Lead Generation

360^o Marketing > internet-marketing > lead-generation

Disillusioned by the ups-and-downs of the corporate world, more and more people are taking up business opportunities that entail identifying and enrolling likeminded people into the business model. If you are in a business that requires lead generation, you will find out how much your business can be impacted by our service.

Business Website Mistakes

If you are looking at attracting likeminded people to your business through the internet, you first and the most basic requirement will be a business website. Many people are not sure exactly how their business website should appear. That is why they end up with websites that look like amateurish attempts. They make websites that are more like personal homepages rather than professional business websites. You may have also seen those one page websites that seem to scroll down forever. It is not surprising that most visitors are likely to give up halfway and quit the page. As you can imagine, the lead generation capabilities of such websites are likely to be very low.

Ideal Business Website

What you need is a professional presence on the Internet. When visitors reach your website, they should feel interested in the business opportunity. The website should also be designed in a way that provides them with all the information they need and encourages them to give joining your business serious consideration. For effective lead generation, what you need is a website that is attractive, professionally designed and easy to navigate. Your website needs to give visitors an exceptional browsing experience so that they are suitably impressed by your business.
Attracting Potential Leads
Getting a professional website is not enough to attract potential leads. It is crucial that your website is also easily accessible by people who are likely to be interested in your business. This can be achieved by a variety of methods. Some of the most effective lead generation techniques include search engine optimization, viral marketing, link building, pay-per-click marketing, opt-in email marketing and blogging amongst a host of other cutting edge methods.

i’amITmm.com – Internet Marketing and Media

We offer you the entire range of services starting with professional web design and including the multitude of internet marketing techniques all under one roof. Just entrust us with your lead generation responsibilities and we assure you that we will use the most cutting edge technology to ensure that your website is most effectively developed and marketed for optimum lead generation capacities. High lead generation can make all the difference in paving your path to success.

Also Read: Give Your Affiliate Marketing Business a Tremendous Boost

The buying process has changed radically in recent years. With Digital Marketing and Inbound Marketing, leads have become the key part of companies’ commercial and communication strategies.

These methodologies allow you to perform a much more accurate analysis of the level of engagement of the potential customer and understand which stage of the sales funnel it is in. And it is the generation of leads that makes it possible to evaluate their real interest in the solutions that the organization has to offer.

When a company invests in lead generation, new business opportunities appear. This is because, when well used, the strategies to attract the public are more accurate, being directed to those consumers who really seek some product or service and can find in the company the solution for their needs.

No for nothing, it helps make the business process more efficient, increase conversion rates, and optimize return on investments in marketing and sales actions.

Below we’ll see more details about the lead generation process and how Neoway can help your business.

What are leads?

Leads are consumers (individuals or legal entities) who have shown interest in any product or service offered by a company. That is, lead is a potential customer.

The generation of leads is precisely the process of identifying consumers interested in what the brand has to offer. It is about arousing these people’s interest in the organization’s solutions and guiding them along the purchase journey towards conversion.

But in order to effectively become a lead, this interest must be realized by providing some data that will allow the company to contact this consumer and start a relationship with the aim of making a sale.

And to encourage potential customers to provide their data, the company must offer something in return, some “reward” —which is done through Digital Marketing strategies, especially Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing.

Generally, this happens by offering content and materials that arouse interest and are useful and relevant to that person, such as more detailed information about the solution or brand, or also some kind of discount, offer or benefit (trial tool, templates, spreadsheets, etc.).

As we have seen, the generation of leads favors the realization of more accurate analyses about the future customer and on the company’s own sales and marketing strategies.

This is reflected in a higher productivity of the commercial team, since sellers start working only with leads that have been previously qualified by the marketing team and are mostly ready to be approached and become customers.

As a result, lead generation allows you to increase the conversion rate, and when strategies are well aligned, you can improve the process of identifying potential customers and improve the utilization of these opportunities.

