If you want to grow, you need a constant stream of new interest. To find customers, businesses often conduct lead-generation campaigns.
Over the years, lead generation has drastically changed. Newer technology has allowed businesses to create strategies to reach their audience faster and more efficiently. But, with a spectrum of strategies to choose from, finding one that works for you can be less than obvious.
We’re here to help! In this article, we’re going over:
- The traditional methods of lead generation
- Digital and modern methods of lead generation
- Cold email as a lead generation tool
- How to measure the success of your lead generation campaigns.
Traditional Methods of Lead Generation
For us to understand more modern lead generation strategies, we need to learn where they’ve evolved from. Here are five of the most popular traditional lead-generation methods:
Referrals
Trust is an important sales factor. Studies show that 88% of customers trust family and friends better than brand advertisements, making referrals such a powerful lead generation tool.
Before the days of digital marketing, referrals were often word-of-mouth. Most businesses would give out discounts on future products or services if customers recommended them to friends.
This strategy is still used even today. Paired with great incentives for the customers, referrals are always a solid go-to lead generation tool that fits well with most strategies.
Networking
Sales aren’t all about your products or how great they are. Often times it’s about the people and the relationships we build. You could network anywhere. The key here is knowing when to strike up a conversation about your offer.
Find organizations your clients are likely to join. Look for events where you could meet prospects. Put yourself in the right place to interact and network with a large crowd.
Pro-tip: Don’t make it about you or your business. Listen to their issues, pain points, and find opportunities to provide a solution.
Direct Mail
Sending mail directly is a surefire way to get you noticed. Done right, it can be the nudge that converts potential prospects into paying customers.
Most prospects will still be undecided. A great way to sway these customers your way is by sending useful information based on their personal interests.
Doing so helps keep your business top-of-mind when further issues arise. So, whether it's a referral or a customer, remember to conduct nurturing campaigns, especially for warm leads.
Advertising
To make money, we got to spend money. That’s advertising in a nutshell. It’s a way to get you more exposure to your target audience and help you close more sales.
Before the internet, advertising was the Wild West of marketing. You could see advertisements for products everywhere from billboards to park benches and even bathroom stalls.
But, the best advertisements were always the ones that were unique, creative, catchy, or even cringey.
Think Buddweiser:
“Wassupppp”
Trade Shows and Events
Ads can be expensive. It’s not the most sustainable marketing option in the long run. A great alternative is joining trade shows and events.
You can present yourself as an industry expert, build authority, and network with potential clients at the same time. Most of these are free if you get invited, but some require a registration fee.
When you get there, make a great first impression. It’s a chance to not only meet clients but also a chance to learn more from other successful businesses.
Digital Methods of Lead Generation
Customers can find anything that they need and want at their fingertips. That’s why the majority of businesses invest heavily in digital lead-generation campaigns.
If you want to succeed in the digital space, consider learning the following digital lead-generation strategies:
Website Optimization
Treat your website as an extension of your business. Be sure that it’s visually appealing, caters to your target audience, and is convenient for prospects visiting your site.
Optimize the elements so that customers can easily navigate through your site to find what they’re looking for. Add automated messaging to help them with their needs.
According to studies, 52% of customers say convenience is a major factor when deciding to buy products. And, don’t forget to optimize the site elements for conversions.
Social Media
The fastest way to connect with your prospects is through social media. 59.4% of internet users have social media accounts and spend an average of 5 hours per day on social media platforms.
There are several lead-generation strategies you can use on social media alone. Some of the most popular include utilizing user-generated content (UGC), paid ads, and content campaigns.
You can’t focus on social media alone. Your lead generation efforts should be holistic. And, all roads often lead back to your site. This is where awesome search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the best way to consistently get organic leads. When your site is optimized, it has a better chance of ranking higher on Google’s search engine result page.
There are three main ways to optimize your website:
- On-page SEO: Includes the optimization of every element on your site, including the titles, headings, content, images, videos, and internal links.
- Off-page SEO: Everything you do outside of your website to help improve your online authority including backlink building, guest posting, and social media campaigns.
- Technical SEO: Technical SEO involves all aspects of your site running behind the scenes such as site speed, server optimization, indexing, and site audits.
SEO on your website also makes it a great tool for local lead generation, especially when combined with an optimized Google My Business page.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
If you want to be aggressive with your lead generation, go for a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. It’s an excellent way to put your business in front of your target audience. You can choose the demographic or location of the people you want to be targeted.
Behavioral targeting is also an option for PPC. Personalized ads can be shown to prospects based on their behavior, interests, and online activity.
