Mauricio Romero
Understanding what kind of services you should look to generate more leads is crucial before you start looking for agencies and other kind of providers. Learn what services you should ask for, what tactics and techniques are available.
First of all you need to understand clearly what is the goal you are trying to reach with lead generation. What you want is to create demand generation for your business, but in a manner sales can clearly follow up.
Lead definition
A lead is a person that showed interest in your solution, product or company. Is a person that had enough trust to fill in a form in your website, entered physically into your store or call you. He made contact with you to understand if your solution can help him solve a problem, issue or opportunity he has.
It should be a person who is willing to give you at least a name and an email. If you don't have this data or the person didn't contact you it is not a lead, it is only a prospect, visitor, fan, follower, you named it. It is an amorphous and blurred piece of data that you can't do anything with it.
What is lead generation
Lead generation is the sum of a strategy, methodology, tactics and activities that will attract and convert visitors into leads. Basically the lead opened a channel of communication. He or she has given you the permission to contact them again.
As an example when you go to a store and they ask you to opt into their customer loyalty program to receive points, offers and benefits you are entering into a lead generation program. Maybe you were a visitor that only was doing window shopping with no particular interest.
Digital lead generation
When we refer to digital lead generation we are talking about all the efforts you make to generate leads that are browsing on the internet through search engines, website browsers and social media.
The reality is that today all the processes are digital. In the previous example you opted into a list and your data is digitized into a CRM. But basically when we talk about digital lead generation we are talking about the original source of the lead, and in this occasion is from digital sources like social media, digital ads or search engine results.
Lead generation system
You need a lead generation system that can be repeatable and scalable to reach your sale funnel goals. This means a repeatable process with well defined outcomes. This is when a Inbound Marketing Methodology makes sense. You have 4 main steps:
- Attract
- Convert
- Close
- Delight
The first two steps are crucial to get the engine run and fill in the sales funnel. The services that any lead generation company can offer you for Attract and convert are:
Website lead generation
This is the most important hub for lead generation. A website should be the main tool to attract and convert visitors into leads. There are several techniques to make this happen.
Content marketing is the most effective tactic. The currency of the internet is information. You should have lots of information in your website to offer your leads. The information should be about all the questions they have about how to solve a problem that your solution solves.
This content is the currency you exchange with search engines. When someone ask a question in Google the search engine needs to give you a good answer. If they don't give you a good answer they could run out of business.
Also content help someone to make a decision on what are the best options or solution to solve their problem. You need content to attract, convert and nurture your leads.
This content should be planned, produced and distributed.
So content becomes the most important tool that get the shape of the next services:
Planning your content
- Research of your buyer persona. What is your target audience looking for? What questions they ask.
- SEO research.- You need the analytics to find out what questions (Keywords) have more volume searches and variables.
- Content calendar.- Which content you should do first, how often you are going to publish, and put it on the calendar.
Producing your content
Your content should get several shapes and forms so it can be distributed in different media channels so the questions will get the shape of written content in articles,
- Interviews.- The answers to those questions should come from your experts that design, produce and deliver your solution. So getting the information from them is very important. Also field research is very helpful to have great content.
- Blogging.-Is where your articles should be posted inside your website. One page, one article for each question.
- Copywriting.- You need to develop your writing skills to organize and edit the articles. Also you should do your messaging in an attractive way so your audience can be engaged.
- SEO optimization.- The articles should be scanned, organized and indexed correctly for the search engines.
Find someone who has experience with this services that will work in almost all the steps of the methodology, but mainly in the first two.
Promote your content
Facebook lead generation
All your articles and content should be published first on your website and blog. Adapt this content to small pieces and promote on your Facebook fan page. Make a link to your website so you can drive visits to your owned media. This is very important.
All of this steps are part of a system. If you want to learn more about B2B lead generation visit our guide page.
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