Every brand has stories to tell—stories that will engage, inform, surprise, and impact their audience and deliver on measurable business goals. And Shiv is the conduit between brand and consumer.
Incrementors Web Solutions’ tech-enabled SEO & Marketing Services help businesses grow by getting more online leads, calls, and revenue. Shiv helps clients find the subject and medium that best fits their unique identity, and then I produce results that meet their objectives. He is an SEO Expert having 10+ years of extensive experience working with SEO clients on a long-term basis.
He will examine your website and find out possibilities for growth using the following SEO tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Semrush, Similarweb, Xenu, etc. His ultimate goal for his clients (B2B & B2C) is leveraging the power of SEO to drive growth, engagement, and revenue generation.
(edited for publication)
Good morning, and welcome to Understanding eCommerce. As part of our Ask the Experts series, we’re here today with Shiv Gupta from Incrementors Web Solutions. How are you?
I’m great, Mike; thanks for having me here.
Absolutely. Today, we’re going to talk about lead generation. Could you give us a little bit of a background about you and your company?
We are in the digital marketing space. I’ve been in this industry for the past 12 years. And my agency is almost a decade old. We are into search and optimization, pay per play, and internet marketing overall, in general. As well as email automation.
Why do most of your customers or most people find lead generation so difficult?
Most of the customers find lead generation so difficult because they only focus on lead generation. And that is the problem which I see these days, right. They don’t think about providing any value to the people visiting their blog or reading their article site. Or, if someone is downloading a PDF from your website, they don’t care about how well that PDF is written. Right? All they care about is we just need to get the lead for our sales team. So that’s the problem when you focus only on lead generation. And at that point in time, instead of being customer-centric, you start thinking about seller-centric.
And when you think about it in that sense, the problem starts when you start only thinking about generating leads, then at that point in time, you stop providing the value. And as soon as that happens, it becomes a very difficult task for them. And even if you generate a lead, the sales cycle would be very long, or it would become challenging for you to generate sales from the leads you have generated. So, for instance, in some cases, many people give you a PDF to download; in return, they take your name and email it right. And then they start spamming you, you Immolate upon checking upon doing further analysis, and most of the agencies we work with, but we have seen it, the conversion issue is around 0.1%.
That means you’re spending $10, or $15, for each download for each email ID. So after spending 1000 $1,500, you’re not even able to generate a proper sale. But, on the other hand, if you are providing value and selling value to them, then the promotion keeps on coming to your website; they keep on learning from you. And once that process starts, right, whenever they need a solution for the problem, when they are looking for external help, they are always going to come to you. Right, and this is the exact game changer, how a person should think, And right now what marketers are thinking.
One of the things that we see, and we’re always amazed that companies are still doing this, is they’ll run a promotional campaign where there’s an opportunity to win an iPad or something else. Most people will be happy to sign up for that for the chance to win that, but they have no connection back. So, once I sign up for that and start receiving emails, I have no interest in the company; I just wanted to win an iPad. So it’s really about connecting; if you’re going to use a giveaway, it’s really about connecting the value proposition in the giveaway to figure out what the companies are looking for, something that’s related to what you might ultimately do to sell them. So how do you convince your clients to follow a more value proposition or customer-centric approach to the generation?
It is all about giving them a new perspective. For instance, you said they put a giveaway on their social media and people when iPads and iPhones. Do you know why that happens? This happens because the owner has given a target to marketing to generate more likes, comments, and subscribers. And this is why instead of thinking in that direction, instead of providing value to the users, they start thinking in the wrong direction and focus on only fulfilling their targets. So they just open towards like, the sales that and they become sellers centric, they work on fulfilling their target.
In this case, when we talk to our clients and tell them to see, even if you generate these types of leads right, you will not just spend your hard-earned money; you will be spending a lot of your time, not just on that campaign. But once you get that in the lead, you do the automation, right in nurturing that. And after that in the sales process, and, and which in most of the cases won’t even happen successfully. Right. So you spend a lot of your time, you spend a lot of your efforts, your money, right, which doesn’t make much sense. So once we have this open conversation with our clients, that’s the time when they understand. And then they start looking at things from a different perspective.