Cold lead: consumer who made his data available in exchange for some information, but does not take the process forward, either for insecurity or lack of interest.
Lead in nutrition phase: potential customer who has shown interest and needs to be worked with Inbound Marketing strategies to provide more information from their expectations to advance him on the buying journey.
Inactive lead: is the lead that, momentarily, is not ready to acquire the product or service that the company offers. Because they are still interested, it is necessary to identify who these leads are, because the opportunity for closing the deal is still latent.
Lead in recycling process: With the right digital marketing strategies, you can reactivate a lead that was inactive, returning it to the sales process.
Qualified lead: lead that already has confidence in the brand, is familiar with the company’s solution and intends to acquire it. At this stage, the future client is ready to receive proposals from the sales team and begin negotiation towards their conversion.
As we can see, not all contacts who have expressed interest in the brand and have become leads are able to become customers of the company. And it is in this context that the work of qualifying leads comes in.

But how do you know if a lead is qualified or not? Through analytics tools it is possible to analyze some clues that indicate whether the contact is ready to become a customer.

For example, a user who repeatedly accesses the company’s blog is most likely looking for more information about the brand and its solutions. This indicates that it is eligible to proceed to the next step of the sales funnel.

However, this analysis may be more accurate. This is because this type of action of visitors can be quantified by generating an indicator called lead scoring.

This score is used to determine which leads are ready for conversion or not, that is, which are ready to become a real company customer.

Actions such as downloading rich materials, registering for a landing page and opening emails also add up to points, as they indicate lead interest in the company’s message and solutions.

Inbound Marketing methodology and lead generation

Regardless of the company’s industry, it will be necessary to put in place different marketing strategies to attract potential customers and sell more. Currently, due to the internet and the digitization of the business, the focus has turned to Inbound Marketing.

Also known as attraction marketing, this methodology seeks to attract potential customers on a voluntary basis, that is, without the aggressive and disruptive characteristic of other strategies, such as Outbound Marketing

Inbound involves gaining the trust of leads and giving credibility and authority to the brand. The goal is to make them recognize the solution offered by them as the best alternative to meet their needs and, once they become customers, stay true to the company.

To achieve all these goals, this methodology works with “baits”, which make the client reach the brand.

However, these baits need to be of interest to users, informing them and helping them in relation to their problems and their possible solutions.

Importance of the consumer journey and sales funnel for lead generation

The sales funnel is nothing more than the set of steps that make up the customer journey. These are the stages that a consumer goes through from his first contact with the organization to the realization of a purchase.

Knowing and having this process well designed is essential to create strategies that lead you from one step to the next, planning them in order to eliminate bottlenecks and better qualify leads as they progress. Thus, having a well-structured and mapped funnel is vital to optimize resources and drive sales.

The main steps of lead generation

Attraction
This stage is aimed at attracting people who are interested in the product or service that the company offers. For this, it is necessary to focus on the construction of materials and contentthat can capture the attention of these people spontaneously.

As a result, the attraction phase brings an audience much more engaged with the brand and really prone to consume.

The most common ways to attract these leads are:

• Creation of content for blog;
• Improved site visibility through SEO techniques;
• Investment in sponsored links and ad creation;
• Strategic use of social networks.

Conversion

Once the audience has been attracted, it’s time to think about converting these visitors into leads. As we have seen, this is done by providing content that is relevant and valuable in exchange for contact information from these consumers.

There are some ways to capture leads, among them are:

Offers: fundamental process of lead generation, in which it offers something of interest to the visitor, whether for more advanced consumers in the shopping journey, such as free tests or demos, or with the aim of educating, such as e-books and webinars.
Landing pages: it is a means of exchanging information. It is from this page that visitors will leave their contact details (name, email, phone, job title, among others) to have access to the content they are interested in.
Relationship: This step focuses on identifying the classification of these leads, that is, which are prepared to move forward and which are not yet ready to continue the purchase process.

Some of the main ways to identify the stage of each lead are:

E-mail marketing: used to send offers and content that are relevant and direct.
Marketing automation: serves to optimize time and make processes more efficient, allowing you to perform a series of tasks related to sales funnel management in an automated way.
Lead nutrition: is to maintain a constructive relationship with leads by sending content that educates and helps them solve their problems. Instead of trying to push an offer, the idea is to respect the timing of each lead on the purchase journey.

