How Do You Improve the Quality of Your Lead Generation?

Lead generation has seen a huge increase in popularity due to the outstanding benefits it has to offer. Consequently, it has become the #1 priority for all-size companies across a lot of industries.

Generating new leads online is a guaranteed way to increase sales and grow your revenue. It’s also a cost-effective approach for finding new business opportunities and attracting quality clients.

But…

Before you can reap the benefits of lead generation, you must do some guesswork and a lot of hit-or-miss at first. The process can be daunting as you may require countless hours to master your strategies and perfect your execution.

So in today’s guide:

You’ll learn the best expert-driven tips and strategies for enhancing your lead generation results without wasting any time. You’ll also discover three golden tips for increasing conversions in any lead generation campaign.

Ready?

Let’s get going…

What Is Lead Generation?

Before we get into the definition of lead generation, let’s first understand what a lead is.

A lead is any company or individual that matches your ideal customer profile (ICP) but is yet to convert into a customer.

Based on the level of interest, you can break down prospects into multiple categories. For example, you can three types of leads — which are cold leads, warm leads, and hot leads.

Lead generation — however — is the process of identifying, attracting, and converting potential leads with the end goal of boosting sales. It involves the use of different marketing channels and sales tactics to garner more interest in a company’s offers and close more deals.

How To Improve the Quality of Your Lead Generation

Lead generation can often be quite confusing, especially when you don’t know who your target leads are and which strategies or tools to use to target them. The process can also be a bit of a challenge for your marketing and sales teams as it requires perfect alignment and clarity.

The solution?

To help you get on the right track, we’ll share with you the best six lead generation tips that can help you close more deals and improve your sales numbers.

1. Define Your Ideal Buyer Persona

Who are you trying to reach with your marketing messages? And what needs, interests, behaviors, and characteristics should you look for in an ideal client?

Improving your lead generation results starts with identifying your target prospects and understanding their customer profiles. This will help you fine-tune your sales process and focus only on communicating with the right leads to maximize conversions. 

Your ideal customer profile (ICP) could mainly include the following:

• Demographics: job title, age, gender, location, industry 
• Behavior: attention, engagement, purchase decisions
• Company details: size, budget, revenue, challenges

You should especially focus on decision-making ability when it comes to demographics. Make sure that each lead you contact is able to make a purchase decision to avoid wasting time talking to the gatekeepers.

On the behavioral side, it’s best to prioritize prospects that have shown interest in your offers or have already interacted with your salespeople. These positive engagement signs are often a guarantee that the lead you’re talking to has the potential to convert in the near future.

As for company details, you can easily identify your targets depending on your business objectives. Any organization that needs your help and has the budget to afford should be on your radar.

2. Create a Lead Generation Strategy

How will you attract ideal clients to your sales funnel?

Having a clear lead gen strategy is vital for enhancing your results and keeping your internal teams organized. You need to develop a step-by-step process that helps you stay focused only on the most essential tasks.

Your lead generation strategy consists of the following steps:

• Mapping out a content production plan 
• Publishing tons of targeted educational content
• Choosing the right content distribution mediums
• Creating landing pages that offer valuable lead magnets
• Following up on leads with solution-oriented content and relevant offers

There are a lot of content types you can use for lead generation. The most popular formats are blog articles, videos, webinars, infographics, and audio podcasts. 

You also have a wide variety of distribution mediums that you can use to promote your content and generate interest in your brand. That includes organic search, social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, email marketing, business directories, etc.

The truth is:

You can’t tell from the start what is going to work best for your business. You have to experiment with different options and use multiple channels at first before you can decide on the ones to stick with in your lead generation.

3. Craft Compelling Content

Content can make or break any lead gen strategy. So aside from the format and distribution channel, your content needs to be of high quality.  

Your lead gen content needs to fulfill three requirements in order for it to be effective. It’s hard to imagine that a content piece can succeed if it fails to meet these three conditions simultaneously:

• Well-written
• Relevant
• Valuable

An amusing content piece is easy to read and understand by anyone. It uses simple language with catchy phrases and short paragraphs. And it’s also completely optimized to rank well on search engines and drive organic traffic. 

Moreover:

Good content is relevant to the reader’s needs and interests. It speaks to their daily work, activities, and interests — which makes it highly attractive in the eyes of your target audience.

Most importantly, impactful lead generation content provides real value by educating prospects on how to solve their problems. It offers applicable tips and solutions to specific challenges that your leads are dealing with every day.

4. Develop a Lead Scoring System

Lead scoring is the practice of evaluating your prospects’ readiness to convert based on their behavior and level of interest. It’s a fundamental step in your lead generation strategy because it allows you to narrow your focus and pay more attention to qualified prospects.

Scoring leads also enables you to provide a unique buying experience to your prospects. You’ll know what potential clients expect and need from you, which helps you be more effective in walking them through the sales process.

To score your leads effectively:

You first have to determine which criteria and characteristics you’re going to rely on when creating your scoring model. Aside from demographics, you need to take into consideration behavioral markers and engagement metrics to decide which leads are a priority.

