Acquiring leads is one of the most important targets of any business. In a recent survey by Hubspot magazine, 63% of marketers addressed “generating more leads” as their number one challenge. Generating leads is a fundamental point in a person’s journey to becoming a loyal customer. Here is everything you need to know about lead generation.

What Is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is a marketing process of attracting prospects and capturing their interest in your company’s product or service by using outbound and inbound strategies. A lead means a person who is interested in your company’s products or services. Some examples of lead generators are live events, job applications, blog posts, online content, and coupons.

What Is Lead Generation In Digital Marketing?

The initiation of consumer interest into your company’s products or services through digital marketing efforts is lead generation in digital marketing. Lead generation in digital marketing may be done through cold calls, cold emails, blog posts, etc. Moreover, by creating newsletters and online visitor guides, you can keep track of who is engaging with them or downloading them and adapt your lead generation strategies according to that.

How To Use Leads?

A very useful tactic to use leads is to send trigger-based cold emails to your customers. If a person opts-in on your blog, it is considered a lead. Suppose, you set a trigger for when a person will opt-in on your blog or website. The way it works is, just as someone opts-in on your blog post, it immediately sends a cold email to that customer. As a result, he will receive an automated pre-written email promoting your company’s products. Again, you can send multiple emails to the same person after a certain interval of time. This can drive your sales like no other.

But, a software tool is required to automate these email deliveries. OutreachBin is such a software that can manage multiple email accounts and campaigns while you build long-term relationships with your customers. It will also take care of sending trigger and time-based email sequences. Moreover, it provides reply tracking, integrations with CRMs and prospect profiles. Not only that, but it also warms up emails for better deliverability. Also, OutreachBin creates your very own customized prospect lists based on your open rates, email campaigns, and replies.

You can learn how to connect your opt-in forms to OutreachBin campaigns through an automated setup. Here is a detailed video below.

What Are The Types Of Lead Generation?

There are two major types of lead generation- outbound (cold calls, advertising, email marketing, etc.) and inbound (SEO, social media, PPC, etc.). Now, it can be confusing to understand what kind of lead generation to focus on to get the most benefits.

What Type Of Lead Generation To Focus On?

First, you have to understand what kind of customers you're trying to reach. Social media marketing is a lucrative way to generate leads. But, there are many customers that don’t use social media and thus, don’t use it to make purchase decisions. Social media marketing is great for B2C (business to customer) services and products. But it doesn't work very well for B2B (business to business) products. You cannot find a lot of CFOs using Twitter for purchasing a breakthrough accounting system. Generating leads for this sector would require you to adopt various outbound strategies.

What Is A Lead Generation Company?

A lead generation company collects business and consumer information that they can sell on to a business that requires new leads. These companies categorize the consumer and business data to make it relevant to the target market. They also organize leads depending on levels of warmth.

How Do Lead Generation Companies Work?

These companies offer a number of services like-

• In house marketing teams
• Database marketing
• Business and professional information databases.

They have the means to personalize and target campaigns for your business and have the reach that you probably wouldn't have had on your own. These companies gather leads by building an optimized website and maintaining it to attract customers. Then they acquire those customers’ information via a contact form. Moreover, the databases that they accumulate through these pieces of information help them identify the leads with a buying intent.

How Much Should You Pay For A Lead?

The cost of a lead varies from industry-to-industry. According to Madison Logic’s infographic on the cost of a lead, to reach marketing people, you have to pay around $35 per contact. But, in the healthcare sector, the average lead cost is $65 per person. You can also calculate the cost of a lead.

How To Calculate The Cost Of A Lead?

You just have to divide the total cost of your lead generation program by the number of leads generated.

Again, there are other factors that affect the cost of a lead. Such as media placement or distribution cost, purchasing or renting a telemarketing list, hiring an agency to assist with your outbound strategies, etc.

How To Get Into Lead Generation?

