The 4 L’s of a Successful Lead Generation Strategy
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In this article, we discover the 4 L’s of a successful lead generation starting with 1) a brief introduction to Lead Generation, and discussing then 2) the 4 L’s of Lead Generation including Lead Capture, Lead Magnet, Landing Page Conversion, and Lead Scoring.
LEAD GENERATION: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
In today’s world where there is cut throat competition between businesses of the same league or industry, it is very challenging yet important to capture consumer interest and keep them engaged. Marketers these days have to come constantly up with new and fresh ideas to captivate the attention of customers, and one way to do so is by the generation of Leads. Lead Generation is a term that is used to refer to the generation of interest or inquiry among consumers into the services or products offered by a business. Lead Generation can be considered equivalent to advertising. The more a business can create quality leads, the better are the chances to improve sales.
Some of the common tactics or methods of Lead Generation include print ads, digital advertisements, social media marketing, email marketing, telemarketing, event marketing and through website content and SEO. The important thing here is to convert visitors on digital channels into buyers by keeping them hooked and interested in the products and services of the business. The method of email marketing has emerged as one of the most effective and preferred Lead Generation tactic, leaving behind important players of yesterday such as print advertising, etc.
Further we will be looking mainly at the 4 L’s of a successful lead generation strategy, and they are Lead Capture, Lead Magnets, Landing Page Conversion and Lead Scoring.
THE 4 L’S
To make sure that your business or company is moving towards success and huge profits is to follow a smart and effective Lead Generation strategy. The best way to do so is by following a 4 layered approach. This 4 layered strategy consists of 4 L’s which are Lead Capture, Lead Magnets, Landing page conversion, as well as Lead Scoring. In simple terms, these 4 L’s can be translated as: get a customer, keep him engaged and captivated, convert him to become a buyer and score highest level of success.
It may seem simple at first, but this 4 layered approach towards a successful Lead Generation strategy is complex and may need a lot of your attention as a business owner or marketer. Each layer has further sub-layers and to understand them better, you can go through the following given information.
1. LEAD CAPTURE
What Is Lead Capturing?
What’s the use of a thousand impressions on your working website if none of them shows real interest in your products or services? The best possible information that a marketer can capture from visitors is their working email address. But keys like ‘Sign-up’ aren’t used or trusted by most since they are usually considered as a means of spamming inboxes. Thus businesses must find new ways to find information about the consumers. Lead Capturing is a process through which you can point potential customers in the right direction so that they can get more information on whatever they are looking for.
In order to do so, one can follow the given two thumb rules:
- Give before you ask
- All marketing processes must be valuable on their ownselves.
To get the process of Lead Capturing start, you must make your landing page attractive and informative enough. An effective Lead Capture system is one which gets the customers inclined, curious and ready for more.
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How to create an effective Lead Capturing system?
The following steps will explain how to create an effective Lead Capturing System:
- Include an irresistible offer – Creating an effective Lead Capture system is not as tough as some believe it to be. One of the first ways to do so is by including an irresistible offer on the landing page. The offer must speak to all demographics and must get the audiences curious and interested in just the first glance. The offer could be a FREE product, a FREE Service or any other deal that consumers just cannot say no to.
- Creative content and a media – Another way to create an overall convincing and effective Lead Capturing system is to include creatively written and strong content with some visually attractive media like photos or videos. Be straight to the point, witty yet easy to understand so that audiences belonging to all age groups and backgrounds can get your point.
- Collect people’s contact information – By asking basic information of the visitors, you can create a strong Landing Page. But remember, the more you ask, the lower will be the conversion rate. So keep it simple, short and concise. Asking only the person’s name and email ID would suffice. This can be considered as a seed to a long term relationship because as the users trust you with their email, they might just trust you with your products.
- Follow up – the next step to create a Lead Capturing system is to have an auto email system delivery or follow-up. The automated response from your side will reach the consumers after they enter their email address and should provide them with more information about your products and services. The email must provide consumers the option to contact directly your support staff through phone, email or live chat. This method will improve your chance of making a long term contact with customers and converting them into buyers.
- Have a responsive design – one thing that immediately puts off visitors is a non-responsive or slow website design. You need to make sure that the website that you create is fast, responsive and attractive. A responsive design is likely to lead to more conversions and thereby better overall performance. Waiting for the next page to load often leads to a lost potential customer.
2. LEAD MAGNET
What is Lead Magnet?
Now that you have captured Leads, you want to make sure that they keep coming back. For this, you need to highlight the convincing reasons due to which your audiences will retain their interest and always opt for your products and services. Lead Magnets are those irresistible offers or deals you give to your prospects in return for their contact information. The main goal of a Lead Magnet is to maximize the number of the aimed leads that you will be getting an offer. If you do not follow the strategy of Lead Magnets, then your marketing strategy will fizz off fairly soon.
Before reading further, you must first know the single most important characteristic of a Lead Magnet. This characteristic or element is Specificity. You must understand that Lead Magnets do not have to be complicated or lengthy in any way. You would rather need a simple and specific solution for a specific kind of a problem.
Effective Examples of Lead Magnets
The following is a list of the most effective types of Lead Magnets:
- Video Training – A Video can be a superb way to deliver on Lead Magnet. The video training that you offer must be attractive enough for the audiences and should speak to a large range of demographics.
- Free Trial/Software download – another effective example of a Lead Magnet is a software download. Many software companies offer Free Trial of one of their popular softwares as a Lead Magnet, and this is a superb way to keep audiences hooked. Make sure that process to download or install the free trial is simple, less time-consuming and interactive for the consumers to retain their interest level.
