Lead Generation: What it is, Definition
The lead generation (ie the process to generate leads, potential customers) is the number of marketing activities that allow you to:
- Grow your business by bringing interested traffic (therefore potential customers) to your site or your business online or offline;
- Transforming visits into warm contacts (prospects), contracts and profits.
Lead Generation = Business
Index of topics covered
- Lead generation online and offline.
- 9 offline lead generation channels (outbound marketing):
- 5 online lead generation channels:
- Why is lead generation so important to your business?
- Lead generation = business
- Inbound marketing and KPIs: in UK too, numbers count and count
- Lead generation: the 3 metrics to measure
- Why is the battle for lead generation ESPECIALLY played online?
- The main tool of lead generation: the lead magnet
- 12 examples of useful content for online lead generation
- Some useful tools to improve the lead generation process:
- Lead generation marketing and optimization of your investment
- The terms of lead generation: Pay per Lead.
- How does a marketing strategy aimed at increasing leads and prospects work?
- From lead generation to funnel through nurturing
Lead generation online and offline.
Having a process of generating potential customers capable of bringing profits is not a need born in 2019: it is contemporary with the development of the business itself.
Today the term lead generation has acquired a surge in notoriety because:
- The net,
- The appearance of search engines,
- The development of social media,
- The emergence of marketing automation software
Allowed to:
Automate,
Target,
Scientifically segment the process of acquiring potential customers,
But without a process that guarantees continuous acquisition of opportunities, entrepreneurial activity has no sense .
9 offline lead generation channels (outbound marketing) :
- Word of mouth
- Cold calls
- Sending mail
- Sending spam e-mails
- Purchase of traditional print advertising
- Purchase of advertising space on TV and radio
- Participation in trade fairs and sector events
- Purchase of banner spaces
- Purchase of billboards.
Usually these are tools linked to a traditional way of doing entrepreneurship.
If some of these are still valid for acquiring prospects in target (participation in trade fairs and sector events for example), others (radio, TV, print media) in the past were considered the main tool of the mass market and advertising that does not it could be measured.
Today, with specific techniques for measuring the return on investment and attribution, the mass media as well as still being powerful tools for branding can also become, with the use of the appropriate tools (call stats, promotional codes, dedicated emails) powerful means of lead generation and conversion.
5 online lead generation channels:
The main online lead generation tools are the following:
- SEO, or organic positioning on search engines;
- SEM (i.e. SEA or pay per click on Google adwords);
- Content marketing or the creation of content that serves to attract prospects interested in the type of content we are able to offer
- Social media marketing (i.e. the use of all social media, free or paid to attract interested users)
- Mail marketing which is the main tool on which the lead nurturing process is based thanks to the tools and software of marketing automation (which I will talk about shortly). Of course, in this case we are not talking about spam mail marketing.
Why is lead generation so important to your business?
Because a good marketing strategy focused on lead generation (if what you have to offer is valid) can prove to be the most useful tool on the web to grow profits and opportunities and automatically generate sales or interested contacts.
In fact, since the buying process has changed, the goal of marketers and companies is no longer to bombard the potential customer or prospect with pounding messages but to:
be found by customers interested in what we have to offer (possibly 24 hours a day, 365 days a year);
build a lasting and profitable relationship with customers (for both).
Lead generation = business
For at least 3 years, all the American reports (Hubspot, Marketo, Business Insider) have highlighted how for overseas marketers to guarantee a process that allows them to have many qualified potential customers is the No. to B than B to C).
Inbound marketing and KPIs: in UK too, numbers count and count
In unsuspecting periods, when we were the first in UK to talk about inbound marketing and we began to develop projects for our customers, we focused on the important numbers for lead generation, those we have defined as the numbers that matter (today it is more it is fashionable to talk about performance marketing, analytics and KPIs) those that generate real and not virtual turnover.
Having started our journey as an SEO agency, we realized that there was something wrong in the way of thinking of the Italian web agencies and SEO specialists to illustrate the data.
Web marketers filled their reports with useless numbers for the entrepreneur, the company and the professional.
For you who want to REALLY EARN ONLINE, knowing the number of impressions or the positioning achieved on the pages of search engine results (if they do not generate wealth both are useless) is totally irrelevant,
The numbers that really matter are others
Lead generation: the 3 metrics to measure
how many potential customers (leads) you get;
how many contracts you can conclude and how much turnover you generate thanks to your online business
how much each contact-contract generated by the web costs you.
Dear entrepreneur or professional, if you don’t see the right numbers at the end of the month, ask yourself if you are investing or if you are wasting your money.
Why The Battle Is For Lead Generation Especially Played Online?
Why the buying process has changed: When the scarcity of information on products and services was the rule and the buyer was fundamentally uninformed, the acquisition of leads and prospects was reserved for companies with their own marketing and sales departments.
The main source of news available to the customer was provided by the sales department and word of mouth.
The channels of advertising (and outbound marketing) could stimulate demand but the consumer was the passive subject of the choice process and the information asymmetry was the prerogative of the sellers who had much more information than the potential customers.
