Whenever you hear about lead generation, the first thing that comes to your mind is the cold calls or emails raining in your spam folder. Through this post, let us give you clarity about a few lead gen topics:

• What is Lead Generation ?
• How Does Lead Generation Work ?
• What are some types of Online and Offline Lead Generation Strategies?

What is Lead Generation ?

First concept to know – every product and service has its own demand and customer. Reaching out to the right customer gets you the sale and leads help you get there, reaching out to the wrong customer is just a waste of investment. So what is a lead ? A lead is nothing but data about a customer who has shown interest in buying your product or service, yet is still waiting to make a decision. Now you might ask, What is Lead Generation then? Lead Generation is the marketing process involved in making a viewer or random person show interest in your product or service through offers and advertisements.

Best Example : Kids shoes & toys. If you have kids in your household, you might see that  a simple advertisement about a sparkling shoe or new toys will make them excited. Unless the shoe or toy hasn’t reached them, the kids won’t sleep and keep nagging the parents until they buy it.

That specific advertisement targeting an audience to garner interest for the advertiser’s product is called Lead Generation.

As per Forbes new study, lead generation is the key challenge for most companies

Forbes

Ultimate Guide to building a solid strategy for Lead Generation

How does lead generation work ?

Lead Generation strategies have been growing to adapt to changing times, there are two kinds of lead generation strategies

• Offline Lead Generation Strategy

In the previous era, where digital growth was just at its infancy, marketing representatives used to reach out to each customer door to door or cold calling to make a sale. 

• The probability of gaining a potential customer was (10 – 3)
• In the same way, the probability of converting a customer was (10 – 1)

Even though we are adapting our strategies to digital growth, still few companies do follow both lead generation strategies in order to convert every possible lead into sales.

• Online Lead Generation Strategy

Online lead generation strategy starts from building business, 

• Credibility
• Visibility
• Liability

Every viewer who visits your website, goes through your website, reviews, and social media presence to understand if your product or service has quality or if it’s another spammer trying to empty the wallet. These three categories are the basic foundation to convert a viewer into a potential lead. So How do you attract a potential lead? it might be the next question, you might have been waiting to ask

Types of Online and Offline Lead Generation Strategies

When we mentioned how few companies use both strategies to convert every possible lead into sales, they allocate a budget for lead generation based on the difference in conversion ratio between online and offline lead generation strategies. Here are selected few online and offline lead generation strategies which has shown constant growth in conversion ratio,

• Search Engine Advertising (also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM)-  Search Engine Advertising is one of the easiest ways to reach your audience by creating visibility for your business and gaining new sales as well as potential customers. There are multiple search engines other than Google, so understanding your potential audience and where they’re from, will help you understand which search engine has greater impact among your audience.

For Example : If your customers or potential audience are vastly from around China, then Baidu is the only search engine that can help you target your audience within China. Google receives only 50 – 60% of searches compared to the number of Internet Users around the world. 

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Visualize search engine optimization as a language, to make the search engine understand the quality of your website content and how your website is relevant to specific user search term. You might have read that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is entirely about content, it’s entirely wrong. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves every process from building your website to contents within it. Optimize your website following Google Search Engine Guidelines, so your website ranking isn’t affected.

You might ask, How Search Engine Optimization can help you gain new leads ? Search Engine Optimization is all about ranking your website for specific search terms or specific keywords. Frequent optimization and fresh contents will help you rank your website in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). By ranking your website on the first page, you get to receive organic results who are really interested in purchasing or knowing more about your product.

What you shouldn’t do?

• Do not Follow Black Hat SEO
• Do not stuff keywords within the content
• Do not try to use hidden keywords
• Do not use copied content from others’ websites or articles.

• Cold Calling – Cold Calling is one of the most common and oldest lead generation strategies. With data about your previous purchases and interests, companies use cold calling methods to understand your interest in future products or to sell you a product. 

• Outreach Marketing – Outreach Marketing is otherwise called influencer marketing, when you come across an advertisement or a YouTuber promoting a third party product for his audience. It’s called influencer marketing, pitching your product through influencers who have a strong relationship with your audience is one of the best and easiest way, to garner more potential leads and customers.

What we have said above are just a few among the many lead generation strategies, you can contact the lead gen specialists at LeadChimp anytime for growth hacking lead generation services.

How do you convert a B2B and B2C lead into a customer ?

As we said above in the types of lead generation strategies, each strategy is applicable to gain good results, if it’s implemented with a goal to target an audience to convert into sales. So When it comes to B2B and B2C, you would have to know “where your audiences spend more time” and “what will be the reason behind their decision making”. It is said, 1 in 10 customers decide based on their requirements, while 5 in 10 customers decide based on how you promote to them. 

“As per the article from Harvard Business Review, Pandemic has changed more and more companies dependable on qualified leads “

Harvard Business Reviews (HBR)

You might think that B2B and B2C audiences are completely different, but everyone is a customer. The lead gen specialists at LeadChimp are here to help you get focused, high converging leads for both B2B and B2C at an affordable cost.