The A-Z ofLead Generation

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Lead generation is a complex accumulation of marketing tactics and customer engagement that enables companies to open up conversations with prospects in the market. Theultimate aim of lead generation is to create contact with potential customers that will result in either a sale or another favourable outcome.

Marketing automation platforms are designed to givemarketers a real insight into how each lead behaves tocertain marketing messages after being entered into anurturing program. Having this type of program in place canallow marketers to outline a specific journey each lead willfollow depending on their behaviour, whilst pinpointing whichcontent is working.

Blogging is the perfect way of improving your SEO rankings to increase web visitors and ultimately result in more inbound leads or enquiries. Dedicating resources to continual copywriting and content production for a blog is also a fantastic way of ensuring your company has content ready to be promoted via various marketing channels, whilst keeping a lead nurturing program topped up. Don’t forget - blogsshould be shareable, informative and interesting.

The phrase “content is king” is arguably never moreprominent than when talking about lead generation. Anexchange of personal and business information forcontent can only happen if the content is deemedvaluable enough by each potential lead.

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Automation

Content

Blogs

Lead generation is ultimately about creating a buzz and theterm “demand generation” is also becoming more regularlyused. Demand for a product or service can only start byidentifying an initial interest, i.e. lead generation – thenvarious techniques can be used to convert that interestinto demand.

Email marketing is arguably the most direct method of leadgeneration. Ensuring the profile of the database being usedfor marketing campaigns is right is crucial to the success of acampaign and future contact with that lead.

Clear, uncomplicated forms are crucial to lead generationsuccess. Ensuring that the number of questions on thelanding page is kept to a minimum is a more subtle approachto making the exchange of details as quick andeasy as possible.

Presenting lead generation campaigns in a way that isin-keeping with your company’s brand, aligned with themarket perception and tone (whether that be professional,corporate, quirky, or humorous) and in a way that engagesprospects to sit up and take notice can require a heftyamount of graphic design. But with today’s fast pacedenvironment, capturing someone’s attention in seconds canbe make or break. People are busy and you only get the onechance to make a good first impression.

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EmailMarketing

Graphic Design

Forms

Demand

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HTML emails are used to design a more interesting andcaptivating template for email campaigns. By providing agood HTML base, a campaign can be structured for successand targeted towards a specific persona using images,colours and other graphics.

Running a lead generation campaign through Inbox Insight isthe ideal tool to fill your sales pipeline with pre-qualifiedleads from any of our EMEA audiences. Our portfolio of emailbulletins is powered by our unique lead generation platform,which gives our B2B subscriber base instant access to marketleading content. Our landing page technology enables you toenhance the lead quality further by asking a series ofprofiling questions too – and as standard, we always provideyou with full business card details of each lead.

Make sure that you use the right voice to reach your targetaudience and industry. If your copy is full of jargon you mightisolate potential new customers or simply confuse people!Getting that balance right can be the difference betweenengaged leads and deleted emails.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) should be defined andmeasured throughout any campaign where leadgeneration is a main objective. This approach can beapplied no matter which channel you are looking to use togenerate leads, whether that be email marketing (forexample open rates, CTRs), web advertising (cost perclicks and impressions), or outsourced lead generation(lead quality, right type of contact).

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Inbox Insight

KPIs

Jargon Free

HTML

Your Lead Generation campaign will provide a list ofpotential customers that have been specifically targetedand qualified based on your individual criteria. It’s thenup to you as to how you pursue these leads and convertthem to lifelong customers.

Defining a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) strategy shouldsee sales and marketing departments working closely.Marketing professionals should be focussing on tactics thatdrive leads who are more likely to become customers basedon buyer personas, business intelligence and lead interaction.

Lead nurturing helps you to stay in touch with potentialcustomers and keep existing customers engaged. However,this is only possible if you continue to deliver valuable andinteresting content.

Before launching any marketing campaign, it’s important toensure there are solid objectives in place. Always make sureyou, as well as your sales and marketing teams, are clear asto what the objectives of your lead generation marketingcampaigns are.

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MQLs

Objectives

Nurturing

Leads

SALE

Profiler questions are designed to give marketers a glimpse into a particular pain point, prob-lem, or goal each lead is experiencing or looking to move towards at the point of generating or capturing them. Used cleverly and sparingly, they won’t impact on the click-to-lead con-version rate but do inspire prospects to pause and think before pressing the call-to-action. Collecting this information and passing it down to a sales department can also push each lead slightly further down the sales pipeline and give internal sales teams anangle to lead into conversations.

Qualifiers determine how leads are defined and related toMQLs (marketing qualified leads) and SQLs (sales qualifiedleads). These are questions that can be used to determinewhether the lead is a valuable prospect, i.e. is the lead inyour target market. Qualifying leads whilst asking profilerswill create a more complete ‘picture’ of each lead too.

In order to see the return on investment (ROI) in a leadgeneration campaign, leads need to be converted to sales.This will be the ultimate decider in determining howsuccessful a campaign has been, so before launching anylead generation marketing activity, it’s crucial to have a clearpath or method for how you plan to convert each lead tomaximise your ROI.

Running a lead generation campaign can become secondnature but it’s important that you pass important knowledgealong to your sales team for them to optimise theirfollow-up. This will help them to overcome objections andbring in new business.

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Qualifiers

Sales

ROI

Profilers

Thought leadership is an increasing term to describe‘premium content’ – companies are now putting more andmore emphasis on outdoing the competition, staying aheadof the market and producing content that is different,engaging, complex and the most up-to-date it can be. It’sthis engaging content that is going to help drive as manyMQLs (and SQLs) as possible, whilst filling your business’sales funnel up with leads quickly and cost-effectively.

It can be very easy to let your unique selling point (USP) beforgotten when you’re snowed under with projects anddeadlines. By continuing to produce informative and targetedcontent your conversions will hopefully increase.

Content that goes viral is often a more powerful tool thanpeople realise. The key to creating viral content forbusinesses is to find the practical element. If it’s useful,businesses and colleagues are going to want to share it ontheir News Feed.

Whether you want to promote live or on-demand webinars, they are a good way to generate leads as unlike written content, they offer the chance to present to potential leads verbally. To maximise the potential of your webinars try to write a blog post to promote your webinar, have dedicated and optimised landing pages to improve conversions, run external marketing campaigns to drive registrations and always follow up with a recording of the webinar for thosewho can’t attend the live versions.

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USPs

Webinars

Viral Content

Thoughtleadership

Technology and mobile devices have created a new wave ofcustomer known as the “X-Generation”. It’s now moreimportant than ever for marketers to make sure leadgeneration tactics such as email marketing, landing pagesand company websites are optimised, so that everyimpression and every click your budget is paying for standsthe best chance of converting.

Video marketing is here to stay, with product demonstrations,online training courses and interactive or animated visuals –avenues such as YouTube and Vimeo allow marketers toupload shareable, likeable and accessible content which canbe embedded on websites and included within emailmarketing campaigns.

Qualifiers are fantastic for lead generation, but manycompanies make their criteria so specific it results inpotentially valuable marketing prospects being wasted.Getting the balance right is a fine art.

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Zero Waste

X-Generation

Inbox Insight publish highly targeted content-driven email bulletins that offer access to key global markets.

We specialise in cost-per-lead content marketing, syndicatingthe most up-to-date and relevant whitepapers, guides,

eBooks and other thought leadership features to generateleads, demand and brand awareness on behalf of our clients.

Inbox Insight,1 Exchange Square,

Jewry Street,Winchester,Hampshire,SO23 8FJ.

01962 835950info@inboxinsight.co.ukwww.inboxinsight.co.uk

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