- Discounts – If you are a retail business or sell products online, and then it is a great idea to offer attractive discount opportunities for your new and potential customers. Offer either a membership to a discount club or give real discount coupons for purchases. Send Promo Codes to attractive offers in the inbox as this works as a brilliant Lead Magnet.
- Free Shipping – Like Discounts, even the idea of Free Shipping works as a good Lead Magnet. Many customers are wary of buying products online as they fear bearing the overhead or shipping costs. But when free shipping is offered, they might just change their mind.
- Survey/Quiz – Many businesses offer free surveys and quizzes to new visitors on their sites as this can be a very engaging way to convert them. A Nice General Knowledge or similar quiz can be a good challenge for anyone and may just convince someone to reveal their email address. Go for interactive quizzes with a visual appeal for a better result.
- Guide/Report – Several Businesses have been using Guides or Reports as effective Lead Magnets for years now and these work fantastically well. Make sure that the guide or report that you offer is attractive enough for the audiences. Find titles like ‘Best Business Secrets’ or ‘The Mantra to be Rich’, etc. as these have a definite connection with almost anyone.
3. LANDING PAGE CONVERSION
A Brief into Landing Page Conversion
Every website owner or business owner must create an amazingly attractive and captivating Landing Page. A Landing Page is different from the Home Page of the company and is a single page marketing method upon which people land when they click on an online ad or a link to your business on a search engine. There are dozens of components that you will need to keep in mind before creating a competition crushing landing page. The Landing Page must be able to convert leads into buyers and should offer what customers are looking for.
A good landing page must serve the dual purpose of warming up the customers and capturing leads, as explained above. Basically, there are two broad types of Landing Pages: click through landing pages and lead generation landing pages.
Essentials of a Highly Successful Landing Page
The following are some of the essentials of a superb and converting Landing Page:
- A Killer Headline – It all really begins at the headline, doesn’t it? Well, the headline must generate attention, curiosity as well as an understanding of what you have to offer to audiences. It must not be any longer than a mere 20 words and even better if it is under 10. It should be clever but not too smart or should not waver away from its main function – to be informative to readers.
- A convincing sub-headline – The headline must be able to make the audiences look, but the sub-headline should be able to make them stay. After you deliver a punch with the headline, you must maintain the persuasiveness with this second head. It should offer a little bit more information than the headline and should be more in-depth.
- Visuals/Pictures – A successful landing page is one which contains either one strong image or a series of attractive pictures. It is a fact that the human brain processes images about 60000 times faster than written text. Make sure the picture is relevant to the products and services you offer and are of high quality. They must be fun and attention grabbing.
- Explanation – Images alone won’t help. You must give a strong explanation of what your products and services are about. Be straight forward and use simple language to describe what you do, how you do and how you can serve the audiences.
- Benefits – You have explained what your products are and how your services work, but it is also important to set them apart from the similar products and services of other providers. For this, you will need to explain the various benefits of your items. Give the value proposition so that one is convinced to buy yours rather than that of others.
- Trustworthy testimonials – When real people back any product or service, then a certain trust factor comes into play, convincing us of the service or product provider. This is why; your landing page must have a few real trustworthy testimonials from existing customers or clients. The testimonials can be clubbed with the pictures of real people to further establish the trust factor.
4. LEAD SCORING
An Introduction to Lead Scoring
Lead Scoring can be understood as the last nail in the coffin as far as marketing with Lead Generation is concerned. This method involves usage of marketing automation tools and benchmarking to go through and rank the information on the Lead Generation. It helps prioritize the leads as per the level of engagement with the content of inbound marketing. The key is to know which customers are interested in buying from you, and this may involve things such as tenure, behavior, engagement levels and some other such interactive hints. For example, if a customer:
- Watches a product overview video, then add 7 points;
- Downloads an eBook, then add 5 points;
- Unsubscribe from a list, then deduct 7 points;
- Fills out a form, then add 7 points;
- And so on…
Lead scoring is a very crucial part of Lead Management and according to it, when a customer’s web activity and behavior is tracked, the level of interest can be determined.
The List of Lead Scoring Rules
- Determine the sales readiness of leads – This is a method that is shared by both sales and marketing teams and makes it possible to target and contact leads who are soon about to make sales. It also enables businesses to nurture those leads who are not yet totally ready and abandon those who are totally not interested.
- Create a checklist – You must create an ideal buyer profile that needs the efforts of both sales and marketing teams. From here, you must use both the implicit and explicit scoring methods to get a clear picture of all the lead’s value. Explicit scoring if, on the basis of the information that the potential customer gives you whereas, on the other hand, implicit scoring is on the basis of the information that a business infers. This checklist can be used to figure out the demographics that are relevant to the company and also the important behavior based on the scores.
Follow the given steps to set up your Lead Scoring system:
- First, you must establish a consistent Lead scoring method to rank the leads.
- Next, you will need to create optimal buyer personas and profiles.
- The next step to building your lead scoring system is to find out the scorecard or checklist for sales-ready leads.
- Now you will need to create some lead scoring rules for each of the several dimensions like behavioral and demographics.
- You will also need to consider the multiple scoring scenarios to fathom the interest and curiosity level in the various campaigns or products.
- You must also determine and fix an expiration date for the scores.
- You must now talk to the sales team in order to define the follow-up process that too is very integral to the lead scoring process.
In spite of its importance, it is surprising to know that almost 80% of the marketers have not yet come up with a Lead Scoring system. This process provides businesses and companies with a real-time feedback on the responsiveness of the leads and how important they are to the marketing process. It also points out towards those people who might be willing to purchase from your company but have not been brought into contact with you.
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