According to a study conducted by the Hinge Research Institute, 73% of companies make lead generation their top marketing priority. This strategy consists of attracting qualified visitors to a landing page, a website, collecting their contact information to convert them into leads and bringing them to maturity before transferring them to sales representatives who can convert them into customers. These are the three key steps in lead generation.
Focus on this powerful digital marketing strategy.
There are two main reasons why so many companies make lead generation their marketing priority. The first is that it is a cost-effective digital strategy. A HubSpot study reveals that generating a lead on the internet is 61% cheaper than finding a new prospect through traditional sales prospecting.
The second reason why you need to do lead generation is to meet the expectations of the modern buyer and offer him the best possible buying experience. Indeed, the buyer's expectations and behaviors have deeply changed with the internet and social networks.
Today, to sum up, he often prefers to talk to Google rather than a salesman. You must therefore do everything possible to attract his attention, to seduce him and to convince him to become a customer, all in an experience that will mainly take place through digital prospecting. And that's exactly what a lead generation marketing strategy offers.
So the first step to lead generation is to attract. You must then ask yourself the following questions: how can I be visible? How can I attract visitors to my sales tunnel or landing page?
You have different levers at your disposal and here are a few of them:
If you activate all or part of these channels, you will attract more visitors to your website every month. But if these visitors leave as quickly as they came, it will not be of any interest for your turnover. The challenge now will be that your marketing department will get the contact details of your most qualified visitors.
How do you invite the most qualified visitors to continue their learning or to increase their interest in you?
You will have to offer them a number of alternatives: offer them to download a White Paper, register for a webinar, participate in a conference, etc. If you are in BtoB, the White Paper is a good choice because it is a content that can be consumed in a fairly short period of time. It is up to you to be imaginative in this area and to offer qualitative content that meets the expectations of your target audience.
Once you have defined and worked on this offer, you will have to make it available and visible on your website. Everything goes through the integration of Call to Action on your website. A call to action is a button to call for action. You will integrate it on the majority of your pages to encourage visitors to download your white paper, participate in your webinar or request a demo.
You cannot pass your leads directly to your sales representatives. It is important to know that 73% of the leads you generate online are not ripe to buy. In this situation, you need to bring your leads to maturity. Email them high value-added content that answers any questions they may have.
Based on the reactions and behaviours towards your communications, you will be able to determine whether a lead is qualified and whether it is mature or not. Once a lead is determined as qualified and mature, you can then pass it on to a sales contact.
The "closing" is systematically done by phone, Skype or Zoom in a first step. The important thing is that this last step is done by voice and with a sales script. The questions to be asked are: how should I structure my sales pitch to sell and transform this lead into a customer? How do I get the best conversion rate?
It is common to hear that it is possible to convert customers with emails, but before moving to this maturity, it is important to have validated sales scripts that work over the phone. These scripts should not be fixed, they should adapt to the needs of the person but you should have a framework that is always the same.
By having 50 or 100 customers, you will have practiced your script enough in the buying journey to be able to identify exactly the key words, the buying accelerators, the key phrases you need to say and you will be able to automate the sales cycle.
A digital marketing agency can help you generate leads. After studying your market and analysing your sales process, they will propose the implementation of an inbound marketing strategy adapted to your company and allow you to increase the number of qualified leads in a long-term relationship.
