‘61% of marketers rank lead generation as their number one challenge.’
If you’re part of that 61% you’re not alone. A lot of our clients have found lead generation challenging and they find it hard to make the time to put strategies in place in order to get results.
Hopefully at the end of this blog you’ll have a better insight into what lead generation is and how it can help your business. We’ll answer the most common questions we get asked about lead generation, lead generation marketing and sales funnels.
So what exactly is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is how you generate a lead. A lead being a person who has shown some interest in your business and wants to know more. Lead generation refers to the process of steps it takes to attract and convert people and potential customers into someone who has shown interest in your company’s product or service. Some examples of lead generators are engaging content, blog posts, live events and online offers.
96%of visitors that come to your website organically are not ready to buy, they don’t trust your business yet. That’s where lead generation marketing comes in!
What is Lead Generation Marketing?
Lead Generation marketing is used to drive those potential customers to your landing page to convert them into leads. There are loads of different forms of promotional tools we can use for lead generation marketing.
I’ll run through a few of the most popular here…
Email: “Email marketing is up to 40 times more effective than social media, according to a study done by McKinsey&Company.” The same study also shows that the buying process happens 3 times faster than on social media.
Email is the most approachable way of asking your potential customer to take action as they have already signed up to your email list and are interested in what you have to offer. It allows you to start nurturing your potential leads with captivating stories about your business, from case studies with results that you were able to achieve for previous clients to help build that trust. Design, copy, an eye-catching subject line and clear call to actions are also very important when creating your email template as it needs to stand out in their inbox.
Social Media: You can promote your offers across all relevant platforms on your social posts and include calls to action in your copy. The type of content you can use on your socials are endless from video, static, carousel images, interactive animation content to engage with your target market.
Blogs are a great way to share more information on your product or service, the benefits of it, why you need it, the facts & figures behind the making of it. This builds trust with your potential customers and shows that you’re the experts in your field.
Ads this process is obviously your more direct approach, targeting your potential customers with a budget using engaging graphic and captivating copy to promote the offer directing them to a landing page on your site so they convert as a lead. Depending on where you plan on running the ads there are tools on Facebook and other social platforms that allow you to target them directly and by using other data from your website and other analytics it will guide you on how to target them more effectively.
What’s a sales funnel and how does it work?
A sales funnel is a system of step by step stages put in place that allows you to bring your potential customer closer to buying your product or service through a series of marketing tools that make up the sales funnel like: videos, landing pages, automated emails, blogs that do the selling for you. It helps you understand what potential customers are thinking and doing at each stage of the purchasing journey. The top of the sales funnel is where your lead generation kicks in.
There are four basic stages of a sales funnel.
Awareness – is when your potential customers become aware of your product or service.
Interest – is when they start taking an interest in your business, by signing up to an email list, following you on social media.
Decision – is when they finally decide to buy and
Action – is when they purchase and become actual customers.
Why do I need a sales funnel for my business?
Every business should have a sales funnel to create a virtual staff member working 24/7 on your business while you sleep, leading your potential customers to the action phase by making them purchase. It’s not enough nowadays to just put up an ad every now and then or post on social media to create the level of awareness needed to engage and attract new customers. The more straightforward your sales funnels, the greater the chance of buying action.
What are lead magnets?
Lead magnets are tools that help generate leads by offering potential customers something in return for their contact details. Examples of some lead magnets are: ebooks, guide books, templates, whitepapers.
The most effective lead magnets need to be tempting enough to help solve a problem for your potential customers
Some examples are:
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Here are a few different types of sales funnels:
Free product / Offer Funnel
The customer is directed to the landing page through ads, referrals, social media traffic, etc. Once they enter their address, the sales funnel kicks off with an order bump a one time offer for one of their products.
This sales funnel is used by companies that have multiple items to sell. They will start off with a very attractive offer, which will add a lot of people to their sales funnel because who doesn’t want a product valued at €XX for free?
The goal is to add as many people as possible to your sales funnel so that you have a long list of customers to send your upsells to down the line.
Free Trial Funnel
It is normally offered by companies who are providing subscription-based services like SEO tools, web hosting, subscription sites. Usually, a lot of SaaS companies use a free trial to get customers to start the buying process because most customers do not want to spend their hard earned money all at once for something they are not sure about.
The customer can take some time to get to know the service and the company before having to decide whether it is something that he wants to invest in.
Examples of companies that use these are: Hubspot, Spotify, Netflix.
Email Funnel
You kick off your email funnel by tempting your potential customers with lead magnets such as newsletters, free ebooks, limited time offers. In order to receive what’s on offer they will need to fill out a form with their contact details.
Now your email list has started, you can then send them various informative follow-up emails that help foster a relationship. After a while, you can send offers via email when you know they trust you and are ready to convert.
This funnel is an affordable way to bring in sales and works especially well for businesses who are looking to sell their products or services online. It is still one of the most important and effective digital channels to sell products through.
For more information on lead generation or how it can work for your business, please get in touch for a free consultation below.
