Do you find yourself wondering where your next client will come from? Panicking as you try to keep your sales momentum? This article will help you out.
Having a lead generation system that attracts potential customers and converts them into loyal buyers is the only solution to helping your business grow and thrive.
And while creating a successful online lead generation campaign can be challenging, we’ve collected some simple, effective tips and tricks you can implement right away. Let’s get down to it!
What is lead generation?
Lead generation is the process of identifying potential clients who have shown interest in your product or service and obtaining their contact information, allowing you to follow up with them and—ideally—turn them into paying customers.
Imagine you manage an online store selling organic skincare products. You want to attract more customers and increase your sales, so you decide to implement a lead generation strategy.
One lead capture approach you could take is to offer a free skincare guide or ebook to visitors in exchange for their email addresses. The guide might offer suggestions on how to take care of various skin types, the advantages of utilizing organic skincare products, or other valuable niche-specific information.
You might design a popup that appears when users first arrive on one of your blog posts or you might choose to delay its appearance to give them a chance to browse a bit before seeing the offer. You’ll probably use a compelling call-to-action (CTA) in your popup to entice users to provide their email addresses in exchange for the free guide.
Once you add visitors to your email list, they can receive customized marketing messages. For example, you could send them product recommendations, special promotions or discounts, or educational content related to organic skincare.
Importance of lead generation for businesses
Here are the top four reasons why lead gen campaigns are so important for your business:
1. Lead gen can lead to an increase in revenue
When you generate new leads, you create new opportunities for your business to convert those leads into paying customers. By nurturing the leads through your sales funnel, you can increase your chances of turning them into loyal customers who will continue to do business with you for years to come.
2. You’ll be able to take advantage of a cost-effective marketing channel
Lead generation enables you to acquire the email addresses of individuals who are truly captivated by your brand’s offerings. By leveraging the power of email marketing, you can easily reach out to these leads and engage with them in a more personalized manner.
The cherry on top? It’s a cost-effective strategy that offers tremendous ROI, especially when compared to other forms of advertising such as pricey Facebook ads.
3. Lead gen can be good for brand building
Lead generation campaigns can also help you establish and reinforce your brand image in the minds of potential customers.
By providing valuable content and engaging with prospects, you can build trust and credibility, which can result in increased brand loyalty.
4. Lead gen leads to long-term growth
Lead generation isn’t just about short-term gains. It also helps businesses build relationships with potential customers and establish long-term connections, resulting in a steady stream of revenue in the future.
By focusing on lead generation, you can create a sustainable business model that will continue to grow and thrive over time.
The 4 L’s of lead generation campaigns
When it comes to lead generation campaigns, a few key elements can make or break your success. One helpful framework to keep in mind is the 4 L’s of lead generation:
You can optimize your campaigns for maximum effectiveness and efficiency by focusing on these four areas.
1. Landing pages
If you’d like to collect leads, the first step is to create optimized landing pages that will help you convert them.
A lead gen landing page is a standalone page that captures visitors’ information, such as their names and email address.
Recommended reading: Landing Page Optimization: 10 Tips to Skyrocket Your Conversion Rate
2. Lead magnets
A lead magnet is an incentive that you offer to visitors in exchange for their contact information. This could be a free slide templates, a discount code, a webinar, or any other valuable piece of content that’s relevant to your target audience.
The key to a successful lead magnet is to make sure it’s something that your target audience actually wants and finds valuable. Do some research to understand their pain points and interests, and create a lead magnet that addresses those needs.
3. Leads
At the heart of any lead generation campaign are, of course, the leads themselves.
One way to categorize leads is by their level of engagement with your brand. A cold lead is someone who has shown little to no interest in your products, while a warm lead has shown some interest or engagement by signing up for your newsletter. Finally, a hot lead is someone who has been qualified and is highly interested in purchasing your product.
Understanding the different types of leads is important because it can help you prioritize your follow-up efforts.
4. Lead scoring
Finally, lead scoring is assigning a score or grade to each lead based on their level of engagement and likelihood of converting. This can help you focus on the most promising leads.
There are a few different factors to consider when scoring leads. First, you want to look at their level of engagement with your brand, such as whether they’ve opened your emails or visited your website. You can also consider demographic factors, such as job title or company size.
Another important factor to consider is their behavior on your website. For example, if they have spent a significant amount of time on a particular product page or have added items to their shopping cart, they may be more likely to convert.
Using a lead scoring tool to assign scores based on these factors will greatly improve your conversion strategy.
8 tips to run a successful lead generation campaign
While you may think of lead generation as an art, there are actually some foolproof tips that can help you achieve successful lead generation campaigns again and again.
Here are the top 8 tips you can start implementing in your own business:
1. Understand your target audience
By understanding your target audience, you can create personalized and relevant content that resonates with them.
You can conduct descriptive studies using various research methods like surveys, feedback forms, and social media analytics to gain insights into your target audience’s preferences and behavior.
