The Ultimate Guide to Effective Lead Generation Strategies
Long gone are the days when lead generation could be neglected. For modern companies, leadgen strategy is strategically important. In this article, we’ll look closely at lead distribution algorithms and criteria to choose a lead management solution that matches your marketing goals.
Read further to learn more about effective lead-generation techniques for your business.
What Is Lead Generation?
Leads are those potential customers who give you information about themselves, i.e., name, phone, and email. Lead generation means the process of lead capturing, qualifying, and nurturing.
Why Is Lead Generation Important?
Sales is the blood of a business, and selling products is only possible with an effective lead generation strategy. The more high-quality leads businesses manage to drive, the higher the chances of generating more revenue. After all, loyal clients increase the customer lifetime value (CLV) and the company’s profits.
To make this a reality, you should follow a trusted lead generation strategy. Read further to discover the sequence of steps and lead generation techniques to enhance your lead management.
How To Create a Lead Generation Strategy
Each part of the lead generation system matters. You can’t proceed to the next level without taking specific steps. With these steps, you can form a viable lead generation strategy. Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
1. Establish Feasible Goals
Set realistic marketing expectations for your marketing efforts. Analyze your experience and competitors’ strategies to depict a possible picture of your future success — ingrain new approaches carefully without overwhelming your marketing and sales team.
2. Draw Up Your Customer Persona
Leads won’t follow you if your content doesn’t hit home. That is why you need to know them perfectly. Critical information to collect about your customer is demographic/firmographic and psychographic data. After gathering this information, you create a customer persona or personas. Write down their age, gender, habits, preferences, fears, and desires.
3. Seek the Highest Quality Leads
Identify your ideal customer’s content preferences:
- Where they inhabit: what social media and websites they like to visit
- What content do they prefer to read, listen to, or watch?
- How often do they consume this content?
Determine what content you need and how often you publish it on specific media platforms.
Use both inbound (“pull”) and outbound (“push”) marketing for content creation and distribution. Inbound marketing deals with incoming traffic, while outbound traffic forms when you proactively reach out to your customers.
Here are the typical methods of “pull” marketing:
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Content marketing (whitepapers, eBooks, checklists, blog posts, videos, etc.)
- Social media marketing (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Inbound email marketing
- Surveys
- Landing pages
- Web forms
The usual ways to practice “push” marketing are the following:
- Cold calls
- Cold emails
- Direct mail
- Advertising (e.g., radio, TV, billboard)
- LinkedIn messages
The picture below shows what can be included in inbound and outbound marketing.
Source: Softwareadvice
4. Improve Clients’ Experience
Tailor your website to your customers’ needs. Everything from texts and design to contact forms should signal them that you are on the same page.
5. Ease Your Lead Generation
The ultimate aim of your marketing activities is to resolve customers’ issues. They are searching for the solution on your website. Your task here is to make it easier to contact your business. For instance, use up to three fields on your contact form. According to HubSpot analysis, that’s enough for proper conversion (see the chart below).
Source: Hubspot
Exclude navigation features on your landing page. By removing distractions, you assist your readers in taking needed action.
Produce content that resolves customer’s issues. This type of content is a lead magnet. The most prominent examples could be:
- eBooks
- Whitepapers
- Checklists
- Webinars
6. Qualify Your Leads
Divide your leads by categories within your pipeline. This process is called segmentation. Decide which content and when each leady type should receive. For instance, email marketing automation may be of great help.
7. Track and Control Your Results
Keep tabs on your marketing performance indicators. Here are the examples of key metrics you should focus on:
- Click-through rate: A ratio that shows the percentage of users who clicked your ad.
- Number of leads: The number of quality leads in your pipeline within a specific timeframe
- Customer lifetime value: That’s the revenue from a customer during your relationship period with them.
8. Improve Your Strategy
Here are a few tips to enhance your performance:
- Optimize your content for search engines. Keywords, tags, meta descriptions, internal links, page load speed — anything and everything can help.
- Use A/B testing to identify what makes users click. You must analyze what converts better by changing one position on your page (website design, button color, content, CTA placement, etc.).
- Collaborate with other media. Create strong connections with companies that may be helpful in your industry.
- Benchmark your competitors. Find what they do better than you and practice it for your lead generation.
9. Automate Your Lead Management System
Marketing nurtures leads while the sales department converts them into customers. The main connector between marketing and sales is a lead management system. Lead management tool connects your potential customers within a sales funnel with a sales rep. Automating this process will help you yield the desired results.
According to Hubspot statistics, 30% of leads are omitted by sales representatives. So, the ultimate task of such lead management software is to connect all your qualified leads without exception with sales agents.
Lead management systems typically offer lead routing features. In the next section, we will explain this notion.
What Is Lead Routing?
Lead routing means the distribution of inbound leads among sales agents. Unique algorithms connect incoming leads with your sales reps in alphabetic or in a specific order you choose. The leads distribution rules may consider geographical location, salesperson’s qualification, lead specifics, and other factors.
This process could be manual, automatic, or hybrid. A manual lead routing system implies that sales reps choose leads themselves. Automated lead distribution deals with specific algorithms that connect a sales agent and a lead automatically. Hybrid distribution routing software pushes potential customers automatically (based on the pre-set rules) to small pools of sales reps, where they choose them.
With efficient lead management software, your sales team converts more qualified leads than usual. Automated lead routing is more productive and efficient because it saves time on connection and increases your sales. An excellent lead selling software collects data from your interactions with leads and customizes your messaging to increase conversion rates.
The next part will reveal how to choose the lead routing software that fits your needs.
Selecting the Right Lead Routing Tool
The lead distribution solution works like a lead bidding software that connects leads with your sales reps and tracks them automatically. The criteria for choosing lead management and lead distribution software are similar. When selecting the lead distribution system for your business, mind such features:
| Feature | Description |
| Control over contact forms | The efficiency of sales routing software also depends on contact form optimization. Multiple companies use A/B testing to optimize such blocks on a website. Manage their number and order to improve your conversion rate. |
| Lead filtering | You should be able to set restrictions for your leads. As a result, your sales agents will work only with highly qualified leads. |
| Lead tracking | This feature will give invaluable insights into how your leads find you and communicate with your company. With this option, you can analyze what pages they visit and their traffic source. You can also identify their age, gender, and other data. This information will help you to adjust your marketing strategy and sales department business processes. |
| Real-time lead distribution | This feature allows you to customize your rules to connect a lead with your sales rep in real-time. Use an availability distribution to redirect a call if there is a delay. It’s a must-have feature of routing software for sales reps. |
| Detailed reporting | It is impossible to imagine lead routing tools without high-quality reports. Monitor key performance indicators in your leads distribution system within different time frames. This frame could be one day ago or one year ago. |
| Predictive modeling | This forecasting feature can unlock your lead generation strategy potential. Boost your marketing campaigns to the next level using past performance and predictive analysis. After entering all impact factors in the analytical model, you receive an outlook of your future marketing results in charts and graphs. |
How To Establish a Lead Distribution Strategy
Leads management software matters with a reasonable strategy only. Here are simple steps of the distribution strategy:
- Choose distribution rules that connect leads with your sales reps
- Select a distribution rule in your application
- Try out different rules: you use one rule one month and the next month another
Start implementing an effective lead generation strategy with small steps. Find both lead routing and lead management software free and test it. When you have a chance to allocate the budget and implement this strategic solution, identify the best option that meets your business needs and requirements.