Lead Generation – In marketing, the lead generation is the initiation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business. It has great importance in marketing. As a marketer, you should learn about lead generation. Before learning about lead generation, you must know what the lead means in general, and what it means in marketing. In fact, marketing and lead generation are interdependent. Lead generation is important for business promotion.
Leads can be generated with different ways. The most popular ways are: the Internet, personal referrals, telephone calls either by the company or telemarketers, advertisements, and events. A research shows that 89% of respondents cited emails (that use internet), as the most-used channel for generating leads. Through internet, you can use other channels, websites, blogs, or social media pages for generating leads as well.
What is Lead?
Lead is totally associated with marketing a business. Marketing and lead generation are interdependent. A lead is the information whether the demographic information or the information relating contact details of a customer who expresses interest in your products or services. Leads are generally two types – one is the sales lead and the another, marketing lead.
Sales leads: Sales leads are obtained based on the demographic information such as age, FICO score, income, psychographic, household income, etc. A marketer obtains leads not only for his business, but he can also resell that leads to multiple advertisers. The sales force generally collects information through phone calls to obtain leads. The organizations that are engaged with the business relating to insurance, mortgage, and finance aspects generally use the sales leads.
Marketing leads: Marketing leads are obtained based on brand-specific information which is used as a unique advertiser offer. One thing is different comparing with the sales leads – sales leads can be sold only once. This is because the increasing of lead generation requires transparency. Marketing lead campaigns should optimize through mapping leads to the respective sources. To grow a business creating marketing leads is essential which collect your best customers’ contact information.
Online Lead Generation
Online Lead Generation is an internet marketing term that refers to generating prospective consumers’ interest or inquiry into your business products or services through Internet. If a visitor discovers your business through one of the marketing channels (i.e. websites, blogs, or social media pages), you can form an effective lead generation.
Online lead generation strategies-
From above, you have learned how much important the lead generation is in marketing products or services of your business. As a marketer, you should learn different strategies to generate high quality leads. Followings are the most important online lead generation strategies that you can apply to obtain high quality leads for your products or services.
Best Online Lead Generation Strategies:
Generating quality leads depends on different strategies. If you can obtain high quality leads, there are better chances they will convert into your happy customers. From a tactical perspective, you should take up some tricks to obtain quality leads. If you are using any one of online channels (websites, blogs, or social media pages), you can apply Call-to-Action (CTA) to generate leads. A CTA may be an image, a button, or a message linked directly to a landing page on your site. A CTA calls visitors to take some sort of action. If any action is made, your site generates a lead. A call to action (CTA) is a dictate to audience/visitors to incite an immediate response using an imperative phrase such as “call now“, “find out more” or “visit a store today” etc.
However, you can apply the trick either from your own websites, blogs, and social media pages, or buying online advertising on others’ channels. Online advertising uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to visitors. The message contains a Call-to-Action (CTA) linked directly to the landing page on your site. If any action is made, your site generates a lead for which you, as an advertiser, have to pay. In the online advertising market, three main pricing models are:
- Cost Per Thousand, also known as cost per mille (CPM) means an advertiser pays each time an ad is displayed. This term indicates the price of 1,000 advertisement impressions on one webpage. CPM indicates costs which are incurred against per 1,000 potential customers that viewed your ads.
- Cost Per Click (CPC) is an internet advertising model that is used to direct traffic to websites. In CPC, an advertiser pays a publisher (publishing website owner) when the ad is clicked. CPC advertising overcomes the problem that exists in the CPM pricing.
- Cost Per Action (CPA) advertising lessens the risk of CPM and CPC advertising by charging only when an specific action is made. For this, there are two options: Cost Per Lead (CPL) advertising and Cost Per Action (CPA) advertising (i.e. affiliate marketing). Online Lead generation is a process of attracting and converting a visitor into the leads providing an offer. Visitors willingly provide their information in exchange of the offer, and leads are generated. The advertiser, in CPA campaigns, generally pays through a credit card transaction against any completed sale.
Landing Page: This page is not like other normal website pages on your site. A visitor often lands on the landing page for a particular purpose. This page is used for various purposes; one of its most frequent uses is to generate leads. A landing page is a particular page that contains valuable information about a particular offer and a form to download that offer. If visitors use this form to receive the offer, a lead will be generated. According to numbers of your business offers, a business website may have multiple landing pages (upto 15 pages) with different offers.
- Forms: Forms are mainly hosted on landing pages of the websites so that visitors can easily get their expected offered item(s) using that forms. A Form consists of a series of fields which are used to collect information of visitors in exchange of an important offered item that visitors expect from your site. You can’t obtain leads without these forms.
- Offer: You can put an offer on the landing page providing a valuable item which will be an expectation of your visitors. The offer must have enough value to your visitors so that they willingly provide their personal or company information in exchange of the offer. Offers include ebooks, whitepapers, free consultations, coupons and product demonstrations.
Social media: With the development of social media sites, it has been used by organizations and individuals to generate leads or gain business promotion. Individuals or businesses are using social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to market their new products and services. You can also utilize social media for lead generation.
New Experience 