How startup owners, SMEs can get more leads through digital marketing and content marketing?

How to generate more leads online? Lead generation tips, techniques, how to create lead magnet and lead funnel to attract & convert visitors into paying customers. Tips to get more leads. Imagine you are on a date. It is an important date, as it decides the fate of your relationship. You are talking important things, and the phone rings – “this is the call for Mr. Dupre and here is a proposition for a good future investment.” Such calls can be very annoying, and make a bad impression in our minds regarding the brand.     

We all have gone through a similar situation. We might be engaged in some important job and get a random annoying cold call, someone telemarketer.  

For a small business owner/SME the cold marketing tactics can prove fatal in the long run. The consumer might get offended by the brand and completely abandon it. Instead, several business analysts believe that generating organic leads for the business is a better and more fruitful option.

Let’s understand what is a lead generation and how it can help the business.

What is lead generation? 

To put it simply, any potential consumer/client who shows some interest in the brand in some way can be considered as a lead, and when this happens through digital media, this is called online lead generation.

A lead usually initiates the communication channel by providing personal data such as name, phone number, email id, etc. to the organization to avail of some kind of offer or subscription. Since the information is provided by the lead, the brands can have a more open and dynamic conversation with them. According to experts, such interactions are more fruitful than random cold calls.

Types of leads

As per the experts, not all leads have equal potential and can provide the same results. Typically, there are three categories of leads based on how they fit into the brand:

1. Product Qualified Lead (PQL)
2. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
3. Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
4. Service Qualified Lead (SrQL)

PQL is consumers who have either interacted with the brand by using their products or expressed interest in making a purchase. The MQL are those contacts who have engaged with the marketing campaigns but are not willing to receive sales-oriented calls from the brand.

Sales qualified leads are those consumers whose actions indicate their interest in associating with the brand and becoming a consumer. Lastly, the Service qualified leads (SrQL) are those consumers who have expressed interest in becoming a paying client.

Why lead generation is important for businesses? 

Lead generation is probably the most popular method of inbound marketing methodology. It helps in forming a close relationship with the consumer. In short, it is a great method of warming up the customers towards a brand, business, or service.  

Typically, when a visitor starts a relationship with the business by showing genuine organic interest, the gradual conversion from a casual visitor to the customer becomes a natural process. These consumers are more prone to male purchase and become a long-lasting relationship with the organization.

Steps for Online Lead Generation

How to get more leads for your business?

Online lead generation tips & techniques. Here are the steps for lead generation:

When these steps are combined harmoniously, brands can expect traffic towards the landing page and organic leads.

How to direct traffic towards the landing page? 

However, lead generation strategies can be a big challenge for business entrepreneurs. As per experts, two things work towards lead generations:

1. The type of service being provided by the brand
2. Quality of the content attached to the service

To direct the interest of the consumer towards the landing page. There are numerous methods through which can be used to make visible conversions. Let’s look at them:

a. Creating a mobile-friendly version of the website

In its previous update, Google has made it mandatory for websites to have a mobile-friendly version of themselves. With a huge number of users accessing the internet on their mobile phones, having a mobile-friendly website could drive the traffic in the intended direction.

For creating a mobile-friendly website, businesses have to fully evaluate their website to find the areas that need working – pages that are more responsive towards mobile phones or completely different websites specially designed for mobile phones.  

b. Webpage Optimization

Also, verify whether your website is functioning correctly. A website with loading errors, speed issues, and a bad user interface (UI) might discourage visitors from visiting the website. Ideally, it is important to scan the Web pages for errors to rectify them.

Making the list of companies that have viewed or visited the website can help in developing sales pitch and marketing strategies.  

c. Running A/B Tests

An innovative method of picking the best version of the webpage is to run A/B testing. Verifying the performance through statistical analysis can help in choosing the most suitable version of the website.

d. Running regular website scans

The strategy of fixing the website only when bugs are reported can be a fatal mistake for the businesses. There is a huge chance of losing potential clients at a faster rate. Such an approach can make detecting broken links difficult to track and could return 404 error pages to visitors forcing them to leave the page.   

As recommended, a weekly website scan can help in fixing errors on the page more easily and help the page in running more smoothly. 

e. Keep Updating Keywords

Finding and recognizing the potential keywords used by the competitors can be beneficial in the long run for businesses trying to make their way through lead generation. By picking out the keywords that work for the competitors, entrepreneurs can optimize their website more easily and strategically.

Lead Magnet & Lead Funnel – Ultimate Guide to Lead Generation

1. What is lead magnet?
2. What is lead funnel?
3. What is squeeze page, lead page, sales page or landing page?
4. Acquisition lead funnel & Retention lead funnel
5. Content, acquisition & monetization strategies 
6. Examples & Tools

How to create lead magnet & lead funnel?

