Generating new leads for your business is easier said than done for most brands. While it seems like an easy task, a lot goes into finding not just any lead but qualified leads. Lead generation is a process of trial and error and always being innovative. So what should you try to get these qualified leads for your business? We’ll take you step-by-step through six proven ways to help you achieve long-term growth for your brand.
How Leads Are Generated
Before we get started, you need to understand how leads are generated. First, visitors click on a call-to-action (CTA) image, button, message, etc., to encourage them to take action. The CTA takes them to a landing page that captures their information in exchange for something of value to them. The visitor then fills out a form to receive your offer.
Sounds simple enough, but there are tips and tools to utilize to ensure you’re getting qualified leads. Curious to know more about lead generation? Our lead gen specialist shares need-to-know info in our “9 Best Pieces of Advice from Your Neighborhood Lead Generation Specialist” blog.
Step 1: Use Dedicated Landing Pages for Each CTA
Landing pages are crucial for conversion. The information you gather and the page you send your visitors to can turn a prospect into a customer. If offering a special download, visitors should be sent to a landing page relevant to the download, not a home page or contact us page. If you have a variety of offers, then there should be multiple landing pages visitors are sent to.
Not only will this create a high-converting landing page, but it will keep you organized on the backend with which leads to go after based on which form they completed. In this blog, we share landing page best practices to follow.
Step 2: Create Different Offers for Each Phase of the Buyer’s Journey
Visitors can range from being at the beginning of their buyer’s journey to being at the end, and depending on where they are in their journey is the type of offerings they should be receiving. Your CTAs should focus on broad offerings to make sure there is something for everyone regardless of where they are in their journey.
Examples of offers for someone at the beginning of the buyer's journey include ebooks, whitepapers, and guides. Offers for the end of the buyer's journey could include free trials or demos.
You can take this one step further if you funnel your leads by where they are in their buyer’s journey. You can send targeted offers that relate to the respective part of the buying journey the visitor is in.
Step 3: Keep the Messaging Consistent
Whether it’s the landing page, email, CTA, blog, or social media post, keeping the messaging the same is important when providing value to prospective customers. If they see different messaging or different offers, they may become confused and be difficult to convert to a lead.
Step 4: Get Social With It
When it comes to how to get leads for your business, social media shouldn’t be forgotten about. We know the power of social media changes what seems daily, and there’s always a new “best” way to use it to achieve your goals.
To get new business leads, you need to do more than just post frequently on social media. When crafting your social media post, use links in your captions that go directly to your landing pages that include your high-performing offers. You can also send them to high-performing blogs that generate the most leads for you.
Step 5: Let Your Customers Do the Talking
Many qualified leads often come from current, happy customers. What’s more credible than a satisfied customer referring you? Sometimes customers may refer you naturally, and other times they need to be nudged to do some referring.
When closing your sale, try to include an incentive if your customer refers you. An example could be to offer 10% off their next project with you and 10% off the referral's first project with you. Additionally, ask your customers to leave you a testimonial. Reviews speak volumes and are simple and easy lead generators.
Here are a few ideas on how to offer incentives:
- Offer an incentive to the company referring you.
- Offer an incentive to both the company and referral for a discount on their next project.
- Offer an incentive to the referral.
- Ask current customers to leave testimonials and product reviews for you — share those testimonials on your website and/or product pages if it’s product specific.
Step 6: Make It Personal
When you get an email addressed personally to you, how does it make you feel? We’re guessing the fact that the brand took an extra step to personalize the email to you makes you feel good and like you’re being directly spoken to.
So why not make your customers feel the same way? It’s a simple task to complete and can help you gain new business leads. Whichever email platform you use, personalize your emails to include the recipient’s name. It will look like this:
This small touch will generate new business leads for you and make your potential customers feel comfortable while building brand loyalty.
Bonus Step: Create a Partnership Marketing Campaign
Whether it’s a podcast, webinar, or an influencer marketing campaign, collaborative marketing is one of the best ways to generate leads.
According to a Forrester report, partnerships exceed paid search as a growth channel where mature partnerships generate 28% of revenue for brands. Another study reported that 57% of businesses use partnerships for lead generation and customer acquisition.
Collaborative marketing campaigns should be a part of your lead generation strategy. Use co-marketing, cross-promotion, product bundling, and other techniques to generate qualified leads for your business.
Red Bull, for example, works extensively with its partners, and it has a dedicated partnership page where it defines partnership pillars:
You don’t have to run such huge partnership campaigns — start with one. Partner with the right brand, set clear partnership goals, and execute them for mutual benefit.
Bonus Step: Giveaway Campaigns
Giveaway campaigns on social media do wonders for lead generation. Not only do you generate leads, but giveaways boost your brand awareness significantly.
Giveaways and contests get massive engagement. On Instagram, giveaway posts receive 64x more comments and 3.5x more likes:
Since Instagram doesn’t allow external links (meaning lead generation gets difficult), it isn’t an ideal platform to run giveaway campaigns. As much as 92.6% of brands run giveaways on Facebook, and 20% of businesses use them for lead generation.
Here is an example of lead generation giveaway:
Instead of asking for likes, comments, and follows, they send traffic to a squeeze page to collect email addresses. That’s a perfect way to generate leads with a contest.
Remember, likes, comments, and shares are not equivalent to leads. Send traffic to your landing page.
According to the HubSpot State of Marketing Report 2021, generating more leads was the top marketing priority. Assuming it’s also your top priority when you wonder how to get leads for your business, you can use this step-by-step remedy to see real results and achieve your business goals.
