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All businesses want regular, qualified potential customers to keep their products or services top of mind. But it’s challenging to get in front of the right customers at the right time. When you identify an ideal customer, you don’t always have clarity about where they are in the purchasing process. Are they ready to buy right now? In the next few weeks? Or have they just started their research? One solution that helps solve this problem is lead generation.
An Overview of Lead Generation & Its Value
Lead generation is when a business develops a system for determining and managing potential customers. It helps businesses build and nurture a group of high-quality leads, often via an email list and lead funnel. This practice is valuable for many types of businesses, whether B2C or B2B, and regardless of marketing budget. To begin, consider a pain point or challenge of your audience, then create content that helps solve that pain point. Share your content via social media channels, email marketing, and a lead magnet (more on this later!). The idea is that you’re able to offer valuable information to your ideal customers before you ever ask them to spend money with you. Beyond building an ecosystem of quality leads, this also puts you in a position of expertise. You can own and operate communications with people who have expressed a clear interest in the solution you offer. Rather than rely on social media algorithms or a paid marketing campaign, you build leads over time for direct communication.
Lead Gen How-To
When done effectively, lead gen emphasizes the solution you offer to alieviate the challenge your audience is facing. You show your understanding of the challenge and ability to solve it through content, often including a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a resource that does not directly promote your business or service; instead, it solves a problem for your audience. Lead magnets come in the form of checklists, templates, webinars, or eBooks, among other things. When you create a lead magnet, you ask for very little (such as an email address) from your potential clients and customers. As a result, they have a positive experience with your business and see you as someone who can help. Collecting email addresses contributes to a lead funnel strategy to qualify and stay in touch with your leads.
Because you don’t know when your potential customers will be ready to make a purchase, you need to show your expertise regularly. Then, when they decide to purchase or hire a solution to their problem, you come to mind as a trusted expert. In addition, when you want to promote a specific product or service, your quality leads will likely be more receptive to marketing because you’ve already shown your value to them.
With all of this, keep in mind best practices. GDPR and recent data breach issues should encourage you to stay compliant with collecting and managing customer data.
Resources to Get Started
To begin building your lead generation system, you’ll want to explore an email marketing platform. Several options exist, such as MailChimp and ActiveCampaign. You should choose the best one for your budget and resources. Your lead magnet should be polished, so consider working with a professional designer. You’ll also need to build a marketing plan to get your lead magnet in front of as many people as possible. To do this, know when, how and where you plan to amplify your lead magnet. This can be done via your email signature, website, social media channels, blog posts, and more.
A one-size-fits-all for marketing success doesn’t exist. Lead gen is a marketing mechanism that doesn’t require a huge budget, shows return on investment, and brings minimal risk because you can test and adjust your tactics over time. You have many options for implementing lead generation, so take the time to understand what’s best for your business. Be aware, there is a lot of noise online. Focus your messaging by empathizing with your audience and providing solutions. If you’d like to hear more about digital marketing strategies, join our email list here.