And, in fact, Mike, I don’t even leave people or my clients for this. This used to work like this is what we have learned from the past 20 years. People, we used to just measure them based upon how many targets they have achieved. And every company I go in, correct? Then their performance is measured based upon all these factors number of each entity. And I think this has to change; the performance of marketers should be measured on different aspects. That’s what needs to be done. So after doing it with a couple of clients, I’ve seen that there are even things that need to be done. For instance, the performance of marketers should be measured based upon the customer acquisition cost.
I agree; we’re genuinely excited when our customers start to look at metrics versus just putting stuff out there. But then we have to take it to the next level, which is understanding the right metrics to look at? Because, as we’ve indicated, simply driving traffic, and if that is the sole metric that you’re using to understand access. I can drive 1,000 people to a site, but if none of them convert, who cares?
Understanding what the conversion cycle is? Ideally, there’s probably a funnel, so you have to put a lot in the top, but we also want to understand how we move people through that conversion funnel? And how do we ensure that I would rather have 100 people enter the funnel, that let’s call them warm leads, versus just sort of cold leads, where there’s a greater likelihood that I’m going to convert them? So, how do you change that mentality? Where or do you help educate your customers on understanding the conversion process,
So, all marketers need to be highly customer-centric. For this, whenever I have a conversation with any marketers of any agency or my marketers, we offer one formula, GIVC, which is genuine interest and value creation. So whenever we are doing something, we should be genuinely interested in the person who will use that thing. And we need to create value for them. Right. So, for instance, we are into digital marketing; we write blogs, create videos, and create them in so much depth that we don’t even want or encourage them to hire us; we give so much information that is there ready. And if they’re going to do it themselves, they can go in, learn it from there and do it all by themselves. Now, here’s the magic beans. See, we have tons of tasks, right? Every everyone is overwhelmed. We all are very busy, very visible. So when they see that, yes, this agency or this person has provided this much value. They know they’re shaped. So guess what, when they want to use external help, who are they going to buy?
We understand that as well. So, we provide a lot of educational content; it helps the customer know where they should be focusing. And the reality is, once they’ve gone through the content, there will be a percentage that will do that themselves. But a greater percentage will also realize, Wow, this is hard, and I should probably hire someone. So, part of educating them in the process is helping them understand how complicated the process is, how complex SEO is how difficult lead generation is. So do you have any particular tips for lead generation, whether it be a specific social media platform or other tips where folks can begin the lead generation process?
Whenever we talk about the lead generation process, the first thing is that you need to make sure that you are like delivering your phone support intensified taking your email in return for your in return PDF. I need to make sure maybe in return for a course; then I need to make sure that the PDF or that course justifies taking the email id and email, right? It should not be like I just provided a wrapping course or a crappy PDF. And in return, I just caught their email id and need to pass that over to my skills team so that we can get it so that they will start this is correct.
So the first step is to make sure whenever you are in some information, or if you’re trying to generate a lead, you deliver what you promised, because based on that they are going to judge you based on that they perceive you whether you are an industry expert, or what type of company you are, or your ethical company, or you’re just fooling them around. Right. And we’re good. Yeah. And to lead them to that particular form of something, right? I’ve seen most of the agencies; they just run an ad to sell their stuff, right for that, stop 3% for the lead only for that. But instead of that, for generating leads, agencies should run ads for the case studies, telling them the problem and how they solve that problem and the net for them because when your potential buyer sees that case study, they will be able to create themselves.
They will be able to see yes, they have done it, achieved it, and be sold the exact methodology they use. So if you want to do it yourself, no one is holding you back. And if you want some external help, we are always here either you can contact us or any agents out there. But guess what, since you provided that information since you are a legit company and you’re so concerned about their growth, they will always come to you. And that’s when that demand generation plays a huge role.
And then, once you’re able to collect this information, is this a one-off effort? Or do you then engage in a drip campaign?
