Effective lead generation methods: 3 rules and 5 tips

Lead generation in simple words

What the hell is lead generation really?
Contrary to popular belief, lead generation is not just about cold calling or emailing. Simply put, lead generation is attracting customers. In fact, the process of lead generation is quite simple, but like most simple things, it is difficult to do correctly. For many companies this is an insurmountable problem.

The abundance of information on the Internet has led to the rise of “conscious buyers” who postpone purchases until they have studied everything for themselves. This article will give you the secret weapon that will turn ordinary viewers into leads more effectively than ever before.

Advertising on the forehead no longer works!

Information Explosion occurred ; over the previous five years, humanity created more information than in the entire previous history.

The problem is that the abundance of information has consumed people's attention. People are overwhelmed and are increasingly ignoring the advertisements that bombard them on every corner, instead they are researching information about a product or service on their own.

The buying process has changed, but 90% of marketers have not changed and work the same way. It is necessary to look for new ways to reach customers through the increasing information noise.

In this article, you will learn effective lead generation techniques that will help you in the era of “ information fatigue .” But first, let's understand the terms from the angle from which I understand them.

Advantages and disadvantages of lead generation

Like any human creation, lead generation is imperfect. It should be considered as one of the ways to attract customers to your business. One of the ways - and not the only one.

Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of lead generation in the form of a table.

If you are a professional in Internet marketing, know how to work with numbers and find suitable channels for attracting customers, then this tool will help you, as a marketer or business owner, increase profits and recoup advertising costs.

What is lead generation?

Lead Generation is the process of searching and identifying potential customers for your business's products or services. Lead generation occurs at all stages of the sales funnel and consists of two components: receiving traffic and processing it.

A lead is a potential client from the target audience. Sales leads are different from marketing leads. Depending on the stage of the sales funnel, leads are classified into:

1. Cold (haven't heard of the product)
2. Warm (heard, but not ready to buy yet)
3. Hot (ready to buy right now)

It is necessary to interest a stranger, and then “warm him up with touches” until he is ready to buy. The lead generation process is similar to sowing a seed and harvesting a harvest.

The result of lead generation is expressed in obtaining contact information about leads, such as phone number, profile address on social networks, email address and others.

We cannot be 100% sure that the lead will make a purchase. The quality of leads depends on the “ character map ” that the marketer creates. The lead generation process is continuous and therefore the marketer needs to constantly collect new databases.

Reasons for poor lead generation:

1. Using the wrong strategy
2. Mentally retarded content
3. Landing page sucks
4. Bad manager

Practical Examples of Lead Generation

To show you how lead generation works in action, let's look at a few practical examples.

Example 1. Advertising campaign “Sunglasses to the masses!”

is developing successfully. She has 5 sales points in Moscow shopping centers and an online store. For the summer season, it was decided to hold the “Sunglasses to the Masses!” campaign in order to increase sales, increase brand awareness, and attract new customers to other products.

“Points for Everyone” is conducting an advertising campaign in Yandex.Direct for this purpose.

The first thing a company marketer starts with is making a list of keywords. The keyword impression statistics service “wordstat.yandex” for the query “Sunglasses” produces the following combinations:

• sunglasses – 60 thousand requests;
• sunglasses – 17 thousand requests;
• buy sunglasses – 2 thousand requests;
• men's sunglasses – 1 thousand requests;
• women's sunglasses – 1 thousand requests.

Since the online store delivers goods throughout the country, it is not necessary to select separate regions. Now, users who enter these phrases in Yandex will be shown a pre-approved ad: “ Buy sunglasses with a 50% discount until July 1, 2020. ”

In the first month, this ad was shown 400 times. It led to the site 100 times (every fourth user). These 100 people can soon become our leads, provided that they like the price, delivery conditions, website design, etc.

Result of the advertising campaign “Sunglasses to the Masses!”: 400 ad impressions, 100 clicks, 9 applications, including 3 clients.

Out of 100 people, 3 made a purchase, 1 called the office, 2 left their e-mail in the feedback form, 3 contacted the online consultant. In total, we received 9 leads (3 of which are already clients).

Example 2. Advertising campaign “Lens”

The same eyeglass company decided to increase sales.

The company management found the result insufficient. Or maybe it knows the motto of lead generation: “There are never too many clients”? It was decided to try other traffic channels. For this purpose, the advertising campaign “Lens” was chosen, which will be implemented on the Vkontakte social network.

An announcement was created here: “On your birthday, every second lens is a gift.” The target audience has been selected: women over 18 years old, living in Russia, whose birthday is in the coming week. The payment for clicks on an advertisement has been determined.

During the week of placement, 300 people clicked on the ad, 6 bought lenses at the promotion, 5 took part in the survey, 5 called the office. All 16 people are leads, of which 6 are established clients.

Example 3. Advertising campaign “Glasses with diamonds”

The management liked the new ways to attract leads and wanted to try another option. This time it was decided to take a risk and buy leads on the exchange. For these purposes, the third advertising campaign “Glasses with Diamonds” was created.

