The demand for new leads is something most organisations are familiar with. To bolster the customer base, to expand, to increase earnings and so on. For any of the above a lead generating campaign fits the purpose, and can deliver outstanding ROI. Executed wrongly it can also deliver non-existing ROI, and dedicated external assistance always pays off. We are experts in lead generation strategies, tailor made to the needs of your organisation – one size doesn’t fit all!
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Why is lead generation important - and how to get started?
Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting potential customers into leads that have expressed interest in your products or services. This process is achieved by capturing their contact information, such as their name, email address, or phone number, and then using various tactics to nurture and convert them into paying customers.
In today’s digital age, lead generation has become an integral part of any successful digital marketing strategy. Without it, businesses risk losing out on potential clients and falling behind their competitors. A strong lead generation strategy enables you to reach a wider audience and turn interested individuals into loyal customers.
How is a lead defined?
Defining a lead is a critical aspect of any successful sales and online advertising strategy. For any organisation venturing into a lead gen campaign, it’s important to have a clear understanding of what constitutes a lead in your organisation. In general, a lead can be defined as any person or organisation that has expressed interest in your products or services, or who fits the criteria of your ideal customer profile.
The benefits of lead generation
To the surprise of many, they are not only limited to increasing sales and revenue. It also helps you to establish a strong relationship with your customers, which can lead to valuable referrals and repeat business. Additionally, it provides you with valuable data and insights about your target audience, which can help you to refine your lead generation tactics and make more informed business decisions.
In summary, lead generation is an essential component of any successful digital marketing strategy. It enables you to reach a wider audience, increase sales and revenue, and establish long-term relationships with your customers. With the right approach and tactics, lead generation and a dedicated sales team can help you take your business to the next level.
Lead management also improves sales pipeline
Additionally, it’s important to have a system in place for tracking and managing leads, such as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. This ensures that no leads fall through the cracks and that your sales team is able to follow up in a timely and effective manner on all warm leads. For lead management software to be efficient, it needs to be flexible to use and ideally include marketing automation.
What is SQL and MQL?
However, it’s important to further qualify and categorise leads based on factors such as their level of engagement, budget, decision-making authority, and likelihood of making a purchase. This is where the concepts of Sales Qualified Leads (SQL or sales ready leads) and Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) come in. SQLs are leads that have been vetted and deemed to have a high likelihood of converting into paying customers, while MQLs are leads that have shown some interest in your products or services but may not be ready to make a purchase yet.
By categorising leads as SQLs or MQLs, you can prioritise your lead generation and nurturing efforts, and allocate resources more effectively. As a result, it improves the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales and marketing efforts, and ultimately drive business growth and success.
Intent based lead generation
Intent-based lead generation strategies refer to techniques that focus on identifying and targeting potential clients who have expressed an interest in a particular product or service. In general, the potential client is already seeking out information about a specific product – and you need to appear as the most attractive option. There are several effective strategies for intent-based lead generation, most of them focused around search engine optimisation (SEO) and paid advertising.
Quality inbound leads
SEO involves optimising your website and online content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords or phrases that are relevant to your business. This is probably not something new for you, but there are a few differences when using it directly for intent based lead generation.
Here the goal is not necessarily to rank high on generic keyword, but to rank high on specific keyphrases or keyword. And furthermore drive that traffic to a landing page catering only that segment. It’s a long term strategy thats not master in a few days, but often 6 months or more. When working as planned however, it becomes an invaluable generator for quality inbound leads, that can be handed directly to the sales and marketing teams.
Scalable quality leads
Paid advertising allows you to target high-intent keywords and audiences through platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or LinkedIn Ads. By creating compelling ads that speak directly to your target audience, you can generate leads and drive conversions.
Overall, intent-based lead generation strategies can help you attract and convert high-quality leads that are more likely to become loyal customers. The CAC can be higher than attention based lead gen, but lead quality is often superior and sits in the sales pipeline for a shorter time period. By understanding your audience and leveraging the right combination of tactics, you can drive growth and achieve your business objectives.
