Top 5 Lead Generation Ideas You Can Easily Implement
Posted by Jamie Jin
Lead generation is the process of collecting contact details of potential consumers and pitching your services or products to them afterwards. In the past, getting leads heavily relied on the sales team. Leads were generated through traditional methods such as cold calling, purchasing lists and roadshows. These methods were time-consuming and ineffective. Without generating good leads, a sales team is unable to refine their sales pitch and close deals for the company. As such, marketers are starting to put more focus on creating lead generation campaigns that really work!
Nowadays, people are more conscious in sharing their contact details with businesses, including you and I! As such, creating effective and original methods to convert and attract leads are getting more difficult than ever. Don’t get stressed up, here are some effective marketing campaigns that every business should be used to generate more leads online!
Lead Generation Ideas:
1. Visual Content - Generate Leads Up To 33%
As mentioned by Unbounce, 65% of us thrive on visuals! Not everyone learns by reading, a large amount of us here are visual and audible learners! Have you ever thought of explaining your business’ offerings through visuals? This is why more and more companies are adopting product videos as one of their marketing campaigns! Also, case studies have proven us right that videos generate leads at a rate of up to 33%.
Product videos are usually short video clips that educate potential leads on the business’ offering. These videos are usually posted on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. At the same time, these videos allow the business to leverage the social network, which would help in attaining extra reach!
One successful example is Chewy, a pet e-commerce store in USA. In order to attract more pet owners to their store, they have started by answering the common questions of pet owners these days. Then, they start to introduce their store’s best seller products and share an in-depth product review on each product. This was a first in the pet industry, which took them by storm!
If you have a low budget, the more you should not be shunning away from creating such videos! These product videos don’t have to be high-budget or complicated, as long as it is clear, interesting, well-edited and straight to the point.
Keep your product videos short and concise, no one wants to watch a draggy video! For short teaser clips, keep it to 15 to 30 seconds. For informational videos, it is important to keep the informational videos in-depth so that consumers can learn from your videos. Select your video host carefully as it affects the quality of the video - not just the camera kit! Other than getting them to subscribe to your videos, you may add a call-to-action in the middle or end of the video to capture their email addresses.
2. Quora - Interact With Potential Leads Through Conversations
Source: Quora logo
Yes, Quora. Have you heard of Quora? It’s never too be late to be part of this life-changing platform! Quora is a public Q&A platform that allows you to answer and ask questions. If you are the kind that loves to help and show off your knowledge, this is the best platform to show off your skills and knowledge to potential leads.
Most importantly, signing up for a Quora account is absolutely free and you can join in any conversations immediately! After signing up, do a quick search on terms relevant to your business and you can start answering the question that allows you to get direct exposure to leads who are asking for solutions that your business offers!
Here comes the best part of using Quora - Quora allows businesses to kill two stones with one account! Not only can you interact with potential leads through conversations, but marketers can also leverage on the platform and enter URLs to backlink to the business’ website or any landing pages. This would definitely help a lot in SEO ranking!
Let’s take Gen M as an example. Taking a quick look, it is obvious that the brand has been using the platform to their advantage! The tone, backlinks and length are just perfect for readers to digest.
So quick what are you waiting for? Sign up and start using! Remember to keep your tone engaging - you are creating conversation! At the same time, sound smart and professional to show that you know what you are doing! After all, you are representing your brand, so be careful with your words! Most importantly, conversations are words without objective and context. Make sure your answer is relevant to the question and is targeted to potential leads. For example, you don’t answer any random question and sell your business at the end of the answer - that’s a bad move! Good luck on using Quora as a lead generation source, you’re not going to regret it.
3. Guest blog - Basic Lead Generation That Most Businesses Are Using
The most basic lead generation that most businesses (and hopefully you) are using is actually content generation. Everyone is talking about it, but we are actually going to bring this onto the next level. For a start, most businesses should start with creating their content through blog posts. After building your “writing portfolio”, to spice things up, it’s time to do something different! There are two ways to do this, but you can do both, depending on your budget and time on hand.
If your business has a lesser budget and slightly more time to spare, you could opt to guest blog on relevant sites that most of your target audience is reading. For example, if you own a fashion-related business, you may reach out to fashion bloggers and propose to guest blog articles that may be of interest to their target audience (which should be yours as well!). By guest blogging, you will direct the current audience to your site, and leverage on other blogs that already have an audience!