Having registered on one of the exchanges, the marketer submitted a purchase request, indicating the following parameters:

• gender: any;
• age – from 30 years;
• region of residence: Moscow and St. Petersburg;
• required contacts: phone and e-mail;
• having a job (desirable);
• marital status: have a partner;
• interested in purchasing high-quality and beautiful glasses.

The exchange set a price per lead of 600 rubles. 50 contacts were provided. The marketer sent them offers to buy glasses with diamond-encrusted temples, advertising them as a possible birthday gift for their significant other or themselves. Potential clients were then called. As a result, 11 people placed an order.

Below, in practical examples, I will give calculations that reflect the results of each of the 3 advertising campaigns.

Chatbots

Chatbots are incredibly useful. Although chatbots have been around for quite some time, in 2020 they have become an “ ubiquitous ” trend. Some online marketers use them as their main lead generation channel.

For example, online stores use chatbots to advise customers on product selection. Chat bots communicate with leads, asking clarifying questions. Chatbots are easy to make because people usually ask the same questions.

A chatbot can:

1. Ask the lead what interests him and direct him to the desired section of the site
2. Offer visitors a trial version of a product or service
3. Demonstrate a product, service, program or service delivery process
4. Ask clarifying questions, identify a need and recommend a product or tariff plan
5. Be in touch with clients 24/7/365.

Chat bots can be installed not only on your website, but also on social networks and instant messengers. For example, messages on FaceBook and VKontakte have a higher open rate (286%) and link click-through rate (768%) compared to email campaigns.

With numbers like these, it’s immediately clear what’s best to do right now...

But maybe you're worried about working with chatbots because you're not a techie...

..but the truth is that you don't need any technical knowledge. You can order the creation of a chatbot from freelancers for 500₽. Chat bots are not as expensive as they seem.

What is lead generation and how to increase sales in business

Lead generation is the process of generating a stable flow of leads. Lead generation today is carried out by traffic specialists, Internet marketers and even entire companies, selling them to the end customer at a certain price. Leads have become a commodity.

Among marketers there is a narrow specialization - lead manager. This is a person who knows how to improve the flow of leads into a business.

Every businessman dreams of having stable high sales figures. After all, the main criterion for the success of a business is its profitability.

How to increase sales? Let's give some advice.

• Keep an audio recording of all conversations between managers and your leads. With the rise of IP telephony, this has never been easier. In the future, you will be able to analyze recordings of phone calls and improve conversation scripts.
• Conduct an audit of your advertising. Evaluate how effectively you are attracting leads, find out which channels are wasting your advertising budget, and optimize your advertising campaign.

At every level of the sales funnel, your potential customers can be lost. A systematic analysis of all levels of the sales funnel will allow you to find weak points and prevent the loss of leads.

Forms with lead magnet

Lead generation is becoming more difficult and expensive every day. This is a headache for marketers. And it will only get worse! The Internet is already filled with free materials, most of these “Ultimate Dog Care Guides” are not really worth giving up your email address for.

Today many people do the same things they did 10 years ago. For example, e-books on the topic: “The Complete Guide to X...” or articles on the topic “5 Reasons Why...”. It takes more than just quality content to stand out.

But, you need a content superstar!

You have to think outside the box. Try something different, maybe something experimental.

When valuable material is ready, we can place a simple form on the site and ask people to leave their contact information in exchange for our super-valuable material. This could be, for example, a checklist, instructions, trial version or book.

The main idea is to integrate the capture form organically into the design of your website. When you give something away for free, it gets a lot of attention.

If a visitor stays on your site for more than 10 seconds, it means he is interested. In such cases, you can use a pop-up window.

After the lead enters their email address, they receive a link to download the lead magnet.

Such Lead Magnets are a major part of the B2B segment, since their products can cost hundreds of thousands of rubles. And visitors are unlikely to buy expensive goods or services directly on the site.

What is lead generation - a complete description of the concept

The concept of lead generation (from the English Leads generation ) came to us from Western marketers as a tool for managing the flow of potential customers.

A lead is a potential customer who has seen an advertisement for a product or service on the Internet, heard a message on the radio, or received information about it from another source.

Note that a lead is not a client yet, but can become one if you manage to attract him.

An ordinary person will turn into a lead if:

• will see information about you and your services online or offline;
• will need these services, i.e. will reach your target audience;
• visit the site or make a call;
• leave a request or contacts for feedback, subscribe to the email newsletter.

Natural questions: what needs to be done to attract as many applications as possible? Where to look for them? How to turn millions of users into your leads? How to make yourself known to capture their attention? These problems are solved by lead generation - the process of attracting or generating leads.

Before talking about this new business process, I would like to make one important note:

Lead generation will not work on its own - it needs an appropriate “environment”: high-quality content on the site, viral mailings, interesting offers, corporate identity and other auxiliary marketing tools.

You need to be able to calculate your expenses and the cost of advertising campaigns, draw the right conclusions and not stop - outdated information will stop working for you.

Create tools

There's a good reason why so many brands, including even Tinkoff Bank, have invested time and effort into creating free tools. Tool-based marketing is popular because even simple interactive ideas can generate many leads.

And while developing an online tool may seem daunting (you may need someone who knows how to code), you'll end up generating a huge amount of leads.