Attention based lead generation
Attention-based lead generation strategies refer to techniques that aim to capture the attention of potential clients and generate leads through eye-catching and engaging content. Attention based advertisement covers the majority on online lead generation ads, as well as offline content. Contrary to intent based lead generation, the audience has not previously expressed interest in the brand or product.
The premise is that you are either creating a need or awakening a dormant need. Of course the possibility exists that the viewer does have an existing need, and you simply manage to be at right spot, at the right time (this is a very common occurrence for social media users of Facebook, Instagram and Google – perhaps its not a complete coincidence… ). As such a different mindset need to be applied and a matrix of ads that each try to engage with a specific segment or mindset of the potential customer.
Intent vs attention based advertising
The difference in approach from the two types are mostly related to the importance of the brand, and the knowledge of the product type. It the brand is important for the product, it needs to be a part of the campaign (Tommy Hilfiger for example). If the brand is less important, focus can be on the product advantages (paper towels for example).
Overall, attention-based lead generation strategies can help you capture the attention of potential clients and generate high-quality leads through engaging and shareable content. By understanding your potential client group and leveraging the right combination of tactics, you can drive growth and output more leads to the sales team.
The Different Types Of Leads
Sales drives all businesses. Without a strong pipeline for the sales team, we have nothing. Without income, there’s nothing. So b2b lead generation really matters. The approach taken by medical monitoring sensor salesmen can differ significantly from that taken by a car salesman. They both need to be pursuing people most likely to buy.
So let’s look at the different approaches on how to generate leads, and what actually leads to successful lead generation. Leads are generally classified as follows:
New leads (canvas leads)
These are potential clients who have expressed interest in your offering, but who are not yet familiar with your brand. They may have responded to a marketing campaign or visited your website for the first time. They have submitted their contact information because of a lead capture; typically a form to fill out.
New leads are often at the top of the sales funnel and require more education and nurturing before they are ready to make a purchase. Depending of the offering, it can convert to an MQL or SQL almost immediately, but in most casas it needs a bit more attention and often passes several touchpoints.
New leads from known contacts (MQL’s)
These are prospective customers who have expressed interest in your product or service and who you have some prior relationship with, such as past customers, subscribers to your newsletter, or attendees at your events. These leads may be more likely to convert to customers since they are already familiar with your brand, but they still require nurturing and education to move them further down the sales funnel.
These can quickly becomes a sales qualified lead, and often the type of leads your sales teams are happy to work with. This category of leads can be generated with the help of inbound lead generation – making the client come back to you. This is best done through quality content marketing which makes the prospective client interested in knowing more.
Up-selling/cross-selling to existing customers (SQL’s)
These are existing customers who have already made a purchase from your business, but who may be interested in additional products or services. Up-selling involves encouraging customers to upgrade or purchase a more expensive version of the solution they already have, while cross-selling involves offering related or complementary products or services.
Up-selling and cross-selling to existing customers can be a highly effective way to generate revenue and build long-term relationships with customers. It normally have a lower customer acquisition cost (CAC) since you are targeting a narrower audience. It its however one of the most efficient lead generation tools available, and provides more leads to the sales team at a steady pace.
Lets dive further into Paid lead generation
Paid advertising is a highly effective way to generate leads that involves paying to promote your brand, products, or services through various advertising channels, such as search engines, social media platforms, display networks, and more. With paid advertising, you can reach a large and targeted audience, and drive traffic to your website or landing pages, where you can convert visitors into leads.
One of the key benefits of paid advertising as a lead generation strategy is that it allows you to target your ads to specific audiences based on their demographics, interests, and behaviour. This can help to ensure that your ads are seen by people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services, and increase the likelihood of generating high-quality leads.
Another benefit of paid advertising is that it offers a variety of different ad formats and strategies that can be used to attract and convert potential clients. For example, search engine advertising (such as Google Ads) can be used to target people who are actively searching for keywords related to your products or services, while social media advertising (such as Facebook Ads) can be used to target people based on their interests, demographics, and behaviour.
