In a move that could redefine B2B lead generation, HubSpot and TikTok announced a unique integration to streamline B2B lead generation.
This partnership helps businesses capture TikTok leads into HubSpot’s CRM (customer relationship management) platform.
Rising Customer Acquisition Costs Amid New Opportunities
This partnership is timely, given that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face escalating customer acquisition costs.
HubSpot’s research indicates that 53% of SMBs in the United States experienced rising customer acquisition costs from 2021 to 2022, with over a third witnessing an increase of 20% or more.
TikTok, a platform where over half of its U.S. users discover new brands, hopes to solve this problem uniquely.
HubSpot-TikTok Integration Automates B2B Lead Capture Process
The new HubSpot CRM integration offers automated lead capture from TikTok, turning a highly engaged audience into potential high-value customers.
Karen Ng, SVP of Product at HubSpot, emphasized the transformative power of combining TikTok’s discoverability with HubSpot’s robust customer platform.
“With this integration, we’re pairing the discoverability of TikTok with the power of HubSpot’s customer platform to help more businesses turn tuned-in audiences into high-value customers.”
How The Integration Works
HubSpot’s Smart CRM, the backbone of this integration, ensures a unified customer experience across teams and offers actionable insights through intelligent workflows and analytics.
Users can link their TikTok for Business account with HubSpot, streamlining the initial setup.
Once connected, advertisers can create lead-generation ads on TikTok that automatically sync leads into HubSpot’s Smart CRM in real time.
This centralizes all prospects, making it easier for businesses to manage their sales funnel.
From there, businesses can engage with new leads using HubSpot’s Marketing Hub and determine which campaigns generated the best results with AI-powered analytics.
While the HubSpot CRM integration with TikTok is only available in the U.S. and Canada, it’s slated for expansion to other countries in the coming months.
We have reached out to HubSpot for additional comments about the cost of the new integration and which countries will be next to try it.
TikTok Offers $200 Ad Credit To First 500 Adopters
For a limited time, the first 500 advertisers who integrate HubSpot CRM with TikTok will receive $200 in TikTok ad credits, making it a cost-effective way to tap into a fresh audience.
See how TikTok & @HubSpot can help supercharge your brand’s performance with our new CRM partnership 👏
For a limited time, we’re giving $200 in TikTok ad credits to the first 500 advertisers who integrate their HubSpot CRM with TikTok.*
A recent TikTok Marketing Science Global Shopping Ad Products Study in 2022, conducted by Material, shed light on the effectiveness of TikTok’s lead generation ads.
57% of TikTok users said they would likely purchase from a business after viewing an ad, underlining the platform’s potency in driving consumer action.
Additionally, 69% of users felt these lead-generation ads effectively capture their attention, a key metric in the saturated digital advertising space.
Perhaps most intriguingly, half of the surveyed users stated that these ads don’t even feel like traditional advertisements, suggesting that TikTok has succeeded in seamlessly blending promotional content into the user experience.
Enhancing Lead Generation With Social Integration
This partnership holds significant implications for B2B marketers grappling with rising customer acquisition costs.
It marks the convergence of a highly engaged audience on TikTok and HubSpot’s robust CRM capabilities, offering a new avenue for lead generation that aligns with community-based customer acquisition trends.
When you’re reaching out to a mass email list with your business offering, the last thing you want is to see that your last email blast didn’t make it to the full audience you aimed for.
These email bounces waste time and money. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
A bounce rate higher than 2% can shatter your entire email marketing strategy by sabotaging your email deliverability.
In fact, according to marketing standards, you want your bounce rate to be as close to 0% as possible and never more than 2%.
The good news? You can take steps to avoid this common problem for good and calibrate your campaigns for better email deliverability.
Read on to find out how bounces hurt your business and what you can do today to boost your email marketing success.
What Is A Bounce Rate?
Your bounce rate is the percentage of emails you send that bounce or do not make it to a recipient’s inbox.
There are two types of bounces – hard bounces and soft bounces – and each has a different effect on your email marketing campaign.
In both cases, however, your message won’t make it to the intended recipient.
What Is A Hard Bounce?
A hard bounce indicates a permanent issue with the email address.
It’s invalid or possibly never existed.
There’s no hope of your email getting through with that address, so make sure to remove it from your email list.
What Is A Soft Bounce?
A soft bounce happens when a temporary issue causes your email to not be delivered.
The mailbox was full, your email was too large, or the domain was down. Your email provider will keep trying to deliver your message, but it may end up permanently bouncing.
Make sure to remove permanent bounces from your database.
What’s Wrong With Getting Email Bounces?
Getting bounces is antithetical to email marketing because you’re sending your emails because you want a real person to open and read them.
It’s frustrating and demoralizing when that doesn’t happen.
