting
Ads create recall and sometimes can be the final push for people to make a purchase
- Blog
This is a brand asset you own and the communication can be tailor-made to reach the end goal.
- Social Media
You can easily guide your followers step-by-step to take the desired action on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The features are unique to each platform and the communication can be designed accordingly.
Success in Lead Generation Campaigns
Since any lead generation campaign has many aspects that contribute to its success or failure, keeping a tab is crucial. Here are a few things that need to be checked so that you can easily figure out, in the campaign, what is working and what isn’t.
Checklist
- Utilize the right lead generation tools for setting up and analyzing a campaign
- Create offers that appeal to people at all stages of the buying cycle
- Customize the Call to action for users in each phase
- Link your CTA to a dedicated landing page instead of the homepage
- Get your sales team involved so that you keep getting first-hand consumer insights
- Review the strategy and revise when needed
Talking about the costs of lead generation, it is very important to keep a tab of industry rates to measure the efficiency of your strategy. Check for your industry benchmark from the below table.
What is your take on these strategies? Tell us about some of the best practices you follow.
