In today’s highly competitive business landscape, every organisation must understand how to generate leads to sustain and grow its customer base. An effective digital lead generation campaign can help businesses identify and engage with potential customers, build relationships, and ultimately drive sales. However, developing successful lead-generation strategies requires careful planning and execution. In this article, we will explore the most important components of any sales-qualified lead-generating campaign that’ll help digital marketing managers to create a powerful lead-generation strategy that helps them achieve their growth goals.
Let’s delve right into it!
Every digital marketing strategy should have clear objectives
Clear objectives are the foundation of any successful lead-generation process. Therefore, set and document exactly what results you want your online lead generation campaign to bring. Moreover, it’s important to ensure that your objectives are measurable so that you can track your lead-generation efforts and determine whether or not the campaign is successful.
This means setting specific metrics, such as a certain number of leads, subscribers, revenue per lead, sales, trials, registrants, and conversation rates, that can be measured and analysed throughout the campaign.
Additionally, a lead generation strategy should also include a detailed plan for how you will reach your target audience, what message you will use, and which channels you will use to distribute your content. Regardless if it’s inbound lead generation campaign or an outreach campaign, and if the focus is new leads, to drive traffic or general business growth, the same principles apply. To achieve an effective strategy it needs to be fully aligned with the business model and cater to both loyal customers and the new potential customer!
Target audience is the core focus of all digital marketing strategies
Think of the target audience from the perception of customer service representative. To generate sales-qualified leads, it’s essential to understand the target audience, including their demographics, interests, and behaviours.
If you want to get high-quality leads, focus on buyer personas
The first step in identifying the target audience is to develop buyer personas. These are ideal customers’ fictional representations based on real data about the existing customers and market research. Buyer personas must include some demographic information like gender, age, education level, income, and occupation. They should also include psychographic information such as interests, values, beliefs, and attitudes.
Every marketing wants paying customers but no one wants to solve their problem!
Moreover, it’s essential to identify the problems or pain points your target audience is experiencing that your offering can solve. Another important aspect of identifying the target audience is understanding their behaviour patterns. This includes where they spend their time online, what types of content they consume, and how they prefer to communicate. By understanding their behaviour patterns, you can choose the right channels to distribute your content marketing efforts and develop messaging that resonates with them.
Furthermore, for lead generation, it’s important to note that identifying the target audience is an ongoing process. As your business evolves and your target market changes, your buyer personas may need to be updated to reflect these changes.
Landing pages – A guaranteed way to get qualified leads
A landing page is one of the most efficient lead generation tools that’s designed to capture marketing-qualified leads by encouraging website visitors to take specific actions. This action could be to fill out a form, subscribe to a newsletter, download an ebook, or make a purchase. A high-converting landing page is optimised for search engine results pages and designed to convert site visitors into leads.
The first step in creating a landing page to generate the most leads is to ensure that it’s relevant to the visitor’s needs. This means that the landing page should match the messaging and content of the ad or promotion that led the visitor to the page. Moreover, the landing page’s content must follow SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) best practices. The headline and sub-headline should clearly communicate the value proposition and benefits of your product or service.
Social proof through social media platforms is a must
Another essential element of a high-converting landing page is social proof. This includes customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of your product or service. Social proof helps in lead generation strategies by building trust with potential customers and increasing the likelihood that they will take the desired action.
The design of the landing page is also critical. It should be visually appealing, with a clean layout, easy-to-read fonts, and high-quality images or videos. The page should be optimised for mobile devices, depending on the industry anywhere from 30-80% of all traffic is mobile.
Every successful digital marketing sales team loves lead magnets
A lead magnet is the core component of effective digital marketing lead-generation strategies. It’s a valuable and relevant piece of content that is offered to potential customers in exchange for their contact information, such as their name and email address. This contact information is then used to nurture leads and move them further down the sales funnel.
Utilise different types of lead magnets to achieve sales-qualified lead
The most common types of lead magnets to generate leads include white papers, e-books, webinars, and case studies. Each of these types of content has its benefits and can be used to target different stages of the sales funnel. For example, a white paper or e-book may be more appropriate for educating potential customers who are in the early stages of the buying process. A webinar or case study may be more appropriate for customers who are further down the funnel and ready to make a purchase decision. Understanding these will help the sales team create a targeted lead magnet that encourages users to take the desired action.
For efficient lead generation, the content should be visually appealing and easy to read. It should also be well-researched and provide actionable insights that the user can apply to their own situation. The content should be presented in a format that is easy to consume, such as a PDF or video.
