What is Lead Generation? A Complete Guide

Quick and easy access to an enormous potential customer base can be overwhelming for brands. 

How do you get your brand noticed and find people who actually need your products and services?

Enter lead generation. 

It's not just another marketing tactic; it's the lifeline that fuels business growth by connecting you with your ideal audience.

Every business needs a steady stream of customers to grow, and lead generation is the key activity to achieve this.

By the end of this article, you’ll fully understand what is lead generation and learn how to implement lead generation strategies to maximize the inflow of high-quality leads.

Lead generation comprises a range of activities to produce and increase awareness about a brand and its products among potential customers, and to encourage them to engage further with the brand.

Using lead generation strategies, you can identify your brand’s target audience, reach out to them and guide them to your website, persuade them to engage further and share their personal information, and even build relationships to help retain leads as loyal customers.

An interested web visitor is said to have become a lead once they have shared their contact information and have consented to further communication from a brand.

Lead generation is the first step of any sales funnel.

The aim of lead generation is not just to get as many people as possible to the top of the sales funnel, but to attract as many prospects as possible who can be converted into leads.

Lead generation techniques fall under two main categories. When crafting lead generation strategies, brands should use techniques from both categories to obtain as many high-quality leads as possible.

With inbound lead generation, businesses entice prospects to their websites by making sure that their online content matches what their target audience is looking for. Here, the lead makes the first move to engage with the business.

One of the main reasons why inbound lead generation is effective is because interested web visitors have complete control over if and how they want to interact with your company. This also comes with the added bonus of attracting better-quality leads who are more willing to be converted to paid customers.

Let’s take a look at a few time-tested inbound lead generation strategies to pique the interest of potential customers and to encourage them to your website.

Search engine optimization is the process of refining your online content so that it ranks well on search engine results for your preferred keywords.

To begin, it's essential for your brand to conduct comprehensive keyword research to identify the most relevant and high-quality keywords to target.

To optimize your content for the chosen keywords, the following steps need to be taken:

All SEO content needs to be refreshed regularly as keyword trends, search intent, and information on the topic change. Once online content gets stale, it stops attracting leads, while still occupying important real estate on your website.

Creating, publishing, and sharing online material that isn’t overtly promotional is known as content marketing. This type of content should be informative, educational and persuasive - something that would help readers and potential customers.

Content marketing and SEO go hand-in-hand. Both are indispensable in any inbound lead generation strategy. Once you’ve settled on the right keywords, make sure to create engaging content pieces to maximize impact. Here are a few types of content marketing pieces that any business should be generating.

Email marketing is an effective lead generation tool if you have a list of prospects.

After prospects have shared their contact information with you, you need to categorize them and tailor email content to suit each category. Email marketing tools such as product updates, promotions, and newsletters should also be sent out regularly.

Ensure emails feature a clear Call-to-Action (CTA) and a simple yet captivating design. Avoid overloading emails with excessive design elements, which could trigger suspicion and slow load times.

It is best to invest in good email marketing software to automate, streamline, and manage your email marketing campaigns. Such software is great for building email databases and sending emails for specific triggers and can even provide excellent data analytics to improve your overall lead generation tactics.

Word-of-mouth marketing is still a powerful lead generation tool. People are more likely to value the opinions and recommendations of those they trust and are familiar with.

This is why referrals are a great way to obtain good leads. When customers have had a positive experience with your brand and its products, encourage them to refer you to their network. .

Especially when it comes to the B2B industry, satisfied customers usually have a network of like-minded people with similar professional backgrounds. So they’ll refer you to people who have problems that your brand can solve and the budget for your products and services.

According to the latest data, people spend, on average, 143 minutes per day on social media platforms. This presents a great opportunity for generating leads as brands can target prospects where they spend a significant portion of their free time.

You can choose which social media websites to focus on based on factors such as your industry, type of products, where your brand is located, and the demographic of your target audience.

For example, fashion brands can focus most of their efforts on Instagram and Pinterest. Tech brands should consider YouTube to create product demos and instructional videos.

Here are a few tips to boost lead generation from social media:

Your website's landing page serves as the initial introduction to your prospects. Therefore, it should be visually appealing, user-friendly, and offer valuable content. Above all, ensure your brand's value proposition is clearly communicated.

Make sure the landing page has effective headlines and conspicuous CTA buttons so visitors can submit their contact information and thereby move further along the lead generation funnel. You can even add compelling lead magnets to incentivize prospects to share their information with you.

In outbound lead generation, the brand takes the initiative, reaching out to potential customers. Unlike inbound leads, who are already familiar with the brand, outbound targets may have little to no prior awareness. This approach grants the brand more control, actively pursuing leads.

Outbound lead generation is often preferred because it works faster even though it may be more expensive in the short term.
Brands can look into the below strategies for their outbound lead generation efforts.

Traditional advertising is a broad term for all types of offline advertising tools. With traditional advertising, you can reach people who don’t prefer to be online and others when they aren’t online. These are a few traditional advertising techniques that any outbound lead generation strategy must include.

1. Telemarketing/Cold Calling - This technique has been around for a while and has somewhat of a negative reputation. Yet, it still works well as a lead generation strategy for B2B and even B2C(Business-to-Consumer) companies.
   
