While there are many paths to tackle lead generation, knowing how to generate leads online is vital in today’s business landscape. This can be especially true for sales managers, as they’re always looking for ways to optimize lead generation strategy for business growth.
Don’t dive into refining your tactics without learning how to generate leads online like a pro:
Your approach shouldn’t feel so manual, but it’s understanding that lead generation can feel somewhat tasking. Get a look at best practices, tips, and tricks for the current scope of effective online lead generation.
You’re likely well aware of the multi-level nature of lead generation. Capturing viable leads is one part of the puzzle while converting is an entirely different area. This can be made a lot simpler by only generating leads that are most relevant to your organization.
Between social media, email marketing, and even SEO efforts, online lead generation, thankfully, comes with multiple avenues you can use to your advantage. Some of the most common lead-generation strategies to drive prospects include automated marketing and thorough content personalization efforts. This same approach matters whether you’re trying to collect individual or company emails for leads.
Always remember that your cold approach shouldn’t just have sales in mind, as community engagement can take you so much farther. Online lead generation comes with a lot of platform support, giving companies more than enough options to find their customer base. To see any kind of actionable results, sales managers need to grasp the differences in varying types of internet leads.
Your outreach strategy should be catered to the type of lead you’re looking for. This can range from a global audience all the way down to personal connections like friends and family. Of course, this starts with an understanding of these types and what makes them fall into separate categories.
This is important for the efficacy of your strategy but also to ensure you aren’t wasting time and resources in the process. Taking this information can help you and your business craft more effective outreach campaigns, leading to better end results.
The phrase “cold outreach” gets thrown around a lot in this industry, but what does that mean exactly? It refers to potential customers that are completely new to your brand. These particular leads tend to be the most challenging, requiring some of the most clever and sensitive CTAs in marketing. This is the starting point for any sector, whether you’re working in healthcare, law, or trying to collect insurance industry leads.
This stage includes a lot of building trust and relationships. Most consumers are put off by sales-like points of contact from brands they’ve never done business with before. A warm-up period is best when going for cold leads, and it’s important to follow the data to optimize your efforts toward the leads that are liable to take action.
Next, you have leads that have already shown some kind of previous interest but have yet to take that leap forward to buy. This can come with some unique challenges as it begs the question: what’s holding them back from purchasing? Depending on a broad range of factors, this can include some diverse answers.
One of your best bets is to lean into the current state of a warm lead and guide them to that next step. Crafting marketing copy for warm leads includes specific details that may answer the questions that are holding them back. In this case, any included call-to-actions should be specific toward the next action you want them to take. This is what leads you to hot leads.
These are consumers who are on the cusp of their decision-making, but they might be having trouble with the options available to them. It’s important to highlight that a hot lead can come with a brief window, especially in today’s realm of digital content.
Several aspects that might be holding a hot lead back include:
You’ll find that these points can be managed with the help of effective and prompt outreach. Sometimes, hot leads just need to be pointed in the right direction, and they’ll make the purchase. The types of leads described so far offer a general, surface-level perspective, but the topic is actually much more diverse.
What’s great about information qualified leads (IQL) is that they provide direct contact information in exchange for something in return. Several relevant examples of what this might look like include e-books, whitepapers, or even a feel trial to a particular service.
Although most IQLs likely won’t know much about you at this stage, the information exchange is all marketers need to get their foot in the door. This creates a positive starting relationship with a growing community and maybe even some potential clients.
Even if they had to give up an email IQLs will remember the value of what they received, and this helps with their incentive to come back. There are plenty of positives to IQLs, and it doesn’t take much to make them happy from the jump.
Leads that are marketing qualified are potential buyers who have shown active interest but aren’t at the sales stage just yet. This generally means a little more information about your product or service wouldn’t hurt.
It’s possible they simply don’t know enough yet to make a firm decision. Tailoring your marketing copy toward MQLs can help lead them to the next stage. On the other hand, there are also MQLs that are deemed sales-ready, which means you can explore more direct forms of contact. Whether it’s through email or even a direct message on social media, you don’t have to be too shy about your cold contact with MQLs.
Consumers who are in the space of being a sales-ready lead (SRL) come in many forms. In B2C or B2B-focused lead generation, an SRL is just that, ready to buy, but that doesn’t mean your efforts in outreach are over.
In many cases, they’re on the last step of their buyer’s journey but may need a final step of guidance from your end. It could be simply answering a question or directing them to their exact interest in your product or service. A good question to ask is: what makes a lead sales-ready exactly?
This can be determined with the help of the BANT strategy. An acronym for budget, authority, need, and timing, it’s a recipe for determining sales engagement. Once all of these pieces fall into place, marketers can feel confident in moving in for the sale. Whether a soft or more direct approach, SRLs are a contact you won’t want to lose. From another standpoint, SRLs shouldn’t be confused with sales-qualified leads (SQLs).
Even if a sales-qualified lead is generated online, this still focuses on direct sales engagements, which isn’t as passive as other methods. In-person or merely an online presence with demonstrations can be facilitated with SQLs to land sales.