Don't believe me? Let's take a look at the news that happened 2 weeks before this article was published:

• Mail.ru Group bought the Worki job search service
• Tinkoff Bank launched its own online service for selling air tickets without intermediaries
• Yandex has released caller ID for iPhone
• VKontakte and its partner will launch a service for selling audiobooks
• Tinkoff Bank launched a website builder for entrepreneurs
• Tinkoff Bank launched a search service for apartments in new buildings

As you can see, large companies have long understood which method of lead generation is the best.

Your service may be free, but to receive full functionality the service will require registration, thereby generating leads. Creating a simple tool may take 2-3 months, but will bring millions of registrations.

Lead generation tools

The process of attracting potential clients can be divided into 2 parts:

• Attracting traffic;
• Converting a visitor into a lead.

Lead generation tools are classified according to these criteria. Some attract people, others help convert.

People are attracted by advertising placed where your potential audience is most numerous. For example, in social networks, in search engines, on forums, etc. It is advertising that launches a flow of traffic to the site where a visitor can become a lead. Therefore, the more points of contact you have with people potentially interested in your offer, the more targeted traffic will reach the converter.

A converter is a platform where visitors turn into leads. This could be your website, blog, landing page, online store. They all become converters when you place a form on them where a visitor can leave contact information. If your audience loves the social network Facebook, then you should launch an advertising campaign here.

Paid advertising

Paid advertising is expensive, but it is the fastest way to get quality leads who are willing to buy immediately and without a discount. We can display ads in Google Adwords and Yandex Direct using keywords that attract the attention of potential customers.

We can launch targeted advertising on social networks FaceBook, Instagram and Vkontakte. In social advertising there are limitless opportunities to segment the target audience according to various parameters and characteristics. But don’t forget, leads on social networks are colder than in contextual advertising.

We then redirect this paid traffic to a landing page where we use additional lead generation tactics to capture the lead.

Most importantly, you only pay when people click on your ad, not for impressions.

What are leads?

Or rather, who are they? Leads are not just visitors who landed on your store's website while wandering aimlessly around the Internet. These are those who are already interested (at least a little!) in your products. For example, a person saw contextual advertising in a search engine or targeted advertising in social networks. Or I heard about your store from a friend or colleague - through word of mouth. And then I followed the link or purposefully typed the address of your store into the search engine.

Doesn't remind you of anything? These are the main sources of traffic! Traffic can be targeted and non-targeted. Let's draw an analogy with a fishing net. The non-target fish brings litter, silt, and debris from the river bottom along with the fish. And it is unknown what will be in this net more. The target one gives you selected large fish - you can do what you want with it.

Now the fish has taken the bait and has landed on your site. It is important that she does not get off the hook and continues her further journey: adding goods to the cart, leaving contact information. Ideally, you place an order and pay for the goods. Your managers come into play and must lead the interested visitor to a purchase, various features on the site that attract the buyer’s attention. That is, the same classic sales funnel that any manager knows about.

We'll talk about chips later. In the meantime, let's talk about lead generation - these are special marketing moves that help attract leads - interested visitors - to the site.
How to do this?

Social media

People spend five to six hours a day on social media, which is used not only to keep in touch with family and friends, but also to share opinions about brands and companies.

This provides a ton of opportunities for business owners to listen to current customers and interact with potential ones.

One day, an acquaintance of mine wrote a negative experience with his bank on a social network. The bank immediately responded and wrote a response, with a desire to understand the situation and provide assistance.

How do they do it? For this, there are special services that scan any social networks, blogs and forums and show customer contacts using key phrases. To do this, you don’t even have to have your own group or business page.

What is lead generation or how do top webmasters earn $2,000 a day from leads?

Lead generation (from the English lead generation) is the process of obtaining leads. In other words, the generation of requests. The point of the process is to obtain contact information from the user. As a rule, an e-mail or mobile number.

Lead generation came to Russia from the USA. Many domestic businesses do not have multi-million dollar advertising budgets. They can't afford to pour a ton of money into marketing and then suddenly discover that their advertising didn't work.

This issue became especially relevant after the crises of 2008 and 2014. for microorganizations and small businesses.

The lead generation market in the United States in 2011, according to independent experts, was more than $1.6 billion. Whereas ours is only about $15 million. The lead market is growing 100% annually.

Have you imagined the scale of the technological gap?

In Russia, there is no main thing that helps any business survive in difficult times - access to cheap loans. That is why our businessmen are trying to cut costs, saving on employees and advertising.

Abroad, entrepreneurs are accustomed to saving time and delegating tasks. In Russia, a businessman will prefer to worry about money, but will spend personal time to understand the problem.

Lead generation has come right to our door, as they say. Fits perfectly into the market.

By buying leads, entrepreneurs save a lot on promoting their products and services. Of course, we are talking about those niches where a stable demand has already been formed, for example: concrete delivery, consumer goods, furniture production. Lead generation will not work where you need to introduce a new product to the market.

If there is a demand for leads, then there will be a supply.

Many Internet marketing specialists have skillfully adapted to the lead generation trend and are earning quite decent money today. Sometimes even very indecent.

Where can a business get leads?

