Growing a business online starts with lead generation – it is as simple as that. If your business can start to capture quality leads effectively, the rest will fall into place. Whether you’ve been in business for a long time or just starting off, the start point should always be to have a solid plan in place to guide your business on your lead generation journey.
It may sound simple to some on the surface, but then we all know things are changing every day. Search and social algorithms change, keywords become more competitive and email programs has become much more selective on incoming mail.
When it comes to lead generation, a business owner may find that they face many of the same challenges as other businesses in very different industries.
Where does one start, what mediums and methods are considered the best these days and what are other businesses relying on for their lead capture?
Even with all the data at their fingertips, marketing teams at small and midsize businesses are still experiencing a shortage of actionable insights. It is not that easy to prove that a lead generation campaign is resulting in high quality leads.
So, with all the challenges we face as business owners and consultants in lead generation, what are some of the steps we can take to maximise our lead generation budgets??
What Should I have A Closer Look at?
As I mentioned in my previous blog post – “Getting more leads is always great, but to convert them into buyers, is quite another challenge”.
Since lead generation can be a very costly marketing activity, the main focus should be to not only generate leads, but to convert those leads into buyers.
With all these challenges in mind, it is definitely possible to maximize your lead generation budget by paying closer attention to the following lead generation activities and how you can streamline your efforts:
The Following 5 Tips Will Serve You Well
Have A Closer Look At Your Social Media Advertising
With the rapid growth of technology and constant changes on all the different social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, it is important to really do a deep-dive and ask yourself where are your best-quality leads coming from?
Do not neglect organic web traffic, referrals, email marketing and Google AdWords. Re-allocating some social media advertising funds to other mediums may be the better solution for your business to experience greater ROI.
Form A Strong Bond With Your Sales Team.
Some of the best data comes from the customer directly and since sales teams are in direct communication with customers, they can tell the real-life stories behind this data and help put it in context.
Do you collect regular feedback from the sales team? Do you use the feedback and improve on your campaign? If the marketing department relies heavily on for example analytics, conversion rates and advertising data only, it will be hard to put everything in context.
Leverage Email Marketing.
Most marketers will agree that Email Marketing is still considered a powerful engine for gaining high volume and high-quality leads. If not neglected, email marketing can be a consistent driver of quality leads. It also gives a business the ability to stretch the budget since it provides a platform for both capturing and nurturing promising leads.
Analyse and Optimize Your Website.
Amid all the changes in social media and email marketing, this is still the best place to attract targeted audiences.
It is critical to evaluate your landing pages for opportunities to optimize for conversions: Add calls to action, embed lead generation forms where appropriate, incorporate some third-party testimonials and look for other ways to make content more compelling.
Invest In Conversion Rate Optimization
Formstack published a State of Lead Capture report in 2016, which argued that conversion optimization is critical for every business. I say that this report is still relevant 2020 and beyond.
It is easy to fall for the trap where we as business owners and even seasoned marketers for that matter, care more about traffic generation and how impressive the numbers are, but we neglect to really look closely at how we are converting that traffic into buyers.
If you’re not methodically working on increasing your conversion rate, stop spending money on marketing and fix that first.
Conclusion
Lead capture is the essence of any successful digital marketing campaign.
Even with a large marketing budget, great landing pages and a super hyped presence on most social media platforms, in the end, it won’t do much good until they’re sending a steady stream of high quality leads to your database.
As we head further into 2020, the focus should be on crafting a strategic marketing plan – set the direction, clearly define the marketing goals and identify the mediums that will best options to capture more leads and land more sales.
Which one of the 5 Tips discussed do you think will help you today?
Thank you for taking the time
Willem
