Lead generation is an essential process of grabbing the attention of potential customers to increase the future sales of the company. The process of lead generation is a crucial part of the marketing strategies of many organisations that result in increased sales. A proper CMO training programme can help one understand all about lead generation and how it works within an organisation.
Understanding lead generation and how to effectively incorporate this concept in a business can help stakeholders to generate more profit and build a pool of customers. The concept of lead generation also helps the product and services to seamlessly move through the sales funnel. Read through this guide to understand the fundamentals of lead generation, how it works and the various strategies associated with it.
What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is the process of building interest in potential customers to buy the products in service of an organisation that in turn increases sales. The main objective behind this process is to generate as many sales as possible and build a large pool of customers. It is one of the best marketing strategy designs and has shown the best results in the online marketplace where it gathers user information through a web form, called 'lead'.
Lead generation is also a very crucial part of the sales funnel for a lot of B2B companies as the services offered by such companies can be very expensive and consumers may not show much interest in buying them directly online. Hence, companies tend to collect new leads that help organisations to inform and nurture potential consumers via various social media handles and email marketing. Leads allow businesses to know the interest of the consumers and make a sales pitch online rather than incorporating salespersons to do so.
Email marketing has proven to be a very effective form of marketing in recent years which makes lead generation a crucial aspect for E-Commerce businesses as well. It helps to gather the contact information of prospective buyers to contact them for marketing purposes and making sales pitches later is there to not show any interest in making immediate purchases.
How are Leads Generated?
The process of lead generation has two major pillars, one is attracting customers to the company's website and the other is convincing them to provide their contact details to the lead professionals. There are multiple ways in which companies can bring potential customers to visit the website painting up on the organisational objectives and financial limitations.
The following are some effective strategies that are increasingly used by businesses to attract a customer base:
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM): SEM is a paid form of online marketing where companies pay search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. to display ads whenever consumers browse on the search engines. Potential consumers navigate through the web almost every day which makes it a great option for attracting traffic.
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): SEO is very similar to the SEM method but the only difference is that it is an unpaid form of lead generation. It involves designing the website content in such a way that is compatible with the search engine algorithms which increases the chances of appearing as an organic result.
- Social media: Various social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn have grown exponentially over the years and have become a great source of traffic for a lot of businesses. Companies can make attractive content and post regularly on social media to attract customers or even pay various social media platforms to run their ads.
- Display ads: This is a common form of advertisement that involves text, audio, video or other multimedia format. Companies can purchase these advertising models to direct traffic to the company website. This type of advertising is generally carried out using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) models.
- Offline events: The advent of online marketing can be offline. Increasing the customer base is completely about creating an effective network. which can be done through offline conferences and meetups. members of the sales department can inform potential customers about their products and abstract them to the company website.
Once potential consumers begin to arrive on the website, the next step is to incorporate web forms to convert them into leads. Attracting the interest of people towards the products and services and persuading them to provide their contact details can be obtained through various means. The common lead generation strategies are known as lead magnets and the major ones are enumerated as follows:
- Content: Lead generation becomes a success when the company generates high-quality content in exchange for the contact information of potential consumers. the content can be in any form such as audio video image ebook email letter etc. The main objective is to provide access to informative content to potential customers in exchange for their information.
- Webinar: Webinars are live interesting conversation sessions in which visitors to the company websites can watch and participate in it. These sessions are generally focused on a specific topic and talk about something informative in nature. Webinars are great options for converting potential customers into leads and educating them about the company's products and services.
- Landing page: landing pages are one of the best tools for lead generation. Companies are required to present their content in a way that benefits their visitors and they intend to provide contact details to the lead forms. Landing pages, also known as sales pages, present the products of the company in a very attractive manner.
After the creation of a lead, the digital marketing team of the organisation contacts the potential buyers through their email IDs or phone numbers and makes different sales pitches to convince them to purchase the company's products.
Conclusion
In today's world marketing has various facets. If you want to become a marketing professional and learn the concept of lead generation for online marketing then the IIT digital marketing course can be the best pick for you. Consider signing up for the Executive Certificate Programme For Strategic Chief Marketing Officers by Imarticus and get all the insights about the fundamentals of marketing, including lead generation.
Lead generation is an important tool for online marketing and building a loyal customer base for the company. Master this technique with an effective CMO training programme and become a successful marketing professional.
