Have you ever visited a website that prompts you to sign a contact form before letting you download content or continue browsing? That email subscription among others is basically what lead generation is all about. You could say that the email address is the bloodline of your company.
A successful lead generation will enable a company to target a wide audience making its contact database grow. This will greatly help businesses and companies expand their influence. This is done by targeting new customers without handing them company pamphlets or brochures.
Is the explanation not complete enough for you? Well you're in luck since there's more where that came from!
What is Lead Generation
That being said, Lead Generation, also called Lead Gen is a part of marketing strategy. It is integral as the first part of the generation campaign. This means that as the name implies, Lead Gen creates or generates leads that are to be used by the people who handle the sales or the marketing sales team.
The marketing sales team studies these potential clients and converts them into ideal customers. Customers will then buy something from the website. This is usually done by making the customer journey as interesting and easy as possible. From the browsing to the buying process, lead generation specialists are the ones who make this happen.
You could say that Lead Gen is the arsenal that the sales team can use in their marketing campaign. Helping them efficiently get the right target audiences and make them qualified leads. How do you obtain these target audiences and prospective customers? What are these qualified leads, and what makes them so qualified?
Need experts for your leads?
The Importance of Qualified Leads
Remember when I mentioned potential customers which will buy something from your website? Understand that "buying" means not only referring to products but also to services. Visitors who left their contact details or email addresses are considered potential customers.
When these subscribers stick to your website or in association, with your company database for a long long time. Then, they are now one step higher from being just potential customers and are now considered qualified leads.
Now let's get down the rabbit hole and further explore the different kinds of quality leads.
The 4 Different Kinds of Qualified Leads
1. Marketing Qualified leads (MQL) are target customers that show interest in your product and services. A good example of an MQL is someone who has signed or filled out a landing page form. Landing pages are usually solo pages that give visitors free stuff after they filled out a short form. Making it very effective in the buying journey of visitors.
2. Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) are the customers who are already on the company's email list. They are then examined by the marketing lead strategy and sales team. And then considered if qualified for the next step in the transaction process. An example is when someone filled out forms with the purpose of asking more inquiries relating to your product or service.
3. Product Qualified Leads (PQL) are contacts who are able to experience your products but with limited features and not the full version. The most common examples of PQL are beta testers or users of freemium products that offer full or semi-full versions within a set amount of time. This gives them the option to either continue with the full version or to stop using the software if they do not like its performance and features. The users become paying customers especially if they really needed the features behind the paywall.
4. Service Qualified Leads (SQL) are customers who have shown interest in buying the full version of freemium software. These are the beta testers, products, or service users who realized they can't live without the products that they are currently using. Common kinds of freemium products are anti-virus, music, and other ease-of-life tools and software. Tools that usually make the user's online work and security much easier. Through the software application, the users show their desire to buy with the right button or links. The lead marketing customer service will redirect the customer to suitable sales representatives.
Lead Generation Strategies for New Entrepreneurs
Starting a business can be a real hassle. If you don't already have a huge customer base. This can be a huge dent in your company's initial setup progress or a huge setback to your business profit when you already have one.
So, a successful lead generation is important to upstarting businesses and companies. This generation process is usually the first step of your business's sales process making it very important in the long run.
5 Tips of Lead Gen Strategies
1. Opt-in or Opt-in Boxes. Starting with the best strategy, opt-ins are the key to Lead Generation efforts. Opt-in pages ask visitors or customers to leave their contact information to get something in return. This may come in the form of live demos, Webinars, free reports, etc. You can give away freebies like pdf walkthroughs, worksheets, and even cooking recipes.
The important thing here is to not stop with just one or two opt-in boxes. Make use of all your blog posts as opt-in bus stops (No, the bus stop is intentional). The visitors will become potential leads and hopefully quality leads in the future. And also, don't be lazy and just position your opt-in in the corner as a link. Get it out there and make it a pop-up in the most eye-catching color or design format that you can.
2. Video Lead Magnets on Landing Pages. Another effective way of generating leads is by including video lead magnets on your landing pages. Nowadays, everyone is in a hurry, and most people don't have time or the will to read white papers. This is because reading is a tedious task and most people don't want to read something even longer after downloading.
The best solution to this is to put the information or summary of the product review into a short video. Furthermore, studies show that using the Ted Talks model of setting the video limit to 18 minutes for its speaker has good feedback and results. Your subscribers can just sit back, relax and close their eyes and listen to your sales pitch.
3. Don't Write Generic Ads. It is pretty obvious nowadays that product and service ads practically look the same. Well, mostly, this is due to the recycling of keywords and AdWords over the years. Because of these, most online shoppers will just look for the product with the lowest price and add it to the cart immediately.
With that being said, imagine if you build a better ad site than the competitors. It could be like adding flavor to an otherwise bland dish! With this in mind, it is pretty obvious that writing valuable content on your ad site can in turn make your products more appealing to the buyers.