Leads can come from different sources. Let's look at the main ones:

1. Contextual advertising. In Russia it is Yandex. Direct and Google Ads. Contextual advertising is the warmest channel of Internet traffic. People are already interested in a product or service and are looking for it on the Internet. You can show them your ads and send them to your website or online store. However, there is also a minus. Contextual advertising is becoming more and more expensive every year: more advertisers are coming in who are trying to compete with each other and starting price wars. And the users themselves are becoming more and more savvy. The crisis also affected the behavior of buyers on the Internet. 10 years ago, a person went to Yandex, saw an ad, went through and immediately left a request on the site. Today it is no longer enough just to advertise in Yandex.Direct. You need to be able to analyze competitors and your audience, build an offer, offer a unique service, make promotions, etc.
2. Targeted advertising on social networks. For example, VKontakte, Facebook, myTarget (Odnoklassniki). Getting leads from social networks is already more difficult than from contextual advertising. Imagine: you went to VKontakte to read the news, chat with friends, and suddenly you are shown an advertisement for baby strollers. Most will simply scroll through the advertising post. But advertising may be of interest to some. As a rule, an advertisement on social networks leads the user to a group with a product or service. If a person is interested, he can subscribe to the community and leave a request in the future.
3. Information site or blog. If the site is interesting, well promoted and has a lot of traffic, it may well be a source of leads.
4. Various thematic aggregator platforms. For example, Avito, Yula, bulletin boards, Yandex. Market, etc.
5. Lead exchanges and CPA networks. These are specialized services that deal with lead generation. Anyone can join the affiliate program and start making money by generating leads.

How much does a high-quality lead cost or how unscrupulous lead generators fool clients

A high-quality lead is a contact that has a high probability of becoming a client in the future.

The quality of leads that agencies and private webmasters supply to clients can be either good or downright disgusting.

Unfortunately, today in the Russian lead generation market there are many unscrupulous players who supply low-quality applications, obtaining them through cheating or other “gray” methods.

The average cost per lead for different niches can vary significantly.

The market averages are as follows:

• Financial sector and banking services – $15
• Education – $15
• Insurance – $5
• Construction, renovation – $30
• Beauty and health – $20
• Entertainment – ​​$1
• Games – $0.75
• Coupons – $1.5

This study was conducted by the lead generation agency CPA Network. Interestingly, in the USA and Russia the numbers are approximately the same.

If you are offered to buy leads in the construction field for 100-200 rubles, it will probably be “slag”: non-existent phone numbers, stolen or “leaked” mailing lists.

It’s good if among the huge pile of this rubbish there are at least a couple of targeted contacts.

I do lead generation myself. And I can say that a quality lead is expensive. For example, in the theme of wardrobes - 500-700 rubles minimum.

If anyone needs cool leads, write to contacts.

In my opinion, it is better for small businesses not to use the services of dubious lead generators, but to deal with quality leads. Simply because they are highly likely to turn into clients and real money later.

Banks, yes, have huge sales departments and qualified managers who can call for months and process cold leads using scripts. Small businesses simply do not have such resources.

How can you make money selling leads?

I will describe several examples.

• You have your own well-promoted website on legal topics. With decent traffic, from 1000 visitors per day. You put on it a phone number 8-800 and a banner offering legal advice. You agree with a law firm that you will supply them with clients. The company processes leads from your website and pays you for them. Quite a passive income. The more site traffic, the more you can earn.
• You are a digital agency. You develop and promote websites. For reference, website development on average in the market costs from 50 thousand rubles, setting up an advertising campaign - from 15-20 thousand. Typically, such agencies charge clients a fixed amount for services. But you can also work for leads. You took a client, built an offer on the website, created an advertising campaign and completed it. We got a working “website + advertising campaign” combination. It gives leads in a certain topic. And you already know how much money you need to invest in order to receive a certain number of applications. You are looking for a similar client in another region and making him an offer - selling leads. Having worked out the “website + advertising” combination, you can sell it many times and increase your profit from month to month.

If you want to make money from lead generation, you should understand that you must thoroughly understand traffic, websites, marketing, and target audience.

If you know how to systematically generate quality leads and sell this service, then you will have no equal in the market.

Blog (SEO)

As we know, people love to do their own research before purchasing a product or service.

Why not give them what they need?

The ideal tool for this is blogging, publishing articles, reviews, instructions and other educational and useful materials. A blog positions a company as an authority in its field and builds trust.

According to data researchers at Hubspot, companies that blog generate 64% more leads than those that don't.

Currently, search traffic is the cheapest of all lead generation methods.

How does a sales funnel work?

If you carefully read the previous part of the article, you might have noticed a pattern: leads can turn from cold to warm, and from warm to hot.

The sequence of leads moving from interest to sale forms a sales funnel. A classic sales funnel looks like this:

I think this visual illustration removed your question of why the sales funnel was called a funnel. The term comes from the English expression sales funnel.

The concept of a sales funnel was first described in 1898 by US lawyer Elias Lewis. Thirty years later, the new concept formed the basis of the AIDA concept (attention - interest - desire - action). AIDA is still successfully used by marketers.

The sales funnel can be easily explained through the AIDA concept.

