Nowadays, the digital era has transformed the way in which we do business. Digitally, the business promotion has been on a continuous trend from campaigns, newspaper advertisements to digital marketing. Every old and new business brand is focused on the way of promoting its brand to potential customers and as such, there is a continuous adaptation to new strategies and techniques in the digital marketing platform.
That is why today, terms like lead generation, social media marketing, search engine marketing are very important to every business brand that wants to stay top of its game and these terms are synonymous with one another.
When we talk about lead generation in digital marketing, we simply talk about the initialization of a customer’s interest (lead) or inquiry into products or services of a business. This is why lead generation has been at the forefront of every digital marketing plan and is very important to every business brand
WHY IS LEAD GENERATION IMPORTANT?
Lead generation is important for businesses especially in a B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to customer) relationship and here are some reasons why lead generation is important in digital marketing:
- Lead generation initializes healthy business growth: It is now paramount that without leads, there is no business growth. Referrals are not enough to make your business grow the way you want it and as such a way to attract and convert potential prospects into customers is by lead generation. This expands and facilitates the growth of your business.
- Through the process of lead generation, you easily find qualified leads: Lead generation is the solution to finding qualified leads. The process of cold calling potential leads rarely results in a qualified lead. Most times it leads to people that are not interested in your brand or even feel you are invading their privacy.
- Lead generation offers transition between customers: Through lead generation, there is a natural trend in which customers pass through. Their journey can be traced, followed and the pattern monitored. This gives you an idea of the relationship between you and your customers and areas that need to be looked into.
TRENDING LEAD GENERATION IDEAS TO ADOPT
- Make use of the right lead generation channels as your marketing strategy: Building a business strategy that works for your business is one of the ‘must adopt’ marketing strategies you need. You must also create a working lead generation marketing strategy and this can only be achieved by encompassing multiple lead generation tactics across different channels to ensure you reach the widest range of potential customers.
If you are operating with a marketing budget, it is important that you don’t focus it solely on a particular channel like video marketing. You may be missing out on opportunities to reach customers in multiple places.
1.Define and set a realistic digital marketing budget: You need to have a set budget you are working with for digital marketing concerning your business brand. This means you need to be realistic about your goals, tactics, targeting options and the ROI (return on investment) you are expecting to see.
If you are working with a lead generation company, they can help you determine the right digital marketing budget to meet your goals. They also offer you insight into different marketing strategies to adopt and tell you whether your goals are realistic for the budget you have. Also know that in a lead generation it largely involves a P2P (pay to play) tactics, meaning you have to invest some money to make more money.
2.Be ready to always adjust your targets: Targeting is very important as far as lead generation is concerned. The more specific you get with your targeting, the more the price is likely to increase. It is important to look at your existing targets and know what is getting you the most new customers.
At this point, you ask yourself some questions like; are there any groups you are targeting that isn’t working for you? Could you stop targeting them and look for new priorities? Lead generation comes down to trials and error and it is important to know how and what you can play around with to improve your results within your marketing budget.
3.Organic + Paid marketing approach should be your focus: There is a need to make your business information seen over and over again by prospective customers, which is why it is important to invest in marketing across multiple channels. Making an organic approach such as a great SEO strategy, engaging in social media marketing can boost the effectiveness of your advertising efforts.
4.Work with a lead generation company: Working with lead generation companies helps you because they act as your marketing partners and help you in different areas such as; finding the right strategy, adjusting your target, setting your digital marketing budget, and running a paid plus organic strategy.
Working with a lead generation company helps you to save cost because if you want to run the marketing yourself you will spend a lot of time learning how to engage the various marketing tactics, managing them across multiple channels, optimizing them, and more. Also, a lead generation company has full support for your different marketing tactics. Their team supports your paid search, social media marketing (SEM), email marketing, and more.
5.Produce a promotional video: A greater percentage of marketers worldwide believe that video content is one of the best strategies that have a good ROI (return on investment). While written content and images can be great in generating interest in your company, the best lead generation ideas are often those that appeal to a wider range of customers. Creating videos demonstrates what you are selling and it gives your customers an inside look at exactly how your product will solve their problem.
6.Make use of a lead magnet: Lead magnets in lead generation refer to those irresistible offers that essentially bribe customers into checking what you have to offer. We could look at lead magnets and refer to them as bait if we assume marketing as the fishing rod. Lead magnets include toolkits, videos & webinars, free trials, discounts, etc.