Call-to-action (CTA) – The key pillar of digital marketing lead generation strategy
A CTA is a button or link that prompts users to take the desired action. A well-designed and strategically placed CTA can significantly increase the chances of converting website visitor into service-qualified lead. A clear and compelling CTA should be prominently displayed on the landing page, and it should use action-oriented language that encourages the user to take the desired action. Using phrases such as “Get started today,” “Download now,” or “Sign up for our newsletter” are just a few examples that can create a sense of urgency and motivate users to take action.
The extent to which you generate leads depends on the design and placement of the CTA
The CTA should also be visually appealing to streamline efforts of digital marketing campaigns and stand out from the rest of the page. This can be achieved through the use of contrasting colours, bold typography, or eye-catching graphics. It should be located above the fold, where users can easily see it without having to scroll down the page.
The CTA should be aligned with the overall goal of the campaign and the user’s stage in the sales funnel. For example, if the campaign is focused on generating more awareness than actual sales, the CTA may encourage users to download a free e-book or white paper. If the campaign is focused on lead conversion, the CTA may encourage users to sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo.
It’s essential to test and optimise your CTAs continually for social media advertising, paid advertising, and other search engines. A/B testing can be used to test different versions of the CTA and determine which one is most effective. This can involve testing different colours, wording, or placement to find the optimal combination that generates the highest conversion rate.
In addition to the CTA on the landing page, it’s important to include CTAs throughout the website and marketing materials. This can include CTAs in blog posts, social media marketing posts, email newsletters, and other marketing materials.
Lead generation forms
Did you know that 74% of businesses use web forms to generate leads, and 49.7% say that these are their best-converting lead-generating tools? If the forms are poorly designed or difficult to use, they can quickly turn off potential business leads, resulting in a low conversion rate. Therefore, it is essential to create easy-to-use and intuitive lead capture forms that collect essential user information without overwhelming or frustrating the user.
The first step in designing effective lead capture forms is to identify the essential information you need to collect from the user. This may include their name, email address, phone number, and other relevant information such as their company name, job title, or location. It’s important to keep the form fields to a minimum to reduce the user’s workload and avoid overwhelming them.
Short lead gen forms perform better!
Forms are like a lead generation machine so it’s essential to consider the user experience. while creating them. This includes the design of the form, the placement of the fields, and the flow of information.
In addition to design and placement, it’s essential to consider the user’s journey through the form. This involves the sequencing of questions and the use of logic to tailor the form to the user’s needs. For example, you may use conditional logic to show or hide certain form fields based on the user’s responses to previous questions.
Another critical aspect of lead capture forms is the use of progressive profiling. This involves gradually collecting more information from the user over time as they engage with your brand. This helps to avoid overwhelming the user with a long-form upfront while still allowing you to gather essential information to qualify and nurture the lead.
It’s also important to optimise your lead capture forms for mobile devices, as an increasing number of users access the internet through their smartphones and tablets. This involves designing mobile-friendly forms that are easy to use on smaller screens and ensuring that the form fields are large enough to be clicked on with a finger.
Click here to learn if inbound marketing is a good strategy to generate leads or not.
Start generating leads with email marketing
Effective lead-generation strategies always utilise email marketing. Once a marketing-qualified lead has submitted their information through a landing page form, it’s essential to follow up with them through different channels or sales call and provide additional value and opportunities for engagement. Automated and targeted email marketing campaigns can help the sales team accomplish this, allowing you to stay top of mind with your leads and nurture them towards a conversion. Moreover, according to Content Marketing Institute, 69% of marketers distribute their content via email marketing.
The first step to generate high-quality leads is to segment your leads based on their interests, behaviours, and demographics.
Once you have segmented your leads, you can create targeted email campaigns that are designed to provide value and encourage engagement. This may include educational content, such as blog posts or webinars, exclusive promotions or discounts, or personalised recommendations based on their previous interactions with your brand.
Email automation aimed at the right buyer persona
To maximise the effectiveness of your email campaigns, it’s important to use an email automation platform that allows you to create and send automated emails based on specific triggers or actions. For example, you may set up an automated welcome series that is triggered when a lead first submits their information. This series can introduce your brand and provide additional value and opportunities for engagement.
It’s also important to monitor the performance of your email campaigns and make adjustments based on the data. This may involve testing different subject lines, messaging, or call-to-actions to determine what resonates best with your audience.
Effective lead generation strategies depend on multi-channel promotion
Multi-channel promotion is one of the crucial components of lead generation in digital marketing that involves strategically promoting your campaign across multiple digital channels to reach a broader audience and drive more leads.
The first step in creating a successful multi-channel promotion strategy is to identify the channels that are most likely to reach your target audience.
