3 Useful Steps for Lead Generation

Lead generation is a common challenge for marketing teams large and small. No matter how much energy you put into attracting web visitors, if you are not converting them to leads and acquiring customers, then your online marketing activities are not really paying off.

Although not a one-size-fits-all solution, these three steps have been proven to help companies generate more leads and boost their sales…

Step 1: Put content at the heart of your marketing strategy

When considering purchasing a product or service, the majority of your prospects start their journey in one very famous place, Google. It is therefore essential that your organization is creating a host of search engine optimized content at the heart of your marketing strategy allowing you to get found by more prospects.

The key ingredient to success through content marketing is engagement. You are not selling at this very early stage and should focus more on engaging you audience by providing valuable and thought provoking content. Start by thinking about what your prospects really worry about and determine how you can communicate your expertise in dealing with this issue across:

Blogs
Whitepapers
Video
Presentations
Podcasts
Webinars
Slideshows

Step 2: Nurture your leads by providing relevant information at the right time

All too often lead nurturing, i.e. moving leads further down the sales funnel, happens by badgering prospective customers through sales calls. But not all prospects are ready to talk to you about their specific requirements simply because they have downloaded your latest white paper. You need to provide them with additional information around their specific issue, further educate them about the solutions available and, of course, give them reasons as to why you they should choose your team to overcome their issue.

This is the most effective way of converting more leads to customers. By engaging your leads on a regular basis, you gain further understanding of their pain points so that when the time comes, you can tailor your message, and make the sales call more relevant and effective, thus reducing your sales cycle.

Step 3: Determine the true ROI of all of your online marketing activities

You want to be the most efficient sales and marketing team, right? Well, in order to achieve this, you need to know exactly what is working and what is not. By analyzing your web traffic from first visits to most recent conversion and sales, you will quickly understand what is resonating with your audience.

If you can close the marketing loop by tracking your performance and revenue across all your channels, including social media, mobile, email, and web, you will be able to provide accurate reports on ROI and to make informed marketing decisions in the future. Now that is efficiency!