4 Clever Lead-Generation Ideas for Your Next Marketing Campaign

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The internet rules the world nowadays. It is impossible for many people to go on their days without checking what’s going on online. This compels businesses to follow suit and build their online presence. After all, the golden rule of marketing tells us to be where the customers are.

But being visible online, whether in search engines or on social media, is clearly not enough in an ever-evolving digital landscape. The competition is too fierce, and doing the bare minimum won’t cut it anymore. This means you need to make an extra effort to be on top of your customers’ minds and nurture them down the marketing funnel until they are ready to buy your products or services.

This brings us to the importance of lead generation. Imagine driving thousands of traffic to your website only to end up not converting any visitors to buying customers. That is a complete failure. If you want to succeed, you need customers.

And customers do not simply appear at a drop of a hat. They need to warm up to your brand and, eventually, give interest in what you offer so you can nurture them throughout their buying journey.

What Is Lead Generation and How Can You Benefit from It?

Lead generation is the answer to this conundrum. You will want to generate leads, people who showed interest in your products or services by giving up their information like name, email address, and phone number. This is usually done by signing up for your email newsletter, downloading a free e-book, or enabling push notifications.

The process of turning a prospect into a lead is called lead generation. Strangers who visit your website will not readily buy your products. Through a solid lead-generation strategy, you can warm them up to your brand by offering them something they cannot resist. They will see your offer if you run a good marketing campaign, whether it is appealing Google ads or tempting Facebook ads.

Generating leads usually goes like this:

1. An internet user saw your Google ad and immediately clicked on it when they saw your offer, either in the form of a coupon code, a handy guide, or any gated content that gives them value. This takes him to your website or landing page.

2. They will then see a contact form that they need to fill out. The form contains fields like their name, contact number, and email address.

3. Once they sign up, it means they are giving you permission to add them to your email list. In exchange, they can download your irresistible offer.

After step 3 is done, the visitor becomes your lead and will now be a part of your database. This allows you to place them in a nurture campaign, sending them a series of emails with different types of messaging.

The goal is to introduce your brand and your product offers while making them feel that you understand their problems, challenges, and frustrations. You will want to position your products as the solution to their pain points.

The most important thing to remember throughout the process of lead generation is to offer something of value to your prospective customers. Your relationship from the very start should be mutually beneficial. By ensuring that they have a good experience throughout the customer-nurture process, you gain their trust and, eventually, convince them to become paying customers.

Clever Ideas for Your Lead-Generation Campaigns

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Every great marketing campaign begins with a brilliant idea or two. Lead generation is no exception. You need to be innovative and think out of the box if you want to win the lead-generation game. After all, customers have grown more discerning about the content they consume so they will not easily fall for cheap tricks that marketers too often pull up their sleeves.

To help you jumpstart your lead-generation strategy, we’ve prepared 5 clever ideas that you will want to try.

Put the Hook on Your Lead Magnets

This idea is certainly not novel. It has been said before, and we are saying it again to drive the point home—your lead magnet is the foundation of every great lead-generation campaign. Your hooks are the gated offers that you dangle in front of your customer, hoping that their interests will be piqued and they will take the bait. Your lead magnets must be something of value, one that your prospects cannot resist.

When we say a gated product, this means an interested prospect can only access the content by opting in. They will need to provide their important information which is your primary aim in running a lead-generation campaign in the first place.

Some examples of good lead magnets:

• A series of webinars
• A mini-guide or e-book
• A set of editable templates
• Product samples or trials
• Free audit or evaluation
• Product coupon or discount codes
• Training videos
• Case studies
• A handy toolkit
• A worksheet or workbook

Provide Free, Interactive Tools

Popular brands like Moz, HubSpot, Wordstream, and other sites consider free tools as valuable investments. They often pour time, money, and effort to create interactive tools that can help solve their prospective customers’ problems.

HubSpot, for example, offers a free tool to help you create a customer persona. You can generate customizable buyer-persona documents that you can readily use when planning out your marketing strategy. When you download the finished document, they will prompt you to provide your details, including your first name, last name, email address, phone number, company name, and website URL.

The trick is quite often effective as the tools are useful, so you will be compelled to give up your information in exchange for something more valuable.

While it’s true that there’s so much work that goes with developing a tool, this tactic truly works, enabling a lot of brands to generate a huge number of leads in the process.

Try Embedding Lead Forms in Videos

Some marketers still doubt the effectiveness of gated content, relying more heavily on driving traffic to their websites. But if you want to work smart, you should think about generating leads through a gated offer. However, there is a caveat. Not all lead-generation strategies work. Everyone is doing the same, too, so your target prospects have more options at their fingertips.

What can you do? Try to stand out. And by standing out, we meant doing something differently. Most marketers focus on their gated content that they tend to forget that prospects prefer to have a taste of what they can get their hands on before giving up something as valuable as their personal information.

Some brands take the hybrid approach to gating their content. Take for example a video content that is not locked up behind a lead-gen form. Instead, they had the brilliant idea of embedding the lead-gen forms within the video so it shows up while you watch. Subscription is encouraged, but it is not required to watch the whole video, drawing just the right amount of attention without posing a distraction.

The beauty of this tactic is that you get to provide a truly free content to your customers but they find it too valuable that they end up giving you their information eventually.

Design a Fun Quiz

Quizzes are always fun to do! Why not make use of this in your lead-generation efforts? Not only does it give your customers some kind of entertainment, it can also give you the chance to learn about their pain points while getting their contact information. Plus, quizzes can often be shared on social media, which can give your customers a chance to show off and spread the word.

For example, if you are a skincare company, you can design and create a quiz that will help your prospects determine their skin type. You can start by asking them a series of questions that will eventually help you identify what type of skin they have. Once done, you can prompt them to fill out the lead form so you can email their skin-type result. Your email can then contain the answer to their dilemma and some product recommendations that can help them take care of their particular skin type.

If you are a content agency marketing to businesses, you can make use of quizzes to learn more about your customers’ needs. Questions about the challenges they face in creating content can help you gauge how to best help them.

Wrapping It Up

Your marketing campaigns can only be successful if you harness the power of lead generation. And while you are at it, be sure to offer quality content that your target customers will have a hard time to pass up. Provide them with something valuable—one that can help in educating, entertaining, informing, or inspiring them.  

Try considering some of these clever lead-generation ideas to help turn your prospects into paying customers. Soon, you can find the right formula that will allow you to win more leads and more changes in customer conversion.