To maximise the effectiveness of your paid advertising strategy, it’s important to have a well-defined audience and a clear understanding of your goals and objectives. You should also have a well-crafted ad message and offer that is compelling and relevant to your target audience, and a landing page that is optimised for conversion. In addition, it’s important to continually test and optimise your ads and landing pages to maximise their effectiveness. This can involve testing different ad formats, targeting options, ad messaging, and landing page designs to identify what works best for your target audience and generates the most leads.
Organic lead generation
Organic lead gen refers to techniques that focus on attracting potential customers through non-paid channels, such as search engine optimisation (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing. These techniques aim to build long-term relationships with customers by providing valuable information and solutions to their problems.
SEO involves optimising your website and online content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords or phrases that are relevant to your business. By targeting high-intent keywords, you can attract visitors who are actively searching for information or solutions related to your product or service.
Overall, organic lead generation techniques can help you attract and convert quality leads that are more likely to become loyal customers. By focusing on providing value and building relationships with your audience, you can generate leads and drive growth for your business.
Lead generation process
The typical lead generation process for paid lead generation consists of several stages, including planning, targeting, creating ad campaigns, tracking, and optimisation. Here is a brief overview of each stage of how to generate leads:
- Creating ad campaigns
Once you have defined your ICP, you can create ad campaigns that are tailored to their needs and preferences. This includes developing compelling ad copy, selecting eye-catching visuals, and optimising ad placement and format for maximum impact. Keep lead generation trends in mind, trends often get extra exposure and attention from algorithms!
- Tracking
As your ad campaign is running, you will need to track and monitor its performance using analytics tools. This involves measuring key metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This can be done in several ways, Google Tag Manager (GTM), UTM parameters, direct tracking on social media or your landing pages. The more data you gather the better, this will help you optimise the performance and ROI
- Targeting
The next stage is targeting, which involves using audience targeting tools and data to identify and reach your ideal customer. This includes selecting the right demographics, interests, behaviours, and geographic locations for your ad campaign. It is important not to cut any corners in this process, since it could results in bad performance. And one future paying customer missed, is one to many. Marketing and sales teams working together on this task often yield great results.
- Planning
The first stage of the paid lead generation process is planning. This involves setting clear goals and objectives for your campaign, defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and identifying the most effective channels and tactics for reaching them. You might need several different lead generation strategies, to include anyone who are a potential customer.
Lead generation aftercare
- Optimisation
Based on the data you gather from tracking, you can optimise your ad campaigns to improve their effectiveness. This may involve adjusting targeting criteria, ad copy, visuals, and other variables to improve conversion rates and reduce costs. It is crucial to understand the data in order to improve lead quality and remember that not all leads are useful.
- Qualify And Score Leads
Not all leads fit perfectly into the funnel. Some client are happy to start buying now, while others need a bit more time and info. In any successful lead gen campaign, lead scoring is not just an option, but rather an essential component that should always be implemented.
By implementing a lead scoring system, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of each lead’s level of engagement, intent, and buying potential. This enables the sales teams to prioritise warm leads that are more likely to convert, and tailor their marketing efforts to nurture leads that require additional engagement before they’re ready to make a purchase decision.
- Lead management
Without a lead scoring process in place, businesses may waste valuable resources on leads that are unlikely to convert, or may not give enough attention to leads that are highly engaged and ready to buy.
Furthermore, lead scoring enables businesses to track the success of their marketing campaigns and adjust their strategies accordingly. By analysing which lead actions lead to the highest scores and ultimately the most conversions, businesses can refine their messaging, targeting, and engagement tactics to optimise their campaigns for even better results.
Overall, the paid lead generation process requires careful planning, targeting, and optimisation to ensure maximum ROI and effectiveness. By following these steps and continually monitoring and refining your campaigns, you can generate quality leads and drive growth for your business. The marketing team needs to have a full understanding of what is working, and why, to improve lead quality and increase lead capture. Setting up a campaign is just the beginning of generating leads!
The crucial elements of a great lead generation strategy
An attractive Offering
In a lead generation campaign, having a strong and compelling offering is essential for attracting potential clients and driving conversions. The offering is essentially what you’re promising to deliver to your potential clients in exchange for their contact information or some other form of engagement.