Content Strategies

1. E3 – Educate, Excite, Engage Model
2. AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire & Action model
3. FAB – Features, Advantage, Benefits Model
4. Story sharing model
5. POD (Point of difference & Value Proposition Model)

Strategies & Tools for Acquisition & Retention

How to Generate More Leads from Your Website

All businesses need customers. These are the lifeline of any business either a physical or online one. But getting customer leads is challenging especially in the online world when you don’t even know where to start. Below you’ll find some lead generating leads that successful Internet marketeers use around the world.

Lead generation from website

1. Value: This is the most basic rule of all, and the one that most new website owners break the most often. You must create real value in your website. This means building a website with a blog where you post daily. You can add written content, video content and more, but you must add valuable content on a consistent basis. This is the first building block and the one where most new website owners fail, because it takes discipline, time and can be very boring at first.
2. Target Your Leads: You don’t want to simply build a site to attract traffic. You don’t want to attract just any lead, you want leads that turn into buyers. You do this by offering information that attracts leads in general but which quickly makes it clear that you are selling something. If you provide value with your sell, real potential buyers will remain interested, and those looking for a “free ride” will be scared off.
3. Add Video: Create a fun informational video and post it to YouTube. Be sure to add links to your website and a keyworded description to help it index within YouTube. Place the video on your site as well. The idea is to promote it on your social media platforms and wait for it to go viral. Note, its important to teach, inform and entertain in video format. It is this combination that creates interest and leads.
4. Socialize: The decision as to whether social media actually generates sales is still under discussion, but what everyone does agree upon is that social media is very effective at spreading thoughts, feelings, images, more and this can bring in leads. Offer up these ideas, images, jokes, videos, links to articles and more. Do it regularly and your friends and fans will start spreading your message. Don’t forget to add social media buttons on your blog too, as this will give your readers a way of sharing the information with their own friends, thereby bringing you more leads.
5. Make the Offer: All this buttering up is great but you don’t want to leave it at that you actually want to sell. Once you’ve started spreading the message, put an offer in front of them to see what happens. Place an offer in your email signature.
6. Get an Email List Going: Start an email list so you can send out press releases with offers and information. Give away something that is of real value to get leads to sign up for your email.; software they can use, a book that could really teach them something, a short video course, etc.

Conclusion

To get more leads you should offer more than your competitors. You want an easy to navigate website with lots of good information. You want to have them sign up for your newsletter so you need to give them something of value and you want to promote your website through your blog, social media and video. But once you do bring in the traffic you want to make your offer so you keep those leads that are potential buyers and eliminate the free-loaders.

Landing page, cornerstone pages & funnel hacks

Generate More Leads with Social Sharing

Info, tips and infographics on how to generate more lead with social sharing. Learn about social consumers and the science of sharing to target consumers.

Around 54% of the 10,000 largest websites are now displaying social sharing buttons for the major social sharing networks. The main focus is to reach out to more number of people by triggering the reader’s emotional response. It is more like forwarding interesting email articles to friends, retweeting a post on Twitter, or liking a story/ link on Facebook.  However, the content must ignite a spark in your readers’ mind.

What sharing means for your business?

This kindergarten concept can actually help you to generate and nurture leads. Research showed that websites with sharing links generate seven times more online social mentions than the sites that do not offer this facility. In fact, a website with Twitter sharing buttons is linked to around seven times more often on Twitter than site without any tweet button. On average, sites (among those 10,000 largest websites) with Twitter share buttons are mentioned in around 27 tweets along with a backlink to the site.

Thus, you can imagine how your social reach will expand by merely adding some social sharing buttons on your website. But is it really that simple to motivate your readers to share the links on the major social sharing networks? You need to understand that by sharing links, you readers are actually recommending your content to their friends and followers. And people only recommend stuff when they are really interesting and/ or informative.

So ask yourself would you share the link – this is the basic criterion to understand if your content has the potential to ignite that spark in your reader’s mind. Remember people hardly spread what is mediocre; they value great work that inspires to care and your goal is to inspire them to share to reach your network’s network.

How to ignite your readers?

One of the best ways to ignite (even) a little spark in your readers’ mind is by sharing your opinion and taking a stand. Expressing your opinion in no uncertain terms usually inspires people at an emotional level. For example, look at the political and business blogs – they usually hit the emotional level of their readers to become a key player for discussion about the given topic. Take your cue and a stand about something to increase your social mentions.

