Lead generation is the process of raising buyer interest and gathering inquiries from prospective purchasers, often in the form of names and contact information. Lead generation is an important factor in all marketing campaigns.
These leads are then qualified for their ability and desire to purchase your products and services.
While generally the focus of B2B marketing organizations, lead generation also applies to B2C companies, especially where high price, high consideration products are involved.
57 percent of a typical purchase decision is made before a prospect ever talks to a supplier based on a Corporate Executive Board study of over 1,400 B2B customers across industries. This is an aspect that you can't control but it leaves you 43 percent to work with.
For marketers, lead generation is a tradeoff between quality and quantity. Specifically without a sufficient number of leads, you can’t achieve your sales conversion goals.
By contrast, too many leads often translates to unqualified buyers who need lots of persuasion to convert or they’ll never buy.
(1)Today’s customers are social media and content marketing savvy. Whether they’re making a purchase for themselves or their business, they’ve at least started their research before they ever contact you. The more you know their behavior, the better off you'll be.
(2)Experiment with owned, earned and paid campaigns. Try something you’ve never tried before. Be willing to fail small and fast. Trial and error is big in sales and lead generation, you have to fall before you can climb.
(3)The most effective way for marketing to drive stellar leads for sales is to deliver the right content to the right prospect at the right time. Targeting the right audience. Mapping content to the buyer journey and then delivering it to the right prospects is the best way to drive effective sales-ready leads without wasting your sales’ teams time and you company’s money.
(4)Include a strong call to action. A strong COA is so vital. So much social media marketing and content marketing fails when the recipient of the message isn’t clear about what to do with it. Do you want a share? A site visit? Their contact information? A subscription to your page or channel? Spell it out clearly to them, lead them down the road you want to take them. You don't have to hide it!
(5)Ensure that the content is the right type of content for the community that it’s presented to and the right place in the customer journey. Be cognizant of the many steps in your customer’s journey. Make sure that awareness content is used in social channels. Consideration type content can be used for paid targeted audience buys. If the content is wrong, you either won't get the lead or it won't be the type of customer you need.
