What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is the marketing process followed to attract total strangers and convert them into potential leads.
Buyers' decisions today are largely influenced by free and abundant information available to them online. They choose a product after researching through a rich source of online information. This behavior is driving the development of new lead generation tools.
There is a need and need for constant improvement to develop powerful tools to capture and sift through this information of the buyers to acquire the most qualified leads. Tools alone may prove inadequate to get us to this objective and hence, a need to deploy a right mix of online and offline techniques.
Why Lead Generation Tools?
In your mission to make sales and get your business off-the-ground, you need an array of quality leads. Lead generation strategies facilitate your activate interest in your target market in the products.
Marketo's study reveals that businesses with strategic lead generation practices achieve 133% greater sales. Further, companies with mature lead generation strategies spend 73% of their time selling as opposed to companies without such strategies spend only 57% of their time.
But different buyers have different levels of interest and so, you will need to segregate the prospects according to their interest level and then come up with mature lead generation strategies to get them interested in your offer.
The buying process has undergone a colossal change and marketers, faced with the challenge of constantly finding new ways to get heard through the noise. E-mails and mass advertising are proving to be not enough; need has arisen for the marketers to focus on getting found and build continuous engagements with buyers.
A recent study reveals that 78% marketers struggle with lead generation and more than60% marketers say improving lead quality is their biggest challenge. Now, the big question here is how would you push through a large amount of high-quality leads and sales-ready prospects into your lead generation funnel?
If you're focused on boosting conversions, you'll need to use lead generation strategies to keep the top of your lead funnel full without wasting your time or budget.
We at Pixilex have analyzed the best lead generation tools and shortlisted the top 10 and picked the top 5 in our report.
1. Linkedin
KeywordSpy facilitates keyword tracking and allows you to carryout advanced keyword research and receive detailed analysis of the competition. Trace the keywords, study and comprehend different advertising strategies employed by your competitors for their Adwords and PPC campaigns.
PROS:
Get to High-Value Audiences
Sponsored Updates of Linked-In, can facilitate your access to high-value audiences. Unlike other networking platforms, every Top Decision Maker is now a member of Linked-In. You can target an upper-level manager in need of your business solution as well as the C-suite executive whose stamp seals the deal.
Target Top Business Decision Makers
Segregation by geographic location, industry, job title, and company is a big plus. Want your content to reach just the CEOs? - Possible in Linked-in, but not found in any other social network.
Go, get the Qualified Leads
Other social networks may brag of more active members - but the superior conversion rate of clicks in Linked-In outsmarts the completion. This platform proffers to content marketers the "right" clicks that would convert easily into qualified leads and not just more clicks that may not convert at all or as easily on other social networking sites.
Launch Your Own Campaigns
LinkedIn's self-serve ad interface is easy to use and a well documented user manual is available to guide you through the process. The application's versatility would suit the needs of small businesses as well as those in Fortune 500.
CONS:
Higher CPC Pricing
Advertising on Linked-In comes at a premium price for B2B content marketers get access to high-value customers through granular targeting. Average CPC is estimated at around $6 while LinkedIn minimum daily budget for campaigns is $10. In contrast, Facebook's CPC is $0.50 and a daily minimum is $1.
Craft your Strategy
Considering the premium fee on clicks, you will like to ensure that there are only useful clicks. Make sure you've carefully thought out your buyer persona and create your content and landing pages accordingly.
VERDICT:
Despite the CPC price tag and need for strategic content development, LinkedIn advertising would prove to be truly rewarding to B2B content marketers. Comparable access to target market cannot be found in any other social network.
2. TWITTER
PROS:
" Easy to create - less than a minute to write and send
" #hashtag power - use them to increase your social reach and improve brand awareness. Join the conversation - what's trending?
" Get to the point - 140 characters
" Analytics - measure and boost impact on Twitter
" Automation - using various tools, you can tweet in advance to save you time!
" Lists - A list is a curated group of Twitter users. You can create your own lists or subscribe to lists created by others. These lists are like a mini news feed of the people that you have added.
" Twitter cards - Website cards to lead generation cards work a treat to drive more engagement.
CONS:
" Spam balance. It can take practice to ensure you're interacting adequately on Twitter. Create a balance where you're not missing key marketing opportunities without coming off like a spammer.
" Twitter is hectic with 340 million tweets per day.
" The limit of 140 characters can pose a challenge if the message cannot be conveyed in few words.