Bounces waste money. Email services charge based on the number of email addresses on your list, as well as how many emails you send. If you’re getting bounces, you’re pouring dollars down the drain.
Bounces waste time. Why would you put all of this work into your emails only to have them result in a pile of bounces?
Bounces affect your email deliverability. They send notice to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that you’re likely a spammer and should be treated as such. Fewer people will see your emails because they’re now going to the junk folder.
Is It Possible To Have A 0% Bounce Rate?
Perfection is unattainable, but it is an ideal to strive for.
You may want to achieve a 0% bounce rate. However, there are many factors out of your control:
A Full Mailbox: Your customer may have a valid email address, but their mailbox is full. This will result in a soft bounce.
Issues With Email Providers: The contacts on your list rely on other email providers, so you can’t dictate what happens on their end.
Glitches: You’ve likely witnessed an email that bounced for no discernible reason. Sometimes an unexplained phenomenon or glitch is to blame.
The concept of “aim small, miss small” applies. If you shoot for 0%, you may get close.
If you try to hit the benchmark, you may veer into the danger zone.
How To Reduce Your Bounce Rate
Now that you know the risks of a high bounce rate, let’s explore the most reliable ways to keep bounces at bay and help your emails reach the inbox.
Image courtesy of ZeroBounce.Net, October 2023
Step 1: Validate Your Email List
You can remove invalid email addresses from your list once they bounce, but the damage is already done.
To keep your email deliverability high, you want to avoid bounces in the first place – and the most effective way to do it is by using an email validator.
An email validation service checks your email list for invalid email addresses so you can remove them before they cause harm.
The process is easy and fast – on average, you can verify 100,000 contacts in less than an hour.
Email databases decay at an average rate of 23% a year, so remember to validate your contacts at least once a quarter.
Image courtesy of ZeroBounce.net, October 2023
Step 2: Set Up An Email Validation API
After you verify your entire email list, you can go a step further and prevent it from acquiring bad data with an email validation API.
The API is your second layer of defense against bounces, working in real-time to protect the health of your email list.
Once you connect the API to your sign-up and registration forms, it blocks invalid emails right at the point of capture.
For instance, if someone mistypes an email, it prompts them with a message asking them to enter the right address. Aside from that, a trustworthy email validation API blocks bots and fake sign-ups, thus protecting your email deliverability.
Step 3: Remove Unengaged Subscribers From Your Email List
Building an email list takes effort, so many companies want to hold on to the email contacts they gather.
The bigger your list, the higher the ROI is the common mindset.
Are you spending hundreds of hours working through each one manually?
Are you having to guess which leads are more likely to result in conversions?
Or are you converting leads, but having trouble deciding which to focus on first?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, it’s time to stop prioritizing lead management and start concentrating on lead scoring instead.
What Is Lead Scoring?
We all know how crucial lead generation is to a business, but what happens when you have the leads but don’t know what to do with them? Which leads are the most valuable, which leads have the most potential, and which can you safely ignore?
These are the kinds of questions that lead scoring answers.
As the name suggests, lead scoring is the practice of assigning points to each of your leads, usually between 1 and 100.
Scoring criteria vary from business to business, but they’re most often based on factors like customer behavior, brand engagement, demographics, and segmentation. Once you’ve assigned a score to a lead, you’ll then have empirical data your sales and marketing teams can use to drive conversion.
Sounds simple enough, right?
It’s certainly effective enough. According to a study from Information Technology and Management, effective lead scoring models deliver excellent performance in annual revenue (i.e., a 50% average increase).
But what goes into good lead scores, and how do you use them to deliver qualified leads?
While your own B2B lead scoring model will be individual to your particular business, most lead scoring frameworks are built on data acquired from existing leads.
This will usually take the form of information submitted, actions taken, or engagement across various channels. You can then choose to either assign your scores manually (which can take a lot of time) or to use a predictive lead scoring model (which can save a lot of time).
Either way, you’ll have the information you need to streamline your marketing efforts and concentrate on viable, valuable leads. And that’s how you turn prospects into customers with lead scoring.
The Benefits Of Lead Scoring
Why is lead scoring important, and just how does it benefit the sales process? Let’s take a look.
Increased Opportunities
With lead scoring, there’s no reason to lose out on conversion opportunities again – because you’ll know exactly which high-quality leads to focus on and which unqualified leads to ignore.
Just ask TeamBuilding, a company whose lead generation boomed over the pandemic. By implementing a lead scoring system, the TeamBuilding team was able to identify qualified leads and use marketing automation to streamline their lead management.
Not only were they able to grow their sales team, but they also tripled their monthly revenue as well – all thanks to the power of lead scoring.
Increased Efficiency
How much time have you wasted in your business reaching out to leads that went nowhere? That’s time and money that a lead scoring system can save you.
