Lead generation as a growth booster for your business - The basics.

What is lead generation anyway?

What are leads

A lead is a contact who is interested in your service or product. Once this prospect has voluntarily provided you with his contact details, the lead can go through certain sales processes. Each lead has a status. The transition of the lead to a new status is called conversion. Examples of different stages are: Prospect, Lead, and Close.

Lead generation describes the process that takes place to convert potential prospects into leads. This process consists of several sub-steps. On the one hand, you have to draw attention to your offer and on the other hand, you have to generate curiosity and interest among your visitors so that they leave their contact details.

Later we will talk about the possibilities and ways you can use to make this process optimal for your customers.

Why is it worth optimizing lead generation?

If a prospect voluntarily signs up for your offer, they are no longer a cold lead and the probability of closing the deal is increased many times over. At the same time, you can quickly reduce your costs for new customer acquisition through intelligent lead generation.By optimizing the lead generation process, you can quickly help your business grow online.

Generate Leads

In this section, we will go more into the process of lead generation and show you the various options that you can use specifically for your business.

The basis for lead generation is the existence of traffic, i.e. visitors on your channels (social media and website). Traffic can be generated in various ways, such as inbound or outbound marketing. Content marketing is becoming more and more efficient and popular. This involves increasing visibility by providing high-quality content. Such content can be provided in the form of blog articles, videos, podcasts, images, social media posts and e-books, for example.By providing valuable content, more people will automatically come to your website as your relevance to potential customers increases. At the same time, you also have the opportunity to generate attention through outbound marketing. For example, through billboard or cinema advertising.

Once the first step is done and you have traffic on your site, the actual lead generation begins. The basic idea here is to create free added value for your visitors and thus awaken a need in them. In return for the added value, you can ask for the contact details, such as the email address, just like the consent to use this data.

The most used contents

• Blog-article
• Whitepapers
• Webinars
• Coaching Contents
• E-Books
• Parts of your product or service
  
  
  

It's best to redirect traffic to tailored landing pages where you present the specific offer and the added value. This way you can quickly maximize your conversion.

If you offer free added value, it's also very important to give your prospects a quick and easy way to take advantage of your offer and leave contact information. So use call-to-action buttons to give your prospects clear calls to action. In addition, it's important to make the forms clear and unambiguous. Many prospects bounce early in the funnel due to poor usability. Feel free to read up here on how to best create your forms and what to look out for.

Leads qualification

General

Assessing and qualifying your leads is an important step for the best possible processing. Gather the important information about the leads that will help you convert them into new customers. You can obtain this information, for example, through interactive forms such as the one provided by smashleads™. The value of the information base you receive from your leads depends on the interest in your specific offer.

For example, if you generate leads via a free trial or a coupon, you know directly that there is targeted interest in your product or service. This gives you the opportunity to convert the leads into customers with a very high probability.

If, for example, you generate leads via your content offer, such as the newsletter, you do not know to what extent these leads are also interested in your product or service. So you need more information to qualify these leads.

So lead generation varies greatly from company to company. The basis for successful lead generation is information. This is the only way to find out whether someone is really interested in your products or services or not.

What data is usually collected?

In classic forms, the following data is often requested: name, e-mail address, company, country, telephone number and industry. Important: In the EU, you may only request information that you absolutely need, due to data protection regulations.

Interactive forms - more detailed information

Interactive forms give you the ability to generate much more information about your individual leads. These are displayed directly in your dashboard and offer you the opportunity to convert your leads into customers. At the same time, interactive forms optimize your conversion many times over. smashleads™ offers you the opportunity to use the lead generator free of charge. You will receive detailed specific statistics on your individual prospects. With smashleads™ you can save 60% of the processing time and manage your leads intelligently.

Lead-Scoring

The term lead scoring refers to the evaluation of individual leads in numerical order. The leads with the greatest interest in your product or service receive the highest value. Be sure to use the same scoring standards across teams. For example, the score may depend on the interaction rate of your leads with your social media. Another criterion can be the accuracy of the information and how it fits the previously defined target group. At the same time, you can also evaluate how your leads came to you and then qualify them. So think about the qualifiers that are relevant to you.

The basic rule is: the higher the score of a lead, the better the chances of converting them into sales qualified leads.

Optimize lead generation

Lead generation is part of the sales funnel and represents a central level in it. The typical levels are: Visitors, i.e. website visitors, Leads, Qualified Leads and Customers. You can think of the entire process as a funnel. On the way from visitor to customer you will always lose people. The rate of people reaching the next level is called conversion. Divide your sales process into the different stages and measure the specific conversion rates. If one is too low, you can look specifically at which part of the process causes the prospects to bounce and then optimize this.

smashleads™ helps you to significantly increase the conversion rate between the individual levels. On the one hand, the lead generator increases the conversion rate from a website visitor to a lead and on the other hand, qualification becomes much easier at the same time.

Try it yourself!

Strategies

You can use different methods and channels for lead generation. Just read our other articles. For example, here you can learn 7 secret tips to multiply your lead list in a short time.

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