The purpose of lead generation is simple; to improve brand awareness or provide information to entice your target audience to turn them into prospects and then customers.
Generating leads isn’t easy. It requires you to design an effective campaign, stay consistent with it, track performance, and outreach prospects regularly. The kind of lead generation campaign you choose depends upon your business type. And therefore, lead generation for a B2B is different from a B2C business.
Lead generation campaigns are complex for B2B businesses because it takes a lot of back-and-forth communication. Sometimes it takes months or years to convert a lead into a customer. However, if they know the right way of planning an effective lead generation campaign, they can quickly improve their sales and overall growth.
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While things vary for both the kind of businesses, we will talk about how you can plan an effective lead generation campaign. But before that let’s understand how a lead generation campaign works, and what a good lead generation looks like.
Let’s get started!
How Does a Lead Generation Campaign Work?
A simple example of a lead generation campaign is when you visit a website for information related to a product, you might be asked to subscribe to the mailing list or sign up for free. Websites often use phrases like ‘subscribe to our mailing list for offers’ or ‘to find out more, subscribe to our mailing list’. If you subscribe to the mailing list, then the website has successfully generated a lead.
Lead generation campaigns can use different channels to collect the data of prospects and to get people interested in a product or service. The internet has made it easier for businesses to connect with their target audience, and that’s why it should also be used for lead generation. However, even on the internet, a mailing list isn’t the only way to generate leads.
What Is A Good Lead Gen Campaign?
If your campaign addresses the following aspects, then it’s a great lead generation campaign;
- Target audience
- Leverages multiple channels
- A strong strategy
- Tracks performance
How to Plan an Effective Lead Generation Campaign?
Every lead generation campaign is different, despite having the same goal, more or less. The main reasons behind that are the objectives of the campaign and the target audience. However, if you make a well-thought-out plan for your lead generation campaign, it will definitely bring the results that you want.
Let’s take a look at the steps that can help you plan an effective lead generation campaign:
Set Your Objectives
Whether you are planning a marketing campaign or a lead generation campaign, the most important step is to set your objectives. Once you establish what you are aiming to achieve with the help of the campaign, planning for it will become easier.
Having established objectives will also make it easier for you to measure the success of your campaign and make necessary changes along the way. A few common objectives for a lead generation campaign are:
- Number of leads
- Revenue per lead
- Sales
- Subscribers to the mailing list
- Conversion rates
- Webinar registrants
Research Your Audience
The more you know about your target audience, the easier it will be to plan an effective lead generation campaign. A common mistake businesses make is not having a clear sense of their target audience. For instance, women in their 50s are not a well-defined audience. but stay-at-home moms in their 50s who live in a suburban area and get shopping insights from Facebook pages are.
If you are not sure who to target through your lead generation campaign, you can start by getting help from Google Analytics to find out the demographics of your website’s regular visitors. Target the people who are most likely to turn into customers.
In order to get to know your audience more, you can
- Find out the demographics of the followers you have and other trends on social media
- Conduct surveys on your website
- Ask your sales team about your existing customers and their preferences
- Do competitor research to find out what is their target audience
Once you do your research on your audience, you will know what their problems are which will allow you to offer them the solutions they need.
Choose Your Campaign Type
After establishing your objectives and defining your audience, you will be able to choose a campaign type for lead generation. There are a few tried and tested methods of lead generation that always bring results, but only if they are used correctly. So, it is important to use the method that will work with your audience.
One such method is QR Codes. QR Codes offer a feature called lead generation. It allows you to capture the contact information of end-users scanning the QR Code. This is especially useful if you’re running campaigns for retargeting purposes.
If what your audience is seeking is information, then offering them free ebooks and checklists could be a good idea. However, this method is more successful for B2B lead generation as you can offer the solution to complex business problems through these resources.
For B2C Lead Generation, the best options are giveaways, contests, free trials, and discounts. These types of campaigns will surely bring in new leads and improve your chances of closing more sales soon.
Create an Offer
Once you have chosen your campaign type, you can create an offer related to that for your target audience. The offer you create for a lead generation campaign is called a lead magnet because it attracts potential customers.
It is also important to decide on a channel for sending your offer. If the majority of your target individuals are already on your mailing list, you can make use of that to send out the offer. You can also share the offer on your social media profiles.
It is important to send different offers to individuals depending on where they are in the sales funnel. If an individual is already a customer, they will want a discount for future purchases. Whereas, a first-time buyer can be attracted with the help of giveaways and contests.
Leave Room for Optimization
It is important not to be rigid in your strategies. Once your campaign begins and you start getting results, you should be able to make necessary changes when needed. When you measure the success of each step, you will know which strategies are working and which need to be changed or upgraded.
Split testing is the best method for testing different elements of your campaign. In order to do split testing, you can create variants like email subject lines and call-to-actions and see which one performs better. Split testing not only helps you improve your ongoing campaign but also enables you to plan effective campaigns in the future.
Conclusion
Lead generation is a must for a business to grow and succeed. But only by following the right steps can you generate leads. If you follow the steps mentioned above and regularly monitor the progress of your campaign, you will be able to get good results. Once you have generated leads, you can start working on closing sales.
