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Be it a small start-up or a big million-dollar business, one common challenge for every marketer is “how to increase lead generation?” Businesses accept it as an important aspect of the sales funnel and consider it as the lifeblood of the business.
Hubspot says, 74% of companies say converting leads into customers is their top priority.
B2B lead generation ideas play a crucial role in building a pipeline of high-intending prospects for businesses. By following the lead generation best practices you can increase conversion rates and gain huge profits in the process.
The lead generation process embodies actions of identifying and targeting potential new customers with the intention of cultivating their interest in what your business has to offer. It involves understanding the customer journey and developing interest in prospects by providing them maximum information about your products or services.
Actually developing the interest to such an extent that customers will contact you to get more information and perhaps even end up with a purchase. Creating lead-generation ideas is crucial for effective sales and marketing. This is where businesses get their precious pool of prospects that can eventually become loyal customers.
The lead generation ideas and processes for businesses differ depending upon the complexity or cost of the purchase being considered. For e-commerce businesses it could be online purchases, for some, it could be filling up forms or increasing email subscribers.
However, B2B lead generation ideas include a couple of stages that if done right can deliver a huge ROI at the fastest possible time. Marketers identify it as a lead generation funnel that has four stages:
The above framework can be used to create a perfect end-to-end lead generation process.
Note: The four stages of the lead generation process discussed above are to get involved in moving someone from awareness to conversion and at each of these stages, address a prospect’s evolving relationship with your business.
Understanding the different stages behind a lead generation funnel is very important. It helps to focus your sales efforts to turn your prospect list into customers. The lead generation ideas and best practices will give you valuable insights into making it work for your business.
Let us dive in.
The focal point of every business is to deliver real-time sales and support assistance to customers to increase their sales and profit percentage. Live chat is one of the best lead generation channels and is most preferred among customers.
According to Vtldeaign, 91% of users, were invited to have a live chat with sales reps and it helped them in their product purchasing decisions and resolve their product queries instantly.
Chatbots have revamped the way brands interact and engage their customers. Bots are greatly used as B2B lead generation ideas to automate the sales tasks. You can configure chatbots to prequalify leads when your sales agents are not available.
You can build an effective sales bot and train with relevant sales questions to qualify visitors. With bots, you can reach out to a large number of customers that do not hamper the effectiveness of your sales team.
Health Tap, the leading technology company delivering a suite of connected health apps, created ways to generate leads with a bot to answer health-related questions and created an excellent lead generation example.
The bot helps in the following ways:
Social media channels can serve as one of the best lead-generation channels. It helps to build the face value of your brand. Businesses grew by 24% by using social media for lead generation.
With the help of social media platforms, you can build an active audience and share relevant content with them. This will help to expand your audience and build stronger relationships with them. Social media lead generation helps to create ways to generate leads and invite them into your sales funnel.
One of the lead generation best practices could be adopting an omnichannel approach that connects all the channels like phone, email, in-app, website, store, etc. to connect with customers over their preferred communication channel.
Businesses that provide consistent service quality across multiple touchpoints retain 89% of their customers.
Omni channel communication strategy helps to gain insights into how the customers have interacted with the brand so that you can use customer journey maps to meet or exceed your customer needs. Thus, delivering optimal omnichannel customer care and increasing opportunities to interact with customers.
Bank of America, a globally acclaimed brand delivers consistent omnichannel service to its customers by creating a great lead generation example.
The bank allows for everything starting from depositing checks to scheduling an appointment to be handled by the company’s mobile and desktop apps.
There are instances when messaging has not had much impact which is why visual interaction comes to the picture. When customers are on your website, they might face some issues such as difficulty in understanding the product demo video, product subscription queries, or information about completing a form or application.
In such scenarios, you can wisely use live customer engagement like co-browsing, video, and voice chat to deliver real-time assistance to your customers. Aberdeen Group shows that co-browsing is helping companies accomplish far greater annual improvements to customer satisfaction, achieved by reducing customer effort in real-time.
Marketo research found out 93% of B2B companies say content marketing generates more leads than traditional marketing strategies.
Content marketing is more effective for your business and smart content marketers know that diving in with a clear strategy is key to your success. But your success depends on the kind of content you are able to produce on a regular basis. When the content is interactive it will engage your customers and capture interested leads.
Have you ever come across a “Sign up for a Free Trial” or “Add to Your Shopping Cart” button?
I am quite sure that you have seen it. These are a call to action or CTAs that act as prompts for your visitors to do specific tasks.
The orange button in the below image below represents a clickable CTA.