Today buyers, long before talking to the seller (assuming they still do), carry out their own searches and find a lot of information in the online channels they favor: search engines (in most cases), on social media (Facebook, pinterest , Linkedin, Youtube, etc.) and through other online channels.
The main tool of lead generation: the lead magnet
The secret to winning today is to be found well before the customer decides to buy.
Those who do not invest online are cut off from the dynamics of choice that are increasingly upsetting the way they choose and buy.
This is why building a solid digital presence (so-called lead magnet) and building a reputation also through content marketing, is essential to aspire to success and to save time and money.
12 examples of useful content for online lead generation
- E-book
- Infogratica
- Guide
- Computer
- White Paper
- Video
- Courses
- Podcast
- Brochure
- Webinar
- Hangout
- Mind Maps
Some useful tools to improve the lead generation process:
For landing pages, there are lead pages and unbounce
For the ab tests, there are convert.com, optimizely, vwo, Google Optimize
For heat maps and the qualitative analysis of the web visit there are hotjar, crazy egg, kissmetrics
For onboarding sumo me, optin monster
Lead generation marketing and optimization of your investment
Lead generation marketing works, indeed, if your plan is well studied and implemented, it will allow you to acquire customers and earn and will guarantee you the lowest acquisition cost compared to other channels.
Remember everything online can be measured!
A lead acquisition plan can be built on the basis of your real needs and business goals: you can decide how much to invest to win new interested users or new customers.
A customer acquisition project on the web is not an expense but an investment whose ROI is measurable.
Lead Generation = excellent investment
The terms of lead generation: Pay per Lead.
Pay per lead = you pay for what you get in return (contacts or contracts).
There are many ways to invest in a customer acquisition strategy (if you have the patience to follow me I will explain in detail the phases of a good acquisition plan): a very effective tool is the so-called Pay per Lead, that is, you establish (after having weighed the value of a lead for your business) how much to pay in exchange for an interested contact or a potential customer.
This is a perfect example of a win-win type investment: if your web agency does not bring you results, you don’t get a penny, if your agency is smart, you will share together the rich fruits of a well-studied and executed job.
How does a marketing strategy aimed at increasing leads and prospects work?
In order to understand how an effective lead generation campaign works, you need to put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes.
Remember:
Whether you are a company or a professional you must understand that you are not selling services or products but
Offer The Solution
To your potential customer who has a problem to solve or a desire to satisfy.
The customer goes to the doctor not to buy the visit but because he is sick or afraid of getting sick, the customer does not buy a web marketing consultancy but wants answers to increase his profits or because something does not work in his business, the customer does not pay a gym membership but needs to stay fit or look young and “cool”, a customer does not want a product but is looking for the solution that will help him to satisfy his need or to fulfill his aspiration.
If you don’t focus on your customer, abandoning the “product-centric” vision, you will hardly be able to do business in 2017 and beyond.
Starting from this premise you can plan your lead generation strategy at 360 °.
A necessary but not sufficient condition for a web user to bring water to your mill is that he knows the solution you want to offer him and therefore somehow knows you.
If a potential customer already knows he has a problem or expresses a need, the matter is conceptually simple: to start a lead acquisition process you have to widen the funnel of people who come into contact with your business to the maximum, guaranteeing maximum visibility. in the virtual places where your potential prospects gather (and if you contact us we will show you some examples of how we have applied the strategies I am talking about to increase the turnover of our customers).
Since search engines have become the privileged place where your user searches for solutions to their problems (the verb to Google in America has become synonymous with search) you must be visible on Google (which has 90% of the market share in UK and Europe).
As?
Making the most of the positioning and consequent visibility deriving from an SEO activity (organic visibility) or from the paid campaigns of Google Adwords (also called Pay per click or SEM).
The reasoning becomes complicated if your potential target does not know they have a problem, has not expressed a need / need or is not yet looking for a solution: in this case you have to do a bit like it did in old-style advertising to create awareness (so-called awareness) using the means that web marketing makes available to you (compatibly with your budget and your business objectives): blogs, social networks, Facebook advertising, affiliate programs, content marketing, PR are all arrows that can get you to the final goal.
In this case, offline tools are also useful (articles in magazines, participation in trade fairs, proximity marketing, guerrilla marketing, etc.).
A well-studied project is one that can guarantee you maximum visibility with respect to your actual possibilities and your investment capacity.
From lead generation to funnel through nurturing
Visibility is only the minimum requirement: obtained through SEO with blogging and content marketing with social media marketing or through proximity marketing, with paid campaigns on Facebook or with AdWords is just the starting point .
Lead generation requires much more: it is the art of “converting” the visitors who come into contact with your online business, into potential customers or interested and profiled users who, spontaneously, leave you useful data to start the business lead nurturing, that is the activity that can transform a contact into a contract.
The lead generation management expert is the new alchemist capable of transforming traffic into sound money also in uk!
Since the first courses on Ninjacademy we have stressed the concept of how to study a strategy to turn strangers into customers and set metrics to monitor results.
Without this fundamental phase, the whole scaffolding of a lead generation do not plan collapses which will lead to the conclusion of sales or contracts, nor will it bind the customer to your brand.
Call now to learn about the best Lead Generation strategies to grow your profits
Call us, we will find together the way to get your business off the ground