
Lead Generation Is The Fuel To Grow Your Website
Your business has many goals, the greatest of which is earning and increasing profits. Increasing profits requires your business to grow customers, sales, or preferably, both continually.
To a small degree, your business growth will fuel itself. As more customers patronize and appreciate your brand, there’s a good chance they’ll drive new business for you. But that is a slow process and risky. Of course, you can’t rely on this, which is why lead generation is so important.
The real difficulty in developing an effective lead generation strategy is narrowing down the options. There are so many ways to attempt to generate leads that you can waste a lot of time and money on the wrong tactics, or go about the process in the wrong way.
Don’t you wish someone had already done the heavy lifting of experimentation before you so you could skip right to the good parts? Since you’re not the first business keen to generate leads, you have a wealth of information and resources at your disposal. Here are seven proven lead generation tips to help you get started with your strategy.
Know your audience
You can do everything right, from using trending keywords to providing relevant and concise information to customers. But if you don’t have a clear idea of audience expectation, you may not achieve the expected lead generation results.
In addition to setting your own goals for lead generation, you have to consider what the goals of your audience members are so that you can meet them through your lead generation strategy. It’s not enough to assume that they’re seeking your products/services.
Are they seeking a local business? Do they want pricing information up front? Are they looking for added value in the way of freebies or in-depth information such as tutorials? How does providing for audience expectations factor into your lead generation strategy? Testing can tracking can help you to understand what motivates your audience to convert.
Tailor your content
There are several things you need to consider when it comes to creating content geared toward specific conversions. For example, creating sales copy is different than creating content designed to accomplish other conversions, such as generating leads.
When you create landing pages, you naturally have to consider your branding and overall company goals. You must also think about how to provide the value consumers expect. If your goal is to generate leads, such as by encouraging visitors to offer contact information or join a membership program of some sort, you also need to think about how your content accomplishes the goal.
Teasers and gates
The prevailing opinion of late is that business must provide something of value before asking for something in return, such as contact information. However, you don’t have to give away the farm.
You can use a teaser with a small amount of information to hook your audience and then require membership sign-up to access remaining information, for example. Gating content is a great way to show visitors the value they stand to gain by providing contact information.
Provide clear CTAs
There is simply no reason to be convoluted when it comes to your calls to action. The clearer you are about what you expect visitors to do and what they’ll get in the bargain, the better chance you have to close the deal.
Pursue social followers
Social media is but a single tool in your lead generation strategy, but it is an important one. Users rely on social media for communication, socialization, and increasingly, consumer opportunities.
Building a following on social media allows you access to networks of potential consumers that may not otherwise find you, and you gain the added value of trusted referrals through your followers.
Don’t forget old-school options
It’s tempting to put all your eggs in one basket, but you need to resist the urge to focus only on ads or social media, for example. A diverse approach to lead generation will give you the greatest opportunity to test, track, and develop a targeted strategy for success.
Don’t forget about tactics that have gone out of fashion, such as direct mailing. You may have to be persistent to make such methods pay off, but if you are effective at generating leads, the efforts will be worthwhile.
Follow up
Tracking and analyzing data is not fun, and it’s not sexy, but it is necessary if you want to hone your lead generation strategy. Keep in mind; you can gain insights not only from failure but also from success, so don’t just scramble to analyze metrics when you’re falling short of goals. It’s valuable to know why some strategies work and others don’t.
Whether you are in e-commerce, SaaS, Consulting or B2B, lead generation skills are critical to success. Getting high-quality traffic to your site is essential to growth.
