Lead generation is crucial for consistent business growth. Ignoring it means failing to attract potential customers and seizing excellent sales opportunities.
The latest lead generation statistics show that 61% of marketers consider generating leads their most significant challenge, while 40% consider it their top priority for 2022.
If you want to drive qualified traffic, attract more leads, boost conversions, and supercharge sales, read on to discover the best strategies that work in 2022.
Irresistible Lead Magnets
Source: GetUplift
Lead magnets are among the best tools for generating qualified leads. They are incentives that compel website visitors to share contact information to receive exclusive content or a free product or service.
Offering high-quality content for email subscriptions is one example.
Another is webinars. The 2021 Demand Generation Benchmark Survey Report revealed that 53% of marketers agree that webinars are excellent top-of-the-funnel lead generation tools for driving high-quality leads.
Other lead magnets include:
- eBooks;
- How-to guides;
- Tutorials;
- Videos;
- Checklists;
- Cheat sheets;
- Templates;
- Infographics;
- Webinars;
- Courses;
- Free trials;
- Product samples;
- Discounts.
Whichever lead magnet you choose, the key is to make it irresistible to your target audience. Whether you offer exclusive, insightful content, access to discounts and promotions, or a chance to check out your product or service before purchasing, it should entice people to disclose their contact details.
It’s all about meeting their needs, fixing their pain points, and providing real value in exchange for their email addresses and names.
Pro Tip – Promoting your lead magnets is essential – highlight them with a clear CTA on your homepage, landing pages, hello bar, blog, and social media profile. Also, don’t forget about exit-intent pop-ups to convert visitors about to leave your website.
Referral Programs
Source: Extole
Referral programs are another excellent marketing strategy many companies use. Leads you get through referrals are some of the best new sources of business that can boost your conversions, sales, and marketing ROI. For example, referrals have a 30% higher conversion rate than leads from other marketing channels.
Referral programs entice your existing clients to engage their friends and family in your brand to earn specific rewards or perks. They are brilliant tools to show appreciation to loyal customers, build trust, raise brand awareness, and drive more traffic and leads. Additionally, they help increase customer lifetime value and spending rates.
Consumers love discounts and rewards, and they trust recommendations from friends and family, making referral programs fantastic opportunities to attract new customers.
For instance, you could have referral programs where every new referral gets the customer 10% off their next purchase, a discount on their next monthly subscription payment, or $10 in credit to spend at your store. You can also offer gift cards, branded swag, or cashback rewards.
Lead Generation Advertising
Lead generation ads collect data about people who click on them, including their names, email addresses, and phone numbers. They feature instant forms and let you download your lead data. These ads are perfect for generating qualified leads on social media and can commonly be seen on Facebook and Instagram.
They’re more cost-effective than your regular PPC ads, as only people genuinely interested in your offer will click on them to share contact details in exchange for real value. As a result, you can reduce your PPC ad spending and maximize your leads, conversions, and sales using these ads.
Buyer-led Growth Model
A buyer-led growth model relies on the product as the key to higher customer acquisition, conversions, and retention. It transfers the power from sellers to buyers, creating an organic product-adoption process where some people discover a product before others join in as the word spreads.
That’s significantly different from a sales-led model where vendors guide leads and prospects throughout the buyer’s journey, keeping them at arm’s length. Instead, putting buyers in the driver’s seat gives them complete control over their experience.
Adopting a buyer-led growth model requires educating customers on your products or services through relevant, informative content, including blog posts and videos.
Lead magnets such as free trials and free versions work like a charm for SaaS companies, but don’t forget about built-in tutorials, in-product chats, and online self-service portals.
Customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies are excellent for building trust and credibility, regardless of your business type. You can also use social proof and endorsements of your offers’ value and quality to attract qualified leads and turn them into ready-to-buy prospects.
Source: Sumo
Also, let’s not forget about transparent pricing. Many consumers bounce when a website doesn’t display pricing plans. They want to know what to expect without contacting you, primarily to compare the prices with your competitors.
Lead Generation Quizzes
Source: ProProfs
Lead generation quizzes are perfect for capturing people’s attention and engaging them with your brand. They also help you learn more about your target audience to satisfy their needs better.
Quizzes are interactive content that few people can resist. They can even go viral, giving you a fantastic opportunity to raise brand awareness, expand your reach, drive more traffic to your website, and boost leads and conversions.
Quizzes for lead generation help you boost email subscriptions, as they include a lead capture form that requires contact information in exchange for the quiz results. In addition to the results, you can also offer an incentive and take things up a notch.
To get the maximum benefit out of your lead quiz, you must optimize every part. You must:
- grab attention with the title,
- make the questions relevant and exciting,
- tie them back to your products or services, and
- create share-worthy results.
Including a product or a link to relevant content in the quiz results is a highly effective practice for lead generation. You can use any lead magnet in the results, as long as it’s relevant to the quiz, increases brand engagement, and entices people to share the quiz and spread the word about your business.
Online quiz creators, such as ProProfs, let you create a quiz from scratch or use pre-built templates to save time. You can also customize your quizzes to fit your branding and lead generation goals.
Giveaways and Contests
Source: Sprout Social
Organizing contests and giveaways on social media is another excellent way to generate qualified leads. They offer a great way to grab people’s attention and make your company stand out.
Who doesn’t like getting free stuff? Make your social followers compete to snatch an alluring prize, and you’ll drive your lead generation through the roof!
- You can also host giveaways with influencers to tap into their vast audience and take advantage of their power to influence people’s purchasing decisions.
- You can organize sweepstakes for your top-selling products, buy-to-enter contests, comment-to-enter contests, and ask followers to create user-generated content for a chance to win a particular item or product bundle.
- You can also organize exciting social scavenger hunts. These can create memorable experiences that drive engagement and conversions. In this fun activity, you scatter clues from your social profile to help people answer a specific question.
These can provide the answer on a unique widget on your site, which automatically signs them up for your email newsletter.
Conversational Marketing
Source: Inbenta
Conversational marketing is engaging target customers in two-way conversations to convert them faster. It’s about interacting with them and building relationships instead of only relying on one-way communication.
Live chat and chatbots first pop to mind when you think of this interactive marketing type. They’re perfect for being available 24/7 to answer potential and existing customers’ questions.
But, conversational marketing includes much more. It focuses on one-on-one interactions across multiple channels. This includes social media and instant messaging apps, such as Facebook Messenger, SMS, phone calls, email, etc.
The best part about conversational marketing is offering proactive customer support, which is unsurprisingly preferred by 86% of online shoppers. You can be there whenever your leads or customers need you, improving their experience, building trust, and guiding them through your marketing and sales funnels.
Conclusion
These lead generation strategies are crucial for supercharging conversions and sales, but they’re also perfect for learning more about your target audience. They give you an insight into their needs, pain points, desires, and preferences, helping you forge better relationships and inspire long-term loyalty.
But, don’t expect an instant sales spike when applying the strategies above. Instead, it would be best if you also nurtured the leads you generate. Lead nurturing is essential for maintaining relationships and building trust & brand loyalty. So segment and score your leads, nurture them regularly, and go a long way towards achieving your goals.
