How to create a successful lead generation strategy in 2021

People these days are surrounded by marketing messages and ads. They don’t have so much time to give you attention. You should earn it.

Moreover, there are chances that they will not hear your message.

This means lead generation strategies either need a revamp or add them into your marketing plan across the industry.

This blog will surely help you understand how to build a lead generation strategy but let’s first understand what “a strategy” means-

A strategy doesn’t just define what you do, but it’s more about what you should not do.

To create a successful lead generation strategy, you need to work on two critical items:

• A robust and compelling content, and* Use that content to convert your visitors into leads

Before we start discussing a lead generation strategy, let me tell you a small story of a shopkeeper who has not given importance to his walk-in customers.

Lazy Shopkeeper’s Story

A shopkeeper in a town used to run the departmental items such as grocery, stationery Etc.

The customer used to walk-in, take the things of their choice, put them into the cart, and walk away.

However, there were very few customers who had an issue with the items that they were purchasing.

They went to the shop owner and asked questions. But the shop owner I would say too lazy to attend and help them.

The customer got frustrated because of the shop owner’s behaviour, and they went off without purchasing anything.

This is precisely what happens when we do not have lead generation techniques on our website.

Your website’s user also get frustrated when you don’t attend them

The secret ingredients of inbound marketing

Like for every successful recipe, there are a set of ingredients that every chef uses. Similarly, to build a fantastic lead generation funnel, there are a few essential elements that are “a must.”

And here’s what I mean-

Compelling content makes your website a strong lead generation weapon

1. The first and most important secret ingredient is your content.
2. Then you need a UX-friendly website to lay down lead generation items.
3. Followed by creative techniques to attract your website visitors and further convert them into leads.

I had always felt that customers would only come to you when they see value in your content.

They should get hooked to your content, and if that happens, 50% of your job is done.

So, in my opinion, if you write engaging content and use them smartly on your website, chances are you’ll be getting a lot of leads using this inbound marketing channel.

A strategy is not a to-do list, Steve Blank (thinkgrowth.org)

Four simple steps to create a lead generation strategy

Your content is your first secret ingredient. Build compelling content and place it on your website to maximize its potential.

Here are some key areas that can help you as a starting point to write content:

• Have a plan to write useful blog posts
• Plan to gather interesting quotes by industry thought leaders.
• Few guides that your targeted audiences can download from your website

Based on my experience, I have learned that many business-to-business customers read content about a brand from where they wish to purchase a product.> Creating compelling content is the only key to attract visitors and convert them into customers.

Now that you have understood why content is essential and how to build that, let’s come back to our original topic of this blog.

You need to follow these four steps and make sure it gets included in your website.

1: Capturing leads on the website

Create multiple areas to capture visitor’s contact information

The harsh truth is, almost half of your website visitors will not return to your website if we fail to take their information when they first visited.

A brilliant example of capturing lead on a website would be asking for an email address or taking their subscription on the blog pages.

However, these days, people are quite reluctant to provide their email address on any random website because of the fear of spamming.

It would be nice if you found out the way to get this information.

If you wish your visitor to give his contact information, you should give them valuable information to help them succeed.

And that’s our next step: to build a magnet that can be used as your valuable information.

2: Build Lead magnets

Create helpful content to attract website visitors

Before we get into these details, let’s just understand why a lead magnet is needed?

Unfortunately, most websites fail to engage your visitors because there’s a gap between the visitor generation and the lead generation phases.

They assume that our product or service offerings content is helpful and sufficient for visitors to take their buying decision.

However, it’s not the case. Your visitor already knows about your competitors who are selling the same services or products as you are.

To get hold of your visitor’s attention, you will need to understand your customers’ pain problems and create unique and helpful content that solves their problems.

And all this can be done using the technique called a lead magnet.

Now, let’s understand what a lead magnet is?

A lead magnet is a technique that helps you create resources that brings value to the table for your visitors in exchange for their contact information.

It is a license to ask the visitor’s information to give them solutions to their pain problems in return.

Always keep in mind, these resources should be free of cost.

Some of these resources include:

• An ebook
• A webinar
• A white paper
• A guide that summarizes the industry problem and its solution
• Short videos
• For product, it can be free trial or freemium

These resources will make your visitor knowledgeable about what your company is capable of doing, and in return, you will have their email address to reach out to when a new resource goes live.

3: Develop a winning landing page

Landing pages create an engagement of your visitor with your brand

It is an essential step that helps convert your visitors into leads.

A landing page is any page where your visitor will land after clicking on an ad are the Google search engine results.

However, note that it is better to have Separate landing pages than your website and solves the purpose of singular marketing.

There are many free resources and websites available to help you create a winning landing page.

I recommend the WordPress platform, which can solve the dual purpose of creating a website and your landing pages.

Here are a few more tools to explore:

Instapage, Unbounce, ActiveCampaign , Hubspot

Let’s get back to our topic.

Landing pages Captures the leads and nurtures them.

I am giving a checklist of what you should include and what you should not while developing your landing pages.

• Your landing page should only focus on solving a single problem statement. It should not confuse customers with two or more solution offerings.
• Make sure it has a clear call-to-action.
• Your landing page is not your product or service page.
• It should also have a single form that can capture the prospect’s information.
• Stick with the promise you are giving to customers. For example, in the advertisement areas you mentioned about getting 50% off on an annual maintenance contract, you should have the same mentioned on the landing page.
• A simple technique to do this is to have similar content mentioned on your advertisement button, and the same can go on your landing page section. By doing this, your prospect will get to know that they are following the same type of ad they clicked upon.

4: Maintain Lead’s Score

Build a point based mechanism to prioritize lead followup

Lead scoring is an essential feature of a marketing automation tool that helps segment the leads you have received based on their content engagement.

It usually works based on the points mechanism. For example, if a visitor reads your post, assign five points, and if the same visitor downloads an ebook, you give 15 points.

So the total score signifies to us that it will be possibly a potential customer to you.

But the fact is, many business-to-business companies do not have such strategies in their marketing plan.

I have gathered a few advantages of having lead scoring as part of the primary lead generation strategy, and they are as follows:

1. It acts as a feedback mechanism about how visitors are responding to your content.
2. It also indicates how many customers are ready to buy your service or product but are not in touch with you recently.
3. It also helps companies concentrate on those crucial leads that can save a lot of money and resources.
4. Furthermore, a salesperson can confidently communicate with those prospects as they are already aware of the prospect’s interest and possibly can close the deal very quickly.

Lead generation plays an essential role in the marketing strategy of every company in any industry.

I am sure you have visited such websites you did not return upon because they did not have such techniques.

These businesses fail to capture attention when you were on their website and do not have your information to contact you again.

I believe this is a huge opportunity loss.

So when you have your content in place, all you need to make sure is you follow the steps mentioned and build a fantastic marketing funnel for your visitors that converts into a lead followed by a winning customer.