9 Effective Lead Generation Strategies

Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for your business’s products or services. As marketing accelerates its shift towards the digital world, creativity and flexibility become the focus of generating quality leads. Online marketing and social media provide a wealth of methods and strategies available to put your business in front of the right people. Continue reading for nine of our favorite lead generation strategies that are proven to be effective for growing your business. Plus, download our Social Media Marketing Tips Guide for more valuable tips on how to generate quality leads through social media.

The Mechanics of Lead Generation

There are a vast number of mechanics used to convert prospects into leads. The best marketing practices use most – if not all – of the strategies we share in this article. Different prospects can be found in various corners of the internet, and it’s important to cast a wide marketing net to ensure you aren’t missing out on a potential goldmine. Being creative is also an important element for effective lead generation since the modern consumer can quickly become familiar and uninterested in frequently used methods of lead generation.

What is a Lead Nurture Campaign?

Lead nurturing is the process of cultivating buying behavior by building solid, lasting relationships with your leads. A lead nurturing campaign is an automated marketing campaign that targets current leads and brings them through the buying process on a personalized journey. This campaign should cover every step of the sales funnel from the top to the bottom. The framework that an effective lead nurture campaign is composed of involves education, informing of pain points, engaging, and converting. Each step should feature levels of customization and personalization that will resonate with your leads.

9 Effective Lead Generation Strategies

1. Know Your Target Audience – When it comes to your audience, it should always be quality over quantity. Marketing to a specific and focused targeted audience that you know will be interested in your products or services is always superior to a wider, less specific audience. Currently, audience targeting is considered a top way to drive demand by advertisers.
2. Write Powerful Blogs – There are two elements of blogging that are considerably overlooked in today’s online marketing landscape – blog value and quality. Blogging is still extremely valuable in bringing interested traffic and leads to your online platforms, and the most informative, well-written blogs consistently rank on search engines.
3. Run a Contest – Everyone loves free stuff! Hold a contest with no purchase necessary, but requires filling out a form or sharing on social media to enter. Contests show goodwill with your audience, provide you with a wide array of quality leads, and when done right, can strengthen your digital presence. Contests also provide a conversion rate of over 30%, higher than any other content.
4. Implement a Social Media Plan – With 3.43 billion users expected to using social media by 2023, knowing exactly how you’re going to present your brand on social media is crucial for generating leads. Create a plan with scheduled social media posts that takes potential leads through a journey of discovery and education about your products or services. It’s also important to be flexible and post on a wide array of different social media platforms to ensure no opportunities are being missed.
5. Use Live Chat – Consumers place a huge value on convenience and efficiency, and a live chat is an excellent way to provide that. If someone has a question about your company that cannot be immediately answered, potential leads may just leave your platform and move on to the next solution. Live chat is a valuable way to ensure that no lead opportunities are missed. Additionally, chat features will soon become an expectation among consumers, as 85% of companies are expected to adopt live chat by the end of 2022.
6. Build Strong Landing Pages – Sometimes the navigation features of a website are not necessary and can even get in the way of the content you’re trying to bring attention to. A landing page is a standalone web page built specifically to generate leads and is an extremely effective way to market a product or service, as they average a conversion rate of around 10%.
7. Harness Influencer Marketing – One of the fastest growing and most effective methods of generating leads is through influencer marker. The increase in influencer popularity isn’t for nothing, as 89% of companies claim ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or superior than other marketing channels.
8. Create a Newsletter – A great way to keep your audience informed about your company and its industry is through a newsletter. Educate your readers, share stories, and make announcements to keep your audience interested and produce quality leads. This method is not going anywhere, as email marketing revenue is expected to increase $17.9 billion by 2027.
9. Use a Lead Generation Tool – Marketing platforms like HubSpot provide a holistic, modern, and extremely powerful lead generation suite of tools. HubSpot can manage several of the mechanics we discussed, such as landing pages, live chat, and social media. Grouping all your tools in one place is a valuable way to easily manage your marketing efforts for effective lead generation.