• First, you have to learn the basics like what a lead is, the most common types of leads, main stages in the lead generation process, etc.
• Also, you have to avoid making common mistakes.
• Check the quality of every one of your generated leads and nurture them.
• Use multiple digital marketing channels.
• Collect as much information about your leads as you can.
• Figure out ways that best meet your leads’ needs.

Another important point to get into lead generation is to keep your eyes on statistics. To become a professional lead gen marketer, you should develop a habit of monitoring your work results every day. But, an important tip is to not overanalyze. Here are some metrics that you can monitor depending on your goal.

• Performance metrics: Click-through rate, conversion rate.
• Sales metrics: Win rate, sales qualified leads.
• Marketing metrics: Marketing qualified leads, return on investment.
• Cost metrics: Cost per acquisition, cost per click, cost per lead, cost per impression.

These are just a few tips for getting started on generating leads.

Lead Generation Jobs

Lead generation is pretty expensive. So, when a company is new to the business and has no experience in generating leads, they tend to hire experts in this sector. With the help of these experts, companies generate highly qualified leads as well as grow their revenue in a manner that is cost-effective. If you are in search of a lead generation job, look for proven independent agencies and professionals who are selling their services on Fiverr.

You can also look for freelance lead generation jobs on Upwork and Freelancer. Check the list of providers’ credentials and past experience by browsing through the category. You can also just post a buyer request stating your budget and requirements and then sift through the providers’ lists who get back at you.

How To Set Up A Lead Generation Campaign?

1.Figure Out Your Target Audience

You cannot generate leads efficiently unless you understand what your target audiences are. For this, you can follow these steps.

• Interview your best clients to know what their goals are, where they spend their time online, the process they go through before hiring an agency, their biggest challenges, etc.
• You can also do industry research like AMI’s Hiring and Firing Insights Report. This will help you understand what factors most businesses take into account when deciding whether to contract work out to agencies like yours.
• After learning everything you can about your prospects, you can mold your lead generation marketing campaign to best suit their likings.
• You can also think about what your core offering is. For example, for a product like OutreachBin, you could focus on brands that are looking to invest in email marketing and email automation.
• Understand what you bring to the table for your target audience. Figure out what makes your business unique from all the other competing businesses. Have a unique value proposition to separate yourself from the competition.

2.Set Your Campaign Goals

For a successful marketing campaign, you need to start with goals- specific ones. You can't just say that generating as many leads as possible is your goal. This will lead you to nowhere.

• Use your past performances as a benchmark to set up what number of visits, conversion rate, leads, etc. you want to hit in a particular timetable.
• But first, you have to figure out the worth of each lead to your agency. Only then you'll be able to determine the value of your average customer and how many you need to hit your goals.
• After that, keep a track of how many of your leads are converted into clients on average, then compare it with industry benchmarks to estimate your rate of conversion. We will discuss more on How Many Leads To Generate Per Month.

3. Determine Offers That Will Attract Your Client

Different clients find different sorts of offers to be useful. Like, a small business owner who is searching for social media marketing tips will look for offers completely different than one who is comparing agencies to outsource to. The former business owner would find your ebook, “50 Twitter Marketing Hacks From The Experts” to be ideal. Whereas, the latter prospect would find a case study showcasing your agency’s effectiveness more relevant. For creating a great offer, you need to know who’s going to be using it and at what stage of the buyer’s journey they are. For example, besides creating valuable content, Moz also develops tools like Mozbar and Open Site Explorer. Hubspot creates templates for creating buyer personas.

If you need a little help, this survey from Regalix questioned 285 B2B marketers about the best offer at each stage of the buyer’s journey. The answers are:

Awareness:

• Blog post: 81%
• Social media: 83%
• Infographics: 81%

Consideration:

• Websites: 75%
• White Papers: 78%
• Web-based events: 72%

Purchase:

• Case studies: 47%
• Videos: 39%
• Website:56%
• Research Reports: 39%

These offers can also be tools and free consultations and not just content.