A strong offering should be both valuable and relevant to the audience to output good business leads. It should be something that solves a specific problem or fulfils a specific need that your audience has. For example, a software company might offer a free trial of their product or a marketing agency might offer a free consultation to help businesses improve their marketing strategies.
Who wants your offer?
On the other hand, a weak offering can negatively impact the success of a lead generation campaign. An offering that is irrelevant or of little value to your audience is unlikely to generate much interest or engagement. For example, a financial services company offering a free coffee mug to potential customers is unlikely to generate much interest or excitement.
It’s important to remember that a strong offering is just one piece of the puzzle. The offering should be paired with a clear and compelling call-to-action (CTA) that encourages potential customers to take action and engage with your business. Additionally, the offering and CTA should be communicated effectively through targeted and well-crafted marketing messages that speak directly to the needs and desires of your ICP.
Make your offer Irresistible
In summary, a strong offering is a critical component of a successful lead gen campaign. It should be valuable, relevant, and effectively communicated to your Ideal Customer Profile. Examples of good offerings include free trials, consultations, or valuable resources like e-books or webinars. Examples of weak offerings include irrelevant or low-value incentives like coffee mugs or branded keychains.
A strong CTA is vital for lead generation
When the visitor is swayed with your unique offering, the Click To Action is what brings them over the line and results in a lead capture. A strong Call-to-Action (CTA) is essential to the success of any lead gen campaign. A CTA is a prompt that encourages the viewer to take a specific action, such as filling out a form or making a purchase. The CTA is typically placed at the end of a piece of content or on a landing page, and it should be clear, concise, and compelling.
One of the primary reasons that a strong CTA is so important is that it provides a clear direction for the viewer, which can help increase the likelihood of conversion. A well-designed CTA can also create a sense of urgency, which can motivate the viewer to take action before it’s too late.
A boring CTA does not convert
Another important aspect of a strong CTA is that it should be relevant to the content or offer that is being promoted. This helps to ensure that the viewer is engaged and interested in what you are offering, which can improve the quality of your leads. By crafting a clear, compelling, and relevant CTA, you can increase the effectiveness of your campaigns, improve the quality of your leads, and ultimately drive more revenue for your business.
These CTA’s work well for lead generation
- Unique opportunity – Something complete irresistible and often time limited. Drives urgency and makes the visitor feel special
- Discount – The classic that always works. Who doesn’t want to save money?
- Trial – For products where a trial is applicable it is often the most efficient lead magnet and can help increase consumer interest.
- Demo – Can be of the product features, how it works, or how it will benefit the client
- Downloads – Can work really will for unique, quality content
Campaign and brand coherency
Campaign and brand coherency are critical elements of any successful lead gen campaign. Coherency refers to the consistency and alignment between your campaign messaging, branding, and the overall customer experience.
To ensure coherency in b2b lead generation, it is important to establish a clear and consistent brand voice, visual identity, and messaging that aligns with your target audience’s needs and interests. This includes the tone and language used in your messaging, as well as the design elements of your campaign such as color schemes, fonts, and imagery.
Brand identity should be a priority
Inconsistencies or discrepancies between your campaign messaging and your brand identity can create confusion and erode trust with potential leads. For example, if your campaign messaging promises a certain level of quality or service, but your brand identity does not reflect these values, it can create a disconnect and result in a loss of potential leads.
To maintain coherency throughout your lead gen campaign, it is important to establish a clear strategy and guidelines for your branding and messaging, and to consistently review and optimize your campaign to ensure alignment with your overall brand strategy. By maintaining coherency, you can build stronger relationships with your audience, establish trust and credibility, and ultimately generate more qualified leads for your business.
Target audience match
The importance of a target audience (TA) match cannot be overstated in a lead generation strategy. It refers to the alignment between your campaign messaging and the needs and interests of your TA.
To generate quality leads, it is essential to understand your target audience’s pain points, challenges, and goals. This information can help you craft messaging and offers that resonate with your audience and demonstrate your value proposition. By addressing your target audience’s needs, you can build trust, establish credibility, and increase the likelihood of converting leads into customers.
Pick the audience with care!