Sell

All the work of generating leads and its nutrition aims to generate demand and new business opportunities for the company.

Although some sales occur directly on the site, in many cases the seller must contact the potential customer directly.

In general, the more complex and expensive the solution, the more the sales process tends to become more consultative, requiring the active performance of the commercial team in closing the business.

This process can be aided by some tools, including:

Lead Scoring: From the analysis of the profile of the level of interest, a score of each lead is defined, indicating the actual potential of purchase.
Inbound Sales: methodology that prioritizes customer needs, as opposed to trying to sell at any cost.
CRM: software focused on trade management, containing all the information and history of each seller and lead.
Analysis: The last step serves to go through the entire process and observe the results that have been achieved, allowing to evaluate which strategies have worked and which need to be reviewed.

Digital Marketing makes it possible to track and prove these results in a very precise way, providing, through a series of metrics and concrete data to analyze the company’s performance.

Tips for getting started generating leads

Define your persona

The first step for lead generation is to create the business persona. This definition is fundamental for the company to know what it is talking about and thus create the strategies to communicate with these people in the most appropriate way.

The persona is the fictitious representation of the company’s ideal customer. It should be based on real data on the characteristics, behaviors and interests of customers, together with the creation of their stories, motivation and objectives.

With this profile outlined, it is possible to enhance the identification of the public with the content offered and ensure that the solutions offered are really aligned with the pains and needs of the personas.

Produce rich content
To get the person’s attention and highlight the content of competitors, you need to create materials that offer something more to the visitor.

This is where rich materials come in, which are the ideal bait to present more complete and relevant content, so as to arouse the person’s interest and convince them to provide their contact information.

Bet on SEO, SEM and CPC techniques
Seo work is very important to make the company’s website achieve better organic positioning in search engines and have more visibility and be found by more people.

There is a whole set of techniques and best practices to achieve these goals, such as the use of the most searched keywords, the optimization of the elements of each page (URL, title tag, alt text, meta-description, titles, subtitles, etc.), link building, among others.

Together with SEO, the company should invest in SEM (marketing for search tools), which consists of disseminating the site in a paid way in the main search engines.

Unlike organic strategies, SEM uses paid advertising platforms such as Google Ads, providing ads that will be available to your audience.

For this, the most used format is CPC (cost per click). As the name suggests, the company pays only for the clicks made on your ads.

The value of each access will vary depending on the keyword used, the level of competition for these terms, and their relationship to the target site.

The big advantage of CPC is that these are highly targeted ads that can attract highly qualified leads.

Perform webinars
Recorded or live, the webinar (online seminar) is one of the most used content formats for lead generation.

With a relatively low cost, this is an excellent alternative to give voice to what happens in the day-to-day of the company and also to produce quality materials, bringing presentations, conversations and / or interviews with experts and partners.

Like other content, it is important that the webinar does not become a commercial channel. The transmission must have an educational character, dealing with matters that are of interest to the target audience of the company.

Invest in email marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of communication within a marketing strategy, being a key tool in generating leads and to advance the customer journey.

From the moment a visitor leaves their email to access a material or to receive a newsletter, for example, the company now has a direct communication channel with that person.

Thus, we have one more channel to inform consumers about news, events or solutions and expand the relationship.

Step by step to build a lead generation campaign

Determine what will be offered to the consumer
The first step in creating a lead generation campaign is to define what will be offered to the public. For visitors to share their contact information, you need to attract them with some value offer.

To this do so, you can create free content that is relevant and that serve as a psychological trigger, such as e-books, webinar spreadsheets, podcasts, infographics, etc.

Establish your campaign’s target audience
Knowing how to define the target audience is one of the most important measures to efficiently work the content that will be made available for lead generation.

You have to take the time to understand who this audience is, what it has in mind and how it pays attention to the company.

Only from the understanding of the target audience will it be possible to segment the campaign, in order to enhance the chances of success.

Define a strategy for each step of the sales funnel
Understanding the shopping journey and the funnel is a key step in the lead generation process. As the lead advances in the sales pipeline, new content must be offered.