Now that you know what you're going to offer to your prospects, build your post-click landing page and you're good to go.

How Many Leads To Generate Per Month?

This number varies from business to business and there are some varying factors that will have an influence.

Annual Revenue Target

You have to figure out how much revenue percentage are the leads generated by your company responsible for. There are some companies that have a number of revenue streams, so these numbers should be identified before starting a campaign. This determines the number of leads your company has to hit.

Your Sales Cycle Length

One of the most important steps when planning a campaign is to be realistic about your sales cycle length. Within your ideal timeframes, not all leads will convert into customers. You need to figure out how long it takes to convert a lead into a customer and then build this into projections.

Size of Your Business

Depending on average sales value, bigger businesses have larger revenue targets that equate to more required leads.

After you know the average value of your sales, it's easy to figure out how many customers are required to achieve your revenue target per month.

Can You Make Money With Lead Generation?

A lead generation business is a very lucrative venture. Generally leads pay very well. If you run a targeted site and deliver quality leads, you can earn a lot of money. You also have to pick the right programs for this. You’ll get anywhere from $5-50 per lead. Not bad.

How To Generate Free Sales Leads?

1.Influencer Marketing

This strategy brings brands and companies together with influencers who have a niche, service, loyal followers, content, etc. You don't necessarily need to offer cash to influencers to promote your products. Some are perfectly happy to do so in exchange for a shoutout to your followers, a discount on your product, or a free license to your software. In fact, micro-influencers can be even more profitable than influencers with a huge number of followers. According to a study by HelloSociety, micro-influencers have 60% higher engagement, drive on average 22.2% more weekly conversions, and are 6.7 times more cost-effective per management. To approach your influencers in the right way, follow these instructions:

• Do enough research on the influencer before reaching out to them.
• Appreciate their work before making a pitch.
• No matter what you offer, be it money or your service, make sure to state it clearly to them.
• Mention all the relevant information to them, but make the message concise.
• Leave scope for further negotiation and be respectful of their opinion.
• If they don't reply to your first message, follow-up.

2.Guest Posting

Guest posting helps to further improve your reach and generate more leads by allowing you to tap into other companies’ audiences. In terms of lead generation guest posting has enormous benefits:

• Reach a brand new audience through your guest posts
• Increased brand awareness
• Possibly rank higher in google
• Be seen as an authority by others

Here is a great example of guest posting done right, Buffer’s Leo Widrich, with his constant guest postings, drove 100,000 signups to his company in a span of nine months.

3. Cold Calling And Cold Emailing

Cold calling and cold emailing are two of the most effective ways to generate free leads. The advantages of cold calling and cold emailing are great:

• You can master your sales pitch
• Can make a connection by gaining relevant information
• Reach new customers
• Can increase brand awareness

However, it can get cumbersome to do it on your own, and you have to employ more people in turn for managing your cold emails. So, even though doing it yourself can be free of cost, the best way is to use software to manage all your cold emails automatically with a few extra bucks. The all-inclusive pack by OutreachBin comes with unlimited emails per month, 40 email warmups per day, upcoming API, automation and sequences, no-code email editor, unlimited team members, and a lot more in only $39 per month.

4. Content Marketing

Content marketing helps to create and distribute educational content about your domain. Through content marketing, your primary goal is not to sell products but to create authority and trust around your business. Here are 6 steps to learn how to create a blog:

1. Pick a creative blog name to emphasize what your blog posts will be about.
2. Customize the design of your blog template to match your style.
3. Share your expertise through your blog.
4. Connect your domain with a personalized domain name and free web posting.
5. launch your blog.
6. Share it and engage with your followers.

5.Review Platforms

These platforms are completely user driver. So, you'll need to:

• Keep the reviews coming by giving it your all through networking.
• Convince customers to leave reviews.
• Have a discount on your product or offer a gift card, if needed.
• Be on hand to respond to the review and follow-up.

These are all that you need to know about lead generation. We hope none of your questions regarding this topic have remained unanswered.