Some sites and bloggers may need you to pay for a guest blog placement, especially when they get too many requests. If you decide to guest blog, it is important for you to pick the right topic and proceed to leave a call-to-action in the middle and end of the article. Some tips from us, do not give away all your best and new topics! You could possibly look at what performed well on your blog, and revisit these topics by rewriting similar topics. Do take note of plagiarism though!
If your business has slightly more budget and less time to spare, try to engage guest bloggers instead. This means that instead of writing it yourself, get a writer to guest blog on your site. Preferably, the writer has to be someone that has a certain influence so that the writer is able to let her follower click onto the blog link. By inviting a guest blogger on your site, it creates excitement among your current fans as well, as more fans are more enticed to ‘click’ into the site to read something ‘new’. With that, it is important to invite guest bloggers that are relevant to your business. Last but not least, don’t forget to check out the reputation of your guest blogger. Choose smartly, it is not worth to tarnish your brand over an article!
4. Pop-ups - Collect 1375% More Subscribers
As much as we dislike to mention this, we got to say those pop-ups that you thought were irritating, WORKS! Pop-ups can come in many forms, such as an exit-intent pop-up or as a welcome message. The pop up usually includes a call-to-action that has an intention to collect personal details from website visitors.On which type of pop-up is better for your business? We never really know. Both has its own benefit, but if you are a content page, it is recommended to use a welcome pop-up. This will create an ‘illusion’ that user audiences have to ‘sign up’ before accessing the link. If you do sales on your site, like e-commerce, exit-intent is highly recommended!
According to Optinmonster, 70% of abandoning visitors never return… This means that over 90% of your marketing spend is going to waste! However, do avoid using both types of pop-ups and probably try A/B testing to see which works better for your target audience.
Taking a look at the case study on the Aweber blog, a niche website tested a sidebar together with a pop-up signup form. With just over seven months, the pop-up fared better by collecting 1375% more subscribers!
As you can see, design plays a big part in getting your target audience to sign up with you. Make sure that the design doesn’t go too far from your branding. The key is to get a pop-up form to gel with your branding look while ensuring it is attractive enough. A tip from us, you might want to include a gift of appreciation that might entice them, such as a promotion code or content upgrade.
5. Practice Active Listening - Engage With People Mentioning You
I know what you are thinking, Twitter is so last year. But hold your comments before we further elaborate! Twitter has been used as a platform for users to express their thoughts and update their current life happenings through ‘tweets’. This is something that companies should quickly leverage on! Twitter is so easy to use. Just a quick search on relevant keywords relevant to your brand, you can see who is currently interested in your business offerings. Unlike other social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, businesses are able to access to this real-time information effortlessly.
Take this chance to engage with people mentioning your business, or possibly help solve a problem your offering can! In order to bring this on to the next level, reply to tweets with a blog post you have written. Not only will you help to increase view, but this is also a way to let people know of your brand, and potentially become an advocate of your brand.
According to salesforce.com, GNC found that many potential clients of theirs were discussing health and GNC products. By creating conversations with them, GNC saw an increase of inbound sales by 25%. Paying attention to conversations on Twitter is definitely time-consuming. In order to save time, try TweetBeep, a software that allows you to set up Twitter alerts that will keep you informed on any potential conversation (and conversion) opportunities!
Though active listening may be similar to the Quora, they actually aren’t! Quora mostly question and you just have to answer them. Twitter is broad and you might come across unpleasant comments about your brand too. Take this chance to turn things around, you might just convert an unhappy consumer to an advocate.
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Through this article, we hope you have learnt a thing or two! Just a short recap, these lead generation campaigns can be launched simultaneously for best results. The best scenario would go something like this - the potential lead asks a question on Quora or tweets about it on Twitter, your business interacts and solves his issue by providing tips. A blog URL link is also attached - which may or may not be a guest blog copy, and then the potential lead enters website with a welcome pop-up to obtain his personal details. This way, lead generation campaigns work hand in hand together, to create a even bigger lead generation campaign! If you have any interesting lead generation campaigns that you think worked for you, feel free to share in the comments below!