Part of the aim here is to guide the customer focus toward demonstrated selling points. Outreach with SQLs generally entails the final stages of their buyer’s journey but shouldn’t be left to their own devices. Even if they’re quite sure of moving forward, you want to keep leaning into their interest and engagement. Soon enough, many of them will take the marketing bait.
Important best practices to remember when engaging with SQLs include:
Now, considering there are so many different types of leads in your market, which are the most important to your team? First, it’s important to discern who your ideal lead is and develop clever online strategies to generate those leads. Quality matters here as well, which is where BookYourData can help with efficient real-time email verification. Generating leads isn’t the hard part; it’s finding quality contacts that will actually engage and see the buyer’s journey to the end.
Some might argue you should focus on all of them, but there’s a sweet spot here that’s going to be your bread and butter. For most businesses, generating warm sales leads is the most ideal pocket to focus on. This is due to their existing interest in what you’re offering, making it easier to guide them through the buyer’s journey.
Not only do these contacts require less ongoing lead management, but they’re much less likely to become bounced leads. This is an issue that can happen with a lot of cold leads, as they don’t feel as much incentive to stick around.
Another angle to consider is that warm leads also carry more potential for referrals. Consumers who like a product or service are bound to tell someone they know about it eventually. Whether an intentional referral or not, the next person’s curiosity could turn them into a warm lead as well. The fact of the matter is that you want to move them from one stage to the next, which demands tailored marketing for each category.
Consider that at certain times, you may have more leads in one category over others, and this may shift your marketing priorities here and there. Remember that warm leads have already engaged with your business in some capacity.
Whether they received a product sample, e-book, or exclusive newsletter, lean into their unique interests to help drive them to the SQL category. Now that you have a thorough understanding of the types of leads out there, it’s time to talk about how to find them.
While it’s no secret that there are many different ways to generate leads, some processes inherently work better than others. In the realm of the internet, you have plenty to choose from, such as emailing, social media marketing, e-books, webinar events, and much more. If you look at this topic from a bird’s eye view, you’ll see several lead-generation practices that can be helpful for conversions.
A core aspect of any sales manager's focus is that the sales or service offer should be sent through many different channels. What's great about generating leads online is that it's relatively easy to make use of multiple outreach channels simultaneously.
From LinkedIn to email marketing and other relevant social platforms, there’s more than enough analytics to identify your target audience. Effective lead generation requires consistent engagement, but it has to be tailored, not aimless.
Through initial contact and well-thought-out follow-up schedules, you can make the most out of that offer. A combination of creativity and best practices is a part of this progress, but you have solutions to help speed things up with lead generation. You can source verifiable B2B email lists in today’s world without having to do the traditional manual grind. The benefit of a tailored email marketing database can be staggering for a company's progress.
You’ve likely encountered many landing pages of your own. They can come in many unique designs and presentations, but they essentially all serve a similar purpose. Aside from grabbing consumer attention, it also aims to present an offer, perceived value, and influence for conversions.
A key detail of any landing page is to not overwhelm readers. Unfortunately, this doesn’t take much, as most people’s attention won’t last long regardless. Keeping them interested without overstimulating them is the name of the game.
Considering you’re trying to generate some contact information here, make use of concise messaging across the board. Fill-out forms should be brief, as you don’t want to put too much responsibility on visitors.
That’s why simply asking for an email is an easy way to get it done. That free e-book or webinar has to be sent to them somehow, which is where that email lead comes through. Your landing page should also be optimized for desktop and mobile devices. Overall, make sure to A/B test your approach, research your audience, and optimize outreach efforts moving forward.
It’s true that sales are important, but showing a sense of gratitude and community is equally important. Make sure to integrate some type of thank you page or pop-up alongside your marketing material.
Even if all they did was provide an email, make sure to thank them for it. Consumers can pick up on soulless marketing material and thank you pages help add a layer of warmth. Now, the scope of an effective thank you page can include the following:
With a clever approach, the warm tone and direction of your thank you page can be structured to incentivize even more action from the visitor. Maybe you’re asking them to share their opinion on social media or providing links to additional relevant content. To get a clear look at whether or not your efforts are performing well, you need to make use of CRM.
No matter what stage your business is in, you should be making use of data tracking and ongoing lead management tools. Being able to effectively track and categorize your leads is the only way you’ll be able to tailor your marketing material to each person.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is what captures and holds identifiable information on leads. This information can also come from multiple sources, such as email marketing, landing pages, or social media.
Leads can be separated based on various qualities. A few prominent examples include:
You can utilize engagement metrics to identify the current state of lead. When you’re able to properly categorize and market to certain leads, you're bound to end up with better results.
CRM software solutions aren’t hard to come by, and today, they’re more intuitive and user-friendly than ever. SaaS lead generation strategies aren’t exactly a new concept, but they aren’t something that should be overlooked.
Without the various streams of data CRM solutions provide, you’re going to be shooting in the dark with a lot of your leads. Aside from the many ways you can generate leads, websites should be a consistently strong focus area.
There’s a rabbit hole of information related to optimizing a website for lead generation. To help summarize what’s most important, you can stick to many of the best practices being utilized today.