Knowing where a lead is in your sales funnel and how likely it is to convert is what lead scoring is all about – and having this information readily available is what makes your business more efficient.
No more time wasted chasing down cold leads; instead, your sales team can strike while your leads are hot, shortening your sales cycle and streamlining your sales process.
More efficiency, more profitability.
Improved Marketing
Marketing campaigns aren’t cheap. So when you’re spending money, wouldn’t it make sense to know which of your campaigns and channels are bringing in the most high-quality leads?
That’s where lead scoring comes in. It’s one of the most valuable tools your marketing and sales teams have in identifying which of your campaigns are working and which aren’t.
If your social media marketing is generating more promising leads than your email marketing, you’ll know where to focus your efforts, where to keep spending money, and where to save money. And that’s how you reach your target audience while boosting your ROI at the same time.
Increased Conversion
Conversion – it’s the ultimate goal of any business, isn’t it? Turning leads into actual sales.
And it’s what lead scoring strategies can help you increase, through identifying high-value leads.
By helping to pinpoint where your potential customers are in the sales funnel, your marketing and sales team will be able to target them more directly, nurturing them at exactly the right time and in exactly the right way in order to make a successful sale.
By giving customers what they want, when they want it, you’ll be giving your company what it wants at the same time – increased conversion and increased revenue.
Improved Sales And Marketing Alignment
Reaching your target audience and making a sale means your marketing and sales teams need to work together successfully. A lead scoring model can help achieve this.
By identifying leads promptly and giving regular feedback to your teams, they’ll be able to refine their campaigns and processes to target your leads more directly. It’s all about communication, collaboration, and empowering your marketing and sales teams through lead scoring to work as one.
How To Develop A Lead Scoring System
Now that you know what makes lead scoring important, how do you go about it?
By creating a lead scoring system that takes your company’s unique needs into account.
It’s all about using data and analytics to identify your most promising leads and using that information to increase your sales effectiveness.
And the lead scoring framework is where you start.
1. Behavioral Attributes
In order to start scoring leads, you’ll need to assign points to them first. And one of the most effective ways of doing this is by analyzing their behavior. Every action a lead takes while engaging with your brand all contributes to their lead score.
This could include downloads, webinars, page visits, or time spent on a page. It should also include email engagement and social media engagement, too – any interactions that a customer has with your brand, including open and clickthrough rates, likes, shares, and reposts.
This kind of behavioral data is known as an implicit attribute: any kind of active or passive behavior or engagement that your lead exhibits.
You’ll need to decide which kind of behavior is more valuable to your brand and then assign point values accordingly. Opening an email might be +1, while downloading a brochure might be +3 – that’s for you to decide as part of your lead scoring tool.
2. Demographics
Another important data set to consider is demographics. This kind of data refers to a lead’s gender, age, race, location, and similar – usually information provided when signing up for an email list or newsletter, or opening an account.
While demographic information may not necessarily have data points assigned, it can be effective when used in conjunction with behavioral attributes – knowing what groups of people are more likely to engage with your brand and across which channels.
This kind of lead scoring is known as explicit lead scoring – data that you’ve been able to collect directly about a particular lead.
3. Segmentation
Another kind of explicit lead scoring data includes segmentation. This is a more focused form of B2B lead scoring that looks at a lead’s company demographics, including company size, revenue, industry, geographical location, ad spend, and budget.
By segmenting these types of leads into high, low, and medium value, you’ll be able to create an accurate picture of their purchasing power and qualify these leads to increase your revenue.
4. Negative Scoring
So far, we’ve looked at the types of lead scoring criteria that can contribute to positive scores.
But what about negative scores? These are just as important to consider when it comes to lead qualification.
Being able to exclude stagnant leads will increase your efficiency and allow you to concentrate your marketing efforts on medium and high-value leads only.
Think about assigning a negative point value for low to no engagement after a certain time or across certain channels, and you’ll refine your lead scoring strategy even further.
5. Build A Lead Scoring Model
You can do this in one of three ways:
Manual lead scoring: Here, you’ll need to set up your lead scoring model by hand using the criteria we’ve covered. Look at your leads’ attributes, behavior, and data and assign data points, both negative and positive, accordingly. The only downside to this is that it can take time and man hours, something you may not be able to afford, particularly if you’re a small business. And you’ll need to be meticulous with your scoring in order to minimize human error too.
Probability-based lead scoring: This will follow from your manual lead scoring by incorporating spreadsheets and formulas to help optimize the process. Create a formula to manage your data and calculate the probability that the leads you’ve identified will convert to customers. These probabilities will then guide your marketing and sales teams in isolating which leads to actively pursue.