If you notice, WordStream uses contrasting colors with its CTA to make it stand out against the entire blue site. They also reiterate the fact that their product is free to use twice further enticing you to try it out.
CTAs should be prudently used across the website to boost customer engagement. You can direct your visitors to comment on your articles, and ask them to subscribe to your email list. You can also ask them to connect with you via social media.
For e.g., incorporating value proposition elements like ‘Free Guide’, and ‘Save up to 25%’ in a call to action button clearly explains to the visitor what they are going to get in return for their action.
The key to making your CTAs stand out is using the right language according to the situation and considering their placement carefully. The business profits and revenue greatly depend on the judiciously using CTAs.
Webinars are a great tool for B2B lead generation. It is a very good medium for sharing and retaining knowledge. With the use of webinars, you not only reach your target audience better but also deliver a database filled with leads.
Research has shown that there is a 75% better chance of people watching a video than reading a text. 79% of buyers say they will share information in exchange for webinars.
Some other benefits of webinars are that they are much cheaper to organize in relation to physical events. Using webinars saves on travel and accommodation costs.
Email marketing remains one of the best ways for small businesses to reach and engage their audiences. It is still the most effective way to market your products and services, and get the word out about your business.
According to Marketing Sherpa, 72% of U.S. adults prefer to communicate with brands through email as opposed to other marketing channels.
One of the reasons why email marketing remains so effective is that consumers are comfortable with this marketing channel. In fact, many actually enjoy getting email communications from their favorite brands. You can easily communicate with your target audience through a reliable channel.
It is vital to use the latest technology to engage your visitors. Popup technology can help you learn what engages your visitors. It is one of the best practices for capturing the attention of your prospects. You can also use it for online lead generation.
Using the latest popup technology allows you to fine-tune your popups so they don’t bother your visitors. You get a chance to learn about your audience or promote an ebook, and you never have to worry about annoying your visitors.
Whether you are a small business or an enterprise, if you are looking to move your sales figures, one of the most common approaches is to offer discounts, coupons, or deals. Offering discounts or deals can be a powerful weapon in your conversion arsenal to drive customer loyalty.
Here are several types of discounts and offers you have at your disposal. Some of the most common are percentage-based discounts, dollar-value discounts, free shipping, free gift, etc.
Walgreens online photo department, for example, has weekly sales and coupon codes, as well as ongoing promo codes at the bottom of the page.
“Users spend an average of 5.94 seconds looking at a website’s main image”
Researchers found that their subjects spent about 2.6 seconds scanning a website before focusing on a particular section. One of the biggest challenges when designing a website is not only creating a flawless experience for all devices but also one that engages the visitors and holds their attention in the right way.
Including distinctive elements such as reviews, testimonials, video-based customer stories provide the opportunity to influence the visitor by striking a balance between regular content and important details.
What it means is images add depth and significance to a user’s impressions of a website while spicing things up. It also shows that users pay attention to the main image on a web page, so it’s important to make sure that this image communicates effectively and reinforces the brand.
Note: Balance the images across the website. Don’t go overboard.
Note: There are statistics that show sliders actually having a detrimental impact on conversion and user opinion. Here’s a chart from Instapage showing the massive discrepancy between click-through rates of slider images at different positions.
Forums or communities allow customers to ask questions and connect over similar interests. Often users turn to forums to ask for technical help and look for information on businesses they may use for a service, or just for general knowledge of a subject.
This creates great opportunities for business owners to reach out with their services or to resolve any problems that may have happened.
For example Quora. It is very important for B2B businesses. It allows you to communicate with your customers. Quora might just be the place where you can enhance the customer experience.
On Quora, your prospects and customers are already asking questions — questions that you have the answers to. If you join the platform and play the part of the expert, you’ll quickly enhance your brand’s image in the eyes of your target audience and drive leads to your website.
Trade shows or industry-specific events help to target leads. According to a study by Convention Industry Council, there are more than 284,000 conventions, conferences, and tradeshows in the U.S. These events attracted more than 87 million attendees.
Staying on top of your competitor’s marketing tactics is key to be ahead in the game. This knowledge consists of both knowing what to track and how to be effective at it.
Whether you are in B2B or B2C industry, you need to understand buyer personas and choose the right lead generation channels. Lead generation is not an end goal but a continuous process to engage with your customers and prospects too.
Make sure to follow the lead generation best practices to help your businesses to acquire more customers, retain them and accelerate overall revenue growth.
As some initiatives are more successful at driving immediate conversions than others, and therefore should be measured accordingly in relation to the sales funnel.
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