So at the end of the day, ideally, we should not put them into a drip campaign; we should still leave them out there and nurture them in different genuine ways by constantly providing them value. So yes, we’ll have to do a drip campaign because, ultimately, we need to produce results. These days, marketers and salespeople are expected to generate revenue; no one talks about anything else. So they have to do that. In the drip campaign, I would suggest providing them information core when nothing is based on their interest, zero spam. If you’re doing that, then gradually down the road, you will get more leads, and the sales cycle will reduce the sales will happen very fast. If you are doing proper work in demand generation, you won’t have to spend too much time in the sales process. So that’s how it works.
And what’s the difference between lead generation and demand generation?
Oh, that’s a beautiful question. What I have seen is a lot of people are confused, but lead generation is. What demand generation is, and after working with a lot of clients, you can say that in the funnel, lead generation is the last part, and demand generation is where everything starts, when you are focusing only on generating leads, you will not be able to provide the value.
In Demand Generation, you are only providing the value. And it’s up to them whether they want to hire you or indigenization to call constantly trying to engage them in terms of showing your production services, for instance, right now we are into the COVID era, right and zoom and that can compete they are doing so good proposition for zoom to have a better-demanded mission candidate would be how like they should get involved in these topics how to be more productive at your home or how to have a more compelling call with your colleagues via checking at your home and in and this is a problem. They should suggest a solution that how they can do it. Right. Instead of just saying Zoom is a conferencing software go ahead try the user prior so When you are saying, Zoom is a conferencing software, you’re telling about your product and services, that is, when you’re talking about their pain and the solution for it, then that is about demand generation. That’s the real difference between these two.
And then what is the connection with both lead generation demand generation into CRO? So how do we take those leads that we’ve now collected and then move them through the process, so they turn into customers?
Alright, so demand generation comes first, and a new generation comes after that. So into your CRO, once you have captured that email captures the need, you need to constantly update them about the problems they are facing and potential solutions. You don’t need to talk about your products; you don’t need to go mod your services; that’s when it’s more towards demand condition side when you start talking about that you can solve this problem. It’s all about you, it’s all about seller-centric, that that’s when it starts going towards the lead generation or lead nurturing. And
When do you revisit your messaging if you find that the people who enter the funnel aren’t your ideal clients or your ideal prospects?
So, if you are doing it correctly and have done the demand generation correctly, then there are significantly fewer chances that the leads you are getting are not your ideal clients. Because again, one of the metrics I suggested earlier for demand generation is to see the quality of leads to see the sales side. But when you are focusing, you were very tight when using your biped thing; if you make a form and say give me your email ID and Name will provide me with an iPad. So you will get poor-quality leads, then you are on the lead generation side. But when you focus on the demand generation side and talk about the problems and potential solutions, then obviously, only interested people will come into your pipeline into your sales funnel. So that’s where the difference begins. So that’s why I encourage all my clients and everyone to be more towards the sales demand side instead of the lead generation side.
When you say look at your quality metric, how do you define your quality metric? Is it a warm lead? Is it closed? What do you use to assess that the quality of the leads that are coming through?
The quality of leads that are coming through? We see the amount of like Legos, the customer acquisition costs, number one, and the win rate on inbound leads versus outbound leads, right was it? And one other interesting thing which uses inbound revenue contribution, like what percentage of revenue coming to you, from this inbound leads as compared to the outbound ones, what percentage of your company that whenever I like in most of the cases that I’ve seen is it’s only 5% or 10% and ideally should be 35%, 40% or 50%? So through that, and once you start doing that, the entire synergy.
50%, your revenue generation through inbound that strictly the performance metric of the marketers rather than how many leads have been generated? Right? And the same, you can also look at the sales cycle and have inbound versus outbound right when you are going to them versus when they are coming to you. So these are a couple of matrices, which you can compare and see the performance and major.
One of the metrics you mentioned earlier was the cost to acquire. Is there a significant difference when you look at the cost-to-purchase view? For example, by inbound versus the cost required by outbound, or is inbound cheaper?