Predictive lead scoring: Here’s where AI can work for you. Predictive scoring uses algorithms to assess your leads based on their behavior, their commonalities, and their differences, and assigns point values to them automatically. By using predictive analytics and machine learning, you’ll save time, and you’ll eliminate any potential guesswork, getting better leads to your sales and marketing teams faster than ever. Plus, your predictive scoring will get smarter with time too, giving you better results and improving your efficiency.
Best Practices For Lead Scoring
Of course, once you’ve established a lead scoring model, your lead management doesn’t end there.
That’s because, just like any other sales process, it needs to be constantly analyzed, updated, and refined to ensure that it stays relevant and competitive.
Keep updating your lead scoring model. Times change, and so should the way you score leads. A download that’s valuable to your business today might not carry the same weight a year or two down the line, and it’s important that your lead scoring model is agile enough to recognize and adjust for this.
Set a point threshold. There’s no value in simply collecting more data on your leads and assigning them scores, and then not doing anything with them. In order to capitalize on the value of a lead, you’ll need to set a point threshold for it. Once this threshold is reached, that’s when you pass the lead along to your sales and marketing teams to convert. If you’re using predictive scoring, you can even automate this process to maximize your sales effectiveness even further.
Train your marketing and sales team. Once you’ve established a lead scoring model, it’s imperative that your sales and marketing teams know how to use it. Teach them how to use the system, how to identify different leads across different platforms, and where their individual responsibilities lie in the conversion process. This way, you’ll have an effective lead scoring strategy and a unified message across all touchpoints.
Start Empowering Your Business With Lead Scoring Today
Establishing a lead scoring strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. At its heart, it’s about understanding customer data and using it to predict which of your leads are the most likely to convert to customers.
This, thanks to marketing automation and predictive analytics, is becoming easier than ever.
So rather than wasting your resources on stagnant or low-value leads, save time with lead scoring instead and see just what kind of value it brings to your lead management and your bottom line.
Looking for ways to scale your Google Ads account and advance your strategy?
Are you optimizing for offline actions, too, like calls and sales?
On June 21, I moderated a webinar with Michael Scott, Paid Ads Marketing Strategist at Manticore Marketing, and Amelia Northrup-Simpson, Product Marketing Manager at CallRail.
Scott and Simpson showed ways you could use Google Ads and other tracking systems to optimize your offline activity and maximize your ad ROI.
Here’s a summary of the webinar. To access the entire presentation, complete the form.
What Is An Offline Conversion?
Offline conversions involve activities outside online platforms like websites, apps, or software.
These non-digital actions, often tracked in a CRM, mainly consist of sales or closures. By optimizing offline activities, we can concentrate on making sales instead of online conversions.
The first step you need to take is determining how to upload the data, which will be discussed in part 4.
Despite the availability of various methods, using Google Sheets is often the most practical, as it is compatible with different platforms and doesn’t disrupt workflow.
First, ensure that each data field on any form has a CRM destination.
After importing leads into the CRM, automation should be set up for lead export via an automation tool or possible native CRM integration with Google Sheets.
You can now make a campaign on Google ads with the Goal of “Offline Conversion.” If you set it as an account goal, it will automatically optimize based on offline conversions!
[Slides] Google Ads: How To Boost Revenue & Optimize For Offline Sales
Here’s the presentation:
Join Us For Our Next Webinar!
Mastering GA4: How To Use The New Google Analytics Like A Pro
Join this webinar to make sure your business has GA4 set up with conversion tracking working, and learn how to utilize the new interface, event data types, and more to keep your campaigns on track.
There are many unique and creative ways to use video marketing in your law firm.
From educational and captivating content to engaging and share-worthy videos, this article will help you discover new ways to generate new leads with video!
Let’s get into it.
1. Create Educational Videos
The legal field is often complicated, wordy, and altogether unapproachable for the average person.
As a legal professional, though, you have the opportunity to translate complex topics into information your audience can easily understand!
One of the best ways to do this is to create educational videos that address common legal questions your audience may have – or to provide more information about the legal process in general.
This can be incredibly helpful to potential clients who are overwhelmed with all of the traditional jargon surrounding their legal issues.
For example, home foreclosure can be a scary and intimidating issue. Help put your audience at ease by breaking down the exact steps they should take to prevent foreclosure – including hiring a legal professional.
Since most legal issues will require someone to get legal support, you can always mention your services in hopes of a potential client reaching out to you!
Tip: Consider adding real-life examples or case studies to add even more value to your educational videos. This will make your videos more relatable for your audience.
2. Launch A YouTube Channel
The best way to get more eyes on your video content is to start a YouTube channel. This is because YouTube acts as a search engine, allowing users to search for topics and discover related videos.
For example, if someone searches for “child custody battle” on YouTube, they will be met with a list of related videos from other lawyers and publishers.
But how high these videos rank in YouTube search is somewhat dependent on YouTube SEO.