Give your readers something to react to; tell them how you feel about a certain topic. The Times conducted a study with Latitude Research regarding the psychology of sharing. It was found that around 68% of respondents shared a link to let people know who they are, where are coming from and what they care about. The bottom line is to create content that offers validation to your readers. Foster an attitude to connect your product/ services to something meaningful in people’s lives.

A recent study conducted by SEO firm BrightEdge Technologies showed that around 53.6% of the 10,000 largest websites have at least one social button or plug-in installed. Adding social sharing icons seems like a no-brainer, yet many websites are not even leveraging upon this technology to make sharing their content on the top social media as easy as clicking. They fail to understand that it is essential to make social sharing as effortless as possible.

Which social sharing button to choose?

Facebook and Twitter are dominating the online market, when it comes to choosing social sharing buttons on the homepages of a site. Around 50.3% of the 10,000 largest sites are displaying Facebook links and plug-ins, while another 42.5% have Twitter links. Google+ share buttons are found on 8.1% of the websites and LinkedIn buttons were displayed on just 4% of the sites. However, these two sites are more likely to gain popularity in the coming days. In addition, share buttons for Delicious and Digg are found in several larger websites.

Try using a catch-all service like AddThis or ShareThis to offer readers an easy way to handle sharing. Make sure that individual buttons are more compelling and less confusing. Facebook and Twitter offer share services where you need to install buttons and code on your own blog/ site. And embed this social sharing option on everything you offer – be it an article, a video, infographics, case studies or success stories, e-books and white papers or any other stand-alone content.

Some more suggestions!

Also, try to create some winged content to soar across the social web. People usually share content that they find useful, informative, or just plain fun. So have some content that can create social buzz. Also, make sure your site’s settings allow sharing the content that you have uploaded. If you want to extent yourself a little, you may allow others to use your content for corporate brochures, but with an attribution. This will increase your social exposure up to a great extent. In addition, there are some online license providers who help you to define the terms of what people can/ cannot do with your website content, apart from sharing them on social networking sites.

Some websites also use a logo or watermark (make sure they are tastefully embedded) in the corner of the photos you are uploading on your website. And with the social sharing buttons you are encouraging others to use your photos in their digital work while giving you the attribution, thus increasing your social mention.

The monster Infographic of Social Sharing

The Social Sharing Trends Infographic

Source: summify

The social media sharing habits of men and women – Infographic

Get Creative with Your Online Lead Generation Techniques

How to get leads online for your business? Be creative .

Just as a digital marketer has more tools up their sleeves, like automated online weaponry, consumers are sharper about rejection as well! You throw up online lead generation lines like “Click Here” and “Try It Now” and the consumer immediately thinks, “Here’s Some Spam for You!” In the next second, the browser tab is shut down and the potential consumer moves elsewhere.

Your life as an online marketer becomes tougher. You have to generate leads online but at the same time, you have to get creative about how you approach your potential consumers. They must not feel at any point that they are being leveraged for your profit. The moment they get wind of your plans, they will do everything they can to make it go kaput!

What you need to do is slip in some online lead generation techniques that are well-disguised. The calls to action must come in naturally embedded and not as something distracting. It is the Holy Grail of online marketing to achieve that kind of finesse in your marketing messages. Try too hard and it shows; try too little and it slips away! After some soul searching, here are some creative ways to develop leads online.

The Use of Slide-Ins and Pop-Ups

Using pop-ups and slide-ins, especially the former, is now considered as a strict no-no. I would like to differ here, only slightly though! I come to this point of view by looking closely at why pop-ups and slide-ins are so hated. The foremost reason is that they are irritating and often disrupt the experience of the user. What if pop-ups are developed and used in ways that does not disrupt a user’s experience? Would you still consider them as pariah?

Pop-ups are usually wasted, mainly because they offer no value-add. You can change that around. Give something to your pop-ups that add value to the user’s experience. Then they will look at your pop-ups with fresh eyes and renewed interest. Invest time and effort in developing these pop-ups and inserting them at desired points in the marketing funnel.

The same goes for slide-ins. If you have a text-heavy web page and wish to incorporate a slide-in somewhere, make sure it is lower down the page, after the user has read quite a bit and you can safely assume that the topic interests the reader. A slide-in at this point is more desirable because the user is already interested in your content.

The Natural Path for CTAs

Since we are getting creative here, we should take nothing for granted. This whole idea that Calls to Action or CTAs are best above the fold is now a topic of debate! This was accepted as the norm all along but nowadays with more technicalities coming to the fore, their invincibility is no longer a given. What is more acceptable is that these CTAs must be placed on the natural eye path of the user.

