Lead Generation and its Techniques

 

What is Lead Generation: definition, strategies, tools, techniques.

What is a lead?

A lead is a person or a company potentially interested in your product or service. Every lead consists of information that you have on them. For example, a basic lead would be a name, contact details, and company name/location/job title. 

Types of leads

Now let’s have a look at how to categorize leads. We’ve defined three main ways you can do it:

Interest is the first point that helps you define leads and split them into two subgroups:

  • Warm, or inbound leads, are the ones who showed their interest by themselves and found you on their own (for example, they came across your blog and subscribed to your newsletters).
  • Cold, or outbound leads, are a subgroup of leads generated by you thanks to your targeting strategy and lead generation tools.

Types of the lead generation process

The lead generation process depends on the marketing methodology, i.e., how customers get to know you: whether they find you (inbound lead generation) or you find them (outbound lead generation). 

Inbound lead generation 

The inbound lead generation process is permission-based, meaning that your potential customer finds and decides to interact with you on their own. It consists of the following steps:

  1. A potential customer discovers your company by visiting one of your marketing channels (your website, blog, social media page).
  2. They react to your call-to-action (CTA) by clicking on a button or a link that contains a message encouraging them to take some action.
  3. They are sent to your landing page, where they fill out a form in exchange for a valuable offer (any lead magnet you create), this way becoming your leads.

Outbound lead generation 

Outbound lead generation is interruption-based, meaning you find those people who are more likely to become your customers. You contact them directly with the aim of communicating your brand and delivering your sales pitch. It embraces the following stages: 

  1. You identify your leads (people who match your ideal customer profile), determine their needs, and think about how you can help them.
  2. You do research: look for leads’ contact information, collect it, and keep it organized.
  3. You reach out to your leads via cold emails, cold calls, or social networks. 

Lead generation strategies

Now that you understand the difference between inbound and outbound types of the lead generation process, let’s focus on the lead generation strategies you’ll be using for each case. 

Inbound lead generation strategies

The inbound way of getting new leads rests on lead generation marketing. The latter consists in finding promotional channels that will attract your potential customers. The sources of inbound leads vary depending on the niche (most common being content marketing, social media, and search engines). 

Outbound lead generation strategies

Leads that are found can be harder to convert because they have not taken an interest in your offer voluntarily. However, using specific targeting and personalization, the so-called cold leads can be converted just as easily. 

Among the widespread outbound lead generation strategies are pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, cold outreach, and content syndication. PPC is a paid option, while lead sourcing can be both paid and free, manual and automated.

Lead generation tools

If you work at scale, manual lead generation is a tough and ineffective job. You need to automate some of your processes, and that’s where lead generation tools come in handy.

Lead generation tools are software that helps you attract leads or find and contact them on your own. There are dozens or even hundreds of lead generation tools available, all categorized depending on your goals. We’ll discuss five of the most popular categories: 

  1. Email lookup tools 
  2. Email outreach tools 
  3. Marketing and sales automation tools/CRMs
  4. Communication tools
  5. Advertising tools

    Importance of lead generation

    The lead-to-customer conversion rate is never 100%. This is why filling in the sales funnel with quality leads is the main lead generation purpose. The importance of getting quality leads is obvious. It helps you:

    • Target the right people. You focus your resources on specific customers who are more likely to buy your product or service. This results in saved time and money, streamlining your company’s processes and growing sales.
    • Build brand awareness. Lead generation always entails educating your leads on your company and its product — both when they get to know about you on their own or when you reach out to them with the information about your product’s features. Leads can then spread information about your brand by word of mouth, bringing you even more clients. 
    • Get valuable data. As a rule, generating leads means collecting information about your prospective customers, their wants and needs, and your competitors. This helps you improve your product or service so that it has a competitive advantage in the market. 
    • Grow revenue. With an effective lead generation strategy, your company can get 133% more revenue than you’ve planned. 

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