As I’m sure you know, generating leads – hopefully both high in quality AND quantity – is your most important objective as a marketer. Having a successful lead generation system in place is what keeps your sales funnel full of prospects at all hours of the day. Surprisingly however, only 1 in 10 marketers feel their lead generation efforts are effective.
In any lead generation campaign, there can be a lot of moving parts. It’s critical to understand that aside from the variety of techniques that can be used and implemented, there are essential mechanics built in to every high performing lead generation campaign.
The best lead generation campaigns contain most, if not all, of these components. From a tactical perspective, a marketer needs four crucial elements to make inbound lead generation happen. Keep reading to take a look through these 4 essential mechanics to online lead generation!
1) The Offer
An offer is a piece of content that is perceived high in value and demand. Types of offers can include whitepapers, free consultations, checklists and product demonstrations. As marketers, our job is to ultimately get people to say “yes” to our offers. When an offer is scarce, exclusive or in high demand, it becomes more desirable. Irresistible elements can overcome a lead’s doubt or concern. Why do these elements work? Because they trigger a physiological reaction that makes an offer more valuable. People need to perceive the value of your offer to be greater than what you’re asking for in return. The higher the perception of value, the more irresistible the offer.
2) The Call-To-Action
A call-to-action (CTA) is either text, an image or a button that when acted upon (I.E. clicked), links directly to a landing page so people can find and download your offer. Calls-to-action (CTAs) are the special anecdote used to drive people to your offers. If your CTAs aren’t effective at capturing people’s attention and persuading them to the click, then it makes the offer useless. CTAs can be used on normal product pages, in display ads, email, social media, direct mail and pretty much anywhere you can market an offer. But not all CTAs are created equal. In today’s world where every brand is fighting for consumers attention, it’s critical that prospects choose your offer over your competitors.
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3) The Landing Page
A landing page, unlike normal website pages, is a specialized page that contains information about one particular offer, and a form to download that offer. Landing pages are one of the most important elements of lead generation. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa’s research, landing pages are effective for 94% of B2B and B2C companies. The use of landing pages enables marketers to direct website visitors to targeted pages and capture leads at a much higher rate. What’s great about landing pages is that they direct your visitors to one particular offer without the distractions of everything else on your website. Visitors are on a landing page for one sole purpose – to complete the lead capture form.
4) The Form
You cannot capture leads without forms! PERIOD! Forms will collect contact information from a visitor in exchange for an offer. Forms are the key to a landing page. Without them, there is no way to “convert” a visitor into a lead. Forms come in handy when it’s time for people to sign-up, subscribe to your site or download an offer.
TO SUMMARIZE >>>
Generating leads online has the power to transform your marketing. Using great offers, calls-to-action, landing pages and forms – can reduce your cost-per-lead while delivering higher quality prospects to your sales team. The basics I’ve described are just the beginning.
Let us show you how this process actually works… Below is a CTA for The 30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips, Tricks & Ideas. This guide contains many best practices for every aspects of lead generation to help improve your conversion rates. But these tactics are only the tip of the iceberg! You must continue to tweak and test each step of your lead generation process in an effort to improve lead quality and increase revenue.