Then, you must assign values to each factor so that you can segment leads into different categories using scoring points.

For example:

• Landing page conversion (20 points)
• Email Response (30 points)
• Comments on social media (5 points)

A CEO that has subscribed to your newsletter and replied to your emails will gather more points compared to a customer service agent who isn’t picking up the phone.

5. Automate Your Lead Generation Process

The best way to improve sales efficiency is to have your lead generation process run on autopilot. There are a lot of tools and strategies you can use to save yourself time and stay focused on other important duties in your business.

Some of the lead generation responsibilities you can automate are:

• Lead nurturing campaigns
• Content publishing (website blog/social media)
• Email marketing sequences
• Customer support (using chatbots)  
• Lead tracking and scoring
• Paid advertising and retargeting campaigns

Now…

It’s important to note that automation can only work after you’ve put in place a smooth process for generating leads. 

It takes a lot of trial and error before you can perfect your lead generation plan. For instance, you have to take your time to build a detailed strategy that’s built on quality content and strong marketing tactics. Once you begin to achieve your desired results, you can rely on tools to help you handle other processes.

6. Outsource the Process to a Lead Generation Company

Another way you can attract more high-quality prospects in less time is by outsourcing lead generation. It’s the ultimate solution for companies that are looking to grow fast while maintaining the same level of efficiency.

But what exactly is outsourced lead generation?

Lead generation outsourcing is the practice of hiring an agency to handle your lead generation duties. An external team of sales and marketing professionals will help you find and attract new prospects to accelerate your sales funnel. 

Outsourced lead generation is a great way to lower your costs and widen the talent pool in your company. A lead gen partner will provide you with qualified experts who will bring along a wide set of skills and tools to enhance your results.

Outsourcing your lead generation processes might be a good idea if any of the following applies to you:

• You don’t want to risk your growth by hiring inexperienced employees
• You’re looking to expand into larger areas or break into new markets
• You’re about to launch a new product and service
• You want your internal teams to gain more experience by working with qualified lead generation professionals

How To Improve Conversion Rates for Lead Generation

Increasing conversions is a straightforward way to improve your lead generation and enhance your sales cycle. A higher conversion rate will allow you to make the most out of your newly generated leads and keep your pipeline flowing.

Here are three tips to help you increase lead generation conversions:

1. Optimize Your Landing Pages for a Better User Experience

Your website often shapes the first impression potential prospects are going to have about your brand. Therefore, it needs to be well-optimized to ensure a positive user experience that can get many leads to convert into clients.

How do you improve your landing pages?

For starters, you need to work on your website design and branding. Each page on your site needs to enhance trust and credibility to encourage more people to convert. You need to maintain the same design style including your logo and colors wherever your brand is present online.

Also:

The majority of online consumers today use mobile, especially when it comes to organic traffic where 63% of users are on mobile devices. That’s why it’s important to prioritize mobile-friendliness when developing your website.

Aside from that:

Your website must provide its visitors with the information they need as easily and quickly as possible — which is why loading speed is crucial. If you are an eCommerce store, you can use a headless e-commerce solution for your website. It will ensure you have a fast website, and customers can find what they are looking for within a few seconds.

2. Write a Stronger Web Copy and CTAs

Your web copy is every written word, sentence, or paragraph on the page that helps you establish solid relationships with potential customers. A well-written copy can take new visitors from not knowing anything about your brand to being interested in a matter of a few minutes.

Obviously…

The goal behind writing good copy is to provide value. You’re driving targeted traffic to your web pages to give them the precise answers they’re looking for. 

To make your landing pages more engaging, you have to:

• Craft powerful headlines and section openings
• Write in an attention-grabbing language  
• Use short words and phrases to keep visitors scrolling
• Stick to an easy-to-read writing style that focuses on simple words

Once a prospect is done reading your landing page, you need to tell them exactly what they should do next, or else they’ll just leave your website. That’s why using calls-to-action (CTAs) is a must if you’re serious about increasing conversions.

A call-to-action could be a text or a button that nudges site visitors towards taking a desired action. For example, you can ask new prospects to contact you for more information or subscribe to your newsletter to make sure that you’re not losing them.

3. Offer Valuable Lead Magnets

The lead magnet, also known as a freebie, is what you offer potential prospects back in exchange for their contact information. It could be anything with real value — such as an ebook, a white paper, a case study, a product demo, etc.

To create a lead magnet that converts, your need to explain to your visitors what you’re offering and why it matters. You can also add a sense of urgency to your offers to encourage quick action.

In order for your lead magnet to be successful, it has to be both interesting and valuable.

An interesting lead magnet promises a solution to a relevant problem that the visitor is unable to solve on their own. For example, a long-form ebook that offers a complete guide around a trending topic in your industry might be the perfect lead magnet for your business.

As for value, your freebie has to deliver on the initial promise if you want your prospects to trust you. By helping converted leads overcome their challenges, you’ll win them over and have their full attention until they buy from you.