Inbound is an event done right. Inbound is very cheap. Like we had a good conversation earlier that you spend $10 or $15 per email, right? You provide them with a PDF; you received 1000 email ids, right? So you probably spend 1000 to $1,500 for that, and in return, you get only one lead or maybe not even a single deal because you were only focused on getting the emails, and your message was not correct. So we’re not helping you. We’re not perceived as a legit company. And you’re that entire money and time and efforts I think when to be on the other hand, if you have done it right. Then even with a lesser amount of money, you will be able to generate higher quality.
One of the challenges that we often see is when we talk about the cost to acquire, learned long-term value churn, and things like that, these are metrics that most small business owners don’t understand. So we find that we need to a considerable amount of effort in, you know, educating people around these particular metrics. Because I think to be successful, you need to understand, you know, your cost to acquire and relative to your long term value. And then ultimately, what’s your churn look like?
Churn is the number of customers that don’t renew or choose to leave for whatever reason. So We’ll focus on those three things. Because one, we want to acquire new folks. So that’s the acquisition; we want to make sure, as you mentioned earlier, that if we’re spending $1, we’re making three. So we’re looking at the long-term value versus the cost of acquisition. But we also want to understand how many people are leaving, because if we have a large turn, say, 10%, that means that our entire customer base is turning over every ten months? This means it’s costly because we have to acquire new customers to fill them back into the funnel. So, where are you as far as how do you help people learn what these metrics are, understand what they are? So they’re looking at the right metrics?
When you talk about churn rate, a couple of things get implemented in our organization, right? First, or even if you talk about sales, sales is always a conversation with someone. You have a good conversation with someone, and at that, it’s just about whether they work with your model. You don’t need to be too pushy; you don’t need to be too sleazy. And it all happens naturally.
Similarly, once we have made proper sales, the customer understands once we have set the expectations. So it all starts from sales, right? You cannot just say yes, yes to everything, whatever the client was asking just to get in, you need to have a proper conversation and need to set expectations, right. Once that is done, all the client cares about is a good relationship and deserves in most of the visits; I’ve seen companies providing the results versus their clients, right, because they found someone $1 cheaper.
If you have a good relationship and have a good conversation throughout your relationship with them, it makes a huge difference. So what is what we have done is create a lot of touchpoints with our clients. We have created in sheet with vow factors; what are the things we can communicate with the client for other servers when those servers will go right with the first check the expectations right on them after the end of the first week after the end of the first month. So these are all the touchpoints that keep updating us on how the bank is feeling, whether they’re getting proper reports, or whether they’re getting an appropriate explanation of the things in which direction they want to move forward.
These touchpoints play a huge role in ensuring that the churn issue is as good because you get to know that issue before the client leaves. And you can take the right action to fix that problem. So if there is an overall if you’re actively doing things, you won’t even have to face a problem or face its high percentage.
And when you’re working with clients about inbound marketing, how do you work with them to help them define market segment segmentation so they can figure out where their ad should appear in front of whom?
For this, we sit down with the clients and ask a couple of questions and encourage them. Those said, like to make themselves with their current buyers. So we encourage them first between them that see we need to create an exact buyer persona. We need to know their name, demographics, age, where they’re spending time, how much time they’re spending, and how they travel to work? What are the other websites, which they visit when they see so just a small, like service you can get for our clients or we ask our clients to hire a third party try to create a survey form for the 100% customized for them, they cannot just use any random survey or from the Google, right, it should be highly customized based upon what kind of client is providing, after that, sending that survey to their actual customers.
And once they fill out, we get a huge amount of high-quality data. And based on that, we decide whether you spend money on Facebook or LinkedIn, or maybe it should be a Forbes or entrepreneur or any other website because wherever your ideal customers are spending time, you should be visible there. So based on the collection of that data, we make decisions, and we run our campaigns in an ad to guess problems; that’s where we’ll be doing. So that’s how it all comes into play.
And when it comes to the buyer personas, are you helping your clients build these personas? Are you relying sort of on them doing it themselves?