Plan YouTube video topics that relate to what your potential clients are likely looking for. You can use keyword tools for YouTube to find keyword ideas.
Then, you should include your chosen keyword in the video title, description, and video content (voiceover/script). This helps improve your YouTube rankings and attract viewers to your channel.
Be sure to include a call-to-action (CTA) for potential clients to contact you, and consider adding your website link and/or phone number to the description of your video.
Tip: Use a tool like Animaker to create animated explainer videos. This can be a fun way to explain complex legal concepts.
3. Embed Video Content Into Blog Posts
Another way to drive traffic to your videos is to embed them in blog articles on your website.
If your law firm has a blog, this is likely a place where you post law firm updates, informational content, client testimonials, and more. Article marketing is a great way to drum up more organic traffic for your law firm.
If you have website analytics already, I recommend identifying the blog articles that currently get the most traffic and creating videos for these. Then, you can embed the videos into the articles themselves.
If you don’t have website analytics yet, I highly recommend getting set up with Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA). Both are free and provide valuable insight into how your website is performing, how many people visit your site, etc.
4. Ask Clients For Video Testimonials
There is a lot of trust to be built between lawyers and their clients. With so much on the line – money, time, family dynamics, etc. – clients are often wary of hiring legal help with no guarantee of results.
And while you can’t guarantee any outcome, you should be able to guarantee a positive experience. This is where having happy client testimonials can help build trust in your business.
So, in addition to asking for client testimonials on Facebook and Google, consider asking clients for video testimonials. These videos can be added to your blog, website, YouTube channel, ads, and beyond (with consent, of course!).
Ask clients to describe their experience working with your law firm, why they might recommend you to future clients, and what the outcome was from working together. However, be aware that you don’t want your testimonial videos to be too scripted.
5. Use Video In Paid Ads
Paid advertising can be exciting, too! Instead of resorting to the traditional, text-based ad format, consider experimenting with video.
The most common pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platforms are Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads, but you may decide to use others that better fit your niche.
You can publish video advertisements to reach new audiences, drum up engagement, and generate leads for your firm.
Grab attention by having a strong opening that quickly communicates your message.
Keep your video short and sweet (15-30 seconds is recommended).
Optimize your video for mobile viewing by adding subtitles, a clear CTA, and a vertical aspect ratio (9:16 is recommended).
Add compelling branding, like your logo, photos of your team, icons, and more.
Encourage viewers to take action. For example, you can direct them to your website or include your phone number in the ad.
6. Use Live Video
Many platforms, like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, allow you to post live videos. In this format, you simply log into your account, navigate to the Live function, and click “go live”!
Live videos are great for engagement, allowing you to interact with your audience in real-time.
Some great live video topics include question-and-answer sessions, tutorials, online conferences, interviews, or webinars.
You can even use platforms like Be.Live to share your screen or have multiple hosts on-screen. It even allows you to post your live to multiple Facebook groups and/or pages simultaneously.
When hosting a live video, make sure you have a reliable internet connection. I also recommend being in a quiet, distraction-free space with a simple backdrop.
7. Host A Webinar
Like educational videos, webinars are a great way to provide valuable information to your audience. The difference is that webinars are usually longer (hours or days at a time), and you might even have attendees sign up in advance.
Webinars work best if they fit into your larger marketing strategy. For example, you might advertise on social media for people to attend your webinar, for which they need to provide their email address.
Then you can follow up with them via email marketing, direct them to your blog, or prompt them to work with you.
A wide variety of tools allow you to record a webinar; Google Meet and Zoom (yes, the ones you use for virtual calls) allow you to hit “record” and save your video.
Then, you can upload the video to YouTube (and make it “hidden” except for attendees) or post it on your website behind a subscription wall.
8. Collaborate With Industry Experts
You might be the most experienced lawyer in your niche, but I’m sure you don’t know everything! This is when it’s helpful to pull in other industry experts to provide additional value to your audience.
For example, you might be a family law attorney (whose target audience is parents), but you don’t know much about probate and estate planning. You could invite a trusted probate attorney to discuss the value of wills, estate planning, and more.
This can take the format of an interview (with you and the interviewee on screen) or as a pre-recorded video that the expert sends to you. Whatever format makes the most sense for you!
Try to look for industry experts who have a strong following in your target market. That way, you can broaden your reach and expand your potential client base.
Creative Law Firm Video Marketing Ideas
It’s clear that video marketing can be a lucrative way to drive more traffic and leads for your business.
More than just the above, there are tons of ways to expand your reach with video.
The possibilities are only limited by your creativity and imagination – so don’t be afraid to have fun with it and try new approaches.
Are you prepared to meet their expectations at each stage along the customer journey?
Refining your content strategy to guide your future customers through the conversion funnel is critical, especially with so many online channels at their fingertips.
