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Lead generation is attracting prospects to your business and increasing their interest through nurturing, all to convert them into customers. Some ways to generate leads are through job applications, blog posts, coupons, live events, and online content.
What is a lead?
A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company's product or service in some way, shape, or form. Leads typically hear from a business or organization after opening communication (by submitting personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription) … instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased their contact information.
Cold leads
Cold leads are those that didn’t show any interest in your products or services, neither contacted your business for services nor could be happy with your efforts while trying to reach them (basically irritated by your calls).
Warm leads
Warm leads have expressed interest in the goods/products or services you offer. These prospects could be interested in knowing more about your company, what you do, how you do it, and where you do it from. These prospects are likely to become customers but also need nurturing.
Hot leads/Qualified leads
These people have shown interest in your products and services and are qualified to become your customer. Alternatively, hot leads are always regarded as better leads since these are people or companies nearing the end of the sales cycle.
Tips To Increase Lead Generation For Your Business
1. Provide Valuable Content
Marketing content is what draws customers and potential buyers. It is the first point of contact long before a salesperson steps in. But, it is not only used by the marketing department. Salespeople utilize marketing content as they go about their business. Therefore, marketing content should first be evaluated before it is put out, and these are some of the areas that should be given a core focus.
What content is available?
What content should be used for marketing?
Who should use this content first?
Where should this content be used?
Why is this content preferred over the other?
Will this content give us the best we expect out of it?
Finally, is there anything left untouched?
Both teams should evaluate to ensure there is no contradicting information. Unfortunately, some studies have found that sales teams sometimes create their information, which would impact your performance in the market.
Today, 60-70% of the content in B2B organizations is not being used. So this is an excellent opportunity to get sales and marketing teams aligned.
2. Improve Digital Customer Experience
An excellent digital customer experience must provide a fast experience for users as they switch channels or websites to become potential customers. Sometimes companies with great Digital customer experience provide an organized online experience that delights their partners.
As more businesses are conducted through digital storefronts, the goal of any company should be to provide the best experience possible. Significant disparity. Customer experience is about more than knowing where and what your customers buy. It’s about crafting an experience so personal that it meets all your customer’s needs, thus driving long-lasting loyalty.
Customer experience involves all the ways a business interacts with a customer and then managing data pulled from these interactions to create a better experience in the future. Customer service focuses on one interaction, while customer experience management focuses on every interaction.
3. Embrace Social Media
First things first, you ought to have a social media presence. According to a report on social media usage released by Statista:
In 2020 alone, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide(a global rate of 49 percent.), and this is projected to increase to almost 4.41 billion in 2025.
On average, internet users spend 144 minutes per day on social media.
Facebook was the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently boasts approximately 2.5 billion monthly active users, making it the most popular social network worldwide.
In June 2020, the top social media apps in the Apple App Store included mobile messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger and the ever-popular app version of Facebook.
In 2021, Social networking sites were estimated to reach 3.78 billion users. These figures are still expected to grow as mobile device usage and social networks increasingly gain traction in previously underserved markets.
The above statistics communicate how important it is to tap into the numbers on social media and adopt social media marketing.
Social media marketing involves posting relevant content like live videos, texts, prerecorded videos, images, GIFs, and animations on all your social media engagement platforms, talking to your audience, listening to their complaints, and addressing their concerns.
The social media platforms used are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube, Snapchat, and WhatsApp. Different business brands use social media for various purposes, i.e., to get traffic to their websites, to generate sales, to get people’s views about a product and its performance, to get to a target audience and engage with them, and also to engage with potential consumers of the product or service.
4. SEO is your Goldmine
Usually, marketers and business people think that to increase organic traffic; you must use paid advertising using Google ads. But, no! Once you get into paid ads, the results cease to be organic. The trick behind increased organic engagement and conversion is search engine optimization (SEO).
Search engine rankings are a relevant phenomenon and are here to stay. The average person completes a Google search 3-4 times per day. While other search engines – like Bing – are still crucial to your SEO strategy, Google owns more than 95% of the search engine market share – making it a top search engine optimization priority for many small business owners.
To boost your rank in search engines, you should be watching out for the following:
Your domain name.
Keywords in your industry. Tools like ahrefs can help here. Keywords are so crucial, especially when it comes to Google searches. The more keywords are emphasized in the content, the more likely your content will appear higher on the search engine results page. This translates to more clicks on your content, which will, in turn, organically increase traffic and conversion rate.
Use Google Analytics to look at your SEO performance.
5. Focus on customer retention
Research by HBR shows that improving customer retention by 5% boosts profits by 25%. Therefore, customer retention is an essential aspect of the survival of organizations. Business people who understand customer retention's value always strive to ensure that their customers get the best experience to keep them as their existing buyers.
Due to the mass migration from the banking industry to insurance and retail, Fintech companies must increasingly focus on customer retention. Customer Loyalty is now determined by the experiences customers have while using your goods and services.
Essential action points to help you grow your customer retention rate;
Give gifts to your customers like capes, umbrellas and more.
Send out appreciation messages and emails to your customers after shopping.
Put in place a referral program that benefits potential existing buyers and new customers.
Give loyalty points to customers after making purchases.
A data-driven approach to customer retention is a smart way to boost your retention strategy.
6. Clear CTAs
Your messaging should inspire action. The action doesn’t need to focus on a purchase, although it can—and, at some point in your welcome series, it should. But your call to action (CTA) can also prompt people to:
Take a quiz.
Explore your products.
Initiate a download.
Participate in a survey.
Compelling CTAs motivate recipients to convert. Research shows that clients respond more quickly when short and straightforward words seduce them to take action. CTAs words include; get, order, buy, start, download, sign up here and more others. These usually compel recipients to take action. CTAs that show consumer benefits also improve conversions. These words include; free, personalized and complementary. Call to Action words to add in your recipient's email message should;
Boost and improve conversions with singular and prominent CTAs
Use action words to motivate clicks
Include a color-contrasted and easy-to-click CTA button so that more customers will click.
7. A clear value proposition
Your value proposition is the primary benefit your new customers enjoy when purchasing one of your products. It’s the short, snappy answer: "What’s in it for me?”
When someone subscribes to your list, they’ve participated in an exchange with your brand. They’ve done their part in handing over their email address; now it’s time for you to do yours.
8. Special offers
Special offers in welcome emails convert well. But that doesn’t mean you’re bound to the discount.
Ben Zettler, founder of Ben Zettler Digital, advises testing your offer first. “The ‘tried and true’ XYZ% off doesn’t have to be the way because everyone else is doing it. Have you tried testing a gift with a purchase? Or dollars off vs. a percentage off?”
9. Run A/B test to track results and measure performance
Tracking results to determine the performance of an email marketing campaign is vital. To run an A/B test, you need to send your campaign to two segments in your email contact list. Then check the view rates, open rates and clickthroughs.
Tracking results depends on your key performance indicators. In this case, the key performance indicators could be sales conversion, click-through rate, open rate, view rate and delivery rate.
You can track performance results by;
Doing an A/B test of your email copy on two or more contact segments
Measure the results of each email campaign to test the performance
Use performance results to optimize and grow your conversion rate