If you’re a business owner, leads is one of your biggest assets that you want to continue growing through effective lead generation strategies. Your lead is like the fuel for your business without which you might as well be standing still.
If we talk about lead generation in its simplest form, it is a systematic way of getting more potential clients on your list to build a connection with them and communicate with them about your products and services.
The business strategists in 2022 say lead management is an art that not everyone knows. And rightly so. With growing awareness of internet usage and expansion in e-commerce among every common man, it is becoming more challenging for companies to generate a lead that will actually help them with getting more paying customers.
Whether you're new to it or have been practicing lead management, we kid you not when we say this is going to be your go-to place for getting the best tips on lead management.
3 Proven Ways to Generate Leads
Businesses generate leads using different strategies, there are three common ways/strategies that have been working best for business owners to generate leads.
- Lead generation through search engines
- Content marketing
- Social media lead generation
While each has its own benefits, it also depends on the type of business you own and your target market. You can choose any of the above-mentioned sources and generate a lead for your business to ensure growth.
With a good lead generation source, you also need to make sure you have a strategy that goes side by side with your medium and boosts up your efforts for generating the lead.
Lead Generation Tools Defined
In a little bit we’ll discuss managing your leads effectively and the do's and don'ts of the process. But when it comes to lead generation, there are certain tools that you need to know about in order to make good use of them and minimize the workload for yourself.
Lead generation tools are basically apps, websites and strategies that help you generate leads effectively.
When you plan on gathering information about your probable customers, you’ll have to collect all their contact information to reach out to them about your products and services. You’re not just looking at the number of people visiting your website but also gathering information about them, using lead generation tools.
6 Common Types of Lead Generation Tools
Businesses with different goals have different requirements for lead generation, so there's no one-in-all tool for lead generation. You can pick on the one that suits you best and continue collecting data for as long as you desire.
Here are some types of lead generation tools that work best for collecting valuable data about your customers.
Fill-In forms
This is one of the most commonly used and conventional ways of lead generation. Whoever visits your website you ask them to fill in some basic information about them and if they’re interested in your products they will leave their details.
A key success factor is to offer them something of value in exchange for their name, email address, phone number, etc.
A common example is to provide a report. Similar to the one you’re reading now. Another example is they can sign up to your list to get a couple sent to them via email.
This list can go on and on. There are many, many different things you can do to provide your website visitors value in exchange for their email and contact information.
Chat tool
Some websites have a “chat with us” option that allows visitors to instantly connect with a respondent and get the desired query answered. This helps websites have more traffic at one time as visitors spend longer time on the website, which leads to better quality lead generation for your business.
Advertisements on social media
One of the most commonly used tools for lead generation these days and rightly so. Social media has made lead generation so much easier. Posting an ad about your business on social media platforms will help you get relevant traffic to your website which will generate a high-quality lead that is most likely to turn into sales for you.
Email address diggers
This is for those who have visited your website but haven't left any traceable information about them. Email address diggers can actually help you find the email addresses of your website visitors and get them on your lead.
Open searching
This is referred to as a random lead search. Gathering information about anyone who may have shown interest in your product or website and generating leads out of it.
CRM (Customer relationship management tools)
This will come in handy for your existing customers, getting back to them and connecting with them to generate future sales.
Selecting the Right Lead Generation Tool(s)
Now that you know about all the different types of lead generation tools, we need to see how does one know which tool is best for them?
Well, there are a few things that can help you assess which tool might work for you and which one won't do much. Here are a few questions that you need to ask yourself while choosing the lead management tool for yourself-
- Is the tool you’re selecting easy to use?
- Does the tool you are using provide easy access to the lead data?
- Does it come under your budget? Affordability is a major factor when selecting the lead generation tool.
- Will it help you target your ideal audience?
All these questions will help you select the right tool for your lead generation.
15 Lead Generation Tips and Strategies
Here are some tips that have been seen practiced by top businesses to generate leads.
Set a Goal
As a business owner, your foremost priority is to generate more sales and build a brand image. But before that, you need to have a defined set of goals that will lead you toward the next step on your ladder.
Some businesses look up for more sales from the same customer and focus on making every customer a returning customer, whereas some target more and more audiences to get as many new customers as they can to generate sales.
Setting up your goal and defining your motive will help you shape your business accordingly. Knowing a well-defined goal for your business leads to effective strategies for lead generation and how your sales turn out from that.
Outline Your Business’s Flow of Lead Generation
Businesses that have proper sales procedures have more chances of generating good leads, but even if you don’t have a significant outline for your business try to create one roughly even if it is manually on a diary or sticky notes.
Try to create spreadsheets for your business defining the step-by-step procedures for your sales that will help you generate more leads.
Define Your Ideal Customer
Once you have rated down your available lead, check for yourself and define your ideal lead out of the lot.