If you’re ready to start getting the most out of your leads and driving more sales for your business, register for our next webinar and learn what it takes to turn interested prospects into paying customers.
Key Takeaways From This Webinar – Learn To:
Define your market landscape.
Create a journey derived from data science.
Calculate your content gaps.
Create a content plan based on prioritization.
Join Wayne Cichanski, Vice President of Search and Site Experience at iQuanti, and Jill Perlberg, Vice President and Head of Content Strategy and Client Experience Marketing at Northwestern Mutual, as they discuss ways to optimize your content strategy to suit the structure of your unique sales funnel.
You’ll learn how to create relevant and valuable content that’s perfect for each stage of your customer’s journey.
Sign up now and get all the insights you need to step up your content marketing strategy.
You’ll even have the opportunity to ask about your unique situation in a live Q&A session.
Can’t make the live webinar? Register anyway, and we’ll send you a recording after the event.
Today’s consumers have an almost limitless amount of information at their fingertips. Podcasts, videos, blog posts, and social media – are just a few of the sources that can drive them toward one brand over another.
If it’s your job to attract these potential customers, you know the struggles of generating high-quality leads.
In this piece, we’ll take a closer look at lead generation, discussing the different types of leads you could attract and providing some strategies and examples for lead gen that you can put to use right away.
What Is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is a marketing process of capturing potential consumers who show interest in your product or service.
The goal is to connect with people early in the buying process, earn their trust and build a relationship so that, when they’re ready to make a purchase, they buy from you.
But lead generation also serves secondary objectives, including building brand awareness, collecting customer data, and fostering brand loyalty.
With this in mind, it’s important to remember that not everyone who visits your store or website is a lead.
That’s why successful lead gen goes after specific targets, using a variety of platforms and strategies including:
Landing pages – Using a tracking pixel, landing pages collect information about visitors you can later use to target them for sales.
Email – Email is a great lead generation tool because the recipients will have opted in, which means they’re already familiar with your brand.
Social media – With unmatched opportunities for engagement, your social media accounts are a great way to encourage your targets to take action.
Blogs – A great way to establish authority and provide value, blogs are also a great place to promote specific offers.
Live events – When it comes to qualifying leads, live events are a great way to meet your target audience and quickly identify the ones more likely to make a purchase.
Coupons and other promotions – Offering a discount or free item is a great way to encourage targets to provide their contact information.
What will ultimately work best for you will depend on your niche and your audience.
As you experiment with different lead generation strategies, you may find one more successful than the others. This means you should probably make that channel your priority, whereas others may not be of any use at all.
But we’ll get to all that later.
First, let’s talk about leads.
The Different Types Of Leads
Sales is the engine that drives any business. Without sales, there’s no revenue. Without revenue, there’s no business. So, it’s kind of important.
But it’s a massive field. The approach a medical monitoring sensor salesperson takes is going to be very different from a used car salesman.
But both of them – and every other sales professional for that matter – have one thing in common: they need to spend most of their time pursuing the people who are most likely to buy.
In general, leads fall into seven categories:
Hot Leads – These leads are ready to convert. They are qualified and interested in your offering, and are the most likely to convert to a sale. For example, this might be the purchasing director who has had several conversations with you and received a product demo. They have purchasing authority and a timeline.
Cold Leads – These are potential customers who may be unfamiliar with your brand or offering. As of yet, they have shown no interest in what you’re selling. Generally speaking, these are the hardest leads to convert to sales.
Warm Leads – A middle ground between the two previous types of leads, these are people who are familiar with who you are and what you offer. They’re the type who watch your videos or read your blogs, but haven’t contacted you directly. Your goal is to warm them up into hot leads.
Information Qualified Leads (IQLs) – This is the kind of lead who has already shown some interest in your company and has followed a call to action. Maybe they signed up for your email newsletter or filled out a lead generation form. They are often looking for more information and will react positively to a nurturing campaign.
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) – MQLs are one step further down the pipeline from IQLs. They are actively searching for a solution that fits their needs, and are trying to discover if yours is the right fit. These are the types of leads who will download your whitepapers, watch your videos, and attend your corporate seminars.
Sales Ready Leads (SRLs) – Sometimes called “accepted leads,” these are the bottom-of-the-funnel leads who are almost ready to pull the trigger on a purchase. It’s important to understand their budgets, purchasing authority, needs, and timeframe.
Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – These leads are ready to buy and should be in communication with your sales team. They are considered very hot, however, you should be aware that they are likely still considering some of your competitors.
The Lead Generation Process
As you have probably gathered by this point, lead generation is a multiple-step process.
Yours will vary, depending on whether you’re focusing on inbound or outbound generation – but both should follow a similar pathway.
