A good lead generation process includes multiple steps to entice, develop, and transform leads into loyal customers.
You need to have an open mind in running your lead generation process. In addition, you have to be willing to take risks and try new strategies and ideas.
Customers and leads change as the industry does. Your content and approach should also evolve in order for your business to keep up.
Defining lead generation
Lead generation is an important step in the sales process. It is referred to as the practice of attracting your potential clients and helping them throughout the buying process to persuade them into converting as a paying customer.
It is all about building a relationship and trust with your audience and informing them about your business and products along the way.
Different companies may use various strategies to achieve a successful lead generation. The key is to gain the attention of the people who are most likely to purchase from your company..
5 steps to successful lead generation functions
To succeed in lead generation, you need a structured, consistent, and repeatable process that regularly attracts your leads. With the absence of this process, generating leads may become a challenging task for your team.
Here are the tips you can use to have a successful lead generation process.
Earn leads
Begin the lead generation process by attracting people to your website. Create engaging contents that can be shared throughout your various marketing channels.
Make books, blog posts, discussions, photos, infographics or whatever else that would fit your business and your audience. Distribute this content across your blog, social channels and wherever your potential customers are active.
Some of your content should be short form that can be read, viewed or consumed easily, while some of your content should be longer form that requires signing up for access.
Once you have piqued the interest of a lead to the point that they would want to view your long form piece of content, they could sign a form which makes them a part of your contact management system, email list or both. This visitor is now a newly acquired lead.
Take care of your existing leads
Once a lead is a part of your system or email list, it is important to continually connect with them to ensure movement through the sales funnel when the time is right or to encourage another purchase.
Maintaining their interest in being part of your email list is important. Your team has to work hard to build a long-term relationship with the lead.
The process of developing a relationship with a prospective buyer could take a long time. However, converting them into loyal and happy customers takes longer.
Take your time in interacting and creating a connection with them over different channels. Focus on the time when the customer is ready to take the next step with your business.
Rank your leads
A lead that is engaging more with your business is important. Categorizing your leads allows you to understand which leads are more valuable than others.
Creating a profiling system for them can build a clear picture of who your leads are and how capable they are to make a purchase.
High quality leads are already interested in your content and services and are close to reaching a purchasing decision. Focus your team’s efforts in nurturing them as you would most likely close a deal with them.
Also, you should analyze the rise and fall of your lead score. Understand what part of the process you lose most leads and correct it.
Pass the leads to sales
The process of engaging and nurturing leads, to preventing them from losing interest in your product and developing their desire to interact with your company is the focus of the marketing team.
The sales team should focus on moving the desire a customer has to action in the form of a conversion.
Once a customer is done buying products from your company, the sales team has the responsibility of enhancing the experience with existing customers and maintaining the relationship over time.
Evaluate your process
Continuous analysis is the key in a successful lead generation process. Your methods should be constantly reviewed by the whole team to ensure its effectiveness.
You can use marketing analytics to help your team understand if certain benchmarks are being reached by your approach such as an increased flow of traffic to your website, more visitors signing up to your list, increased conversion rate, more time spent on your website etc.
Always monitor your process to determine whether they are directly impacting a lead’s journey and are helping them from losing interest in your business.
