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Lead Generation: 5 Simple Steps to a Smarter Strategy

These are the best practices for a fail-safe lead generation strategy.

So, you want to learn how to build a lead capturing machine and grow your business. Where do you start? How do you get your landing pages to perform?

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Ah Lead Generation, the one purpose all Digital Marketers live for. What even else is there to life?

What are the best practices for a fail-safe lead generation strategy? Keep reading and learn how to give your marketing strategy a boost now.

1. Define Your Goals and Target Audience

What’s the first step in creating a smart inbound marketing methodology that captures not just leads, but marketing qualified leads? Defining your goals and identifying your target audience!

This is where most savvy Digital Marketers will begin any given campaign. If you haven’t already, start by producing some strong Buyers Personas that depict your ideal customer, in detail. Give them a story. Fill in their needs and their challenges – but don’t just hypothesize. Do some research by interviewing your current client base and speaking to your sales team who are on the front lines with clients. By filling out your Buyers Personas, you’ll be able to see the many different target audiences your business may have.

If you’ve already got your Buyer Personas pinned down, move to the next step: defining your campaign goals. Every campaign, needs a specific, relevant, and measurable goals. Depending on your business needs and your target audience, you campaign goals will vary campaign to campaign.

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Not the ‘target’ I had in mind. But if you have your target audience and goals set, then hats off to you.

For example, your target audience may be an existing customer list – visitors who have previously bought from you but have been inactive for sometime. In this instance, your goal is to re-engage this audience and get them to buy again. You may therefore promote a new and exciting offer.

In other instances, your goal is to drive more traffic to your site and bring on prospective clients. In this case, you’ll combine a brand awareness campaign, along side compelling content that adds value to your prospective clients’ lives, and support all of this with retargeting.

2. Engage Audiences with Captivating Content (Videos, Webinars, Guides)

You know what I hate now a days? When I get to the front of the check out line at the mall and before the cashier even starts to ring up my purchase, she asks for my email.

Not in a delightful, ‘Hey, can I have your email because I’ve got a great incentive for you that will be instantly sent to your email now which you will benefit greatly from,’ kind of way. But rather, just a ‘hand over your personal contact information now @#*~%!’ sort of way. Sometimes I feel like I’m being held up at the check out.

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No Darrell, you cannot have my number, OR my email. – Yvonne

Not in a delightful, ‘Hey, can I have your email because I’ve got a great incentive for you that will be sent to your email now which you will benefit from greatly instantly’ kind of way. But rather, just a ‘hand over your personal contact information now, @#*~%!’ sort of way. Sometimes I feel like I’m being held up at the check out.

Why should I give up my deeply personal contact information if I don’t know a) what your offer is and b) what’s in it for me?

Digital Marketers should be asking the same thing when building out their lead generation strategy. What’s in it for your customers? 

Beyond the offer that you’re providing to customers, getting visitors to fork over their personal information and become your lead requires that you provide them with something that will add value to their lives. These incentives can come in the form of educational content like eBooks and guides, digital courses and webinars, or resources like templates, checklists, and presentations, or even in the form of free gift giveaways.

Create compelling content that is worth your audience’s wild, and they’ll be give you their numbah (and email) from left and right.

3. Abide By Form Rules

What should your landing page forms look like? How many fields are too many, too few? Is there even an ideal number?

Just remember this: the number of fields your form uses depends on your offer. The further down the sales funnel your offer, the more details and therefore fields you may require from your leads.

For something as simple as a presentation or use of a free tool, you may only ask for emails. For product demos and webinars, however, you would definitely ask for more information:

  • Full Name
  • Email
  • Phone Number
  • Title
  • Company

The only way to really know, however, is to test, test, test!

4. Use Personalized Testimonials to Build Trust

Adding testimonials to any landing page is going to add credibility to your offer. Word of mouth is perhaps one of the strongest way to persuade someone who is on the fence to buy.

In fact, customer testimonials and reviews have the highest effectiveness rating (89%) for influencing buyers.

Testimonials go further, however, when you add a face to the words and are personalized. Including photos with your testimonials or case studies verifies the human aspect of the testimonial, and asserts it’s honesty.

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Example of personalizing testimonials and case studies.

According to MarketingLand, surveys reveal that 71% of marketers see their ROI increase with video ads. That said, it’s worth testing the use of video testimonials to drive leads.

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Unbounce chooses video featuring KISSmetrics for their testimonials.

5. Consistently Use an Actionable CTA

Using a strong, actionable CTA consistently for your campaign may be the difference between that final click after the visitor fills out that lead form or just clicking away.

CTA writing best practice is to be specific and describe precisely what will happen once visitors click on the button. Match your message and your action.

Here is an example of a great actionable CTA from Netflix:

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Why is this great?

  • Copy is concise
  • CTA is specific
  • You know exactly what you get when you click
  • Clean simple design focuses visitor’s eyes on CTA
  • Copy colour and button background colour stand out

Here is a poor CTA example:

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Why does this suck?

  • Unclear title makes it unclear what this offer is for
  • Where is the CTA button? OH it’s located on the bottom right in font that blends in – viewers can’t even find it!
  • If your visitors can’t find your button, they’ll quickly get frustrated and click away – don’t frustrate your viewers!

Keep your CTA relevant, specific, and clear and just watch your leads grow.

And REMEMBER, regardless of the best practice advice you’re receiving out there, there is no better way to get the definitive answer on the right lead generation strategy for your business leads if you don’t test. Test, test, and test! Now go and generate some leads.

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Want to learn more? Connect with our team at sales@clearpier.com