You need to know which chunk of the lead is most important to you and will actually be beneficial for your business. Because by now, we have clearly understood the concept that not every lead is a potential customer.
So filtering out your lead and defining your ideal lead will help you focus on the chunk that is more meaningful for you and your business.
Assess Their Needs
See if the customer's needs are aligned with what your business is providing. Rate them based on the fact that do they really need your product. This will help you assess your lead better.
Know Your Customer’s Budget
Not every potential customer is going to turn into a paying customer because they have their budget and that is what determines their capability of buying your product.
To organize your lead in a better way in order to manage it properly, you can classify customers with a certain budget into a separate category and promote products to them according to their budget.
It’s a very effective way of personalized marketing, where you reach out with a particular product to only those potential customers who seem to have the required budget.
Organizing Lead(s)
Nothing works better for your business than having a well-organized list of details about your potential customers. You have generated lead, be it on your diary or sticky notes, it’s time to get it into a more organized manner and shape it into a proper list.
Here are a few tips on organizing leads and managing them properly:
Shortlisting Your Data
Cleaning up your raw data and deleting any repeated names will help you manage your lead in a more organized way. When you start cleaning up your raw data, you may also lose count of some contacts that have a missing digit or probably a number that does not exist.
Categorizing the Data
You have your data sorted, now to make it even easier for you to work with that data, you can go ahead with assigning personas to your lead. Assigning personas is basically grouping the contacts based on their preferences, geographical location, gender, and different demographics.
Add on Information
Gathering the basic information like name, address, and contact number is essential but when you go the extra mile to know more about your customers, they will feel more connected to your brand and respond in a better way.
For instance, knowing about your buyer’s family members or their pet’s name will give you some extra marks on the promotional campaign and help you get a paying customer.
Rating Lead(s)
Scoring or rating your lead is very important to know better about your sales. Say your website traffic is 100% but the sales are generated from only 30% of that traffic, now this 30% is the main lead that is going to give you more sales in the future while the rest 70% are mainly asking queries and just randomly visiting.
Scoring your lead will help you focus more on the customers that are important and paying you for your business. You can focus on the following aspects of your lead to rate them and know whether they’re capable of converting into a paying customer for you.
Prioritizing Leads
Once you know your customers well and are ready to reach out to them, you can prioritize and touch each persona based on the timeline they’re likely to buy the product.
For instance, reaching out to customers in the United States close to Easter will be more beneficial for you than reaching out to customers in other regions with different cultural beliefs around the same time.
So prioritizing the right lead for the right timeline is going to help your business generate more sales effectively.
Use Effective Keyword Strategies
With the increasing use of social media, is one thing that has been working very well for businesses. Using the right keywords can actually help you generate relevant leads.
People looking for specific products will type in specific keywords in the search bar, you need to keep a track of these keywords that are relevant to your products.
You can rely on a keyword search as it comes in straight from the customer himself, and so you can direct them towards the product they are looking for.
The keyword strategy is actively being used by brands in 2022, especially for SEO-based search engines that can provide you with all the information just with a click.
Use a Fast Loading Landing Page
After you've communicated about your product with your lead, the ball is in their court now. The first thing you want to make sure of is when the customer clicks on your link, the landing page is quickly loaded.
If a landing page takes forever to get loaded, it may leave a bad impact on the customer and they might just go back and close the tab.
The standard optimal time for a webpage is 3 seconds, so anything above that can be frustrating for the customers and can leave you at a loss a customer.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile
This is something that does not even need any further discussion. Honestly, businesses are well aware that 80% or more, people that visit their website are probably on their phones and so ab optimized website that is mobile phone friendly is going to add up to the experience they have on your webpage.
Website optimization is talked out at the time of web designing, so if you're getting it done from a third-party person, make sure to communicate with them openly about this.
Add an Explainer Video to Your Website
Whether your website is technical or user-friendly, a little tour of the website will hurt nobody.
An explanatory video is what the audience is more interested in instead of photos or a step-by-step guide verbally. The FAQs that were answered verbally before are mostly recorded into a short video for people to watch and learn all about the website.
Times are changing and with increasing technology and the growing social media market, it is becoming quite important for businesses to cope with the advancements and follow the trends.
Help Your Lead Get to Know Your Business
When a business generates a lead for a particular promotional campaign they aim to explain it well and communicate the motive to the potential customers.
Helping your lead understand your business better will help you guide them towards decision-making on whether or not they want your product.
There is a term for this called “client management” where you try to create a long-term relationship with your customer by explaining to them about your business and how you work.
Knowing insights help customers build a better trust level for your business.
Make Personalized Proposals
Reaching out to your lead can be time-consuming when you have to send a message to hundreds and thousands of people. But having said that, it is still very important to make every lead of yours feel like they’ve been communicated individually.