First, the potential client's attention is captured. He becomes a cold lead. This lead is then interested. This is how a cold lead falls into the category of warm ones. A person has a need for a product or service. The last objections are closed, and finally he becomes a client.

The ability to build an effective sales funnel is highly valued among marketers. To grow a future client, you need to:

• Excellent knowledge of methods of conveying information about a product
• Be able to identify your target audience and spot the “needle in a haystack”
• Constantly study competitors' offers and be one step ahead
• Maintain a smart pricing policy

A sales funnel is a visual tool that is easy to visualize. Use funnel and conversion data to determine at what stages you are losing customers. The performance indicator of your funnel is conversion.

Sales conversion is the ratio of leads to customers. You can calculate conversion at any stage of the funnel.

For example, your ad on the Internet was seen by 1,300 people (1st level of the funnel). Of these, 494 left contacts (level 2), i.e., they became your cold leads. The conversion at this stage was 494/1300=0.38 or 38%.

Let’s say that out of 494 people who left contacts, 130 (level 3) became your clients. How to calculate the conversion from level 1 to level 3? The problem is solved simply: you need to divide 130 by 1300. We get the result - 0.1 or 10% in the final buyer.

YouTube channel

YouTube has become the second search engine and people are consuming video content more than ever before. Youtube channels are the fastest growing marketing tool and the newest among all lead generation channels.

It is much easier to watch a product being used rather than read about it. Whether you're an expert in your field or simply passionate about your business, you can write down your tips and tricks.

This is a great lead generation tactic.

Don't forget to include a link to your lead magnet or capture form in the video description.

You can post videos of various formats on YouTube: instructions, training videos, entertainment videos, customer reviews, product demonstrations, and webinars. And don’t forget to read my cool article “promotion of a YouTube channel”

Lead generation scheme

Regardless of which lead generation method and tool you choose, you must adhere to the general lead generation scheme.

It is represented by the following elements:

• An offer is an offer that has high value for a potential client. It is the offer that should encourage the consumer to leave you their contact information;
• A call to action is something that should push a potential client to go to the page with the offer. This could be a button, link, test, or image. The main thing is to interest a potential client and force him to proceed to the offer;
• Landing page is a page that describes all the benefits that the offer brings. She must convince the potential client of the need to receive the offer;
• Lead form is a questionnaire that a potential client will receive an offer by filling out. It should allow you to collect as much data as possible about the consumer, but not be too long, otherwise you risk losing the lead. The main purpose of the questionnaire is to collect the user's contact information, so do not forget to make these fields mandatory.

Lead generation services

All of these channels can be great sources, but the lead generation process can be very time consuming. Therefore, companies have appeared that offer ]cold calling[/anchor].

I recommend another way, bypassing these companies, to contact the freelancer directly, give him a database of contacts so that he can call them all himself, and provide you with phone numbers with already filtered leads.

Services of this kind are used by banks, insurance companies, real estate agents, wholesalers, marketing agencies and others.

There are also companies that offer “gray” methods of lead generation; they use special spyware, Trojans or other intrusive means of collecting information without the knowledge and consent of users. I do not recommend using their services.

Lead generation tools and techniques

At the moment, there are 3 groups of lead generation methods. They differ from each other in the type of channels through which work with leads is carried out. Each of the three methods, in turn, has several tools of influence. Let's look at them.

Lead generation methods implemented through personal interaction with the client

Personal interaction methods are more suitable for companies in the corporate sector of the economy. They can also be used for the B2C market, but only if you are offering an expensive, exclusive product to a narrow target audience. In other cases, it will be ineffective and costly for the company.

So, this group contains the following methods:

• Personal business meetings.

An excellent way to identify customers interested in a product, allowing you to immediately express your offer to them. Before scheduling a meeting, you need to develop a list of contacts of potential consumers and choose a method of communication to invite them to a meeting. If you work in the B2B market, then you can find information for contacting a representative of the organization on the official website of the intended client.

If you are a representative of the consumer market, we recommend that you use corporate groups and social media pages of competing companies to obtain contact information. Look at the list of subscribers of such “publics” and you will receive a large number of personal pages of “cold” and “warm” leads, whose contacts you can easily get during a personal meeting.

After you have worked through your list of contacts, you need to create a script and text for the meeting . At the same time, the script and text must necessarily address the interests and motives for purchasing the lead. Please note that there is no need to memorize the meeting test, it is necessary in order to direct the dialogue in the direction we need.

• Phone calls.

As a rule, this method is implemented through “cold” calls. An automated informer or a so-called “customer service manager” talks to potential clients and reads the text “from a piece of paper.” We want to warn you against such a decision. Template text scares and irritates a potential client, distancing him from purchasing your product.

In “calls”, a personalized approach to a potential consumer is important. During a telephone conversation, you need to take into account his needs and wishes and convince the potential client that your product can best solve the problem.

Before dialing a number, we recommend that you do some preliminary preparation.

First, conduct a little marketing research: determine why a specific client needs your product, what price segment it belongs to, and how ready they are to buy.