The funnel top is essential in the lead generation process, as it is the one that allows the user to proceed to a stage closer to purchase.

In turn, the funnel medium is what will show the potential customer how the company’s solutions can help you solve your problems.

Finally, the funnel bottom serves to show why these solutions are better than competitors.

Create forms through landing pages
Landing pages are landing pages where the visitor arrives for a specific purpose. The most frequent of these purposes is to capture this user’s contact information in exchange for access to an offer, which can be from an e-book to a free trial of the company’s tool.

Typically, this data is collected through forms, which consist of a series of fields that the visitor must complete before clicking the button to receive the offer.

Forms can also be included in pop-up format on different pages of the site and within the blog.

Use Attractive Call-to-Action (CTA)
CTAs, or calls to action, are buttons or messages inviting the visitor to perform a specific action. In the context of lead generation, they often involve inviting the user to click to receive an offer.

Calls-to-action should be attractive and objective, clearly indicating to the visitor what they will have access to if they click that button (download, discount, more information, contact representative etc).

Promote campaign content across different media
It is important to promote the material in the most diverse channels. This disclosure can be done simply by disclosing the landing page link, for example, at the end of a blog post, in social media posts, or through CPC ads.

Whichever channel you choose, the contents should bring clear CTAs that direct you to the landing page of the material.

Key lead generation metrics
Lead generation has as one of its great assets the possibility of accurately measuring each step of the sales process, from attraction to closing the business.

And this is done by monitoring a series of metrics, which should be defined according to the needs of each company and how they can contribute to their strategies.

Some key indicators to follow are:

Cost per Lead (CPL)
Represents the cost of each lead generated by a campaign. This indicator helps to assess whether investments are being well allocated and whether strategies are, in fact, giving financial return, not loss.

The CPL is calculated by dividing the total investment value by the number of leads earned by the campaign.

Volume of leads
It is the calculation of the number of leads generated in a given period (month, quarter, semester, etc.), comparing how many were in the funnel at the beginning and end of the chosen time cut.

This indicator is important because, in order for there to be more sales, it is necessary to generate leads. It is worth noting, however, that volume alone is not an indication of success.

There needs to be well-established goals and processes that allow us to attract more qualified leads.

Leads per Sale (LPV)
Calculating how much each lead costs the company is important. However, it is necessary to be in mind that not all of them will become customers. And that’s where the LPV comes in, an indicator that shows how many leads must be generated for a sale to occur.

To get it, simply divide the total number of leads by the amount of sales achieved.

Conversion rate
Perhaps the most important metric for the entire lead generation process, the conversion rate indicates the performance of each step of the funnel. For this, it must be calculated in each of the stages.

That is: how many visitors became leads; how many leads have become MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads); how many of these became SQL (Sales Qualified Leads) and, finally, how many became customers.

How CARMOTIVE by i’amITmm helps lead generation

i’amITmm offers complete solutions to assist your company in lead generation. Our platform brings tools that allow access to market data, which can be cross-set with internal data of the organization, facilitating the task of finding the best customer and generating qualified leads.

The company now has access to a database of individuals (age, location, estimated income, profession, functional history, employment probability, among others) and companies (CNAE, size, estimated billing, number of employees, among others) from all over Brazil, which underscores marketing strategies, commercial intelligence and qualified prospecting.

Based on technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics and Machine Learning, iamitmm.com solutions can be integrated into the company’s CRM, helping to reduce time to find the perfect customer and optimize a range of processes related to receiving, importing and analyzing leads in the sales pipeline.

Conclusion

The generation of leads is a very important process for companies, because it optimizes the stage of attraction, making it more accurate and accurate. With this, the sales team starts working only with leads that are prepared for purchase, which contributes to a better productivity of the commercial team and an increase in conversion rates.

With the help of the right tools, it is possible to streamline this process, automating tasks and reoperating with the help of technology to identify the best opportunities, monitor the performance of each action and bring better results. Learn how @iamitmm solutions can help your business structure the lead generation process and enhance your results. Talk to our experts.