2. A/B test your lead gen offer
A/B testing your offer is a crucial part of your lead generation strategy as it helps you identify which offer resonates better with your target audience.
By testing two different offers, such as an ebook or a 10% discount, you can discover which offer generates more leads and conversions. This way you can optimize your marketing efforts and uncover new insights about your target audience’s preferences.
For example, you could A/B test a popup promoting your ebook:
Against a popup promoting 10% off:
3. Increase urgency
By setting up limited-time offers, you can increase the sense of urgency and convert more visitors to leads.
Adding a countdown timer is a great way to highlight that your offer is only available for a limited time.
Here are some templates that you can get started with if you wanna offer time-limited offers:
4. Personalize headlines
Another way to increase the number of leads is through personalization. By using data about your visitors’ behavior and preferences, you can create high-converting landing pages that are tailored to their needs.
For instance, you can use OptiMonk to display targeted messaging on your website or offers based on the visitor’s location, browsing history, previous interactions with your site, or traffic source.
Here’s an example of how Obvi matched their landing page to their Facebook ad using Dynamic Content.
Learn how to personalize your headlines using Dynamic Content here.
5. Use an irresistible lead magnet
Lead magnets are valuable resources that attract leads and encourage them to share their contact information in exchange for access to the resource.
A lead magnet can be anything from a coupon code to a swipe file, a shopping guide, an ebook, or even a giveaway. The key here is that you need to make sure your target audience is interested in your lead magnet, and that it provides real value.
6. Use popups to promote your lead magnet
Popups are one of the best ways to promote your lead magnet. They help make sure your visitors don’t miss your offer, so you can capture as many leads as possible.
OptiMonk’s targeting options make it simple to create targeted lead magnets for visitors who are interested in specific topics (e.g. people who are currently reading articles about a certain topic) or visitors who are about to leave your site without buying.
Here are some ready-to-use templates to capture your visitors’ attention effectively.
7. Collect more data about your leads
Collecting the right data and then segmenting your leads is a highly effective marketing technique. By dividing your leads into specific segments, you can target the needs and interests of different groups of people and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Here’s the best way to collect extra information about leads without decreasing conversion rates:
First, ask for the visitor’s email address as you would do with your regular lead generation campaign:
And then (once they’ve already provided their email address) ask a segmentation question:
This approach ensures that you don’t lose any conversions, as visitors have to enter their email address to reach the second stage of the popup. Additionally, because it takes very little effort for visitors to declare their interests, almost all of them (95%+) will answer your question.
8. Nurture your leads
Once you’ve gathered your leads, you need to nurture them through targeted email marketing and other strategies that help build relationships and move leads closer to making a purchase.
You can increase the efficiency of your email campaigns by personalizing your landing pages (and even your entire website) for these visitors.
Constantly reminding your customers about your offer throughout your site (not just in your promo emails) will create a more personalized customer experience and increase the conversion rate of these segments by up to 20%.
Here’s an example from Temple Webster.
3 real-world examples of successful lead generation campaigns
Now that you’ve learned how lead generation can boost your business’s bottom line and read over our tips for a successful lead generation campaign, let’s top it off by showing how some outstanding companies use lead gen to increase their customer base and revenue.
Here are just a few examples of lead generation campaigns done right:
1. Vegetology doubled their conversion rate
Here is an excellent example from Vegetology. They utilized a “mystery discount” instead of the typical (boring) 10% off, which piqued people’s curiosity and resulted in significant interest.
In addition, they added a seasonal twist to the basic offer and incorporated the current month in the headline (“February special”), which increased the sense of urgency. By utilizing OptiMonk’s Smart Tags feature, they were able to automate this process and avoid the need to update the popup each month.
Lastly, with the assistance of the OptiMonk team, they introduced a teaser that trailed visitors throughout the website after they closed the popup.
2. Obvi collected 205 new phone numbers in one week
Obvi ran a teaser campaign for their Black Friday sale to build a subscriber list and increase purchases during Black Friday.
The teaser campaign had a 7.23% conversion rate and collected 205 new phone numbers in one week, thanks to a countdown timer that increased urgency. The exit popup targeted visitors who were highly interested but had yet to make a purchase.
3. BOOM promoted their ebook for low-engagement visitors
To entice visitors who aren’t yet interested in buying or subscribing, consider offering a lead magnet. Take inspiration from BOOM, who created an ebook on makeup tips for women over 40 and promoted it on a popup.
By offering a tangible incentive, they saw a significant increase in signups.
Wrapping up
Having an effective strategy to generate leads on command sounds like a dream, but if you implement the tips and tricks covered above, you’ll be well on your way to building a well-oiled lead gen machine.
This article presents everything you need to create a dependable, scalable, and effective system to attract the right customers. Now it’s time to do your part… putting these tips to work for you. We can’t wait to see you smash all your goals!
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