Lead generation [beginner's guide]

You've probably heard the cliché, "Build it, and they will come." But you shouldn't assume that to be true when running a business. You can't just sit back and think that customers will find you. With an effective lead generation process, you can build awareness, attract potential customers, draw traffic to your website, and show people why they should buy from you.

Unless you have strong marketing know-how, lead generation can seem challenging to understand and implement at first. Fortunately, you can follow proven best practices to grow your customer base and increase sales.

In truth, learning the fundamentals of an effective lead generation process is one of the most critical things you can do as a business professional. A healthy pipeline and continuous influx of leads are a necessity for every company. You can't leave lead generation to chance.

Lead Generation: a beginner's guide

1. What is a lead?

A lead is any prospective customer who takes an interest in or inquires about your company's products or services. Some companies may consider leads to be prospects identified as having a higher likelihood of converting, while others treat any sales contact as a lead. You should decide on an accepted definition of the term "lead" for your company. That way, you'll avoid confusion among stakeholders and be able to measure your success in acquiring new potential customers. There are different types of leads based on their statuses:

1. Marketing qualified lead (MQL): This type of lead has come in through your inbound marketing activities, such as paid or organic search, content marketing, or social advertising. They have expressed interest in your business by signing up for an email list, completing a survey, or taking another action. However, these contacts have not yet interacted with your sales team. 

2. Sales qualified lead (SQL): This category includes leads that have been vetted by a sales professional. Often, SQLs include prospects that meet specific minimum criteria that make them more likely to become clients of your business. You may also hear this type of prospect referred to as a "sales accepted lead."

3. Product qualified lead (PQL): This type of lead includes prospects who might have tried a product's free version (i.e such a software) and now are expressing their desire to turn into paying customers.

4. Service qualified lead (SQL): Here we find leads that have expressed interest in a service, they are now ready to talk to the sales team and turn into paying customers.

2. What is lead generation?

Lead generation is the process you use to draw people to your business, generate their interest in your company's products or services, and get them on the path to making a purchase.

You can use a variety of different online and offline strategies to generate new leads such as social media marketing, blog posts, cold calling, or live events.

Lead generation is a multi-stage process and covers more than just making people aware of your company. You can think of it as having three fundamental phases:

1. Generate traffic: Initially, you're trying to help people know that your business exists and draw them to your website to learn about what you do. The more traffic you generate to your site, the more opportunities you have to convert those visitors into leads. Often, businesses use tactics such as search engine optimization (SEO), social advertising, directory listings, or guest blogging to increase site traffic. 

2. Convert visitors into leads: Once you've drawn people to your site, you want to get some information from them — such as their email addresses. That way, you can start sharing your message with them proactively. At that point, a visitor officially becomes a lead.

3. Convert leads into customers: Now, you can focus on motivating your leads to buy. Perhaps you'll use content marketing to educate them on why they should choose to do business with you. Or you may offer discounts and promotions via email to spark a sale. These are a few of the many lead nurturing tactics you can use to gain new customers.

Why is lead generation important to business?

If you don't acquire new prospects regularly, you may find it difficult to expand your business. Here are a few benefits that lead generation offers your company:

• Makes people aware of your business

• Builds a healthy new business pipeline

• Increases sales and profit ratios

• Targets desirable and likely-to-buy customers

• Collects information and insights on prospects

• Helps potential customers research before they buy

• Empowers you to identify prospects that aren't a good fit for your business

• Lets you focus your marketing budget on high-yield acquisition tactics

3. Lead generation process

Here are the 8 steps to a more effective lead generation:

1. Identify your leads' pain points. To generate the best quality leads for your business, you want to understand everything you can about the people who choose to buy from you. You need to know your audience's pain points — what concerns them, what needs they are trying to fulfill, and what motivates them to make a purchase. Start by looking at your website analytics. You'll gain access to demographic information, along with the sources and search terms that draw people to your site. Also, you can derive insights from current or past customers. Review any survey data, examine their comments on social media, or reach out to customers to gain their perspectives. Or ask your customer service or sales teams about feedback trends they've observed. If you're just starting out, you may not have much web or customer data on hand. In those instances, look at the types of customers your competitors generate to understand buying motivations.

2. Align with sales and customer service. Effective lead generation requires a strong relationship between your sales, marketing, and customer service teams who should work together to deliver mutually agreed-upon service level agreements (SLAs) — a commitment between parties to achieve a common goal. Here are a few areas where you're sales, marketing, and service teams will need to be in alignment: definitions of key terms, standardized sales processes and performance measures and reporting

3. Align content to your lead's sales stage. One important thing to remember about lead generation is that you need to find ways to stay on your prospects' radar if you want them to become customers. Regularly creating, publishing, and disseminating content is an excellent way to keep in touch with your prospects. To create compelling content, consider your customers' point of view. What types of information do they need at different points of the buying cycle to help them progress to the next step? As discussed previously, you can create content tailored to each stage of the marketing funnel to guide prospects towards a purchase. During earlier stages, focus on education and provide material tied to your offerings when people are close to conversion. 

4. Build your email list by offering a free ebook. A steady stream of content will keep moving leads down the funnel. If you're not sure where to start, offering a few ebooks for download in exchange for email contact information is an excellent way to build a prospect list. An ebook is a digital content intended to be read on computers, tablets, and mobile devices. Keep in mind that ebooks don't need to be long, even a 2,000- to 3,000-word ebook on an attention-grabbing topic can bring in leads. 

