What is a Lead?
A Lead is person who is interested in company’s product or service. Online, a lead is traditionally defined as a person who completes a landing page. A landing page is a webpage with a form through which a person supplies contact and business information in exchange for free information provided by a company, such as an e-book, webinar, product consultation, or product demonstration.
Its very common that people do leave their email on contact forms but the email alone sometimes doesn’t convert them into a lead, there are many chances that person leave their email id’s for various purposes, not with object of making them as company’s lead contact. That’s why its always good consider a email as a contact rather a lead. And same needs to be taken as challenge to convert that email id as a LEAD.
How much information is Sufficient?
Information always comes from most landing pages with forms on it, the challenging thing on these landing pages is, what information needs to be put so that visitors provide their information in respect. The more information is asked, such as age, phone number, the lower the likelihood that a prospect will complete and submit your form. Its good and effective to for a couple of pieces of information such as name, address and phone number. the problem with this is that too little information can burden your sales process and make it difficult for sales and marketing team members to prioritize leads. Thus, the solution to this problem involves compromising. When planning or updating your lead generation strategy, talk with your sales team. Ask them what information they NEED about leads in order to have a smooth and productive sales process. If certain information isn’t actively being used by either sales or marketing, then don’t ask for it. This simple compromise can ensure that you get the landing page conversion rates you want and the information that your sales team needs to close deals.
Inbound Leads: Inbound leads to rock information. Instead of cold calling or other forms of sales prospecting, generating leads through inbound marketing makes your sales team’s job way easier and perfect to generate leads. If a person is an inbound lead, it means that they have visited the website because that is where they submitted their contact information.
This means that they should have some idea about your business and your product or service. this also saves your sales team a ton of time and allows them to establish credibility and trustworthiness earlier in the communication process. Not only do better educated customers make a salesperson’s life easier, but they can also be happier customers in the long-term because expectations were properly set prior to their purchase.
When driving leads online, a business needs to have a few key elements in place. From a tactical perspective, a marketer needs three crucial things to make inbound lead generation happen.
Lead Generation Mechanisms:
Landing Pages: Landing is the most important page of any service you offer on the website, its important to have a lead form on your service landing pages. These pages are always searched by people and are visited most, so your landing pages needs to designed carefully so that it should have a proper lead form along with service information offered.
Offer: An offer, in the context of lead generation, is some sort of content or product that is of enough value for a person to provide contact information in exchange for access to it. traditional lead generation offers include: eBooks, whitepapers, webinars, free consultations, and product demonstrations.
Call to Action: Landing pages and offers are useless if no one sees them. to send people to a landing page, you need a call-to-action. often abbreviated as ctA, a call-to-action is text, an image or button that links directly to a landing page.
Networking groups: Many business people go to networking functions for trade associations, chambers of commerce and other organizations on a regular basis. Most of them view these events as a boring hassle and do everything to avoid them. However, networking events are an excellent lead generation strategy for businesses, because the other business people that attend them are consumers too and need products and services just like the rest of us.
So, instead of standing in the corner and counting down the minutes until you can leave, walk around and start up conversations. You can even ask the people you meet for permission to add them to your database of contacts. It is also a good idea to follow up with the people you have met after the event with a quick phone call or email to build the relationship.
Alliances: Building alliances with other businesses that target a market similar to yours is a great way to generate new leads for your business. Choose a reputable business that treats its customers well, engages in proactive marketing strategies and is open to trying new things. Once you have built a relationship with this business and have come to an agreement, you can start targeting their clients with your own marketing. A great strategy is to write articles on topics you are knowledgeable about and have them placed in the newsletter of your alliance. You could also write an ebook on your area of expertise and give it your alliance to give away as a gift to their clients. Another great strategy to implement with your alliances is a joint event. You can share the organizational time and cost, and then invite clients from both businesses so you both have the chance to generate new leads.
Brochures: Brochures are an effective lead generation tool for businesses because they give prospects initial information on the product or business and encourage them to take the next step in the sales process. An eye-catching brochure that is designed well, conveys the benefits of what you offer, has a powerful call-to-action and is distributed in appropriate locations will attract many potential customers to your business.
Brochures are a great strategy for businesses because they are relatively inexpensive to produce and can be distributed in several ways. They can be sent directly to prospects in a direct mail campaign, handed out at trade shows and events and displayed at your business and with your alliances.
Trade shows: Trade shows are an excellent way to promote your business and generate leads. If you choose the right trade shows, many of the people there will be prospects that you can engage with and turn into customers. Some types of trade shows that are a great place to find leads include:
- Local business expos
- Chamber of commerce shows
- School business expos
Industry trade shows To generate leads at trade shows you will need to be really prepared and have thought a lot about your techniques. You will need to have experts on your stand that know your products and have excellent communication skills. You also need to have a way of qualifying leads so you don’t waste time and money chasing leads that only visited your booth for your freebies
Referrals: Referrals, or word of mouth, is the number one most successful lead generation strategy. And best of all, it’s completely free. If your business has great products and services and a great team, your clients are bound to rave about you to people they know. It’s a well known business fact that if a person hears about a business from someone they know and trust, they are more likely to become customers than if they just saw an advertisement for the business.
So, you need to be proactively seeking referrals from your clients. Don’t be afraid to ask for referrals – if you are a good business and you ask politely, the majority of your customers won’t hesitate to give you referrals. Remember to reward clients that give you referrals with a small gift, a thank you note or a discount.
Adoption of various methods to generate leads might increase sales teams cost, to be effective, Generate leads online using inbound marketing methodologies that has the power to transform your current sales and marketing processes. Using landing pages, calls-to- action and offers to can help reduce your cost-per-lead while also delivering leads with a higher level of initial education to your sales team.
So that is why it is said “The basics are just the beginning.” So one needs to stick to the basics and get on to it, things will start working and doing wonders for business activities.