Step 1: Do Your Research
Before you start trying to collect leads, you need to gather as much information as possible about your target audience. You want to know not just who they are, but where they live, what’s important to them, and most importantly, what their pain points are, particularly those that are the most pressing.
It’s often a good idea to create customer personas, in which you define the demographics, budget, and needs of typical customers. You may want to consider social habits, professional experience, and even psychological traits.
Once you know who you’re going after, it’s time to identify where they are. Are they active on Facebook, or more likely to respond to an email? Again, this will vary depending on your specific circumstances.
This is also the stage where you should check out the competition. What are they doing? What differentiates your offering from theirs? And most importantly, why is it better?
Step 2: Create Great Content
By now, you should know what needs your offering fills for your potential customers. Use this information to create content that solves it.
Your choice of medium will affect your content format. For example, videos work great on social media, but you can’t embed them in an email.
Likewise, if you’re going after your target audience on Twitter, your lengthy blogs are going to need to be linked to, or at the very least truncated.
Never forget your focus is on adding value. Each piece of content you create should serve a specific purpose, whether that’s educating your audience about your offering, building brand awareness or promoting a sale.
Step 3: Develop A Lead Generation Database
You can have the hottest leads on the planet, but they won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t handle them the right way.
You should create and use a lead database where you can record, study, filter, and segment your potential customers.
Ideally, you’ll want to get an automated CRM system to dramatically reduce the labor involved with this.
Most of these will allow you to tag leads based on the type and how hot they are. This allows your sales team to work through their lists in a more efficient manner, dedicating the most attention to those with the biggest chance of converting.
Step 4: Qualify And Score Leads
Not all leads are going to be in the same place in the sales funnel. Some will be ready to buy today, while others may just be getting an idea of what’s out there.
You need to adjust your approach based on this.
Most companies use a lead scoring system of 1-100, which indicates approximately where the lead is in the customer journey. They are assigned points based on their actions, with more serious actions resulting in more points.
For example, following your Facebook page could be worth 10 points, filling out a “Request a demo” form might be worth 20, and opening and reading an email could be 5. If a lead does all three of these, their lead score would be 35.
These numbers will give you a general idea of where they are from the following stages:
New leads, who have just made initial contact.
Working leads, with whom you have had contact and initiated a conversation.
Nurturing leads, who are not interested in buying right now, but might in the future.
Unqualified leads, who are not interested in your offering. These are sometimes called “dead leads.”
Qualified leads, or those who want to do business with you.
Obviously, you should focus more time and energy on the leads that have a higher probability of converting.
Lead Generation Strategies And Examples
The ways you can generate leads are practically endless, but in this section, we’ll discuss some of the more common strategies you can employ, plus give you examples of them at work.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the practice of creating engaging and informative content that provides value for leads and customers, thereby generating interest in a business.
This can span both traditional and digital marketing, and is an important part of any successful marketing strategy. It can include things like newsletters, podcasts, videos, and social media.
You can use content marketing for any stage of the sales funnel, from growing brand awareness with timely blogs, creating demand or demonstrating thought leadership with white papers, driving organic traffic via SEO, building trust, and earning customer loyalty.
To make the most of yours, offer many opt-in opportunities and make them more enticing by adding discounts, guides, or something of value in exchange.
Email Marketing
Email remains a popular choice for lead generation for a good reason: it works.
A study by Mailchimp found 22.71% of marketing emails were opened, with some industries seeing even higher rates.
Whether you’re sending out a monthly newsletter or a cold outreach email to a potential prospect, email remains one of your best bets for generating new leads.
One of the more cost-effective means of generating leads, email marketing also allows you to segment your targets with customized content that promotes maximum engagement.
Another reason email marketing is a favorite for so many organizations is that it provides incredible opportunities for tracking. A quality CRM will give you a lot of useful data, including open rate, engagement time, and subscriber retention, allowing you to fine-tune your campaigns.
Social Media Marketing
Almost everyone is on social media these days, which makes it the ideal place to hunt down leads.
Social media platforms not only allow you to directly interact with your followers, but they also let you create advertising targeted at highly specific audiences.
Interaction is simplified thanks to multiple user-friendly CTAs like Instagram Stories’ skip option and truncated URLs on Twitter.
Screenshot from Facebook, January 2023
Social media is also a great place to run contests or share gated content.
You can use paid ads like the one above to target new leads, share content that will generate them organically, or ideally, a mix of both.
Coupons, Discounts, And Free Trials
If you’re like many people, you may be reluctant to provide your email address to businesses in case they start spamming your inbox.
As a business, however, this can be a problem.
The way to overcome this trepidation is to offer people something of value in return for their contact information.
A risk-free trial or discount code is a powerful tool for overcoming sales barriers. And once a target has tried your offering, you can retarget them with additional offers to encourage a sale.