A personalized proposal will not only leave a bigger impact on the customer's mind but also make them feel about the then genuine effort you're putting in to reach out to them.
Businesses are focusing on personalized proposals more these days that include the customer's name and location and also adds up something about their recent search history.
This makes the customers more intrigued towards wanting to know more about your brand. And eventually becoming a paying customer.
Never Compromise on Data Quality
While it can be frustrating to collect more leads in a short span of time but collecting useless information will not benefit you anyway.
So do not compromise on the quality of data, skip on the anonymous leads and avoid any unnecessary information. Maintaining quality will not only help you when you're filtering out the data and shortlisting the leads but also help you with reliable information for further work.
Data quality also relies on how effective your lead generation is or you can say, vice versa. If your data is good quality and comprises only information about potential customers that are most likely to make a purchase from you, you will thank yourself later for not compromising on the lead data quality in the first place.
Collecting Accurate Lead Data
Even if you work on all the above-mentioned tips, if your data is not accurate, there will not be any specific use of that lead. To ensure the accuracy of data there are some tips that you can keep in use to help yourself with data collection.
- Make a lead generation form with specific questions and preferably a drop-down menu to select an option from. This helps avoid any text input from the customer and minimizes the chances of error.
- Focus on data protection and make sure to have your data secured.
- Divide your leads into different categories, to automate data once collected.
These tips will help you not only minimize your work on a clearer lead but also have more contacts collected for you to reach out as the chances of having incorrect contacts.
Maintaining the Integrity of Your Lead Data
Once you’ve collected data and your lead is generated, it is important to know here that this data is not a one-time thing. Maintaining previous data can actually help you a lot with future sales.
Businesses that keep a record of old data and work accordingly have been seen to make better progress and grow at a faster pace.
Maintaining lead also includes syncing your data collected from different sources and gathering it up for one collective result. There are ways you can do this automatically rather than manually making lists of data from different apps and gathering them into one.
Lead Management Framework
What is a lead management framework?
In case this is what just popped into your mind, here's what it is!
“A lead management framework is basically a framework that builds a bridge between sales and marketing.”
For starters, sales can gather the data you will need for future marketing and so having a good lead management framework can help you a lot.
It can convert your prospective customers into revenue-generating customers and that's the biggest catch for any business. An effective lead management framework can help your business connect with your buyers at any level of the sales journey.
Your goal is to convert all probable customers to your sales and for that, you need to make sure you are reaching out to the right audiences with your promotional campaign.
4 Keys for Effective Lead Management
We have read about tips for generating and managing leads effectively let's get into some key points that you can take along your journey of lead management to make it more effective.
Pre-Plan Your Ideas
Before you dig into planning for the lead management and the promotional campaigns you are going to use that data for, pre-plan your ideas and think from the customer’s perspective.
Your main focus in the pre-planning phase will be the people and not your project/campaign.
Plan Your Project with Your Team
It is always good to have your ideas shared clearly with your team members. Planning your project with your team will help you manage your lead more effectively. You might also become aware of your shortcomings and what you need to work more on when you plan your project with your team for lead management.
Lead Ranking
A lead that is sure to turn into a sale is one that's ranked highest and so the one with the least chances of converting into a sale is the lowest ranked.
Once you’ve planned your project you start ranking your leads whether or not they qualify for a particular campaign.
Focusing on only leads that are more likely to be suited for a project will help you get a better outcome for the campaign and save costs.
Readily Available Content
The key is to reach out to your lead proactively with the content that should be readily available for this. This is also a part of the planning phase where you plan on what content are you going to reach out to the lead through.
Good content will match with the liking of the lead and most likely route them to the sales portal, converting a lead into a sale.
Using a CRM Tool to Manage Leads
CRM or customer relationship management tool is designed to help you keep a healthy conversation between you and your lead.
With tons of contacts in your lead, it can be hard for you as a business to get back to all the queries and respond to them accordingly.
CRM tool will not only help you with making the right reply on time but also help you with automation which guarantees smooth conversation between you and your lead.
Another plus of using a customer relationship management tool is the fact that it saves a lot of time for you.
Choosing the Right CRM
Things are not the same today as they used to be a decade before. Businesses are looking for quick solutions and just like any other thing, lead generation has also become much faster and easier with the development of many lead management software and apps.
There are platforms that can help you with lead management. These lead management tools include Lead management software, CRM, and customer lifecycle platforms.
Choosing the right tool for yourself is the key. So here's what you need to be mindful of while selecting the right lead management tool for your lead management.
- Identify and know your needs.
- Look up all possible tool options for your lead management.
- Compare and then pick the best option for yourself.
Good lead management software will allow you to work effortlessly with managing your lead. Some businesses also prefer to outsource these services and get the lead managed effectively.
