Lead generation is all about strategically finding people interested in your product or service. It bridges the gap between sales and marketing teams by using marketing to collect information to use in the sales process. Many businesses focus on lead generation because it brings potential customers directly into their sales pipeline. However, going in this direction often leads to businesses seeing high amounts of low-quality leads coming in, primarily due to an improper marketing mix structure.
How then do you effectively execute lead generation campaigns to make sure you’re getting those high-quality leads? The answer is simple: take a look at the bigger picture and implement a full-funnel approach. By working with a lead generation marketing agency, this will ensure that you’re not relying just on mid-funnel tactics and neglecting top-of-funnel efforts that are needed to build initial awareness. This allows you to make the most of lead generation strategies within your marketing plans.
How to Build a Lead Generation Strategy that Actually Converts
When implementing a lead gen strategy, it’s important to note that there are many factors that come into play. You want to ensure that you are engaging potential customers along every touchpoint of their buying journey — awareness, consideration, and decision — in order to create a measurable and successful pipeline. This can be accomplished in two ways: through inbound or outbound efforts. Both play an important role in your overall strategy, but coordinating these efforts usually gives you the best results.
Learn to Maximize the Entire Funnel
To truly maximize your results, the way you approach your strategy needs to come from a cohesive integration across the full funnel. This means all your tactics need to work together, regardless of the approach you choose. Utilizing a CRM such as Constant Contact helps to streamline this process. The problem is that people often focus too much on just one part of the funnel. They think lead generation is solely about getting leads, and forget about the trust-building portion that also needs to take place. A good lead generation strategy integrates every stage of the funnel over time. It's like expecting to close a sale without ever initiating a relationship first; you’re skipping the awareness steps that make conversions possible.
First, you need to determine where you are in your customer's buying journey. Are you a known brand to them or not? Your answer to that question will determine the next steps you need to take.
- If your answer is “Yes, they know who we are and what we do," then you might be able to pull back on the initial awareness tactics and start integrating more consideration tactics earlier on. However, this doesn’t mean completely skipping awareness altogether, as you will still want to reintroduce whatever product or service you are targeting for them.
- If your answer is “No, they don’t know who we are or what we do," you need to start by focusing on brand awareness tactics that introduce your brand in a natural, non-sales-driven way, rather than immediately pushing for a purchase. By doing this, over time, they will gain more trust in you as a company, helping to increase the likelihood of a conversion happening as you implement consideration tactics.
Once you can understand where you are in their buying journey, you will then be able to target them strategically through each stage of the funnel. This will allow you to reach them more effectively, leading to an improved conversion rate with high-quality leads over time.
Inbound vs Outbound Efforts - Know the Difference
Now that you’ve got your starting point in your prospects' buying journey, you need to decide how you are going to pursue them. There are two main approaches when it comes to lead generation marketing: inbound and outbound. Inbound efforts can be categorized as components that attract or pull potential customers in from valuable content, meeting the customers where they are in their buying journey instead of interrupting them with cold calls or outreach. Some examples of these components could be things such as blogs, organic videos, social media content, optimized websites, and webinars. These efforts primarily result in high-intent leads that generally have a lower cost per acquisition, as they are relationship-driven with a focus on trust being built, making it easier for them to convert.
Outbound efforts, on the other hand, are comprised of components that push out messaging to potential customers in order to generate sales interest. It’s an outreach approach aimed at bringing in users that the business has deemed qualified through targeted and personalized marketing. Examples of these components include cold calling or emailing, paid advertising, direct mail, and in-person networking. While the turnaround time for leads coming in is usually quicker than inbound efforts, there tends to be a higher percentage of lead quantity compared to lead quality.
While these efforts perform well on their own, strategically utilizing them together maximizes your lead gen strategy tenfold. You essentially want to fuel your outbound efforts with inbound data. You are able to use the data that you have collected on your ideal target audience from your inbound data to then target lookalike users through outbound efforts like paid search ads or personalized email marketing. This allows you to eliminate any guesswork around which strategies are effective, leading to more informed decision-making.
Unlock Higher Quality Leads with a Lead Generation Marketing Agency
As a lead generation marketing agency, we help our clients create strategies that work. We utilize a full-funnel approach to improve the quality and efficiency of their lead generation campaigns, along with achieving a fully integrated strategy with better sales insights. If you are looking to improve your lead generation campaigns, get in touch with us, and let us help you build campaigns that actually convert.