Although your website might look marvelous, business owners could be missing out on many opportunities if it’s not properly set up for online lead generation.
As the name would suggest, lead generation is all about finding innovative ways to generate new leads. A lead is the contact information and in some cases, demographic information of a customer who is interested in a specific product or service – all of which have the potential to ideally transform into raving fans of the particular brand or business in question.
While taking steps to address customer retention in any industry or sector is crucial, so too is the fine art of attracting potential new ones. Many moons ago, this process would have involved advertising mediums such as radio, print, television and even cold calling. Today, online lead generation is the new normal – but where do you start, and what does the process involve?
Five Simple Lead Generation Tools To Try Online
The cold hard truth is that most leads that end up on your website never come back. As a business, this means that you have very limited time to get their contact information, and to try to engage them in the future. An email address is the most common thing to ask for, but you have to offer some value first before they would agree to share their information with you.
Commonly described as the missing link between marketing and sales, the purpose of lead generation is to spark the interest of someone – so much so, that they’re willing to hand over information about themselves to your brand or business.
However, if online lead generation was that easy, then more people would be doing it. The process involves clear steps to an outcome, so a well researched and carefully designed digital methodology is a must. If you’re new to this arena, the good news is that kick starting your online lead generation journey might just be easier than you think.
Use Lead Magnets – A lead magnet is a promise of value to your potential customers in exchange for a piece of their personal information, such as their email address. In simple terms, the idea is to give a potential customer something for free that they will use. While popular lead magnets include case studies, free trials, webinars and ebooks – all valuable pieces of free information – don’t go too crazy with their quantity, but instead focus on quality.
Landing Pages – Every day, millions of businesses use pay per click marketing strategies such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads. However, if you’re buying online traffic, what do you intend to do with the new visitors once you have them? To boost SEO and reward them for their click, make sure you have at least one separate landing page for each target audience you’re trying to serve, and be sure to include a lead magnet.
Email Marketing – While we all know how annoying pop up windows on websites can be, they do have their advantages. A common lead generation tool used by many e-commerce websites is to offer a discount to first time email subscribers, who are then added to an email marketing database in the hopes that they make a purchase from you in the future. Make sure you have all of the terms and conditions clearly outlined though, as well as the unsubscribe button.
Rethink Contact Forms – While almost every online brand or business has a ‘contact us’ page or even built in enquiry forms, using these strategically for online lead generation is a little known strategy that truly works. Instead of publishing your prices, try and get a customer to download them and use it for lead generation. This way, you’ll have their contact details for a follow up if you don’t hear from them.
Content Marketing – Getting seen online is one of the hardest parts of taking your business digital, but content marketing for SEO is a unique advertising strategy with a plethora of benefits. With a focus on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online through blogs, videos and even social media posts, content marketing is simply the lead generation gift that keeps on giving.
Even for the most seasoned of business owners, keeping up with these types of digital technology is not the most efficient way to use their time, energy and resources. Instead, many opt to outsource this digital responsibility to a reputable content marketing agency, or a group of industry professionals that specialise in this space, and create content that is both engaging, and ‘Google friendly’.
If you lack the time, energy or experience to successfully harness content marketing for online lead generation, the good news is that it’s never been more affordable to offload this task to the experts – but where do you find them?
The Key To Good Branding Is Great Content
Here at Content Hive, producing top quality digital content is exactly what we do best. We have itemised a list of digital content services, and allocated credits next to each of these. This means that each month, you can use your credits with us to produce digital content such as blog articles, social media posts, videos and even animated Instagram stories. By using this model, we believe that it enables us to produce high quality content with faster delivery times.
If you aren’t quite sure where to start on your digital marketing journey and would like to speak to a professional, why not book in a free discovery call with us at Content Hive today to discuss how we can get your brand buzzing online.