Considering most people resort to search engines to find solutions to their problems, you want your product or service to fall in line with these queries. Optimizing your website for better visibility can definitely take some work, but it’s paramount for attracting new customers. Take the following key angles into account when working through website optimization.
The reality is that your website demands consistent attention to perform its best. When the goalposts of optimization are always changing, you have to ensure your website adapts along the way. You’ll find several essential angles to website optimization. These include SEO, social proof, content marketing, and lead magnets.
It’s one thing to give them a random offer, but aligning your offer with their search intent gives them much more reason to act.
Any kind of marketing material or content you put together for your website should be aligned with the buyer’s intent. This also ties into search intent, which is information you can use to tailor your marketing efforts.
New leads are always going to have questions regarding your company, product, or service. You want to help guide them to the answers with your offers, as well as the content you produce, such as blogs and e-books.
Don’t be afraid to provide lots of valuable information in your content. With a better understanding of your offer comes a better opportunity for those leads to continue down the buyer’s journey. Taking a strategic approach here is crucial for your conversion rates, and a good-looking website with stage-specific offers is the best route. Having a well-structured website is just one piece of the puzzle here, as you also have to be able to bring in the leads.
While many best practices in lead generation have already been covered, there are some other website-specific examples. PPC advertising is a good start, as there are plenty of tools to leverage to work through any learning curve.
Google Ads can aid in driving targeted traffic to your website, with pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns being a popular choice. With the right targeted audience, budget, and content, PPC advertising can be a powerful strategy for targeting leads online.
Cross-promotion, guest posting, and backlinking are all great additions to your strategy. This helps to get your brand name out there through other relevant organizations, online publications, and more.
Another angle to consider that’s a more modern strategy is automation. While this has definitely been around before the recent boom in AI, using lead generation tools with AI has come a long way. Optimizing your lead-generating website means being as effective and efficient as possible. There’s no argument that automated email marketing, web-based chat support responses, and data reporting can be very helpful.
Although there's nothing wrong with it, you don't always have to take a cookie-cutter approach to lead generation. Nuances are bound to vary between industries, products, and services. It's okay to bend the rules here a little bit and apply some well-known tips and tricks.
There are many angles to focus on in lead generation, but conversions are high on the list. Campaigns in this space have to be heavily focused on conversations when it comes to the copy and design strategy.
It comes with a multi-level approach as well, such as email marketing, strong SEO blog posts, or direct special offers. To optimize the number of conversions, you’ll want to A/B test this. Diversify your conversion campaign strategies and see what aspects drive the most results. Then, continuously optimize these campaigns as the data keeps coming in.
Sometimes, a direct approach is best. Lead form ads offer a concise way to collect contact information with minimal hassle. This is commonly handled within the ad itself, one of many features found in many popular ad platforms such as Google. The simplified approach here is what's so enticing, and on top of that, it's a pretty easy option to set up. It's a great way to test your targeted advertising without having to come up with very complex content.
Whether you have a digital or physical product or service, contests and giveaways can be a great way to trigger the buyer's journey. Social media followers and digital communication make it pretty easy to get in touch with users who might be interested. Everything about this scenario is a win-win.
You get the brand and product recognition, and potential leads are incentivized to engage for a chance to win something they're interested in. Another route you can take includes finding a business partner who'd be happy to support your contest or giveaway. It's an easy incentive that can benefit anyone who engages with it. Doing this through online platforms will also allow you to generate analytics and contact information for your targeted audience.
Another classic option is to integrate referral programs into your business model. These are simply to set up, and most people are already well aware of how referral programs work. You don’t have to do much convincing here outside of the referral offer itself. If you drive interest, people will be more curious about utilizing the benefits of the referral program. Referral rewards come in many forms, some being more common than others.
A few examples include:
All you have to do is find what their driving incentive is and lean into that. Give some kind of value through the referral that supports the incentive that your leads are looking for.
If it isn't evident by now, learning how to generate leads online can be done utilizing a broad range of methods. Although it can feel overwhelming, it should seem more exciting, if anything, as this means you have an abundance of tools and resources at your disposal.
In the modern era, sales managers need to be on top of these details to effectively increase revenue. It isn’t always easy, but you don’t have to take your shot at lead generation in the dark. Topical knowledge can be found freely online, as well as working alongside years of expertise from those who have been there and done that.
Overall, it’s important to remember the crucial nature of SEO optimization, social proof, content marketing, and offering value, to say the least. Never overlook the role that targeted, compelling CTAs play in all of this. Without the right driving factor, people are less likely to take action.
As always, consider the validity of your leads.
No one wants to waste their time sending emails to potential leads that are just dead-end contacts. Thankfully, there are tools for this that can help with real-time verification for accurate and effective list building. This is just another example of how BookYourData is such a viable lead generation tool for anyone in sales management, marketing, or simply trying to tackle lead generation strategy.
There are many popular ways to generate leads online for free. A few easy choices include social media, good SEO, and unique content marketing strategies.
Lead generation can be an expensive pursuit, but it doesn’t have to be. Utilizing free and cost-efficient strategies is always an option, and any business can do it.
The best online lead generation platform really depends on your specific needs. This includes factors such as industry, demographics, location, value offer, and many other unique service details.
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