What is a Lead?

A Lead is a person who might have or has an interest in your product or your service. Put simply, leads are anyone who is interested in whatever you do. If you browse the Internet for just 5 minutes a day for 26 days, you're probably a lead for a lot of companies than you think.

How?

You would have expressed your interest in a company or a website owner in some way. You fill out a form on the Internet, you're now a lead, as simple as that. Let's say you filled out a form that gives you access to download an Ebook on DIY Makeup. This form was hosted by a company called ABCD Cosmetics. Now they know that you're interested in DIY Makeup. They might contact you regarding a DIY Makeup kit because that's a similar interest and you're their lead.

Why you should care?

In the above example, we saw how you have become a lead by filling a form and we understood the company may or may not contact you regarding their product.

If they call and you (the Ebook downloader) decide to buy the kit. The company has successfully converted you from a lead into a customer (more on these below). Increase in revenue for the company and you've got something you like. WIN-WIN.

The Lead was just a leading person, leading the company to something. Preferably, leading to a Sale, a Product purchase, or a Conversion if you will. A Lead leads to money.

If you still don’t understand why you should care, the company has made money from a lead and that’s one reason you should care.

What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is strategically attracting Leads for your Business. Lead generation is effective because Leads are not just a Name and an Email, they are more than that. Leads have some sort of interest in your business and have a much higher affinity towards their interest area. Hence, the probability of closing a lead is much higher than closing in a cold call. Doing business with a lead is beneficial to the Digital Marketer and the Lead.

Lead generation process

Lead generation is a process. A process that can be done through different ways from a simple form to a 21 days free trial and a coupon to a product demo. There’s a lot of ways you can go about this, the most simple and effective way to go about this is a form.

Forms are easy to set up for you and they are easily filled out by your visitors, making them your leads. If you’re looking at a different way to go about this that’s totally ok. There’s no one size fits all solution in marketing. What’s working for your business may not work for other businesses and vice versa.

An overview of the Lead generation process:

• A visitor visits one of your organic channels, such as your blog, social profile, or your business page. The visitor may also be from one of your paid channels, like your PPC, Facebook ad, or your Promoted content.
• Let’s say the Ebook from our previous example is being offered with a from in the middle of the blog or at the end of the page.
• When the visitor fills and submits the form, the Lead data is captured you can send that to your CRM and reach out to them in the future.

However, for the above steps to work, you’ll need to follow the conversion-focused design and best practices of conversion optimization. There are tools that’ll help you with this.

Tools you should use

Lead Generation takes time, effort, and marketing resources. Professional marketers use a suite of tools that help them market effectively.

Use tools like SD Lead Generation, which offers unlimited lead generation and prospecting. Marketers around the world use this tool in their pipelines. You can find many tools in the market, but no tool comes close to what SD Lead Generation has to offer.

LinkedIn lead generation: LinkedIn the largest professional network has quite good features for Lead Generation that goes unnoticed. LinkedIn lead generation forms can also be coupled with LinkedIn ads to drive leads.

Chatbot: Conversational marketing is booming and is untouched by many marketers. Conversational marketing with Chatbots can be used to drive things. The best part about conversational lead generation is, we all are familiar with chat or texting. You can easily get your visitors to chat with you and convert them into leads. A solution from SD Chatbot will help you with that. Remember these solutions are automated and can drive good results.

Extract: Extract your leads from Websites, Domain names, or just the Company name, even the first and last name is enough to get your lead. Data tools from SD extraction will help you with that.

Strategies from Marketers

See what marketers are doing and what’s already working. If you’re a beginner don’t try to reinvent the wheel. You can do so down the line.

• Use compelling offer and a clear Call To Action (CTA)
• Use tools like SD Lead Generation for your prospecting and marketing needs
• Declutter your landing page and minimize friction
• If possible speak with a Conversion and Strategy specialists like The Netly, who will do manage all the conversion concepts for you.
• Invest in a CRM to manage your customer relationships. SD Suite comes with a CRM you can use that to manage your leads and customers.
• Setup automated email campaigns for all your forms. Have a Welcome/Thank You email sent when there is the first interaction with your lead.
• Setup Drip campaigns to engage and nurture your leads throughout your pipeline and potential touchpoints. SD Suite has Email and Drip campaigns built-in. So all your campaigns can be set up and fully managed in one place

Maximize Lead Generation

To help you maximize conversion, we have put together a few strategies we use ourselves.

• You offer is what that converts. No offer, no conversion, no leads. Give your best offer to your visitors, an offer for which they’ll exchange their email for.
• A landing page that converts. An enticing offer won’t convert if your Call To Action is not clear. We highly recommend speaking to Conversions and optimization specialists like The Netly.
• Have a few trust badges in your website and near your forms. Promise your visitors that their privacy is respected and follow it.
• Stay consistent throughout your channels, you visitors will hate to see your website if it’s different from your Social Media or your Ad.

By aligning all the notable actions into your methodology will help you Generate more Leads and maximize your lead generation and marketing efforts.

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