Today, most brands and their marketers are looking for effective tools to help them engage with their target audience. These businesses use lead generation as their primary metric to gauge how successful their marketing efforts are.
In content marketing, the conversion rate is a better metric than the number of views or shares. Because of the high lead generation success rate, nearly 67% of companies have made it their sole metric.
Further, in B2B lead generation campaigns, brands incorporate other important factors, such as appointment setting and demand generation, to boost their success. Penetrating new audiences and then delegating prospects to your salespeople can help turn them into hot leads.
In this article, we will discuss strategies to enhance your lead generation efforts and how to promote the success of your business through it.
Let’s get started.
Strategies to Boost Your Lead Generation Efforts
Lead generation comprises attracting prospects to your brand, products, and services. It involves nurturing people who show interest in your business, intending to convert them into buyers. Converting a stranger into a customer is tricky and requires much effort and patience.
Visitors may discover your company through your social media pages, website, or blog. They may click a link, button, or image that directs them to your landing page. On this page, they may see an offer such as a course, an eBook, or a template that interests them. As a result, the website visitor may fill out a contact form to access the offer, and there you have a LEAD.
In other situations, a prospect might take longer to convert into a lead. This is where appointment-setting services and demand generation come in.
Here are two strategies for increasing your lead generation:
Appointment Setting
To realize prospects converting into customers, you must endeavor to benefit from a reliable appointment setting. This is the practice of booking appointments with key decision-makers to turn prospects into clients. It involves delegating verified leads to your salespeople for closure. Thankfully, appointment-setting services can help you make such leads with decision-makers, nurture them throughout the customer’s journey, arrange a meeting, and hand them over to qualified sales professionals to close the deal.
The appointment-setters are skilled and experienced. They do the following:
- Introduce your brand to potential customers.
- Engage the lead.
- Delegate the task of closing the deal to your sales teams.
- Continue to arrange more meetings with the prospect to help you build your business.
Ultimately, appointment-setting services forward high-quality leads to sales reps for closure. This increases the chances of converting a prospect to a buyer.
Whether you outsource or use in-house appointment setters, the aim is to create more appointments from healthy leads, surpass your ambitious sales targets, increase your revenue, and enhance your brand image.
Demand Generation
Demand generation focuses on creating interest in your business, products, and services. It involves using techniques to attract new audiences so that you can turn them into leads through lead generation.
Demand generation activities happen at the top of the sales funnel and aim to drive prospects into the buying process. After that stage, lead generation initiatives convert the prospects into leads.
Here are demand generation tips for driving ideal customers to your business.
Provide Value
You can attract prospects to your websites by offering them something valuable, such as a product demo, an eBook, or a weekly email newsletter. Such items entice your prospects to release coveted contact information, which qualifies them as a lead.
Providing an invaluable go-to resource is a long-term investment. But you will succeed with the consistent effort some business owners fail to make when conducting content marketing.
Invest in Originality
Content marketing is important for demand-side lead generation. It requires investment and originality. A good demand generation strategy doesn’t reproduce what is already available. Instead, it provides original insights, expert opinions, and research on emerging trends. Your brand will definitely stand out when you invest in originality.
Partner with Industry Experts
Most tech companies and startups partner with industry experts and key influencers. One of their strategies is the inclusion of such key individuals in their webinars. Indeed, webinars are easy to produce, but incorporating the most respected, well-known guests requires a lot of effort and time. Partnering with influencers enhances your standing in your niche, boosts brand awareness, and forges valuable connections.
Test Continually
Initially, when designing a marketing campaign, marketers think they know what content the target audience wants or the message that resonates with them. But many elements remain unknown. A/B testing can help you understand what your audience wants, and when you do it correctly, you will improve the effectiveness of your campaigns and increase engagement.
Key Benefits of Lead Generation
Lead generation is extremely vital to your business. Its sustainability depends on those hot leads you generate through appointment setting and demand-driven lead generation. The more qualified leads your business has, the higher its revenue and growth.
Here are additional benefits of lead generation for the success of your business:
1. Expands Your Market
Usually, all businesses, at least in their early stages, target a specific audience or group. But you should expand your market continuously through lead generation. It helps you learn about a wider market and manage to nurture more prospects.
When you run your marketing campaigns and receive engagement outside your target audience, you shouldn’t shut them out. Instead, you should add them, nurture them, and monitor the trend. This is an excellent opportunity to grow your business and target new markets you would have never accessed.
2. Creates Awareness and Visibility
Some founders launch their businesses with little pomp, while some established companies operate behind the scenes. However, with time, they will want to capture the attention of their target audience. Demand-generation activities in such a scenario aim to create awareness and visibility. It aims to turn the tide in favor of your business.
Content marketing is an excellent way to provide value to your customers. You can generate unique content and publish it on your social media channels or website. Your followers will be happy to view, comment, save, and share valuable content with their friends, thus increasing visibility. That awareness and visibility can help convert followers into paying customers.
3. Boosts Revenue
Correctly applied lead generation tactics can maximize brand visibility and the ability to drive more target prospects to your business. With the right message, content, and offers, you can generate interest from a broader audience.
An appointment setting can help you capture the attention of hot leads and make it easier for the sales reps to convert them. Focusing on your target audience’s pain points and interests can boost your sales and revenue.
4. Increases Your Brand Following
Lead generation efforts include communication and content generation. It involves starting conversations on social media and crafting and posting unique content. You aim to provide your target audience with value by positioning your business as a thought leader in your niche.
As a result of such an investment, many potential customers will start following your brand. Your followers will become not only your customers but also brand advocates.
5. Helps in Social Proofing
Customer reviews are important when it comes to convincing prospects to buy your products and services. A review from a past client about how excellent your products and services are can automatically attract several customers. You can ask your customers for reviews and testimonials and display them on your website, social media, emails, infographics, or videos.
6. Shortens Your Sales Cycle
Shortening the customers’ journey can be tricky without an up-front sales investment. Brands want shorter sales cycles so that they can generate more leads and improve their bottom line. It also gives you a competitive advantage and increases market share.
Indeed, pushing more qualified leads through your sales funnel improves your ROI and grows your business. Here are some effective tips to shorten your sales cycle and boost profitability:
Define Your Target
The first step in any lead generation activity is to determine who your target market is. A buyer’s persona can help you define your target market and generate quality leads.
Usually, a buyer persona outlines the qualities of your preferred buyers. It also allows you to approach your target market with personalized messages and in a focused manner.
Avoid “Cold” Leads
Despite your marketing efforts, only some of your leads will convert into customers. On average, 96% of your website visitors leave without converting into sales. That means only 4% are likely to become leads, and focusing on them has higher returns. Therefore, encourage your sales reps to focus on qualified leads and nurture them until they transact.
Automate the Sales Process
There are many tasks that you can automate. They include clerical tasks, social activities, project management, etc. Automating non-sales tasks lets the sales team concentrate on prospecting leads and converting them. This shortens the sales cycle and boosts profitability.
Bottom Line
Lead generation requires consistent efforts. Most importantly, incorporating strategies like appointment setting and demand generation is crucial to your business’s success. It’s an ongoing process, and when lead generation campaigns are done correctly, they can generate numerous benefits.
This article has revealed to you 6 key benefits of lead generation, but the list is endless. Staying updated on changing trends, customer interests, and pain points can help convert many quality leads into customers.
