What is Lead Generation?

Companies used to use traditional marketing strategies like email blasts to get customers. However, it is more difficult for businesses to track, reach, and engage with potential customers due to the increase in competition and information abundance.

Companies use lead generation to warm target customers until they are ready to buy. The purpose of lead generation is to develop a sales pipeline. How? It stimulates and captures interest in a product or service. Businesses in B2C and B2B spaces can use lead generation since it works for any type or size of business.

According to 60% of marketers, the main pain point for their company is lead generation. It is more complex to determine a good lead because some of the people, who download your white paper, are not good leads. So, do not just target them. There are ways for narrowing down the pool, so do not let your sales reps waste their time calling unqualified leads.

You can increase brand awareness, generate qualified leads, build relationships, and finally closes deals by implementing a lead generation program. You can increase your sales by directing higher quality leads to your sales team. You will help your company grow when you do this. You will also grow the credibility of your marketing department. How? You will show tangible results and prove you are a valuable member of the revenue team.

Related: https://sites.google.com/view/clientattractionuniversity/home

Businesses have been using lead generation for several years, but the strategies have changed. You no longer have to find customers early on in their sales journey and send them to your sales team. It is important to come up with new, creative ways for reaching potential customers because the self-directed buyers are overwhelmed with information. Marketers should not use email blasts and mass advertising to find customers, but they should focus on being found and build relationships with potential buyers instead. Marketing is going through a massive shift in the information age.

Tim Barker, Chief Product Officer, DataSift says “Customers are now influential socially and they are smarter, more influenced, more informed, more connected, and unlikely to respond to campaign-bait. Marketing should create content people actually want.”

Lead generation can solve the following common problems

It is no possible to appeal to the self-directed buyer using batch and blast advertising. You can navigate the new complexity surrounding lead generation with a solid lead generation program. Here are some of the problems you can solve with lead generation:

Problem: You want to get a high volume of leads. A lead generation program increases brand awareness, higher quality leads, new relationships, and increases sales if you are just starting out. You need to reevaluate your tactics, channels, audience profiles, and buyer journey if you want to optimize an existing program. Keep your customer concerns, challenges, and goals in mind. Qualified leads will fill your funnel if you deliver content solving the pain points of your customers and you nurture those relationships.

Related Article: Client Attraction University

Problem: My sales team says I do not deliver high-quality leads. Your sales team may struggle to convert leads into customers for several reasons. Firstly, your sales and marketing team should agree on what constitutes a qualified lead and when to hand off that lead. They should keep in mind that 96% of people, who visit a website, are not yet ready to buy. The sales team can put them off if they contact them too soon because buyers hate being sold to. The quality of the lead is important. Therefore, it takes time for marketers to bring in qualified leads, making it a major challenge for marketers.

Problem: I don’t have a strategy on what to do next after I bring in leads. One part of lead generation is generating leads. What do you do after you bring in leads? You qualify your leads using lead scoring and nurturing. You do this before your sales team does its job. Buyers do their own research and they contact the vendor once they are around 75 to 90% in their buying journey. This is according to Forrester. Keep this in mind when you want to determine when you should step in the funnel sales.

Problem: I should show my marketing team’s return on investment (ROI). You should create a strategy and determine what to measure, how to measure, and when to measure if you want to demonstrate the impact of your marketing team. Pick the metrics that show how your marketing amplifies sales pipeline, generates qualified leads, increases effectiveness across the board, and leverages lead generation software to improve sales and marketing alignment.

Problem: My lead generation program no longer works. Reevaluate your lead generation strategy if it does not catches up to the age of the self-directed buyer. Your leads can find you if you use modern lead generation software. Modern lead generation software increases brand visibility and uses informational content to capture interest. Buyers use informational content when doing their research before they are ready to buy.

Components of Lead Generation

Once you generate your leads, the lead generation programs do not end. There are other important components of the lead generation strategy.

A lead generation database: Before you begin nurturing, you should track, attribute your leads to the appropriate source, score, and segment them as they come in. You can do some of this manually, but you can scale your efforts using an automated system.

Supporting content and lead-ready channels: The foundation of lead generation efforts is content. Content is the fuel of all marketing campaigns, including social, email, and event collateral. You should see how your sales tactics, paid programs, email marketing, social media, landing pages, and website fit into your lead generation execution plan.

An analytics engine: You can now accurately track returns on your lead generation programs because you now know how much you invest. You will not get a full picture if you just look at the first and last touch to determine how your overall strategy works. You will convert a cold lead to a sale after seven touches. This is common wisdom.

Amartechstack: You can save money, measure and optimize your programs, do more with less, and grow your lead generation programs and company faster with the right lead generation technologies.