   It involves having salespeople call people that they’ve never interacted with or may have never heard about the company. Cold calling allows salespeople to talk about the company and its products and how they can solve the customer’s pain points.
   
   
2. Direct Mail - Direct mail involves sending physical marketing material such as brochures, letters, and catalogs to the mailboxes of potential customers.
   
   Direct mail marketing works best when brands are trying to target people living in specific locales. For example, a business could send direct email to everyone living near their stores.
   
   
3. In-person Events - Conferences, conventions, and seminars are a great way to reach out to your target audience. Apart from attending such events as guests, you can even set up booths for your brand to show off your products and disseminate marketing material.
   
   You can even sponsor events for more brand visibility. Outside of industry events, local events such as festivals, fairs, and meetups are another great way to meet potential leads and spread the word about your company.

PPC is a popular online lead generation strategy where advertisers pay only when someone clicks on their ads. The best platform for PPC ads is search engines. Brands can bid for certain keywords for which they need their ads to show up and then pay for each click on these ads.

Other than search engines, PPC ads can be placed on websites that have content that your target audience consumes. Social media platforms are another place to publish PPC ads and these platforms even offer great data analytics so you can target the right users with your PPC ads.

PPC is a popular online lead generation strategy where advertisers pay only when someone clicks on their ads. The best platform for PPC ads is search engines. Brands can bid for certain keywords for which they need their ads to show up and then pay for each click on these ads.

Other than search engines, PPC ads can be placed on websites that have content that your target audience consumes. Social media platforms are another place to publish PPC ads and these platforms even offer great data analytics so you can target the right users with your PPC ads.

As its name suggests, cold emailing is similar to cold calling where emails are sent out to recipients who have probably never interacted with the company before. However, unlike cold calling, this method is easily scalable.

Unsolicited emails are sent out to a large group of people in the hopes of initiating contact. The content of these emails should be to introduce your company and its products.

With the help of automation software, you can streamline your entire cold emailing strategy. These programs will help simplify a lot of tasks like finding the right time to send out emails, sending follow-ups, tracking open rates, etc.

Getting as many people as possible to your website isn’t a sign of a successful lead generation strategy. Most of them won’t convert into leads or turn out to be low-quality ones.

This can be a waste of time, money, and effort. You need to have the below components in your lead generation strategy to attract high-quality leads and grow your business.

Before you can even start on any lead generation activity, you need to define your target audience.

Defining your target audience will help you understand their pain points, tastes, preferences, and demographics. All this information should be used to refine your lead generation efforts.

Lead scoring in lead generation is the process of evaluating and categorizing leads based on their level of readiness to make a purchase. It involves assigning numerical values or scores to leads based on their interactions with your brand, such as website visits, email opens, form submissions, and downloads.

The higher the score, the more likely the lead is to convert into a paying customer. Lead scoring helps prioritize leads for sales efforts, allowing teams to focus their time and resources on leads that are most likely to result in conversions.

Lead magnets are a great way to show web visitors that they can receive valuable content in exchange for their information. Other types of compelling offers include discounts, giveaways, coupons, rewards, etc. 

You can even run contests to drum up interest among your target audience. By sharing their contact information with you or by engaging with your content further, participants can win free stuff.

A call-to-action clearly states the benefit a lead will receive when they share their information with your brand. Without effective calls-to-action, your entire lead generation strategy can fall flat.

Make sure that CTAs:

Lead Capture Forms are online forms designed to collect information from potential customers, such as their name, email address, phone number, company, or any other relevant details. 

These forms are a crucial component of lead generation strategies, as they allow businesses to gather contact information from visitors to their website or landing pages.

Lead Capture Forms typically include fields for users to input their information, along with a call-to-action (CTA) prompting them to submit the form in exchange for something of value, such as a free ebook, webinar registration, or product demo.

The data collected through these forms enables businesses to follow up with leads, nurture them through the sales funnel, and eventually convert them into customers.

The sales and marketing teams cannot work in silos when it comes to lead generation. There has to be an exchange of feedback so that each team can improve its strategies to increase conversion rates and business growth.

After the sales team has received lead data from marketers, they need to provide insights and feedback about their interactions with leads. This also needs to be done quickly and regularly - ideally a weekly or monthly cycle. 

Alignment between these teams will also ensure both are on the same page when it comes to identifying the target audience, quality leads, and lead temperature.

Lead generation is not a one-time activity and requires constant tweaks and updates. To ensure steady volume and quality of leads, you must track the lead generation journey and monitor each part of the process.

This will tell you where and why prospects are dropping off or getting blocked and which techniques are producing the best results. With this information, you can prioritize fixes and focus on what’s most important, which is especially useful if you have a tight budget.

It’s not just the strategies that need to be evaluated but also your target audience. People’s preferences, problems, and needs change over time and your lead generation strategies need to be adjusted to keep up.

Lead generation is an indispensable part of running any business. There are various inbound and outbound lead generation techniques described here that you can choose from based on your budget, team size, and ideal customer profiles.

With effective lead generation strategies, you are guaranteed a continuous stream of leads, a significant number of whom can be converted into paying customers. However, the process can become too expensive, inefficient, and overly complex if not set up and maintained properly.

To avoid this from happening and to stay ahead of the competition, you need to continually monitor and test your lead generation strategies and change or optimize them accordingly.