To get a drift, scan a web page casually. Mark the areas where your eyes fall on the page. Pick out these zones. These are spots where the user is more likely to notice before the others. Place your CTAs here for best effect.

Make Sure People Hear what You Do New

Often, launches and new campaigns take off on a tangent. That way, you may get across to newer consumer bases but fail to tap the more viable, existing ones! You are so focused on a target group beyond your marketing arena that you fail to take care of those sitting right under your umbrella. This is when you can generate online leads in an easier manner from these existing consumers!

Make it a thumb rule to back up every new product or service launch or campaigns with extensive blog posts and web content on your existing content channels. Let people know what you are doing. For example, a short post of about 200 words is enough to inform people. Write it like an ad copy with catchlines, et al. This will earn you valuable eyeballs for your new launch.

If you have other creative ideas, go ahead and write them here. We can discuss them together!

Smarter and Cheaper Ways to Online Lead Generation

How to do the online lead generation in smarter & cheaper ways?

This is a highly competitive market that we are talking about here. Look at the ecommerce domain that is flourishing around you. The smaller fish in the pond are in mortal danger of being consumed by the larger whales like Amazon and eBay. Unless they do something drastic and different, they are bleeding dry, mainly because these behemoths of the ecommerce industry are adding more products to their shelves each day. With their ability to offer fat discounts and offers, as an e-retailer, you are left with little options in the hat.

The Problems of e-Retailers

Before we discuss ways to generate online leads at a cost lower than what you are doing right now, let us look at the problems of e-retailers. Once you know the right questions, it will be a lot easier to find perfect solutions to them. The core problems are:

• Strategy: Very few ecommerce ventures get the right synergy going across the board. For online lead generation, you use a number of platforms and strategies. That includes emails, sales pages, landing pages, websites, PPC, etc. There has to be a cohesive glue that patches up all these strands together in a perfect knot. Otherwise, the entire operation will prove counterproductive, with each channel pulling away into different directions.
• Nurture Contacts: This is so important and yet so neglected. This is a time when brand loyalty will come to naught unless you nurture contacts. There is always a better offer for the consumer, a better deal and a fatter discount. Someone or the other is providing them that! How do you hold on to your dear customers from eroding away? You nurture them. You engage in meaningful interaction and spam emails do not count in that!
• Track: Monitoring customers and their buying patterns, including how they look at your websites, can be key to your online lead generation. Customers like to use their tablets or even smartphones to check up brands. Look into their touch-points with your brand. You also have to map out what kind of devices and locations they are checking up from.
• Attract: What is the best way to increase subscription to your email newsletter? Get them to sign up! Most brands spend a lot of money sending emails or newsletters to subscribers. They often ignore the harsh reality that most of these recipients do not care to read through the emails, even when they are customers and not just potential ones. The reason: they have not really subscribed to the feed. You have stitched them up! Attract, don’t impose.

Solutions to the Problems of Online Lead Generation

Now that we know the problems and you have identified your brand to face at least one of them or more than that, let us look at some probable solutions.

• Value-added Content: This is most discussed yet most violated! Potential customers can be coaxed into the subscriber list for your emailed offers only through content that gives them value for their time. You can cut down your online lead generation cost substantially by emailing to only those who actually ask for your emails. Cut out the pride of having a lengthy database when they do not really do anything for your profit margin. Use value-added content and send them to people who want to read it.
• Monitor: Why did the customer abandon an e-shopping cart midway? Why is another customer checking up only one particular segment of your website? These are the answers that suggest a degree of consumer behavior which can help you hit the right spot. You get to the details of whatever your customers are thinking, not what a marketing guru wants you to think! Nurture your consumers by engaging with them through these little breakthroughs. Resolve their queries, even when they are not asking you.
• Social Media: Use the social media for what it stands for: a treasure-trove of information about customers and their tastes. Find out what they are doing online and attune your marketing messages accordingly. If there is no demand for a product, create it! Tap that latent desire in the customer to possess something wonderful and elegant. Social media is not about sending friends requests or getting people to ‘Like’ your page anymore! You have to go beyond it and use it for targeted content marketing.

The Final Word

Though things are more complicated and rough than it was a couple of years back, there is hope in technology. It is not way easier to save money by using tools available to cut out wastage of resources.

Even when you are sprinkling out water, there is a way to ensure which drop lands on whose head. Online lead generation is about finding that way!

Online Lead Generation Forms: Using Them Better

You need to streamline your online lead generation forms and also follow some other steps for better impact. Here are some tips.