After adding some search engine optimization, your CTR score will rise and boosts your overall Quality Score. The mantra here is to not be lazy and settle for the average, but aim for the best!
4. Give better offers. Better offers mean not lowering your price. The essence here is to be creative in giving better offers. Still not clicking? Well, for example, Amazon Prime gives a 30-day free trial, Auto-Cad also a 30-day trial and even famous food companies give a free taste. Do you see where I'm going with this?
Try to think of something unique that your business or company can offer. And make it something that has value and correlates to your main product or service. This method will also expand your contact database by giving you a wide audience. Do this and I kid you not, customer conversions will go through your metaphorical roof.
5. Make an Incentive-based referral system. Do you remember in the old days, when the most efficient way of advertising your product or service is by word of mouth? Well, guess what, it's still effective today and more so! This method is especially helpful if your business or company size is small.
Furthermore, you don't need to create a customer profile or buyer persona since most likely the customers are buying the same things. This generation tactic is the giving of incentives to your current customers through discounts. Everybody loves freebies and these incentives will entice customers to do more referrals.
Want to know more about Sales Reps?
Bonus Strategies for Reading This Far
Add a Live Chat Feature. And finally, a live chat feature will work wonders for your lead generation. The real-time chat function is a must-have feature of eCommerce product pages. This is according to 44% of customer responses. Your live-chat feature will allow prospective clients to reach the proper sales team directly. And without the need of using a phone or writing an email. Additionally, 63% said they will likely revisit the site and 62% were customers who are more likely to return.
Advertise To Your Niche Audience. Podcasts? Yes, Podcasts! The best way of advertising your product or services is through podcasts. Everyone is watching or listening to podcasts nowadays. This tactic offers even more potential than your regular radio station.
You might have seen commercials while watching YouTube. And you must have noticed that most commercials are not related to the video. This is why Podcasts are superior since you can easily find your target niche. Since podcasters usually focus on specific subjects. You can easily find Podcasts that are related to your product or services. This way, your incentive-based referrals can be easily heard. You just let the podcaster mention your referrals. Making it one of the best forms of advertising today.
B2B Lead Gen Vs B2C Lead Gen
These terms have been thrown around a lot in the marketing world. But what do they really mean?
Business to Business or B2B is basically when one business offers a product or service to another business. LinkedIn is a good example of this. They are a networking platform that offers employers the needed manpower. The employers post job offers while the job-seekers post their credentials.
Business to Consumer or B2C on the other hand is when a business directly offers products or services to a single customer. Amazon, Walmart, Netflix, and even your favorite gym are prime examples of a B2C setup.
OBI Services, Your Friendly Neighborhood B2B Lead Generation Company
By now you should have a general idea of how to generate leads. But if you still want a helping hand OBI Services is the best lead generation company for you. Believe me when I say that lead generation is a long and tiring job. OBI Services offers expertise in outbound lead generation. You don't have to waste your precious time cold calling, OBI Services got that covered for you. OBI Services is a B2B company that offers a wide range of generation tools and guidelines to generate more leads with less effort on your side. You'll be generating high-quality leads in no time! You can contact us for more inquiries on our services.
Let's Review What We Learned
Lead Generation can be daunting, but it doesn't need to be that hard. A good opt-in and also a well-made video can make it relatively easy. Obviously, presentation is everything so it's essential to beautify your product site.
Don't just make a generic site that looks copy-pasted from 9 other sites and jam your products in there. Make relevant content that is unique and easy on the eyes. Customers are butterflies, make your product site the flower they want to land on.
And as I mentioned, word of mouth is a powerful time-tested method of raking in customers. Include an incentive-based referral system and you'll be flooded with customers in no time.
Make your blog interactive. Include a live-chat feature on your site so your customers can directly interact with the sales team.
Give better deals and offers. Be creative and regularly update your offers. Find something related to your product and include it as a freebie. If your business is about selling cooking supplies. You can make a cooking recipe as your free deal. Be trendy and join the podcasting world! Everybody loves good podcasts. That makes it a good place to show your product ads. In 2022, there are over 2 million podcasts. Make sure that the podcast you want is related to your product. You don't want a podcast about rocket engines to host your product about weight loss.
Conclusion
Now, remember, the bottom line to a fast and reliable lead generation is to not-be-lazy. Rome wasn't built in a day, but you can be sure the Romans weren't slacking either. Keep optimizing pages, create more incentive-based referrals and spread your product by word of mouth.
But, if you want a helping hand to guide you and make your life easier. OBI Services is the right partner for you! We are an outsourcing company that focuses on making our clients' operations cheaper and simpler.
Don't be discouraged at the beginning but think of it as constructing a building brick by brick. You'll be raking in customers in no time. Just keep calm and get those leads on!
Get Started with OBI Services!