Turning a Lead into a Sale
The final step for any business once the lead is generated and sorted is to convert it into a sale.
For instance, if someone takes a survey for a house renovation, a lead is generated right away, next step from the business is to reach out to the customer and explain to them about their services for home renovation.
Turning a lead into a sale is a tricky yet fun part where you know where to hit on the nail and things are pretty much in your control since you have all the relevant information about the customer to connect with them.
When a person visits your website he’s just a visitor, to collect their data through lead generation tools and then reaching out to them with the right product and service for them is what you need to do to play your part.
7 Mistakes You Want to Avoid
Lead management is an art, and with all the work that goes into it, there are some common mistakes that marketers make that take the entire effort downhill.
But don't worry, we are going to talk about the common lead management mistakes that you need to be aware of and can avoid if you manage your lead mindfully.
Wrong Choice of Product
Before you go ahead with lead generation for a certain product in the XYZ market, you need to make sure that the product is accepted and needed in that market and will be appreciated by your target audience.
The wrong choice of product will only leave you with a failed campaign and get all your efforts wasted due to poor product market fit.
Not Generating Leads Organically
When it comes to sales, you know you are not going to get much benefit from a lead that you have purchased as much as an organically generated lead would benefit you.
An organic lead is one that has shown some interest in your brand and would most likely have interest in your product. Reaching out to someone who has no idea about your brand or no interest in your product will only be a task at your end and comes with a 50/50 chance of conversion from a lead to a customer.
Not Being Creative with Your Campaigns
It's 2022 and people are smart enough to notice a repetitive marketing strategy. Having the same strategy for all your products only make your leads lose interest instead of giving you more sales.
Creative ideas for your campaigns are very important if you are looking to actually make good use of your lead and reach them out with quality content.
Not Using Proper Lead Generation Tools and Strategies
With all the advancements in social media and marketing, there are tons of tools and themes that you can use for your promotional campaigns and to manage your lead.
Not using the right tools for your work can actually be a reason for your campaigns to not do as well as the more updated ones are doing.
Using the Wrong Social Media Platform(s)
One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is, not using the right social media platform. Your campaign will only work if the right platform is selected.
Social media is said to be the biggest exposure space a business gets to have in today’s world. It can help you get a massive amount of leads only if you know which platform is right for your business.
For instance, if your business is for the young generation, say, teenagers, promoting it on TikTok or Instagram will help you run a successful campaign and generate good organic leads.
Low Quality of Lead Generation Form
When we talk about the quality of a lead generation form we are mainly talking about the questions you ask your audiences. They say the quality of answers lies in the question itself, so be mindful about your lead generation form.
Questions with a drop-down menu are recommended to keep it easier for your audiences to answer and to avoid any incorrect information.
Keeping the lead generation form small and to the point may help you generate more leads but if you are looking for quality leads, you may want to keep a detailed form for the information you need to know about your lead.
Mismanaging Your Budget
Businesses invest hundreds and thousands on lead management and promotional campaigns but where to spend more and what to focus on is mainly what matters for a successful campaign.
Managing your budget wisely will help you get a better outcome for your campaign. When we say managing your budget wisely that does not only mean allocating a specific budget for certain things but also includes investing wisely in different social media platforms.
Spending too much on one channel will bring with it higher risk, so play wisely and invest in various platforms and see which one gives you the best result. This way you can make your future investments wisely.
Use These Lead Generation Best Practices To Improve Your Bottom Line
Lead generation and lead management are two things’ businesses are focusing a lot on, these days as this is what directly links to the sales.
Times have changed and now marketing works on an individual level, connecting to your potential customers and reaching out to them with your services.
While lead generation can be a task, there are tools and apps that can help you with effective lead generation and minimize work on your part. Using the right tool for your lead generation is the key.
Social media has been playing a vital role in generating and managing leads for businesses. People with different interests and different preferences have been showing interest in different businesses once they see the ad. One-click from your potential customer brings them to become a "visitor" for you.
Even though lead generation has been in use by businesses to connect with the desired customers for quite a while now, there is still a lot for businesses to learn about it.
With every passing year, advancements in technology and an increase in social media affiliate marketing have changed things for businesses a lot.
Businesses are investing hundreds and thousands in lead generation and lead management only because they know this is the future of marketing.
Investing in lead management can be good for your business only if done wisely. Choose the right social media platform and do not invest all your money in just one source. Try to minimize risk by investing in different platforms and see what works best for you.
Just be mindful about your lead generation tool and manage your lead effectively. Choose the right platform to promote your business and reach out to your lead with the right contract that will make a difference for them.
Businesses that are more open to suggestions and are connecting with their leads in a two-way communication are doing a lot better than the conventional one-way promotional emails.
While you can choose to do it all by yourself, we suggest getting help from professionals and outsourcing a third-party lead manager to work things out more effectively for you.
