Online lead generation: A simple guide for beginners

Well, worry not. This blog is your virtual guru, mentor, guide, or whatever you call it, is going to ease your process by helping you understand online lead generation so that you can decide which method to choose.

As a beginner, everyone wants to perform all methods of online lead generation techniques to feed your sales funnel, but let's hold on to that thought for a while and understand who is your target audience? Is your target audience able to receive and understand your online lead generation strategy?

Let me explain this to you with an example, if you are a B2B company and you are extensively using Instagram and Tumblr to generate leads by creating memes, infographics, etc then there is no point in doing so because most of your potential customers might not even have presence on Instagram and Tumblr, but whereas promoting your business on LinkedIn is beneficial as many of your prospects will have their presence on LinkedIn.

You need to be smart, define, and understand your target audience. Analyse their problem and make sure your product or service is a potential source to solve their problem, only if you can under this you will be able to generate leads successfully online.

What is a lead?

A lead is any person (company for B2B) who in some manner, shape, or type shows enthusiasm in the product or service of a company.

So, why is generating leads important?

In today's world, as the competition is so high, you need leads to be feed in your sales funnel that can be converted into your loyal customer base. If you have good leads then your conversion rate increases.

It's important to have a lead generation strategy for every business nowadays. A lead generation strategy includes tactics and plans for a long term and short term that attract interested prospects to your business, convert them into leads and these obtained leads can be easily converted into loyal customer base in the future.

As the world is moving towards complete digitization, it's important to have an online presence to find good leads. Online lead generation might seem simple, but the truth is that it is most complicated if not done right and the chances of your lead generation strategy failing are more.

Here is a look at some of the top online lead generation methods that many companies use:

1. Social media marketing

2. Email marketing

3. Content marketing

4. Search engine optimization

They are many other online lead generation methods that can be used, but these are some of the basic and successful methods that will help your business to generate leads online.

Social media marketing

Social media is a great way to engage with your prospects. If you are on social media don't just use it to make announcements. Use social media platforms to build relationships with your prospects and leads. This will encourage them to give a sense of trust in you.

Another tip is never to shy away from having a witty social media conversation with your prospects. This will build a good repo among the business and customers. Use social media as a relation-building platform rather than only using it as an information publishing platform.

Have an active presence on social media platforms as this will also help you with your SEO goals. The best thing about social media is that most of the time you can generate leads at a very low cost.

Email Marketing

Many believe that Email marketing can't generate leads as it uses to do before and will vanish soon. Some business assumes this to be true and doesn't even bother investing time and money in Email marketing strategies.

But the truth is it is very much alive and is at its prime stage of the marketing method. The reason why it isn't going to die any sooner is-

• It's simple and easy to write a good email. You don't require a skilled developer to design an Email.
• Everybody has an Email, 57% of internet users are actively using Email. So, imagine the number of your potential customers using Email and how easy it is to reach them.
• Email is always considered as the first point of official conversation with a customer or lead. It is used to communicate any official information. So, when you send an email promoting your product/service to a prospect, then the chances of them reaching you is more compared to any other method.

Design your Email in an eye-catching and attractive manner to grab prospects attention and use CTAs (Call to Action) to pull them into your website where they can find more about your product/service. If you are into B2B then Email marketing is the ideal way to communicate with your clients.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the best way to generate organic leads. It involves educating your leads about your product/ service in a non-competitive way. In content marketing, your primary goal is to educate and build trust with prospects and customers, but not to sell or promote your product/service.

The better way of explaining is that assume you are into providing anti-virus software, so when you do content marketing, never compare your service to that of your competitors. Educate your customers by explaining why anti-virus software is important, how it will benefit them in the short term and long term, consequences of not using anti-virus software in today's generation, and then in the end explain how your anti-virus software can help them with their necessities. So what you have done here is your primary intent was to educate your prospects on the use of Anti-virus software and secondary intent was to promote your software by not comparing it to your competitors. By doing this you are creating an optimistic view about your business in the eyes of your prospect.

They are many types of content marketing, you can use any of the following content marketing methods that suit your business:

These are some of the preferred content marketing methods used by many businesses.

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization AKA SEO is an organic way of generating traffic to your websites. If done right, SEO is more than enough to generate good leads. But the subject of SEO itself is so complicated that new businesses chose not to spend much time on it. Well, the best part is that it is free. So spending a little valuable time of yours on optimizing your website is not a bad idea.

Think of your website as a store and SEO as a method to make your store famous. If your store isn't famous then how would people know about it and how would your sales increase?

Some tips on optimizing your website are work on your image optimization, ensure your website is mobile-friendly, make sure your page loads with 3 seconds of clicking on the website, and design an attracting and easy to find home page.

Include animations, videos, and images on your website to make it more interesting. Don't crowd all your content on one page. Make sure to have a signup form and request only essential details and don't make your prospects feel like they are applying.

Use live chat and be responsive. This will help the prospects know more about your business.

These are some of the tips you can use to optimize your website and draw organic traffic. You might not find success immediately, but don't shy away from trying search engine optimization as it can do wonders for your business.

Now that you know so much about online lead generation, there is no doubt you will successfully execute these methods in your lead generation strategy. If you are still doubtful whether you will get leads or not, then there is nothing to worry about as we have you covered. We provide database service that will help you get instant leads to your business be it emailing list or B2B mailing lists. Contact us for more information.