In addition to messaging, targeting the right audience through various channels is equally important. By utilising demographic, geographic, and psychographic data, you can pinpoint your ideal audience and deliver your messaging in the channels where they are most likely to engage with it. This can help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your lead generation efforts and maximize your return on investment.
When your lead generation strategy is targeted and tailored to your ideal audience, it can help you generate higher-quality leads, increase conversion rates, and ultimately drive more revenue for your business. On the other hand, failing to target your ideal audience can lead to low-quality leads, wasted resources, and a poor return on investment. Therefore, ensuring a strong match with your Ideal Customer Profile is critical for the success of your lead generation campaign.
Retargeting towards those who almost made it
Retargeting can be an effective way to improve the return on investment (ROI) of an ongoing lead generation strategy. By targeting individuals who have already interacted with your brand, you can create highly relevant and personalised advertising campaigns that are more likely to convert. This, in turn, can lead to higher conversion rates and lower customer acquisition costs.
One of the key benefits of retargeting is that it can help to reduce wasted ad spend. By focusing your advertising efforts on individuals who have already shown an interest in your brand or product, you can avoid targeting people who are unlikely to convert. This can help to improve the efficiency of your lead generation campaigns and reduce your overall customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Improve lead quality with retargeting
In addition, retargeting can also help to improve the quality of your leads. By targeting individuals who have already engaged with your brand, you can create highly personalised and relevant advertising campaigns that are more likely to resonate with them. This, in turn, can help to improve the quality of your leads and increase the likelihood of conversion.
Overall, retargeting is an important tool for improving the ROI of an ongoing lead generation campaign. By creating highly relevant and personalised advertising campaigns that are targeted at individuals who have already engaged with your brand, you can reduce wasted ad spend, improve the quality of your leads, and ultimately drive more revenue for your business.
Brand awareness improves conversion rate
Does your audience know your brand? An unknown brand will face a more difficult path to lead generation, compared to a more well known brand. When prospects are aware of your brand, they are more likely to consider your product or service when making a purchase decision. In addition, brand awareness can help create a positive perception of your company, which can make it easier to attract and convert leads.
By building brand awareness through targeted marketing and advertising campaigns, you can increase the visibility of your brand and create a stronger connection with your audience. This, in turn, can lead to more qualified leads, higher conversion rates, and ultimately, increased revenue for your business.
Lead nurture is a part of lead generation
Nurturing leads is the process of building and maintaining relationships with potential customers over time in order to guide them towards a purchase. This involves providing valuable information and resources to leads, addressing their concerns and questions, and maintaining regular communication through email marketing, social media, or other channels. Lead nurture often becomes an integrated part of the inbound marketing, which turns a dead lead into quality sales lead.
Attract all the leads
The goal of lead nurture is to keep your brand top-of-mind for potential customers and help move them through the buyer’s journey towards a purchase. Effective lead nurture requires a deep understanding of your audience and their needs, as well as the ability to provide personalised and relevant content that resonates with them. By nurturing your leads effectively, you can build trust, increase engagement, and ultimately drive more conversions for your business.
What about ROI?
So, what to expect when running a leadgen campaign? What will be the cost per lead? And what about the conversion rate on the landing page? Or leadgen form on LinkedIn? All valid questions which are difficult to answer without detailed knowledge about your organisation, the product, the offering, and the audience. With this information however, combined with our extensive experience, we provide an estimate which normally land within 20% of the actual results.
The cost per lead and conversion rate on the landing page or lead gen form are important metrics that can impact the overall ROI of a lead generation campaign. By optimising these metrics, you can increase the likelihood of generating a positive return on investment.
There is no crystal ball in lead generation marketing
At the same time, it’s important to remember that lead generation is just one aspect of a broader marketing strategy, and the ROI should be evaluated in the context of overall business goals. For example, generating high-quality leads that convert at a lower rate may be more valuable in the long run compared to generating a large volume of low-quality leads that have a high conversion rate but do not generate revenue for the business.
In summary, ROI is an important consideration in lead generation campaigns, and understanding the cost per lead and conversion rate can help optimize the campaign’s performance. However, it’s important to evaluate the ROI in the context of broader business goals and to have a realistic understanding of the factors that can impact the cost per lead and conversion rate.
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