No, we have a proper process, proper seed, right? If they want to print it out, we can have an Excel format if they’re going to do it digitally. And then we’ll make them set and answer all the questions. If the plan is busy, we ask them to come on a call, and they dictate and be right. But we need a proper buyer persona before starting a successful campaign. Otherwise, three months, six months down the road, everyone will be unsatisfied and unhappy. Correct. So you need to start it right to make sure that the campaign is successful.
And one of the questions that we routinely get asked is, you know, how do they decide, you know, what their marketing budget should be?
Yeah, so the marketing budget majorly is different for all different types of clients and scenarios. So how we suggest is we start by some testing, and we do competitor research. Based upon that, we see the places we will be earning the ads for, the places we are, how much they are spending, and all the areas because there are tools out there for which you can get this data. Once that is done, we suggest the initial budget to our client and start running the campaigns around it with smaller budgets. And once we see what type of return or activities we are getting based upon that, we increase the budget on certain platforms and deplete the budget on other platforms. So that’s how it all begins. But yeah, there is no exact answer to this question that language people are always asking for those; there isn’t an answer. There are approaches, but there’s not necessarily a magic answer to that.
If people go through this exercise and work with them and do the market segmentation, you help them create value or customer-centric content; what kind of improvement can they expect in their lead generation or demand generation?
Initially, we study where they are currently at what type of advertisement they are doing, right. The first and foremost thing is to hire a good copywriter who could talk about the pains of their buyers on their website. Right, once you do that, right. And you start running the campaigns, the magic begins. So we have seen huge growth like we have seen 1000 3,000% growth of our clients when with small, small tweaks, I would say not even heavy lifting. So that’s how it all starts. You just need to focus on what is right; you need to have your messaging right on your website; you need to add value to your website’s visitors and everyone around the social media and everything. And once they all are correctly done, everything starts taking shape. And the key point is like a turning point; you can see you can expect very soon.
If people want to learn more about Incrementors Web Solutions, where would they go and where should they find you.
They can visit our website, Incrementors Web Solutions, Or they can go to my YouTube channel as well. So it’s Shiv Gupta Incrementors. Or they hold onto my website at the bottom.
So is your YouTube channel around educational content what to? What do you typically talk about on the YouTube channel?
It’s only about educational content. We just like as we talked there in the last 3040 minutes, it’s all about generating value for them how they can do how they can fix the problem. Or if there’s a marketer who wants to learn, they can come, learn new things, new strategies around digital marketing, lead generation, demand generation, or themselves.
And what are some of the new areas that you think you’ll be focusing on in 2022?
So, in some areas where we’ll focus on 2022, we will believe in the specific Search Engine Optimization behind it. It used to be just keyword-based. And we are focusing only towards providing value, only giving value. So everywhere, whenever we do any type of marketing for our clients and won’t be solely towards the backlinks or something that should be high-quality content, it should make someone’s life better, but it should be making a difference. So we are just moving from the older mindset to a newer mindset just to provide value and start doing better things to make this world a better place to live in.
Are you looking at different mediums, like are you podcasting? Your YouTube being? So you’re using video marketing? So are these starting to become more prevalent over? Blogs and things like that?
Yeah, exactly. So all casting, we have started encouraging our clients to start doing podcasting in their industry, then there is help reporter outright, we are helping reporters into their news articles. So if they like your answer, they’ll be good at talking about us when the article goes, you are the source of that, those sorts of things. So and we are trying to make a channel so that if a client wants to publish themselves in a magazine or on bigger websites, they should be able to do that very easily. And are you doing anything with voice? The voice search optimization, exactly. Even my life, the last podcast was related to voice search optimization. So we were highly focused on voice search optimization this entire year, and we are heavily involved in that already.
Sure, we very much appreciate your time this morning. We look forward to some great things from you. Again, we will add those links below so that folks can find the YouTube channel and your website. And we look forward to great things with you. Thank you very much.
All right. Thanks a lot, Mike. It was nice talking to you.
Likewise.
