Looking At An Effective & Successful Lead Generation Process With The Most Experienced SEO Agency Nationwide
Important Information About The Lead Generation Process
Lead Generation Basics
There is so much to know and learn about the lead generation process. Basically, it is a kind of marketing process to energize and capture interest for a specific product or service and leverage those to develop a sales pipeline. Various digital channels are essential for generating leads, as well as the techniques that get applied to all of the changes that continue to evolve over time. These days, we have modern online and social techniques that are also available. The development of the “self-directed buyer” who is able to thrive on all of the information that can be found online these days is one of the most notable developments. We now have modern online and social techniques. Those new techniques help with creating and evaluating prospective leads before they convert into sales.
Why Lead Generation Is So Essential
The new face of the buying process requires marketers to come with up new and fresh ways to get their messages across to their prospective buyers. Email blasts and mass advertisements up to this point were the acceptable advertising methods. Marketers now need to do more to stay on the radar screen and work on increasing their chances on a daily basis for customers to find them. Once a business is discovered it must work on developing close relationships with its customers.
The Abundance of Information & Attention Economics
With the rise of the internet, information has become more abundant. Although it is a good thing having so much information available, there are challenges that come with it. Having an abundant amount of information results in having to secure attention. It is one of the basic principles that attention economics is associated with. Herbert Simon, a social scientist and leading pioneer of attention economics, says that information, in the economic sense, consumes the attention of its recipients. It has also changed the buying process. Buyers now have so much information available to them, and in trying to not be influenced by it, buyers continue to reject or ignore most of the messages. Instead, they rely on their own research to learn about a subject that they are interested in.
The New Purchasing Process
In the past, during the information scarcity age, marketing was involved in the lead generation process, which involved finding the name of potential buyers and converting this information into sales. At that time buyers relied on sales agents to help them make their decision. The sales agent, on the other hand, may lack the knowledge that is necessary for convincing uneducated, early-stage buyers.
By contrast, the new purchasing process involves buyer doing their own online research where they look for resources that can help them make a good decision. They rely on social media, search engines, as well as other online channels to get information on a specific product or service. They are more prepared than ever before to interact with salespeople.
This is why business must ensure they have a good digital presence. The new purchasing process places the vendor on the very end of the consumer’s buying journey since they have received the information that they would have received from the seller in the past. So they are more of their very own experts now.
Any business with a well-developed lead generation strategy can stand a lot better chance to earn the prospective buyer’s complete trust and spark their interest before they reach the last stage where they meet with the vendor. That also saves on wasting time and stress for a sales team that has a reduce to have to cold call. When your sales time has solid leads it is a much easier process, and ultimately you will get higher and faster conversions of leads into revenue.
Owned Attention & Rented Attention
The purchasing process is currently shifting away from “renter attention” to “owned attention” due to attention scarcity. The common practice before now was applying a marketing strategy based on rental attention, or attention built by other people. For example, buying an ad in a magazine or renting a booth at a tradeshow. They are less expensive these days, because of information overload. More has to be done in order to capture the attention of the buyer, perhaps a combination of owned attention and refined attention – to achieve results from your lead generation efforts.
To gain attention for yourself, these days you have to establish yourself with prospective buyers as a trusted advisor. That can be done from constantly creating valuable content and disseminating thought leadership. When done properly, it helps to increase the chance that your lead generation efforts will succeed rather than being part of a very complex purchasing environment that we are all in today.
Leading Prospects Down The Sales Funnel
It is essential that you understand that the process currently demands you to do more than just convert new leads into sales. Businesses need to go beyond just marketing from the Top of the Sales Funnel. If you realize that not every new lead will buy something at that exact moment, then you will understand there is a new to retain leads so they do not get snatched by the competition or get lost or ignored.
In order to succeed with lead generation, a business needs to be willing to invest in nurturing leads and make use of the Middle of Funnel (MOFU) methods. MOFU techniques are designed to help nurture relationships that are already established and to grow and develop trust by offering engaging, high-quality content. It is important for the techniques to guide the lead gently into buying.