PPC doesn’t mean you immediately get value out of it. A lot of strategy and testing is involved in ensuring a profitable campaign. There are several PPC campaigns to choose from such as:
- Search Advertising: Businesses can choose keywords they want their ads to appear on. They also choose the ad copy that prospects can see and the maximum amount they’re willing to pay per click.
- Display Ads: These are the ads that you can see while scrolling. The ads are based on products or services users may have an interest in. Most use this as a way to build brand awareness.
- Social Media PPC: Social media ads are common on popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok. You can either go for a video ad or posters/banners on social media.
- Shopping Ads: This type of ad helps brands put their products in front of their target audience. Shopping ads have a picture of the product, the price, and a short description. When paired with search advertising, shopping ads can give high ROI.
Content Marketing
One of the best (most underrated) organic lead-generation strategies is content marketing. It’s a long-term strategy that helps build your brand’s authority through high-quality, valuable, and relevant content.
Content marketing’s goal isn’t to sell products outright. Instead, it aims to give immediate value. This can ultimately translate into sales as you’d become a trustworthy authority in your niche.
However, you don’t need to compromise on creating content that provides value and content that markets products. You can do both at the same time—creating quality content that sells.
Cold Email as a Powerful Lead Generation Tool
According to studies, cold email campaigns can get higher ROI than both SEO and social media marketing efforts. It’s a powerful tool in any marketer’s arsenal.
The Importance of Cold Email
If we look at the graphs, the number of people using email increases each year and is projected to do so in the years to come. Statista data forecasts 376 billion emails sent and received each day by the year 2025.
Email is still one of the most preferred modes of communication for millennials and decision-makers making it a great B2B lead generation strategy. You can personalize each email sent to leads, segment your email list, and nudge them further in the sales pipe.
Creating a Targeted List
Personalization is key in any cold email campaign. Certain people react better to specific types of emails. So, to improve conversions, we need to create a targeted email list.
Doing this manually can take hours. To streamline our workflow, we can use email marketing tools like Instantly to help us with email segmentation.
This will help us personalize faster and provide more relevant content to our leads. Providing relevant and high-quality content also makes it less likely that our emails will be sent to spam.
Crafting the Perfect Cold Email
Writing the perfect cold email for leads can be both tiring and daunting. You can streamline the process with the help of cold email templates.
These templates can help get the ball rolling and give you an easier time personalizing all your leads. With Instantly, you can even automate the personalization process.
As a general tip, whether you’re using templates or writing an entire email manually, remember the following best practices:
- Warm up emails to improve deliverability.
- Always edit and personalize templates to fit your target audience.
- Make your emails short and concise.
- Don’t be afraid to add humor to the email.
- Include a strong CTA.
Following Up Effectively
First-touch cold emails aren’t likely to close a sale. Follow-up emails do. Think of your first cold email as an introduction. Remember, the leads still don’t know anything about your business.
They might’ve considered replying but forgot, got too busy, or a number of things. We can’t just speculate on this. The best course of action is to send a follow-up email and go from there.
If leads haven’t replied after two or three follow-up emails, then it’s best to remove them from your email list. This helps you improve your open rates and helps you reduce bounce rates.
Leads that don’t want your business are likely directing your emails straight to spam. This can ruin your email’s reputation and cause email service providers to tag you as spam.
Measuring Success in Lead Generation
Before starting a lead generation campaign, we need to define our goals. This helps us identify how we can measure the success of each campaign.
Defining Key Metrics
Your key metrics define how successful your campaign is. There are several metrics to focus on. For lead generation, we often measure the following metrics:
- Engagement
- Traffic
- Conversion Rates
- Qualified Leads
- Average Revenue per Customer Cost
Analyzing and Optimizing Your Lead Generation Strategies
Whether you're using social media for lead generation or cold email—analytics is a must. It helps marketers understand what works, what needs improvement, and what needs to be let go.
If you’re using cold email marketing to connect with your audience, Instantly offers an intuitive and powerful analytics tool that shows you all the key metrics you need. You can see data in real time and easily compare campaigns.
Key Takeaways
Finding leads is essential for the growth of any business. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to lead generation. You need to identify what works for your business and what doesn’t.
To help you with the process, try using the following methods for lead generation:
- Website optimization
- Social Media
- Search Engine Optimization
- PPC Advertising
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
If you want to get the most leads out of your email marketing campaign, you need a tool to help you streamline and automate—that’s where Instantly comes in! Start for free today!