Lead generation is based on expanding a brand’s database with the contacts of people or companies potentially interested in its products and services. Thus, we call each of these contacts a “lead”, that is, a person or company that has shown interest in the offer of a brand and has shown such interest by leaving their data.
Besides, lead generation is a key step in the inbound marketing process, since it allows us to convert the traffic to our channels into valuable contacts for the brand, which we can then direct along the conversion funnel until we achieve them in clients.
Having leads is one of the first steps (after attracting web traffic) to be able to launch a digital marketing or inbound marketing campaign and get these contacts to become clients of the company or its prescribers or ambassadors.
Leads allow the execution of more advanced actions such as lead scoring, which serves to classify leads and detect those most prepared for the purchase and lead nurturing, an action consisting of sending personalized email chains to accompany a user during the cycle of buying a product or service.
How to implement lead generation?
To achieve lead generation we need users to visit our website or blog or have some kind of interaction with the brand, for example, that they leave us their email when visiting an interactive video or a Facebook Ads ad. In this way, your email will be saved in the company’s database and will become a new record on which to launch digital marketing actions.
To generate leads, various actions can be implemented in the different digital channels of the company and even use the offline channel.
Main lead generation methods
Downloadable content
Within an inbound marketing strategy, one of the main channels for obtaining leads is through downloadable content: ebooks, guides, templates, checklists, comparisons, etc. linked to the contents of a blog.
The strategy to capture leads through this channel is as follows:
- In the first place, a user enters our blog (which has previously positioned itself in search engines using the appropriate organic positioning techniques) attracted by content that matches their interests and/or needs.
- Once on our blog, the user is invited to leave their data to download or access higher-quality free content: ebooks, infographics, webinars, etc.
It is complementary content to the articles or posts that you can find on the blog, of a more advanced and higher quality level. When the user leaves their data, they become a lead in the company’s database.
Subscription to content by email
A newsletter is a way of generating leads since it is distributed by email, almost always inserted in the same body, and with the following basic characteristics: Variable periodicity: weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.
They usually collect different articles from a company, brand, or sector. You can also include a selection of the best blog articles. The predominant content types are informational.
Contests on the website or social networks
Online contests and raffles are also a good lead generation system, also serving to better understand your target, prepare them for the purchase, and retain them.
Other advantages of this type of strategy are:
- Giveaways and contests are very easy to implement both on websites and blogs and social networks
- They offer a very close customer experience
- They serve both to attract the user for the first time and to generate leads
Videos
Another common way to generate leads is through videos on platforms such as YouTube or on the website or blog itself. As with newsletters, videos can be used as quality or premium content, which the user can access by subscription and thus get a lead directly.
A second method of capturing leads is by embedding a link to a landing page in the video itself that leads to a form where the user leaves us their data in exchange for other content or commercial offers.
Campaigns on Facebook Ads
Facebook has an advertising platform, Facebook Ads, which is very interesting for its ease of use and effectiveness in making our campaigns profitable, largely due to its great possibilities for targeting our audience.
We can place our ads both in the news section and on the right side of the screen, targeting exclusively the type of audience that interests us the most.