For example , you sell handmade organic cosmetics. Potential client “A” found your website using Yandex search for the query “natural cosmetics for dandruff.” On the site, he looked through several pages with descriptions of natural shampoos, and then left it without purchasing. Thus, we know that a potential client is looking for a solution to the problem of combating dandruff, we know the price segment to which he belongs, his gender (thanks to the pages of our website that he visited).

Second, based on your findings, create a list of topics to talk about. For our client "A", these will be the anti-dandruff products that you can offer.

Once you've gone through the steps above, winning a hot lead won't be too difficult.

• Events and activities.

Participate in exhibitions, conferences or come as a guest. However, in order for the event to benefit you from a lead generation perspective, careful preparation is necessary.

Let's list what it includes:

1. Get a list of guests - potential clients of the conference, find their contact details, collect information about them;
2. Make an appointment at an event for potential clients (displaying the reason why they would benefit from meeting with you);
3. If possible, prepare a stand with your offer;
4. Send out product information to potential clients shortly before the event (if you have the necessary contact information);
5. Make a list of topics for each potential client that you will discuss at the event.

As a result, at the event you will already receive “warm” leads who will only need to be “warmed up” a little.

Lead generation methods implemented using the Internet

The Internet is an ideal tool for obtaining contact details and information about potential clients. All companies without exception can generate leads via the Internet, so this group of methods can be considered universal.

• Corporate website or landing page.

This is one of the most effective lead generation methods. Potential customers arrive on the pages of your website from search engines ready to make a purchase. Your task is to convince them of the need to purchase the product from you.

But let's take things in order. First, a potential client must choose your site from a multimillion-dollar search engine. To do this, it is necessary to ensure that the resource takes first place in search results using SEO—optimizing the content of the site pages.

SEO optimization of a website consists of creating a semantic core or a set of words or phrases most frequently found in user search queries and then including these phrases in the information content of the website. You can carry out SEO optimization of a resource with the help of a third-party organization or yourself.

If you chose the second option, we recommend that you contact the Yandex search engine service - “Yandex Direct”. On this resource, select the “Word Selection” section and follow the instructions. We do not recommend including words and phrases with statistics of more than 1000 impressions per month in the semantic core. Since they are not only often found as user requests, but are also quite popular among owners of information resources, you risk not being able to withstand the competition. Phrases with a frequency of 500 to 1000 impressions per month are suitable for you. When selecting words, be sure to select the region that interests you.

Then take care of the first impression of potential customers about your company - develop a creative website design. The resource should be readable, the interface intuitive, and the design consistent with the specifics of the business. Remember about such a tool as A/B testing, which will allow you to choose the most advantageous one from several solutions, based on the opinion of your target audience.

To do this, launch each of the available designs for a certain period of time and monitor the behavior of site visitors, track the number of transitions to the ordering page and the number of actual orders. Based on this data, you can make an informed decision.

The next step is filling the resource. In addition to the fact that the site must go through SEO optimization, it is necessary to fill it with complete and comprehensive information about the benefits of your products.

• Social media.

The most inexpensive method of generating leads, in addition, it does not require any special knowledge from you.

Create a group on a social network, fill it with interesting content about your product or company. Remember that the description of the group affects the order of results in search engines. Therefore, it must undergo SEO optimization before publication to attract visitors from search engines. As part of working with a social network, it is necessary to optimize two more structural elements of the resource - the URL and the name of the group.

The URL will influence the order in which the resource is displayed in the search engine, and the name of the group will influence the place of the group in the search engine of the social network. Both elements should be as close as possible to the most popular request from users of your topic, but the URL must reflect the action you want the user to take.

For example , if you sell natural cosmetics, then the group should be called “Natural Cosmetics”, and the ideal URL would look like this: naturalnaya_kosmetica_kupit.

Once you have filled your group with information, launch advertising on the social network. It’s best to talk about your group in other popular public pages with similar topics, but you can also use targeting, which will cost you more. You can post various competitions in the group to provoke reposts. All this will bring interested people to you, who will eventually turn out to be good leads.

• Contextual advertising.

Contextual advertising will allow you to attract to your website only those users who are truly interested in purchasing the product. The only thing you need to remember when using this method of lead generation is that the text of the contextual advertisement must correspond to the most frequently encountered user requests, that is, it must undergo SEO optimization. In this case, you can use words and phrases with a frequency of more than 1000 impressions per month.

You can set up contextual advertising within the Yandex search engine using the Yandex Direct service. To do this, click the “Place an advertisement” button and go through the authorization procedure in the Yandex system. Then follow the service instructions. Google also has a similar service, it is called Google Adwords.

The advantages of this method are simplicity and high quality of leads. The disadvantages are the small number and high cost of leads.

Lead generation methods implemented using mailings

These are the most popular lead generation methods in Russia; they are applicable to both the consumer and industrial markets. It is important to approach any type of mailing from the point of view of personalizing the appeal. We will not dwell long on each type of mailing, since they are subject to the same content requirements.

A lead generation letter must contain the following structural elements:

• A thoughtful, personalized offer. It must solve a specific client's problem;
• Interesting, loud title. At the same time, it should reflect your proposal;
• A link to your website or group, where a potential client can take a closer look at the offer;
• The symbols of your brand;
• A button that allows you to unsubscribe from your mailing list.