Once you have identified the most effective marketing channels, you can create a coordinated promotion plan that leverages each channel’s strengths. For example, social media may be an excellent channel for building awareness and driving engagement, while search ads may be more effective for targeting users who are actively searching for your products or services.
Personalisation will help you get sales-qualified leads
To ensure that your promotion efforts are as effective as possible, it’s important to tailor your messaging and content to each channel. This may involve creating different ad formats or using different tones and languages depending on the platform. It’s also essential to ensure that your messaging is relevant to the paying customer and consistent across all channels, so users are not confused or distracted by different messaging.
It’s also important to use data and analytics to monitor the performance of your multi-channel promotion efforts continually. This allows you to identify which channels and campaigns are most effective and make adjustments as needed to optimise your strategy for organic search. For example, you may discover that certain social media platforms are more effective at driving engagement, while others are better at driving conversions.
Analytics and tracking
Analytics and tracking are essential components of any successful lead-generation campaigns. These activities allow you to measure the campaign’s performance, identify what is working and what is not, and make data-driven decisions to optimise and improve your campaign.
To effectively track and analyse your campaign’s performance, you should start by establishing clear goals and metrics. This may include metrics such as lead quality, conversion rates, cost per lead, and return on investment (ROI). With these metrics in place, you can use analytics tools to monitor and measure your campaign’s performance over time.
Google analytics is still one of the best free tools
One popular analytics tool for lead generation marketing is Google Analytics. This free tool allows you to track key metrics such as website traffic, user behaviour, and conversion rates. By setting up conversion tracking in Google Analytics, you can track the performance of your landing pages and CTAs and gain insight into what is driving conversions and where there may be opportunities for improvement.
Another useful tool for tracking and analysing campaign performance is marketing automation software. This type of software allows you to automate your lead nurturing and follow-up campaigns, track user behaviour, and measure the effectiveness of your marketing activities. With marketing automation, you can track metrics such as lead scoring, lead source tracking, and campaign attribution to gain a deeper understanding of what is driving leads and conversions.
Moreover, check out our handy guide to understand why marketing automation is a must in 2023.
In addition to tracking and analysing metrics related to lead generation and conversion, it’s also important to track your campaign’s ROI. This involves calculating the total cost of the campaign (including advertising, content creation, and other expenses) and comparing it to the revenue generated by the campaign. By tracking ROI, you can determine the profitability of your campaign and identify opportunities to capture leads and ultimately improve your return on investment.
Continuous improvement of your digital marketing
Even with a well-designed campaign that includes clear objectives, a targeted audience, high-converting landing pages, compelling CTAs, nurtured social media page, and effective multi-channel promotion, there is always room for improvement.
Regular evaluation and optimisation of campaign elements are necessary to ensure that the campaign is delivering the desired results and meeting the business’s goals. The evaluation process should start with a comprehensive review of the campaign’s performance metrics, including lead quality, conversion rates, and ROI.
With this information in hand, it’s time to identify areas where the campaign can be improved. For example, you may find that certain CTAs are not performing as well as others, or that your landing pages are not converting as many leads as you would like. In such cases, you can experiment with different designs, messaging, or placement on ads and social media posts to see if you can improve their effectiveness.
Strong lead magnets are vital for any long term strategy
Another key area for optimisation is lead magnets. By regularly updating and refining your product-qualified lead magnets, you can ensure that they remain relevant and valuable to your prospective customers, helping to attract and retain high-quality leads.
In addition to evaluating and optimising individual campaign elements, it’s also essential to look at the big picture and understand not all leads are created equal. This may involve analysing the overall customer journey to identify areas where you can better engage and nurture leads online, or it may involve testing different multi-channel marketing strategies to determine which ones bring in the most conversions.
The continuous improvement process should also involve gathering and incorporating feedback from existing customers and sales teams. By soliciting feedback from leads and customers, you can gain valuable insights into what is working and what is not, and identify opportunities to improve the customer experience.
Lead generation take-aways
In conclusion, lead generation campaigns are critical to the success of any business, as they provide a steady stream of qualified prospects that can be converted into paying customers.
But, building any successful business in today’s tech-driven world takes time. Crafting a strong email marketing campaign, nurturing a presence on social media channels, and diligently working on creating valuable content– these tasks need significant time and effort.
Lastly, the most important parts of any lead-generating campaign are defining your target audience, creating a compelling offer, using multiple online channels to reach your audience, tracking and measuring results, and having a clear plan for following up with leads. With a well-executed lead generation campaign, businesses can achieve sustainable growth and increase their bottom line.