Online lead generation forms are used to gather data about potential consumers who show a liking for your products and services. Such forms, though essential from the company’s point of view, seem like a pain for many online users! As a result, most tend to shy away from filling them up. You may be losing out on business revenue because your online lead generation form is long, cumbersome and tedious for users to fill up all the fields. You need to streamline your form and also follow some other steps for better impact. Here they are:

Steps to use online lead generation forms

• Snip it Down: Cut down on fields in your online form. You don’t need to know certain details about the potential customer at the very onset. Do not include them in your form. Keep only fields which are absolutely necessary to process the enquiry. The shorter the form, the easier it is for the users to fill up and the more they are inclined to do so. Long, winding forms tire out visitors and they skip the form.
• Position It: The placing of the online form is integral to its success. Always place the online lead generation form above the fold. Users are more likely to fill up forms if they don’t have to scroll down to find it. Placing it above the fold will also ensure that users know that there is a form that they can fill up to contact you. Otherwise they might simply leave the page without scrolling, assuming that finding the form will be an uphill task.
• Cursory Matters: Auto-fill cursors work well for online lead generation forms. By that, it is meant that the cursor that works as a cue for the user to type in must be on the first field of the form. This helps to increase the conversion rate as users like it when they can start off typing immediately without having to click anywhere. That also resolves the problem of the user failing to decide which field to fill up first.
• History Repeats: If the user has filled up the same form before, the predictive input must offer that value when the user wants to type in again. The prompt will be useful for users who don’t want to spell it out again. It also saves time on the part of the user and you get to keep the history of what the users are typing in.

How to Use On-Demand Content for Lead Generation

What is on-demand content?

On-demand content & lead generation: Lead generation is a tough game these days, and growing tougher by the day. The attention span of your audience out there is growing thinner. Their mind is being pulled into several directions, forcing their hand to prioritize tasks. Unless they have paid handsomely for something, or they are in real urgent need of it, your audience is shying away from content that you are badgering them with.

The case I’m going to make for on-demand content will be simpler with the use of an analogy. Have you noticed how people use Netflix and other on-demand video channels online? Watching TV shows on the telly at designated hours of the day, or evening, is slowly becoming a thing of the past! People are not willing to wait for a particular time to watch their favorite shows. Instead, they want the video content delivered so that they can watch it at their own convenient time.

This is very similar to recording sports or TV shows on the DTH recorder so that you can watch the recorded content at a more suitable hour. Using such content frees up your schedule.

From the perspective of the content creator, the probability of a content being viewed shoots up sharply. Take the case of several webinars that you subscribe but don’t show up for! Despite the trouble that the webinar organizers go through to put the whole thing together, it rarely pays rich dividends because subscribers don’t bother to turn up.

This works backwards as well! When you organize a webinar as a lead generation tool, the low turnout and feeble response undoes your hard work. However, if you put up the content as an on-demand format, people can watch it as per their convenience. This makes more sense as an online lead generation tool than live webinars. If your audience cannot show up at a particular time, you have to show up at theirs! It’s as simple as that.

There are various benefits of creating on-demand content to generate leads online.

I have organized and participated in webinars and I write this from personal experience. Each time there is a drop in link or the microphone goes for a toss, (Once there was a power outage as well!) there are tremors in the heart!

Technical glitches are just around the corner for live events. Despite your best efforts, these will crop up. Some are beyond your control. These do not happen for on-demand content. You can fine-tune your work just the way you want, keeping all variables under your control.

The opportunities for lead generation in on-demand content are much more than in webinars. Usually, you can generate leads through webinars at the end of the session, through registrations.

For on-demand formats, you have more chances to do so, including exit pages inviting them for the next session. You can have registration turnstiles at the end of every on-demand episode. It’s like having a door in each room, rather than a single door for all the rooms.

You have more chances to boost the production value of your videos through the on-demand feature. You can try out crowd-sourcing to pool opinions and ideas. If you have already produced webinars, you must have an idea of what works and what received more responses. For your on-demand content, highlight those aspects. Develop a production plan and work on it. The thumb rule is simple: show what people want to see. Once you have hit that target, you can use the attention you have already bagged to showcase what you want them to see.

On-demand video content is a new way of generating leads for sure. You have to master it sometime down the line. As far as I see it, unless you change the dynamics of your game with the situation, 2019 will set you further back.

On-demand videos put the users first, something that even giants like Google and Facebook are striving to attain every single day. Once people get a hang of what you are putting out, they will seek you out. That will be when your lead generation initiative will go on an auto-pilot mode.

So long then! 

What can be said in the end? 

Lastly, the lead generations are a recommended way of reaching out to new consumers and creating better results for the respective brand. The method has more potential than cold marketing strategies, and deliver better results. What do you say? What techniques have been effective for you? Write in comments.

Related reading: How to generate more traffic to your website?