The Best Lead Generation Tactics to Fill up Your Sales Funnel

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Where to get more leads? This is an important question for any business, no matter how big or small. If you want to boost your revenue, you should increase sales, but to close more deals, you need to fill up your funnel with more leads.

The lead generation tactics that bring results

Lead generation has always been something that bothered businesses the most. There are dozens of lead generation techniques available, but it’s always a dilemma which one to choose.

You can use the traditional approaches but it might not help you attract the leads that you’d prefer to see in your pipeline. You can also go for something more creative, but it’s pretty risky since you might just waste time and resources on something that doesn’t work.

You want to try different options, but you clearly can’t afford to test everything. The good news is that you don’t have to. Rather than making your efforts disperse across every possible channel, choose the ones that may actually bring positive outcomes.

That said, the effectiveness of each tactic changes over time, just like customers’ behavior and preferences. That’s why you should keep your hand on the pulse of those tendencies and adjust your lead generation strategy by focusing on what brings the best results during a particular period. And how do you find out what’s on fire at the moment? Data, data, and more data. A pulse survey might be the perfect way to find out what your customers are interested in. It can help you generate leads and gather intelligence about their needs, which means that everything they do online will lead them back into our lives sooner or later.

Let’s talk about your options in 2019 and how you can get the best use of each.

Content marketing

Content is king. We hear this everywhere. But at the same time, we realize that not every piece of content can actually rule in the digital marketing world. What makes it really powerful is value. Indeed, due to an abundance of clutter, high-value information online is in demand. That is why well-executed content marketing is perfect for lead generation.

The number of interested users you’ll attract will depend upon the type of content you choose to focus on. Say, blogging, which has been huge until recently, is a bit less efficient at the moment. Right now, 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a business they support (according to the latest Hubspot Digital Consumer Trends Report), so this is what you should pursue. Moreover, with the right type of content at hand, the promotion on social media will be a lot easier.

Email Marketing

This method is cheaper than most strategies, but it still can give you a significant return. Email marketing is very effective if approached smartly, meaning that businesses using this method should not forget about growing their email list, personalization, segmentation, bringing value, etc. As long as you send the relevant message to the right people, you’ll be able to attract more leads and eventually convert more prospects into buyers.

SMM

Social media is a perfect place for lead generation. To see some incredible results, find a place where your customers hang out most of the time and direct all your promotional efforts there. Besides, SMM is a super-productive and extremely viable strategy, which can be effectively used for retargeting. If you have some valuable content ready, it won’t be difficult to get through to the right people. Most importantly, social media empowers you to become more proactive and contact prospects instead of waiting for them to discover you.

SEO

This strategy is clearly more expensive. It’s also time- and effort-consuming, but it surely is a powerful one, especially if used in combination with other lead generation methods. SEO is effective even in such complex industries as SaaS. Mike Sonders admits that Google search “is consistently the biggest source of traffic, new visitors, and often the leads for these SaaS businesses, driving up to 68% of traffic”. The hottest SEO trends cover various aspects ‒ on-page content, images and video optimization, page load time, localization, etc. Obviously, the users taken to a well-optimized landing page with convincing copy and CTAs are more likely to convert.

Event or demo registration

People willingly share their contact details in exchange for something that might help them solve their problems. A good example is conducting an educational event (e.g. webinar) for free. It will be especially useful if you avoid any references to your product or service during that particular event because people don’t like advertisements in disguise. Another great method of lead generation is a free product demo. Prospects requesting it from you are basically taking themselves to the sales funnel without you even trying.

Web personalization

This method is especially powerful for e-commerce websites, but it can be extremely useful for any business. Namely, the companies using geographical personalization can create customized content based on the user’s location and, say, redirect users from the USA to a landing page specifically designed for them. Many businesses also benefit from related content personalization. The opportunities are endless.

Paid search or display ads

Despite an abundance of other methods, using paid search marketing is still very common. Similarly, people still use display ads, which are great for retargeting. The latter can keep you visible to users after they leave your website and enable you to generate leads as well. It takes 6 to 8 touches on average to generate a high-quality sales lead, so this method is great for it being more result-driven.

What works and what doesn’t work

Ascend2 conducted research to determine the most effective lead generation and lead nurturing tactics. Every business has unique goals, priorities and expectations in mind. It’s been discovered that improving the quality of leads and increasing their numbers is what interests companies the most.


Source: Generating and Nurturing Leads Survey by Ascend2 and our Research Partners, Published August 2018

Also, the survey conducted to compare the effectiveness of the most popular lead generation methods has shown that respectively 46% and 47% of marketing influencers turn to email marketing and social media marketing for achieving the top lead generation priorities. Here, take a look.


Source: Generating and Nurturing Leads Survey by Ascend2 and our Research Partners, Published August 2018

All those lead generation methods are popular because they work. You’ll get some leads using any of these tactics, but if you want good results relatively fast, the stats show exactly what you should prioritize.

Also, don’t try to implement everything at once because you simply won’t have enough time to execute it properly. Plus, you may find that not every tactic from the graph works for your audience. Try different combinations and see what’s best for you.

Let’s get creative!

Don’t limit yourself with the traditional methods. Try implementing some of the following lead generation tactics to see better results.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a great lead generation method. If your target Millennials, you should definitely consider influencer marketing. Millennials hate traditional marketing, but they don’t mind ads if these are coming from their favorite digital stars. Try collaborating with popular social media influencers who have high levels of engagement on their posts and who are somehow related to your niche. This way, your campaign will see good lead generation results.

Live chat

A business has more chances to establish solid contact with the person if it provides help exactly when needed. So when the visitor of your site asks you a question or expresses their interest in any other way, the faster you react, the better. Having a live chat icon on your website can significantly help you with lead generation. It’s a great benefit for potential customers as it provides them with an immediate answer to their questions. The businesses also get a number of advantages as having a live chat on the company’s website increases both customer satisfaction and conversion rates.

Online communities

Although this might sound like quite an unexpected place for lead generation, joining a professional online community can actually help you find your ideal customers. And the best part is that you won’t have to come up with sophisticated tactics or sales pitches. The biggest value of such communities is that their members pay attention and listen to each other, and your job will be to just remain an expert in your field. Join the industry-specific groups where people discuss their challenges and problems, and help them in solving these.

Sharing useful tools

Customers don’t want to be treated as sales figures. That’s why they don’t like advertising and self-promotion, and that’s the reason why giving value for free works so well. It’s not only about the money! Instead of investing into paid ads (which are not very effective as you can see in the graph above) and showcasing your solution, create and share the list of various helpful tools that your prospects could use for their benefit. In return, you’ll get the audience interested in solutions like yours, hence more leads.

To conclude

When it comes to generating more leads, the pool of choices is really large. You can go for traditional tactics or experiment with more creative ways. Luckily, the possibilities of digital marketing are endless. Experiment, combine different methods, and explore new opportunities. And remember that just because there are lots of tactics that work, this doesn’t mean that you should use them all. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the value that you bring to the table. If your product or service is worthwhile, it will sell.

Tanya Gonchar

Expert in call center process automation, Head of Marketing at Voiptime Cloud. Interested in customer service, B2B sales, marketing, business analysis.

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