Recently, in order to succeed in lead generation, you need to effectively combine MOFU and TOFU approaches and techniques into an overall holistic marketing philosophy. You can only then convert your leads efficiently into paying clients or customers.
Lead Generation Research
An important aspect of lead generation is lead generation techniques. Companies are increasingly spending good amounts of money on diversifying their creative efforts for capturing the attention of their audience despite all of the noise in today’s environment.
Observed Trends Of Lead Generation Budgets
Recently we have seen an increase in net spending by marketers on lead generation. Typically, money is spent on social media, website optimization, and SEO.
Lead Generation Focus of CMO’s
CMO’s and senior-level marketing executives are increasingly prioritizing obtaining measure ROI from all of their marketing efforts. They are also prioritizing optimization of the sales funnel and marketing over their lead generation efforts. Therefore, CMOs are focusing on locating viable methods to improve the quality of the leads that they generate from their investments and marketing efforts.
Today’s Top Challenges For Lead Generation
As previously mentioned, the top priority across the board for marketing executives is lead quality. However, the quality of leads is a major challenge for marketers. And IDG study showed that 61% of marketers that were part of the study found that it was a huge challenge to generate high-quality leads.
That said, marketing executives must deal with having inadequate resources. That includes needing to operate with inadequate data (both quantity and quality-wise), staffing, and resources while still attempting to generate quality leads in the process.
Most Efficient & Effective Lead Generation Techniques
Another IDG survey on B2B Lead Generation showed that conferences, tradeshows, corporate websites, and email marketing are the most popular and effective lead generation techniques that are being used currently. On the other hand, print advertising and direct mail have been identified to be the least effective forms of lead generation methods.
Lead Generation Fundamentals
In order to get lead generation fundamentals right, you must appreciate the fact that defining leads is highly subjective. Everything depends on the specific company that is involved. Definition of a lead will typically depend on the sales cycle of the company. However, the general definition of a lead is a qualified prospective buyer who shows a certain level of interest in purchasing your services or goods. It is very important to note that each lead that supplies their details to you should get something in exchange; that could be a convincing offer or additional information on your products.
In generally there are two major kinds of lead generation – outbound and inbound. However, the basic principles of customer retention, nurturing, and recognizing are always a part and integral to the comprehensive strategy of a business.
Inbound Marketing
This involves helping prospective clients or customers learn about or find your company, usually before they consider buying from you. Doing this will help you convert your early audience into developing a preference for your brand, and that will turn them eventually into a lead and a sale.
In a market with customers being greatly empowered by having plenty of choices available to them, marketers cannot rely on cold calling, advertisements, tradeshows and other types of outbound marketing methods only. Consumers today are knowledgeable and educated, and therefore need a lot of information. Marketers must find creative and innovative ways to stand out in a crowd and catch the attention of their audience. To do that you need to have a very good handle on inbound marketing.
This is achieved by providing a mix of entertaining, relevant, and informative content. The goal here is to develop a relationship with your audience who are your potential clients as well. However, it is not enough to simply create content. You must make your content available to your audience on the specific channels that are used by your prospective customers.
We will take a look at some of the most effective forms of inbound lead generation strategies:
Content & SEO
All of the inbound marketing efforts you make will run into a brick wall quickly if you don’t create and use the right type of content. Therefore, content marketing is the cornerstone of inbound leads generation. At its core content marketing is all about creating and distributing useful and in-depth content in order to capture the attention of a specific target audience and then engage with this audience. The end goal is to help the audience take customer actions that are profitable.
Social media marketing, email marketing, and other kinds of marketing all thrive on content. When you have the right content it can get you in front of the right buyers and help you win their trust.
If you are interested in refining your leads and starting your SEO campaign to dominate your market, give us a call or contact us today! Visit our blog for more tips and tricks on successful SEO tactics!
