What are the best lead generation strategies in B2C marketing?
Often those who own a B2C business, despite doing their best, find that B2C lead generation strategies implemented in marketing campaigns don’t work and don’t generate a large amount of leads as a result.
Consider that:
- 67% of companies use lead generation as their only metric to determine content success (Source: SEMrush).
What are leads? Leads are users who show interest in a proposal of a certain brand or product. This interest is manifested by providing some contact information, such as a phone number, email or a share on social networks.
Lead generation for B2C is not an easy task, and this is why we will dedicate this post to the best lead generation strategies for B2C.
But before we get to that point, let’s take a step back. First, we’ll define what B2C marketing is, the challenges it faces, and lead generation strategies for B2C.
What is B2C marketing?
The acronym B2C literally refers to “business to consumer.” And what does it mean? It’s nothing more than the way to define all businesses that deal with direct sales between a company and an individual, known as a consumer.
It is mostly retail and can include anything from products such as clothing, perfume, or cosmetics, to services, subscriptions, or contracts. In short, any commerce that is aimed directly at a consumer.
Now more than ever, when people talk about B2C marketing, they immediately think about online sales, about e-commerce. Why? The reason is simpler than you think: technological advances and the recent pandemic have done nothing but increase online sales. As a result, companies who want to remain competitive in the market must necessarily create and take care of sales that are also online.
But in general, anyone involved in sales needs an online presence. Although this alone is not enough. You need to be aware that you need to keep up with consumers, as the goal is to always attract new leads.
B2C Lead generation challenges and strategies
Attracting new leads is a company’s goal, sure. But the modern consumer is increasingly demanding. Today, lead generation must be personalized, innovative, and focused on delivering value to the target audience.
The goal must be to cultivate a relationship, a one-to-one dialog with the consumer, in order to convince them that the product or service you want to sell is exactly what they’re looking for. It doesn’t help that, unlike B2B lead generation, B2C lead generation is characterized by shorter sales cycles, therefore much more tied to emotions, to the impressions of the moment, to instinct. There’s no time for bargaining.
But now let’s move on to what interests us most. If it’s not an easy and obvious path, what are the best lead generation strategies in B2C marketing?
Content Marketing
Creating engaging, high-quality content is one of the best strategies for generating leads. Here are some figures:
- 82% of marketers invest in content marketing;
- By 2025, the global content marketing industry is estimated to grow to $417.85 billion;
- Content marketing generates three times more leads, compared to other types of marketing;
- On average, content marketing costs 62% less than other types of marketing (Source: Hubspot).
The data speaks for itself. Having quality content created specifically for your target audience is a lead generation strategy for B2C.
The goal of this content is to engage, to provide consumers with such value so that they are driven to move to the landing pages of your website, to trust your company, and to provide their contact information accordingly.
In addition, using personalization, sending the right content to the right person, and showing your audience that you are aware of their needs and interests will only pay off for your efforts.
Be careful, however, not to focus on something that is overly promotional and sales-focused. This kind of content can be pedantic and intrusive and could have the opposite effect. The goal is to show potential leads that your business is a real resource for them. The wrong content will only discourage users at the very first stage of interaction with the brand.
So what is the right content, you ask? The blog is key, but don’t forget that there’s more to it. Premium content such as guides, brochures, or non-written content such as videos, podcasts, or “trivial” social media posts are just some of the ideas. Remember that this content is never an end in itself. Here are some tips:
- Blog posts should be shared on social media and newsletters, enticing users to “re-share” them.
- Downloadable content allows you to ask for contact information and thus generate new leads.
- Internal links to downloadable sources or coupons will have a positive impact.
In short, useful content creates value and trust and is much more likely to build long-term relationships with consumers.
SEO
Closely related to the previous point is the use of SEO. Make sure to optimize all of your content for SEO so that it gets more visibility on search engines.
Study keywords to understand what your customers and target audience are looking for and build your content from there. Don’t forget to include these keywords in the titles and body of the texts, on the website, depending on the content of course (and this also applies to videos).
The goal is to attract targeted, chosen visitors and engage them, to make them, in a sense, part of your business. SEO increases the visibility of your site, which in turn generates more leads and customers.
Email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to promote this content. Some people think the concept of email is outdated, but the data says otherwise:
- 99% of email users check their email every day;
- 58% of individuals read their email before checking social media;
- 60% of customers have purchased a product after receiving a retargeting email from the company (Source: websiterating.com).
