The 4 L’s for Rocking Your Lead Generation Campaign

Marketers are increasing their lead generation budgets year on year. The consensus is still that the money is in the list; without a flow of leads coming through the sales funnel, your business might as well be dead.

But, there is a difference between just generating leads and generating high quality, high potential leads. The latter is often difficult for marketers at a time when online consumers are increasingly discriminative about the type of information that lands in their in-box.

Lead generation and thus list building should not be a one-off effort—you can never have enough prospects. On the contrary, converting site visitors should be an integral part of your online marketing campaign, not an appendage.

Here’s how to generate high quality leads that are a perfect match for your business:

Listen actively to scout out potential leads

Lead generation is essentially a process of finding out where potential clients are, what their needs and pain points are, and creating ways to reach out to them in a way that could solve their problems.

Listening to what users are saying about your brand , product or services, the questions they are asking, the things they are complaining about  or what they are saying about your competitors gives you insights into just what your target audience is in need of.

Social listening tools such as Google, UberUV, Social Sprout, just to mention a few, will simplify your work by monitoring brand mentions. The information you receive from listening to your target audience will be extremely helpful in creating content and lead magnets that are relevant to them.

Leverage the power of content

Your owned media assets are the heart of your lead generation campaign. Valuable, topical, relevant and high quality content featured on your owned media is the ‘bait’ with which you can ‘capture’ your audience.

Today, consumers can easily differentiate content that is worth their time (and their continued consumption) and gibberish. It does take time and resources to develop compelling content that people want to view, read or listen to but the efforts will pay off in terms of generating high quality leads.

Of course, the type of content you create and distribute whether on your website, blog or social media should be in a format that appeals to your target audience. High quality images combined with textual content may resonate with a b2b client but a funny video or quirky tweets may sit in well with a younger audience.

The rule of thumb when creating content for lead generation is to always consider the preferences, attributes, and needs of your target audience. If you don’t put yourself in the place of your audience and learn what they actually want to consume then all of your efforts will likely be in vain.

Don’t be afraid to venture into the creation of different types of content including blog posts, videos, social media posts, long form articles, ebooks, or podcasts to bring in visitors to your site and to retain them long enough for a conversion and to give them a great service which results in a life long customer.

Encourage your visitors to opt-in with a magnet

It is not enough to have visitors on your site or social media platform. What’s more important is that you interest them in forming a long-term relationship with you—offering their contact information is a good first step.

By now, you already know that few, if any, users will give up their email address unless they are receiving something really valuable in return. This goes back to the point above; you need to be creating extremely compelling content that a site visitor would not want miss out.

Lead capture forms are a must-have on your website and landing pages, and preferably on your social media platforms. While the design, layout and words you use on the lead capture form are all important, a magnet is what will compel visitors to give up their contact information.

A lead magnet is simply any attractive and valuable free gift you offer to site visitors who opt-in to your email list. Magnets can include a well-written e-book, a free training course, an industry report, a video, a resource tool-kit, free shipping or discounted prices etc.

Lead prospects to a value-packed conversion page

Display and text ads can be a great way to channel leads into the funnel. But what really matters is where your prospects land when they click through the ad. The landing page is the crux of conversions—from visitor to lead.

There are many things that go into the landing page from the choice of colour, font, layout, visuals, placement of the call to action button, the call to action message and so much more.

However, consistency and the call to action are perhaps two of the most important elements of your landing pages. First, the message in your ad should definitely be the same message that features on the landing page. This includes the visual and textual elements. Second, it is paramount that you choose a single clear call to action that plainly spells out what you want your visitor to do.

Lead Generation 

If you are not yet meeting your sales and revenue targets, it is likely that you don’t have traffic problem but rather a lead generation one. Listen, create compelling content, offer valuable information free and you will start to convert those visitors to leads and to loyal fans.