" Quick response. Users expect to be responded to promptly on Twitter.
" Lacks tools for extensive Analytics.
VERDICT:
Twitter ads support small businesses by allowing them to specifically narrow and target the audience that the ad is shown to. You can set the maximum limit on the expenditure you would like to make on the entire campaign and the daily maximums as well. The platform does have a few drawbacks like all others but people realizing success with Twitter ads outnumber the failures.
3. Shareable Content
PROS:
" Enhance online imprints
" Economical, healthier ROI (if you're the best teacher in a given domain, and your content is viral).
" Content of high quality are not many online - and you could be the first in your market, and enjoy the rewards for the first entrants.
" You can become an influencer in your market, benefit you in long-term.
" It is an additional argument for buyers - even if it's not the main thing that convinces them, good content can be the last "push" towards buying.
" Your expertise is your main selling point - if you have a lot to share this can easily become your main way of attracting leads.
CONS:
" Quality Content is required.
" Enormous Patience is a must.
" it's very popular, which means your competitors might already have a huge fanbase, making it even harder to acquire your audience.
" Ingenious thinking is required to outrun your competitors already in the race and running it well.
" Tough to reach your audience with content.
VERDICT:
Plenty of patience and mind-blowing content are required to start generating the amount of leads you need to sustain your business.
To establish this as your prime strategy for Link Generation, you need to launch a detailed research on your target audience - understand their pains, language, what content is liked by them, , who do they listen to and who do they ignore. You'll be building on your online footprint and provide the target group a view into your company - Good content would definitely enhance your brand image.
4. Your Website
A good website converts between 7-14% of visitors and is optimized toward this goal. You need to model it and lay it up as your major conversion tool.
You need to optimize your website for it to serve you as an effective lead generation and conversion tool. Advanced SEO techniques are essential to make the website easily found on Search Engines. User experience on the site should be smooth, enjoyable and information easily accessible. You need to make sure that the content and experience are very captivating and the visitors remember your business over others.
The main lead generation aspect of your website will be your "calls to action". Make sure that these calls to action are obvious to visitors when they first hit the site.
The key to building a website that will convert traffic into lead generation is to make the visitors' interaction with the site and engagement with the business easy. You must present them an incentive to pass on details. Make your web forms simple and easy to complete. Ask for less information and offer a social login as an option and that starts a relationship with your potential client or customer.
To that end, marketers should keep away unnecessary elements from their website and focus on the most important messages and calls to action.
Limit the amount of options a person has to explore through your website," "The more overwhelming it is, the greater chance that they will get [distracted] and leave..
A lot of people think that beautiful websites are better, but studies show that ugly, but functional websites can be just as successful, if not more successful at converting leads."
Since a website is the basic requirement for any business, we shall not discuss the PROS and CONS.
5. E-Mail Marketing
PROS:
" Enormous possibilities for personalized messages.
" A way to stay on top of people's minds and build trust over time.
" Easy to automate, segment workflows and measure performance.
" Questions from recipients allow you to instantly start building a business relationship.
" Theoretically easy to set-up.
" Huge Additional benefit is building up of a subscriber list, a great asset
CONS:
" Requires great copywriting, design skills and a lot of customer insight.
" Time lag - your audience has to find something interesting in your offer for them to part with their email addresses.
" Details matter to attend to - for instance a bad subject line can destroy your performance, even if your messages are awesome.
" Long-term - the best results come from offering big value and occasionally incentivizing, it's not a way to quickly generate leads.
VERDICT:
You can adopt this as your backbone lead generation strategy if the needs of your target audiences are known. They can offer awesome resources in exchange for visitor e-mails. Emailing lists are the most valuable assets in marketing that can be used for lead qualification, nurturing and direct sales outreach later on.
This blog is researched and authored by Paul Ghugloth and Rahul Kumar
About Pixilex:
Pixilex is a premier digital and content marketing advertising agency in Bangalore with a single goal, aimed at boosting sales.
When it comes to advertising, most would think of magazine ads, TV commercials or billboards, but Pixilex is redefining advertising. It’s all about grabbing the limelight on its clients and their product or services. What makes Pixilex tick, is the core workings of an ad agency, coupled with gritty, creative content that sticks and innovative ways to put it out there for the world to see. The means are endless and the sky’s the limit.
Visit us at www.pixilex.com
Call us at +91 968 666 9597
Lead generation is a critical element in your sales process. Having a great lead generation call-to-action is very important.
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