5. Nurture existing and new leads. After you've gained basic details about your prospects, nurture them down the funnel. Make ongoing outreach to keep contacts engaged and share more details about your offerings. Email marketing is an excellent option for lead nurturing. You can send out regular emails such as newsletters and targeted promotions to stay top-of-mind with your prospects. Invite them to fill out preference forms or complete surveys to tell you more about their interests and needs and support your qualification process. 

6. Score each lead. Once you have some insight into your prospects, use lead scoring models to evaluate their readiness to buy. Set a threshold that identifies when a prospect is likely to become a customer and use more proactive and personalized follow-up approaches. Leads with lower scores should stay on your list for continued nurturing, with the goal of increasing their lead score and guiding them further down the funnel.

7. Pass along leads to your sales team to close the sale. When you identify leads with a higher lead score, hand them off to your sales team who can use approaches, such as demos, free trials, in-person meetings, or discounts to the deal. This is a critical step — and you must ensure that you don't hand leads off too early. Also, make sure your sales team has all the content and resources they need to be successful. 

8. Evaluate the lead generation process. It's always wise to evaluate your lead generation process regularly. As your audiences or offerings shift, you may need to fine-tune your approaches to attract, nurture, score, and close leads. You'll also need to determine if you need new messaging or content types to drive more sales. Think of lead generation as a continuous learning process and make adjustments over time.

4. Lead generation marketing

If you run a small business, you may not have a considerable budget to direct to lead generation marketing. The good news is you can select cost-effective lead generation marketing strategies that deliver strong returns. You can even explore zero-cost strategies to build a healthy pipeline for your business.

1. Apply SEO basics: There are a few simple things you can do to boost your presence online. First, claim and optimize your listings on Google My Business, Yelp, and other directories. Make your web pages SEO-friendly with elements like title tags, meta descriptions, and headline tags.

2. Start a blog: Create a content calendar and begin publishing regular blog posts. Use this material to enhance your site SEO and share it through email or social channels. 

3. Build a social presence: Choose the social channels that make the best sense for your business and focus on building traction there before branching out to other networks. 

4. Explore digital advertising: Digital advertising can be a highly effective and cost-effective way to get your company in front of thousands of people.

5. Cultivate referrals: Partner with businesses whose services and products are complementary to yours. For example, a wedding photographer can team up with venues, caterers, bakers, and florists to refer potential customers to one another.

6. Host events: With events, you can showcase your expertise and products or give would-be customers a sneak peek into your business. Hold in-person or digital events yourself or seek ways to be a presenter or exhibitor at events hosted by others.

7. Use email marketing: Email marketing is another lead generation tactic that can be extremely affordable and have a high impact. Choose solutions fine-tuned to the needs of small businesses and create eye-catching emails to stay connected to your audiences.

Think about the complete buying cycle and use approaches that meet the needs of prospects at each stage. Earlier in the journey, you may focus on awareness and education, with informative assets like blog posts, ebooks, and events. As prospects move down the funnel, help guide their decision-making with product-focused content and proof points, such as case studies or testimonials.

What can you do to push prospects across the finish line and help them become customers? Personalized advice and discounts can work wonders for ready-to-buy customers who need a little extra nudge to make a purchase decision. 

There's no one-size-fits-all answer on which types of lead gen approaches you should try. Here are seven of the top lead generation marketing trends for 2022:

1. Influencer marketing: Many brands are turning to social media influencers to reach audiences in their niche. The best influencers have earned the trust of loyal followers, ranging from one thousand to millions of people. When influencers highlight your products and services, they can make a positive impression on followers and spark sales.

2. Video marketing: People enjoy watching videos online, including quick clips on social media and longer YouTube content. You can tap into trends by creating videos for your social pages, emails, or channels.

3. Email marketing: Email remains one of the most popular and cost-effective channels for marketing outreach. With email newsletters and promotions, you can educate your audiences and keep your brand top-of-mind.

4. Interactive content: Any type of content that asks people to take action can generate a lot of attention. Often, interactive content can offer fun and entertainment that will help people cultivate positive feelings about your business. Create tools such as surveys, calculators, quizzes, and interactive infographics, emails, and videos to inspire people to engage with you. 

5. Voice search: People often turn to voice assistants like Siri and Alexa to quickly find information online. Smart brands are taking note of this trend and making their content easy to find through voice search.

6. Content marketing: As discussed previously, creating content is an excellent way to build awareness, capture lead data, and guide prospects down the sales funnel. Every company can use a mix of content tools,  such as blog posts, ebooks, podcasts, and webinars, and use SEO practices to help audiences find content online.

7. Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI solutions can help streamline critical tasks and make your lead generation more efficient. For example, you can use AI tools to help define targets, search for prospects, and create straightforward content like social posts to keep you in touch with your audiences. 

You may use some or all of these marketing strategies as part of your lead generation program. If you need help prioritizing which to pursue, a marketing or lead generation strategy consultant can be your go-to source for insight. 

The bottom line

No matter what type of business you run, you must consistently develop strategies to bring in new business. You need to know the fundamentals of lead generation to build a healthy pipeline full of potential new customers. If you don't focus on lead acquisition, your revenues could stagnate, and that can impede your innovation and forward momentum.

Most likely, you'll find that digital marketing is going to play a substantial role in your lead generation efforts. Today's digital approaches are simple to administer, highly measurable, and can be extremely budget-friendly. 

Lead generation can be time and labor-intensive, but it's an essential function that you can't ignore. While you can take on lead gen yourself, you can also gain benefits from outsourcing this critical task to a consultant. Without question, professionalizing your approach to lead generation can help your business grow and prosper in the years to come.