In addition, it is important to remember that the letter will only cause the desired reaction if the person is interested in what you have to offer. Be sure to take a personalized approach when selecting contacts and composing your letter.

You can send such a letter using one of four types of mailing:

• E-mail newsletter;
• Postal letters and flyers;
• SMS mailings;
• Newsletters to subscribers on social networks.

The type of mailing affects the effectiveness of lead generation. Mailings to subscribers on social networks and SMS mailings are considered the most effective. The worst results are shown by mail letters and flyers.

Lead generation training

Many business owners have bad experiences working with unqualified marketers. Because most online courses are divorced from reality, with unnecessary and unnecessary information.

The Internet Marketer video course is an in-depth course on training effective marketers, based on 5 years of experience from the ConvertMonster agency. Only what internet marketers actually do.

Course Features:

• 29 practical lessons (58 academic hours)
• Homework with checks and feedback
• Personal curator for two months
• Training on your project, the first clients are already in the training process
• 92% practice, 2% theory

Read the course program, reviews and learning process using the link.

Who is lead generation suitable for?

There is no area of ​​business for which lead generation is absolutely not suitable. Therefore, we will divide types of businesses according to their propensity to use a tool such as lead generation.

Lead generation – three times “yes”!

It is most advantageous to use lead generation for online sales. It doesn't really matter what you're selling. This is due to the fact that it will not be difficult to see the client’s interest in your product online, and it is much easier to get contacts in the virtual space.

However, there are also limitations here. We advise online sellers of expensive goods to resort to lead generation; their cost should exceed at least 5,000 rubles per item. If you offer cheaper products, it is preferable to collect them in sets or offer them for purchase in small wholesale. This will allow you to avoid unnecessary costs.

Worth a try.

If you offer pre-selected products in a highly competitive market, then lead generation is for you. Examples of such goods are cars, travel agency services, insurance services, educational services, banking services, and consulting services.

More likely no than yes".

Lead generation is least effective for selling inexpensive impulse purchase products, if only because it will be difficult for you to obtain the necessary contact information of potential customers. And the costs of analysis and data collection in this case will not meet expectations.

Also, you should not resort to lead generation if you are offering a very specific and complex product that requires special knowledge not only from the seller, but also from the buyer.

Lead generation: business benefits of the approach

The example above is somewhat exaggerated, but it reflects the main principle of lead generation. Cold calling and face-to-face sales are dying. 84% of representatives of B2B companies seek services based on recommendations from friends and colleagues (data from Baylor University).

In order for your company to be recommended by others, you need to be as helpful and communicative as possible. After all, lead generation is not only about collecting contacts. In an online environment, it’s more about a mutually beneficial exchange: you want to receive, along with your contacts, a certain amount of trust that can be proven with something useful for a potential client.

Where does business win?

1. Spend your resources efficiently - selling right away is difficult and expensive (in terms of the cost of attracting 1 client). Generating a lead, guiding it through the sales funnel, bringing it to a deal and retaining it is more profitable in the long run.
2. You get more objective indicators. You can calculate CPL (Cost Per Lead) and evaluate the effectiveness of leads from different sources through segmentation (came after a master class, read a blog, downloaded a free book).
3. By analyzing the effectiveness of different lead generation channels, you can scale your business. Do more master classes, create useful instructions or books, organize webinars, etc.
4. It is possible to filter out non-target audiences without transferring them to a certain stage of the sales funnel. The manager will not waste time on calls, calculations, meetings, but will take care of the client who is already “hurting” and who really needs it.
5. You can interact with your potential customer base for quite a long time. This is especially true for complex and expensive products. A person can take months to make a purchase decision. For example, read a newsletter about home improvement and interior design for 7 months, and then order services for $5,000.

Get leads from paid ads

To appear at the top of Google, you can do two things (the best sites usually do both):

1. create high-quality content that receives quality backlinks and ranks high in search results,
2. or pay for contextual advertising.

Ads in the search engines Yandex and Google will help you be in the TOP, but they are not cheap. Therefore, if you are paying for advertising, then it is necessary to promote the best content - both in the ad content and in your home page or landing page.

Specifics of lead generation in different areas

Lead generation in e-Commerce

The main metric in lead generation analysis for online stores is conversion to purchase . The higher this indicator, the better the lead generation channels and website work. If the conversion to purchase is lower than you would like, pay attention to usability, ease of searching for products and placing an order. Perhaps your users can't find what they need, or the checkout process is taking too long, and that's something worth fixing. We wrote more about how to increase the conversion rate of an online store in this article.

It is also worth paying attention to the cost of acquiring a lead (CPL) and optimizing your advertising campaigns.

Lead generation in SaaS

For SaaS, the key lead generation metric is registration conversion . For consistently high registration conversions, make sure that the client feels the benefit of your service and quickly learns how to use it: interesting onboarding and thoughtful first interactions will help with this. Another important metric is user acquisition cost (CPU).