Give them a free gift, offer a coupon, or allow them to take your product for a test drive, and you’ll find many more people willing to give you their info.
Screenshot from author, January 2023
Online Ads
Display advertisements are videos and images that pop up as you’re browsing websites, apps, and social media.
They, along with paid search and PPC, are a great way to reach your intended customers where they are.
Display ads are particularly useful for targeting leads across the buyers’ journey, as well as promoting awareness and sales, promotions, or new products.
Screenshot from Google, January 2023
Remarketing ads are a great way to reengage leads who have stopped short of a purchase, while non-intrusive native ads are perfect for extending your content marketing efforts.
Referral Marketing
A great way to find new leads is to let your existing customers find them for you. Encourage them to write reviews or recommend friends in return for a discount or something else of value.
Image from AAA Insurance, January 2023
This is an excellent way to fill your funnel of leads – and make more sales. Referrals and online reviews give you an authenticity and trust level that no in-house marketing campaign can ever duplicate.
Did you know that when shopping online, more than 99.9% of people read reviews? Or that 94% of consumers acknowledged positive reviews made them more likely to support a business? And that’s not even including the power of personal recommendations from friends and family.
Referral marketing is a great tool for lead generation because it presents your brand in a positive light to more people.
Best Practices For Lead Generation
To ensure you’re getting the most out of your lead generation efforts, keep these tips in mind:
Use Your Data
You likely have a lot of information about leads and the types of strategies that work for them already at your fingertips.
Gather yours by looking at previous pieces that have worked well, whether it’s blogs that get a lot of reads, emails that have a high open-rate, or display ads that bring in a lot of traffic.
Look for general themes or things you did differently on high-performers. This will give you insight into the kind of things that resonate with your audience.
Be Consistent With Messaging
Make sure it’s very obvious to any web visitor or email recipient what action they should take next. Offer them a reason to click your links and keep your messaging clear and consistent.
You should maintain the same tone of voice across channels as you move prospects through the sales funnel. Remember, you’re not just interested in capturing data – you’re trying to create a customer.
A/B Testing
Every marketer knows the importance of testing different versions of collateral. This is because, no matter how well something is performing, it could always do better.
You should experiment with different headlines, images, body copy, etc.
Just remember to only test one aspect at once, lest you miss which change made a difference.
And again, don’t forget the opt-ins.
Use The Power Of CRM Technology
To ensure your sales and marketing teams are operating as efficiently as possible, but a lead generation platform to work for you.
The right tool can help you gather information about your targets, monitor their behavior on your website and identify what’s driving them to you.
Armed with this data, you can then optimize your pages and campaigns to better target your audience.
Create Enticing Offers At Every Stage
People at different stages of the purchasing journey want different things.
Someone who is just curious about seeing what’s out there isn’t likely to respond to a free demo offer, but someone who is further along the funnel might.
Make sure you’re offering something for every buying stage and that you have clear CTAs throughout your materials.
Integrate Social Media
Social media is the ideal platform for initiating conversations and interactions with leads at all stages.
While many marketers typically think of it as primarily for top-of-funnel targeting, by strategically using proven offers and other things of value, you can also go after those leads who are closer to making a purchase.
Clean Up Your Landing Pages
Users want information presented to them in a clean, easy-to-understand manner. No one is trying to read “War and Peace” to find a new vending machine supplier.
Put your important information at the top, and make it clear where visitors can input their information to contact you or get content.
Use Your Partners
Co-marketing is a great way to generate new leads because it allows you to piggyback on the efforts of partner companies.
Create mutually beneficial offers and you’ll spend the word about your brand to a larger audience, which will attract new leads.
Bring Your Sales Team In
Marketers prime the pump, but sales drives the action. Make sure to loop your sales team into the lead generation process early and often.
They will likely have personal insight into what works best to move targets along the purchasing path.
This will also ensure you remain on the same page as far as what terms mean.
Remarket, Remarket, Remarket
Almost no one makes a purchase on first contact, particularly in B2B sales. That makes remarketing an important arrow for your quiver.
It helps turn bouncers into leads and abandoners into customers – and it amplifies all your other marketing activities.
Make Lead Generation A Priority
No one ever said it was easy to find, score, and qualify leads, but it’s an important part of ensuring the growth and financial health of your business.
Nurturing customers and potential customers is hard work. But without it, you’ll struggle to make new sales.
This piece only covered lead generation from a high level, but hopefully, it has equipped you with some strategies you can employ to attract new leads and nurture existing ones.
If you only take a single thing away from this make it this: Put most of your efforts into higher-quality leads, because they’re the ones who are most likely to make a purchase.
And remember – lead generation is an ongoing process. You’re not going to see results overnight, but if you put in the work, you’ll start to generate the results you want.
