How Do You Create A Lead Generation Strategy?

Every business owner is interested in lead generation and finding a great lead generation strategy. The digital arena provides almost countless opportunities to reach and engage consumers that are interested in specific products or services. The question is how to create a lead generation strategy that’s right for your website and your business.

In my experience, it pays to explore different potential avenues of lead generation. Naturally, you also have to be careful to spend your marketing dollars on strategies that are most likely to deliver success and return on investment. But remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when so many others have done the leg work for you.

Being an entrepreneur and starting up many businesses, I learned a lot about how to create a successful lead generation strategy. It didn’t always go smoothly, but I discovered a few key components of improving this conversion.

Understand What Customers Want

I work with a variety of clients selling products from groceries, razors & skin care to technology and systems. Every business has target customers in mind. Figuring out what these ideal consumers want is crucial to any conversion strategy.

What I know is that there are certain things all customers want and love, and things they don’t want. One thing they want is great service. They want to be wooed, but not stalked.  It is important to understand the difference when it comes to lead generation strategy.

If you’re able to get your hands on customer contact information, don’t abuse it by bombarding recipients with dozens of offer emails each day or you’re going to see cancelled memberships. You should also avoid sharing contact information with partners or other third-party business interests.

Consumers are wary of offering contact information, even if they’re interested in your brand.  The reason is the common practice for businesses to share contacts as part of a trade system among partners. Just because consumers are interested in your brand doesn’t mean they want to get spam from all your partner companies.

It’s a tough choice, because swapping leads with other businesses can be a great way to gain access to a new group of potential customers. However, the goal of lead generation is to convert potential leads to customers. Gaining and keeping their trust requires that you consider their wants.

Your strategy in this regard will also center on the products or services you’re selling. You need to put some thought into why consumers are seeking the goods you sell and what will motivate them to choose you over competitors.

Provide Value

One of the best ideas to come out of modern marketing is offering freebies. This isn’t exactly a new concept in marketing. Until recently, it was common practice to demand contact information from website visitors without giving them anything in return but a promise of value to come.

The new school of thought is that you must offer something of value before you ask for their information.  Providing consumers with value entices them into offering their contact information. For example, you might offer a free trial of your product or service. I offer a free website analysis.

You could also provide a free white paper, e-book or webinar, with a request for a follow-up.  Something along the lines of “If you enjoyed this, sign up to receive notification of similar content”. Proving your commitment to provide value up front is going to entice a lot more people than simply installing a button or pop-up with a CTA to sign up.

Focus on Landing Pages

When I create landing pages, I have several goals designed to ensure that consumers have a good experience and reach a desired conclusion. From a purely practical stance, landing pages must be attractive and easy to navigate. They also have to provide sufficient information and value to engage visitors and encourage them to take specific action.

To that end, you need to have a specific action in mind when creating a landing page. Do you want to generate leads? Make sales? Secure reviews or repeat visits? Draw visitors into other areas of your website?

Don’t overburden visitors with too many CTAs on a single landing page. In fact, the landing page should have one simple call to action.  Remember, landing pages are for conversion, home pages are for exploration. The purpose of any landing page may depend on the content, but you should try to focus on one main goal and stick to it.

There are plenty of platforms where you can generate leads.  Having a solid lead generation strategy requires, first and foremost, a strong foundation. Before you start throwing money at advertising and other tactics, you need to understand your target customers, what they love & want, and how to provide value. With this information in hand you can create a practical and effective approach to lead generation.