Lead generation in B2B

Most of the work with a client in B2B takes place offline, so the key indicator of lead generation will be the collected contacts - conversion to leads . To increase this indicator, it is important to interest the client with a beautiful and convenient website, an understandable landing page and offer something useful in exchange for contacts. For example, this could be useful articles, your own research, or a recording of a webinar. Another key indicator showing the effectiveness of advertising is the cost of lead acquisition (CPL).

Which businesses are more compatible with lead generation?

Sales experts identify several areas of business in which lead generation practices are most effective. In what areas is working with leads most justified?

First of all, we are talking about the tourism business, where in the process of selecting a tour, clients willingly leave their contact information to managers. Leads are also actively attracted in the insurance direction, mainly OSAGO and CASCO. The collection of contact information is established in companies whose specialization is the sale of training, educational courses and programs.

The lead generation tool is also very common in the field of finance, because it is impossible to imagine applying for a loan, a loan or a plastic card without filling out a questionnaire with numerous personal data. Car dealerships also work with leads, since, for example, an application for a test drive is accompanied by filling out a special form. The work of all companies in the service sector is structured in exactly the same way - Internet providers, courier delivery, taxis and many others.

In fact, all businesses engage in lead generation. It's all about market capacity. There are simply markets where there are millions of potential clients, and you need to somehow quickly “sift through” them, and there is the space sector, where the entire world market is about a thousand potential clients who can order cargo to be sent into space.

Lead classification

So, what are leads like:

• cold leads

These people know about you and have left you contacts, but they won’t buy anything right now. Perhaps they are not ready to accept your proposal, they do not have money or urgent need

This lead's cold heart still needs to be thawed.

• warm leads

They have already become acquainted with your offer in more detail and are making contact: asking questions in the chat, leaving requests for a call, consulting about products, tariffs, delivery and other things.

It's getting hotter

• hot leads

This is your customers in five minutes - they have chosen you and are ready to pay.

Fry from Futurama is a hot lead

Pay attention to the qualifications of leads. It is important that each user sees the offers that will work best. Lead generation will be more effective if you divide your lead base into several segments depending on their behavior and work with each segment individually. To properly qualify and segment leads, you need to know as much as possible about them.

Try Carrot quest - the service records visitor actions on the site and collects them in eCRM. You can analyze user behavior on the site, highlight segments and launch a chain of auto messages for each of them.

Collecting data about users and segmentation will help you intelligently work with leads: warm up cold ones with mailings and not let hot ones cool down.

Don't waste managers' time on qualifications

Download the guide on automatic lead qualification

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Try Video Marketing for Your Lead Generation Strategy

With over 50% of consumers preferring video content over other forms of content, it's no surprise that 2020 presents more and more opportunities for marketers in this space.

Here are some ways to use video marketing:

• Create a video about your product and post it on your landing page. Marketers who use video in their campaigns can increase their conversion rates by 34%.
• Create a video blog and actively use it to attract leads, it can be either funny viral videos or a serious corporate channel. It all depends on the type of business you have.
• Send videos via email and drive leads to landing pages.
• Include CTAs and links to event announcements in your videos. Encourage visits to the site and registrations for events with some kind of bonuses.

Lead generation methods

Okay, everyone is convinced of the almost magical power of lead generation. Now let's figure out how to get those coveted leads: each category will have its own lead generation methods.

How to attract cold leads

Please do not buy ready-made lead databases: the leads that you collect yourself will be much higher quality. First, start driving traffic to your site. 1. Google, Yandex and other search engines. Think about what your customers are Googling: these are the key queries that will help in lead generation. Contact SEO optimizers to ensure that your site ranks as high as possible for key queries - users usually don’t go beyond the first couple of pages of results.

Plus, set up contextual advertising - the link to your site will be located above the search results. This way, many more people will know about you, and some of them will become leads.

2. Social networks. Set up targeted advertising on social networks that your clients use - this will also attract new leads, and engage in SMM. Regular and high-quality maintenance of social networks will improve the company’s image in the eyes of the client, increase brand awareness and help in lead generation.

Targeted advertising and Facebook post

3. Exchange guest posts. Think about which companies have a target audience similar to yours and work together: agree on guest blog posts, affiliate newsletters, and mutual reposts. This way, the audience of your partners will know about you, interested readers will go to your website and become new leads.

4. Referral programs. Use it for lead generation with your clients - they know best how great it is to work with you, and they can tell their friends about it. Reward them with bonuses for each new user.

Simply attracting people to your site is not enough: work on converting traffic into leads.

5. Automatic messages for lead generation. Carrot quest and similar services will help automate communication with users as much as possible. You can start a chain of auto messages for any scenario, based on user actions on the site.

For example, one of the lead generation tools available in Carrot quest is trigger pop-ups. They help collect leads, notify about promotions, and collect feedback on the performance of your site. Trigger pop-ups can fit into any scenario and increase conversion to the target action.

A pop-up constructor is available to all Carrot quest users. A beautiful pop-up can be made by anyone without any skills in working with html and js. And the result will be pleasing to the eye - look at what cool pop-ups you can make using the pop-up constructor:

Pop-up for Nutrilogic service

Pop-ups in the constructor are made like this:

You can try the pop-up builder now - register in Carrot quest and create your own beautiful pop-up that will collect the emails of all visitors to your site