According to the 2018 State of Inbound report, 69% of businesses claim that generating quality leads is their priority. Moreover, 53% of them claim that more than half of their budget is allocated to generating leads. That’s not surprising at all, given the fact that collecting your target audience’s contact information is the basis of building strong relationships with them and converting them into paying customers.
However, not all lead generation techniques work the same, regardless of how popular or expensive they are. To back me up, stats show that just 16% of businesses say that their outbound practices result in high-quality leads.
Precisely because of this, you should choose highly effective techniques that will help you generate relevant leads without breaking the bank.
Offer Free Lead Magnets
If a stranger asks you to give them your address or phone number, would you really do so? Of course not. We don’t give our personally identifiable information to anyone. And, the same goes for collecting your target audience’s email addresses. People won’t leave them to you unless you give them a good reason to do so. This is where a lead magnet comes to shine.
A lead magnet is an incentive your prospects get in return for providing their email. It could be anything, as long as it’s relevant and valuable to your target audience. Here are a few common types of lead magnets you may love:
- Useful rewards that help your subscribers save time on performing a particular action. They include checklists, cheat sheets, templates, planners, examples, calendars, resource lists, web apps.
- Educational content that teaches your readers about a certain topic relevant to them. These could be tutorials, eBooks, guides, infographics, reports, educational videos, email courses, event tickets.
- Entertaining lead magnets that engage, such as quizzes, surveys, giveaways, quotes, mobile apps.
- The bottom of funnel incentives that motivate customers to complete the desired action, such as offering universal gift cards and coupons, free trials, free shipping, free quotes, early bird discounts.1
Of course, your choice of a perfect lead magnet depends on your goals, niche, and target audience. No matter what you choose, always make sure it is relevant, specific, instantly accessible, as well as that it solves your customers’ problems.
Blog Consistently
Content creation and promotion is the backbone of your lead generation strategy.
First, it’s relatively budget-friendly. According to some recent stats, content marketing generates 3 times as many leads as other outbound marketing techniques and costs 62% less.
Second, publishing industry-specific and engaging content on your website helps you position yourself as an authoritative source of information, helping you earn high-quality links and generate 67% more leads than your rivals that don’t blog.
To create the content your target audience wants, you need to be familiar with their age, gender, location, education, expectations, and problems. Remember, blogging today doesn’t revolve around online promotion. It’s all about bringing value to your readers.
Most importantly, mind your consistency. The HubSpot’s report mentioned above emphasizes that those marketers that published over 16 posts on a monthly basis generate more leads.
Publish Quality Guest Posts
In the past, guest blogging was the primary means of building links, irrespective of their quality. Today, we create highly targeted and valuable guest posts to build a solid online reputation and credibility. As such, this is one of the most powerful lead generation techniques. By publishing on the blogs your potential customers follow, you will boost both your traffic and brand awareness.
Always make sure how relevant and trusted your guest blogging prospects are. Publishing on a mediocre blog in your niche and on a reputable site with an impeccable DA is not the same. Just imagine many qualified leads publishing a post on a site like HuffPost or Entrepreneur would bring to you.
Just like with internal blogging, always make sure that your guest posts are relevant to your target audience, as well as that they answer their questions and solve their problems. The emphasis is put on bringing value and links will come as a reward for it.
Send a Welcome Email to New Subscribers
Making good first impressions is incredibly important in the world of digital marketing. It’s what sets you apart from your competition and helps you start your customer relationships off effectively. This is why sending the welcome email to your all your subscribers is essential. These emails are supposed to set the tone for future conversations, acquaint your target audience with your company, and show them why and how you are valuable to them.
Above all, welcome emails are highly engaging. Statistics show that they are 4 times more likely to get opened than other promotional emails. This is a great opportunity for you to keep your subscribers interested in what you’re doing and turn them into your fans.
Given all these facts, here is what a perfect welcome email should look like:
- Write a catchy and specific subject line.
- Include a personal opening.
- Come up with a clear and straightforward value proposition. It helps you point out why they made a good decision subscribing to your mailing list. This is also where you should familiarize your subscribers with your business and point out what they will get in exchange for providing their email.
- Highlight what they should do to become your active users (set preferences, upgrade the desired profile information, complete an order, etc.)
- Offer them additional helpful resources. It could be tutorial videos, guides, an FAQ page- anything that can really help them get the information needed.
- Provide customer support information, such as your phone number, email address, chat support, and social buttons.
Over to You
Lead generation is the fundamental part of your digital marketing strategy and that’s why it needs to be planned wisely. Keep in mind that overly expensive techniques don’t necessarily need to bring the best results. You should always choose those lead generation methods that work for your startup and target audience. Don’t forget to try and test your efforts regularly and optimize them on the fly.
Now, it’s your turn! What lead generation techniques do you use to generate quality leads for your startup?