The data speaks for itself. Email is not dead, on the contrary! It still represents a great reference point in people’s everyday lives. Email marketing is an excellent lead generation strategy for B2C because it establishes a direct connection with potential leads and is able to monitor consumer behavior by evaluating various indices of open rate, CTR, and conversion. In fact, 53% of marketers say email is the most effective channel for the initial stages of lead generation (Source: Demand Gen Report).
Other advantages include:
- Efficiency: with email marketing, you can reach a large number of recipients with little effort.
- It’s targeted: email marketing campaigns can be highly targeted, through personalization and segmentation. It’s no accident that personalized emails have overall higher open rates.
- Volume: the number of email users is increasing.
From this whole series of factors comes the concept of personalization. Including the recipient’s name or any other relevant personal information in the body of the text, at least once, makes the user feel important. It is also essential to update the consumer on discounts, promotions, prizes, and contests. Moreover, thanks to the analysis, you can also discover the interests and tastes of consumers and to understand which content, in their opinion, is the most interesting, up to the right time to send the email.
Social media marketing
Email marketing goes hand in hand with another type of marketing: social media marketing.
Direct access to your business’ social media should be included in your email. It’s important to create a consistent and tightly interconnected strategy.
“Being on social” is one of the most popular online activities among users, and statistics on social media usage in 2021 show that there are 4.6 billion users worldwide, and the number continues to grow (Source: Oberlo).
Again, the statistics speak for themselves. With social media, your audience expands tremendously, and if used in the best way possible, doing lead generation is a breeze.
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, are means for building relationships, shares, and directing traffic to your site, to specific landing pages, to blogs, and to products. It’s the perfect medium for building trust and establishing successful, long-lasting relationships for B2C marketing.
Create shareable content and on the right channels, it’s not like you can handle them all. Choose the right one(s) based on your B2C business, but more importantly based on your target audience. Publish at the right time, keep track of your most popular posts and the amount of traffic coming from them by using analytics tools.
Website and landing page
We’ve talked about content, email marketing, social media…but what do all these tools lead back to? Obviously to the heart of your business, the website.
The website should be your ultimate lead generator. Everything you publish should redirect people to your site. What’s the best strategy for generating leads through your website? Here are some tips:
- Rank well in SEO results and maintain position;
- Provide a blog rich in relevant, engaging, and interesting content and enrich it with videos and images;
- Create engaging CTAs, thus giving the visitor a good reason to click;
- Optimize your landing pages.
We’ll pause for a moment on the topic of the landing page. What is a landing page? It’s a single web page with the purpose of promoting a specific action, whether it’s the purchase of a product, the download of a piece of content or a voucher, the subscription to the newsletter or an event. It is defined as a “landing page,” which is reached through a web marketing campaign made through social media or Google.
But let’s get down to practicalities: how can you optimize a landing page in the best possible way?
- Each landing page must have a specific goal. A generic page could create confusion and induce the visitor to abandon it.
- Completion forms should be clear and easy to fill out with as few fields as possible, but enough to acquire your lead.
- Opt for simplicity. A minimal design with only what’s required, like your logo and branding. The important thing is to deliver what you promised.
- Include your privacy policy and specify how the data will be handled.
In short, it is clear that every detail must be given the right care. The website is your passport and if visitors find it attractive, easy to navigate, and mobile responsive they will tend to stay there and create a new lead, otherwise they will abandon it without reservation.
Advertising
Finally, in terms of the B2C lead generation strategy, let’s talk about the use of advertising, i.e. paid advertisements.
Multichannel advertising is when a business posts paid ads that appear on multiple channels and on various devices. For a B2C business, social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook are great for reaching audiences with targeted goals based on user interests.
Personalized ads use AI (artificial intelligence) to collect data from various channels, allowing profiles to be created for more precise targeting. By targeting a potential lead through an attractive ad, the brand can get more details about the user through a simple form, sign-up notification, or pop-up email box, before the person continues their journey to the site.
In addition, Google ads provide very high visibility on the search engine.
These are our best lead generation strategies for B2C. In short, the information we’ve provided sounds like a lot and might be intimidating. But in reality, a well-structured strategy and good teamwork will make the process smooth and effective.
What you must never forget in a B2C marketing is the absolute attention that must be given not only to customers but especially to those who have not yet become customers. Only in this way will your lead generation strategy be effective!
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