One of the biggest challenges that marketers can face is lead generation. You can be lead down a rabbit hole searching for new and innovative ways to increase traffic and generate leads. But here’s a secret about lead generation: simplicity is key. We have put together a 4 step process comprised of the only steps you need in order to increase your lead generation.
Step 1: Use Lead Generation Tools to Attract Readers
The first step in any online marketing campaign is to create content that will attract potential leads. There are a variety of effective forms of content that can be customized to appeal to your target audience. Some of the most popular include:
- Landing Pages- A landing page is a standalone customizable web page where a visitor ends up after they have clicked on an ad. They are designed to act as a call-to-action, and they usually feature a premium content item that can be downloaded in exchange for an email address. Links to a landing page are often added to emails and at the end of blog posts.
- Blog Posts- Writing blog posts on a weekly or monthly schedule and posting them on social media sites is an extremely effective way to attract visitors. Blogs also give you the opportunity to address issues or topics that are relevant to your audience, opening the channels for interactions between you to occur and allowing you to further segment your lists. Blog posts that are SEO optimized can even lead to improvements in your website ranking on google.
- Emails- Almost everyone can be reached by email, which is why email marketing is the top practice for lead generation. There are so many things that can be done with emails, they can be automated, triggered and dripped. Here at Marketing Armor we offer a marketing automation platform that comes with tools necessary to create these different types of emails all in one place. You can schedule emails to be sent to specific people/ lists and track their bounce and open rates.
- Ebooks- Ebooks and Landing Pages go hand in hand, and they are one of the most popular forms of premium content. They are usually longer than a blog post and provide visitors more in-depth information about a particular topic, which is why they feel comfortable giving their email address in exchange for one. Because they do focus on specific topics, they help to provide more information about the interests of your audience.
Step 2: Build and Integrate a Lead Capture Form
The goal of any strategy involving lead generation is to capture the information of the people who are visiting your site and showing interest in your blog posts or premium content offers. By having no formal way to capture this information, there is no telling how many potential leads you are letting slip through your fingers. Creating a lead capture form is the simplest way to capture this information in a way that is not pushy. These smart forms can be seamlessly embedded on your website, and the form fields can be customized to fit your needs. Any data that they capture is automatically routed to your CRM or email marketing platform, making tracking trends easier.
Step 3: Analyze your Submissions to Create Segmented lists
The next step once you receive the information that was gathered from your form is to segment it based off of similar behaviors and interests. For example, a non-profit company published two blog posts last month. One was about donations for an upcoming event and the other was about volunteering for the event. They had multiple visitors read each blog post and inquire further. The information was funneled into one list inside the customer relationship management (CRM) platform.
Our marketing automation platform has a built in CRM, and comes with the tools necessary to track behaviors and create lists based off of them. By sorting the information and creating lists based off of which blog post visitors were interested in, you have the ability to send targeted and relevant information to each list. This helps to ensure that you are not bombarding your prospects with information that is not relevant to them or their interests. Personalization is one of the most important elements in the process of turning a prospect into a client and something as simple sending them behavior-based content goes a long way.
Step 4: Use a Marketing Automation Platform to Refine Your Strategy
The beginning stages of any marketing strategy are dedicated to working out the kinks and fine-tuning your campaign. Not every piece of content will successful, and not every topic will resonate with your audience. A marketing automation platform will allow you to track all aspects of your strategy, providing insight into which sections were successful and which were not. This feature gives you the unique ability to get rid of what isn’t working early on so you can focus more of your attention and budget on the areas that are successful. You can automate tasks and create workflows for all of the steps mentioned above, further refining your strategy.
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about using marketing automation to increase your lead generation, click on the banner below to schedule your free 30-minute consultation.
