As your business grows, finding and nurturing leads will increase your customer base and brand awareness.
In fact, quality leads are so important that Aaron Ross, author of best-selling Predictable Revenue, says they are “like a crystal ball that lets you see future sales performance.”
Putting a CTA on your website and setting up an email list are the first steps, but it’s not just about tacking a call-to-action on the end of your blog post. Instead, it’s about choosing the right tools to intrigue potential leads for a robust, offensive lead generation.
To jumpstart that offensive strategy, here are four ways to generate leads that you can use to come out swinging.
Who can resist a free sample?
Let’s face it: everyone loves a freebie. We want free shipping when we shop and free food when we’re at the food court. Free is something that comes up in Facebook ads examples for lead generation all the time:
Free Slurpees for lucky Australians!
There is a documented psychological response to free products and samples that can be harnessed as a powerful marketing tool. Here, even though you don’t get them free until you’ve bought six, it is still more than enough to get your attention.
Free products serve as a “soft opening” for the rest of your services. People who use your free product have started a relationship with your brand, which can be a tipping factor in deciding what product to pay for down the line.
Data enrichment tool Clearbit has mastered this strategy. Take Clearbit Connect, their free Gmail add-on. It allows you to see professional information about any sender, and search for anyone’s email within any company, all from the Gmail interface. This easy-to-use extension serves an explicit purpose for a user, but also keeps Clearbit’s brand seamlessly integrated to a potential paying customer’s inbox.
In fact, Clearbit says free products “[are] our single most effective marketing technique (by far).” Though Clearbit’s software services provide powerful, data-driven insights, their integration and application can be difficult for non-specialists to understand. Providing a valuable but intuitive product can make all the difference when a team is deciding to use a full suite of products.
Pop the question
Generating leads is good, but generating quality leads is better. One way to do this is to connect with a lead through a survey with a contact information form. This will give you valuable information about your leads that can help you nurture them.
Here South African retail store V&A Waterfront are doing exactly that. They are linking through to a survey about their shop.
This means that they are only going to get high-quality leads from people who are actively interested in their Cape Town store.
Here’s some tips for getting the most out of your survey.
Start by asking if the lead needs the value your product delivers. This will help people gauge which of their needs you can meet, which means you can instantly qualify them. In turn, you’ll be more prepared to discuss how you can help them.
Time it correctly. If you have a free trial version of your product, asking people how their experience has been with your product during that trial can help you direct leads to helpful products or features as they look to transition to the full version of your product.
Place your surveys strategically. A survey that appears before clicking away from order form could ask why someone hasn’t completed an order. On a products page, you could ask what features are most important. Capturing this type of data will help you nurture your leads.
Surveys demonstrate the value you place on your customers’ feedback and help you serve your lead from square one. Even if your survey followup doesn’t convert every lead, they can still capture feedback that you can use to improve. Plus, surveys are customizable and an easy addition to any website, making them a fit for any lead generation strategy.
A video’s worth a thousand leads
Videos can be a valuable part of building your brand because they are a powerful way to deliver your message. Video is becoming more and more prevalent in Facebook ads. This ad for LinkedIn, which has almost 1.8 million views, shows the power of video:
Once you’ve got a handle on top notch video content, it’s time to start using that video to generate leads. The easiest way to do this is by adding a CTA to capture contact information and convert the power of your video content into a lead.
If you want to focus on the quantity of leads, add a CTA to educational videos. They will be easy to digest for people new to your product and reach a wider audience.
If you want to focus on quality of leads, add a CTA to targeted videos. For example, place your CTA on short tutorials with special features of your suite of products. These will appeal to in-the-know buyers.
Location, location, location. Make sure your CTA comes at the perfect point in your video. Endroll CTA’s generate quality leads, but midroll CTA’s have a slightly higher conversion. If using a midroll CTA, pique interest in your product/brand before your CTA, but don’t interrupt your viewer’s attention.
Anyone with existing video, or anyone looking to start using video, should consider adding a CTA to their clips. If you already use video, turning your content into lead generation is extremely simple. You can collect leads in your existing videos just by adding a form. No excuses.
Exploit our phone addictions
Check your email and SMS inboxes. Which one is overflowing with unread messages? It’s your inbox, isn’t it? While SMS messages are read 99% of the time, emails can languish. SMS messaging service Sonar say that response rates through SMS are 3-4X higher than with email. So it’s a total no-brainer to integrate SMS into your lead generation process.
(Souce)
The key to using SMS is to fold it into an existing channel to provide a strong context for users receiving your messages. Let’s look at some quick ways to painlessly integrate SMS:
In response to a survey. If a lead gives you their mobile information after taking a survey, use it to follow up. You can give them information about any concerns they raise. For example, if they’re confused about pricing plans, follow up with a link to a walkthrough of your plans.
In response to a video. Follow up your CTA on an educational video with places a lead can find more product information to encourage their exploration of your services.
As the kickstart to an offer. If you’re hosting sweepstakes, offering a coupon, or having a sale, reminding your leads soon before it expires capitalizes on SMS’s instant nature and encourages people to shop because of a hard deadline.
Anyone who has a well-established lead generating channels and protocol should add SMS to their strategy. Incorporating SMS will give you a better set of tools to interact with leads. Today’s consumers are more sophisticated, especially when it comes to researching products, and including an SMS campaign will help you be more nuanced, nimble and informed than ever before.
Build up your lead generation toolbox
Adopting new practices for lead generation can help give you the customer boost you need to reach the next phase of your business. Whether you want to focus on improving the quality of your leads or driving your raw numbers up, adding in one or more of these suggestions will diversify and strengthen your generation. Leads are important, and building a sophisticated generation process is a big step towards success.