To keep your startup afloat, you need customers to get revenue, but where do you get customers?
Every business starts out with quality leads that they nurture and convert into customers. Lead generation is especially vital for businesses looking to establish themselves and grow their customer base. So, you need a robust lead generation strategy to improve your overall sales performance.
Supercharge your sales efforts and drive more clients to your business with the best lead generation techniques. Plus, learn how lead generation outsourcing can further boost your sales team’s success and set a strong foundation for business growth.
- Lead generation is a crucial point in a person’s journey to becoming a happy customer of your business. It’s reaching out to people interested in your product or service to fill up your sales funnel.
- Business resources should be used wisely so you need to be strategic with your lead generation techniques to close sales without wasting time, money, and effort.
- With outsourced lead generation services, you can benefit from the expertise and resources of the provider and focus on other aspects of your business. It’s great for businesses looking to improve their sales process and easily scale it up or down as needed.
What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is the sales process of attracting and converting potential customers (known as leads) into paying customers. Also called lead gen, it’s reaching out to people interested in your product or service to fill up your sales funnel.
For example, companies that use business-to-business or B2B lead generation collect a potential customer’s data (e.g., name, email, company name, and job title) to use for targeted ads and sales pitches.
All efforts that make a person consent to you contacting them or remarketing to them are lead generation techniques. This can be done through emails, online content like blog posts and videos, coupons, newsletters, and live events.
Why is Lead Gen Important?
Lead generation helps businesses of all sizes find and reach out to potential customers. This, in turn, helps them close a deal and make a profit to continue operations and grow their business.
B2B lead generation presents a longer sales cycle so to avoid wasting resources, your lead generation strategy should be well thought out. By getting high-quality leads, you’ll know what to prioritize and allocate your resources to the most promising prospects.
Lead gen can also help companies, especially startups and small businesses, build a strong customer base. With qualified leads, you’ll get a loyal customer base that can supply a steady flow of money and help drive word-of-mouth marketing.
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Best Lead Generation Techniques for Your Business
To put it simply, lead generation kicks off your sales funnel. It’s a crucial point in a person’s journey to becoming a happy customer of your business. That’s why you must apply the right lead gen techniques to your sales efforts.
Here are eight proven methods for getting more B2B leads for your business:
1. Produce A Strong Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is valuable content offered to potential customers in exchange for their contact details. The captured info can then be used to send targeted marketing messages and nurture leads into actual customers.
Some examples of irresistible lead magnets are:
- Free trials – allow a prospect to try a product or service before they commit to buying it. This may come in the form of a limited-time trial period, a trial version with limited features, or a full-featured trial with a time limit.
- Discounts – offer significant deals on a product or service to incentivize prospects to provide their contact details and enter the top of funnel leads.
- Live demo – a practical exhibition and explanation of a product or service in real-time, commonly through an online video platform. It allows prospects to see it in action and ask questions about how it works.
- Free content – a useful knowledge resource that is easy to access and consume, as well as relevant to your target audience and aligns with your products or services. This can be blogs, templates, ebooks, white papers, infographics, videos, or podcasts.
- Webinars – online seminars or workshops that commonly consist of a presentation followed by a Q&A session hosted by an expert in a certain niche.
2. Create An Outreach System
Outreach systems are a means to connect with ideal customers and establish a relationship with them. There are different lead generation techniques that startups can use for an outreach strategy such as:
- Direct Mail: the earliest known direct marketing campaign wherein physical mail (e.g. brochures and flyers) are sent to the prospects’ given addresses to spark interest in the business.
- Cold Calling: a B2B marketer calls prospects on the phone usually to introduce the business and its products or services. B2B cold calling is most commonly used in outbound sales.
- Email Outreach: targeted email lead generation campaigns are sent to prospects to coax them to go to your website. This generates interest in a business and builds links to support its SEO strategy.
- Social Media Outreach: uses platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to connect with prospects and build relationships with them.
3. Build Landing Pages and Forms
A landing page is a standalone web page designed to encourage people to take a specific action such as signing up or making a purchase. This allows you to collect data you can use for your email list, ad campaigns, and more.
It’s a highly effective lead generation technique compared to the website homepage which may have many goals and distractions. There are four factors you should consider when building a great landing page:
- Web Design: The landing page should be accessible, easy to navigate, and visually appealing to keep people from closing the page.
- Web Content: The landing page should clearly tell the readers about the business’s products or services, their benefits, and why the visitor should take the desired action.
- Call-to-Action (CTA): The landing page should have direct and compelling instructions to make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, or download a resource, among others.
- Forms: The landing page should have a questionnaire that captures the prospects’ contact details, like their name and email address.
4. Connect With Engaged Communities
Lead generation techniques like lead magnets, outreach systems, and landing pages are useless if no one sees them. That’s why you need to tap into engaged communities for a broader audience reach.
Ask your prospects during customer development conversations where they get their information from. In most cases, it’s from publications, influencers, and online communities.
Find out where your prospects are usually spending their time online and engage with communities relevant to your niche. This is a great way to get your content and/or message across a wider audience or an entirely new market.
5. Use Social Media
Social media plays a big role in your online lead generation efforts.
A business should build and grow its online presence to be easily found on the internet and establish credibility. You can do this organically or spend money to show your message to the right people.
Make sure to optimize your brand’s social media pages from the business profile picture to the bio. Interact with your target audience to build rapport. On top of that, you can use paid promos and ads to boost your brand’s online visibility on Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
6. Practice A/B Testing
Also known as split testing, A/B testing is a method of comparing two campaigns to know which one performs better. It’s a helpful tool to optimize your lead generation techniques such as landing pages and email marketing campaigns.
A/B testing will keep you from wasting time, money, and effort on a lead gen plan with little to no benefit. That said, make sure you know what you’re testing and why before you start to come to a definite conclusion.
7. Turn to Remarketing
Out of those who view your website, 96% of visitors leave without ever converting to sales qualified leads or actual customers.
With remarketing, a business can show ads to these people once more through the use of cookies. Also known as retargeting, it reconnects a business with a prospective customer who may not have completed a purchase or taken the desired action.
You can then further personalize their ads based on the user’s previous interactions with your business. It’s a great way to boost all of your other startup sales and marketing efforts.
8. Tap into Outsourced Lead Generation Services
B2B lead generation and appointment setting can take up a great deal of time and money, especially for startups and small businesses that may already be stretched thin. Outsourced lead generation can be a great tactic for a business looking to improve its lead gen efforts and grow its customer base.
By getting business lead generation services, you can benefit from the expertise and resources of the provider and focus on other aspects of your business. It is also a low-cost method that can be easily scaled up or down as needed, without having to invest in extra resources.
Get More B2B Leads and Drive Your Sales Success with Magic
B2B lead generation is an important part of any business’s success. There are many lead generation techniques that you can use to attract and convert business leads.
Don’t be afraid to experiment to see what works best. It may take some trial and error but the effort will be worth it in the long run!
Partner with lead generation companies to help your sales team find qualified leads while they focus on closing deals. Magic provides skilled sales professionals with the best lead generation solutions for your business.
Delegate your lead generation efforts to a virtual sales assistant along with other sales work such as appointment setting, data scrubbing, business development, and more. Book a call with us to learn how Magic can help grow your business!
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