For your brand to be successful, it's essential you keep pace with developments in lead generation, otherwise you run the risk of being left behind by the competition.
What is a lead?
A lead is an individual or organization expressing an interest in buying whatever it is that your business is selling. In other words, a lead is a potential customer.
Qualifying a lead
By implementing a lead qualification system, you can evaluate the potential of a lead and segment them according to their preferences. This helps your sales team deal with them in a more personalized manner.
To qualify a lead, try the following:
- Create your ideal customer profile.
- Track past conversations, browsing behaviors, and their areas of interest.
- Understand their concerns about buying your service or product.
- Understand the touchpoints (communication channels) they use to interact with your brand.
- Consolidate data and conversations from across different touchpoints into one unified platform to help engage your audience better.
Once you know how to qualify a lead, you can start setting up strategies to generate them.
How to increase lead generation
The lead generation process involves attracting more visitors from your marketing strategy and qualifying them. However, digitalization has had a huge impact on exactly how this works.
In the era of digital marketing, lead generation means being available at multiple touchpoints to address customers’ concerns quickly, clear up their doubts, and encourage them to progress towards a sale.
In this blog, we will look at 6 lead generation techniques to supercharge your lead generation process.
Lead generation techniques
1. It's all about communicative technology and how you use it
"The lead generation process starts by finding out where your target market 'lives' on the web." - Wayne Davis
We won’t be discussing old school communication techniques here, instead focusing on the latest communication tools that will dominate the marketplace in the years to come.
One of the questions that businesses keep asking is ‘How can we generate leads with our website?’
Effective lead generation depends on reaching people seamlessly and communicating to them effectively.
According to Neil Patel, live chat is a great way to help you attract more leads and even increase your conversion rate.
- Convert your website visitors into leads with visual engagement tools
The days of waiting on the phone or not hearing back for 2-3 days from an email have gone.
We are now in the age of instantaneous, real-time communication, and customers’ expectations are evolving to reflect this. They want their queries answered and they want it done fast.
The best way to fulfill these demands is through using engagement tools such as live chat, video call, and co-browse.
Video chat is great for advancing your leads down the funnel. Acquire’s live voice and video chat software, for example, redefines the power of live communications businesses have to generate and convert leads.
Live chat is a fantastic real-time communication platform. It enables your customer representative to be creative, informative and effective. Interactivity like this helps build trust with customers.
Along with the live voice and video chat functionality, this tool also offers other features like co-browsing, screen sharing, and file sharing capabilities.
Co-browsing is useful for lead generation because it:
- Connects you with your consumer’s browser
- Highlights elements on the browser
- Helps you to demonstrate
- Opens links in the browser
- Makes filling in forms easier
Combining live chat with co-browsing is a sure-fire way to get the most out your lead generation process.
2. Customer relationship management
Nowadays, it’s commonplace for businesses to generate and nurture leads using a CRM system.
According to a recent study by VentureBeat, 80% of companies have generated more leads, and 77% of companies witnessed an increased conversion rate by employing CRM systems.
CRM is a multi-layered system used to track leads, opportunities, and deals.
Typical layers of a CRM system are:
- Customer satisfaction
- Customer response
- Customer needs
- Customer loyalty
- Customer retention
- Customer service
Pick any layer, and you will find that the effectiveness of your communication techniques are at its very heart. For a proper understanding of your customers’ expectations you need powerful communication tools like live chat on your website.
3. Email marketing
“Email is the glue that binds everything together.” – Michael Stelzner
Email marketing is still one of the most effective ways for acquiring and nurturing leads as they move through the sales funnel, providing a reliable way to target and communicate with audiences.
According to the MarketingSherpa Lead Generation Benchmark Report, email marketing is the most widely used lead generation practice.
Email marketing, especially when used in conjunction with integrated CRM and analytics systems, is still a critical part of creating a successful lead generation strategy.
4. Speaking events - potential leads love confident voices
Speaking provides a chance to express the real ‘you’ to your audience.
Plan your own event for a suitable occasion, such as the launch of a new product, changes to your brand, or on the back of important advances in the marketplace.
A smart speaker can express their thoughts well within 5-10 minutes and use the remaining span for questioning sessions. It’s important to keep time to listen to others and clear up any questions, you will reach them more effectively than you ever could by just talking at them.
5. Create content in different formats and use focused blogging
Users like to read informative content. Try to think about what they want from you, then provide the right content solution. Showing you understand them in this way helps gain their trust.
Well-delivered content goes a long way in convincing users to do business with you. You can generate even more leads by ensuring you provide valuable data and information about your product or services along with it.
According to WebDAM, here is why you need to focus effort on producing content:
Consider creating your content in different formats like webinars, videos, infographics, and slideshares as well, so users can access it however they want. This also provides useful collateral for social media platforms.
6. Replacing sales with support
If you can solve customer queries within the first interaction, it’s a game changer for your lead generation process.
For example, one of Acquire’s clients, an insurance company, faced challenges in attracting and closing new contracts because website visitors had to go through a tedious form filling process. As a result, qualifying leads became a convoluted process.
Through co-browsing, customers were able to access the secure online documentations while seeking help from the sales agent through visual cues.
This led to a significant decrease in the average operating time by 50% and an increase in the contract closing rate of 62%.
The last word
Lead generation is a mixture of art and science. Think about what your buyers need. Put yourself in their shoes. Consider potential questions regarding your products. Remember, leads are human before they are digital patterns.
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