Years back, promoting your business meant taking out ads in the newspapers, billboards, and on tv. We dished out business cards, flyer campaigns, and went door to door. 

It was tough.

Fast forward and buyers are a savvy lot. They hardly look upon traditional ads for answers, choosing instead on their ability to research solutions online. 

While it seemingly puts businesses at the mercy of sagacious customers, it also presents an opportunity for you to target prospects with precision. 

You can share relevant and valuable information for the different stages of the cycle, naturally steering these prospects to your business.

If you’re interested in lead generation strategies that place you ahead of savvy customers and competitors, here are some tactics you can employ.

1. Use Analytical Data

You can set up a website, write a couple of articles, and hope your ideal customers will find you.

Or you can take a proactive approach and use analytics software to understand consumer behaviour then target them accordingly. 

Analyzing data is an essential weapon in your digital marketing arsenal. It removes the guesswork from the game, allowing you to make decisions that attract more leads to your business. 

Without understanding your data, the strategies you implement may or may not work out and no business wants to operate in such uncertainties.

Here are some ways analytical data can help with lead generation:

• Offering a deeper knowledge of consumer behavior. Collecting data about how visitors are navigating your site and the pages that interest them gives you a better understanding of their needs and motivations. It makes for better targeting.
• Identifying converting market segments. Websites receive visits from different people. Analytical data helps you know the demographics that bring in more traffic. With this, you can improve your buyer personas and set up highly targeted campaigns.
• Tracking products/services that generate the most leads. Data that informs you which offerings or content people spend more time on help reveal consumer interests. It may even offer insights into their pain points. This way, you can customize messages revolving around these areas of interest.
• Identifying bounce pages. Visitors leaving your pages within seconds of reaching it is not a good sign. Webpage data analysis may help you identify the reason for page bounces and fix the issue.

2. Create Lead Magnets

The idea behind creating lead magnets is fair exchange and reciprocity. 

You exchange compelling content or useful material for something you want—which, in most cases is your audience’s contact information. 

Lead magnets are an excellent way of increasing subscribers and leads, and ultimately revenue.

So, what makes a good lead magnet? What would convince your audience to share their email contact with you?

• It solves a problem. Businesses have challenges they want solved. Offering material that solves or shows them how to solve these problems is a compelling reason for them to share their information.
• It helps audiences achieve their goals. Their goal may be increasing revenue, improving efficiency, or handling challenges. Your incentive should help them achieve their goals.
• It’s easy to digest. Unless you’re dealing with highly technical audiences, keep the material jargon-free. Users shouldn’t feel overwhelmed by the information you are sharing.
• Instantly accessible. Have you ever shared your name and email, waited for the email that delivers the material you were expecting, but got nothing? You feel torn between unsubscribing and writing a note to ask for the material. Don’t be that company.

Examples of lead magnets include product demos, webinars, newsletters, white papers and ebooks, case studies, surveys, templates, checklists, and cheat sheets.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Do you want to reach target audiences organically? SEO should make your list of digital tactics. 

Here, you employ specific keyword phrases crucial to your industry or offerings to improve your ranking in search results so audiences can find you quicker.

To facilitate lead generation, here are some considerations:

• Keyword selection. The key to being found lies in keyword phrases that reflect search intent. Brainstorm the terms industry experts, customers, and prospects use to refer to your industry or the solutions you provide. 
• Having identified appropriate keyword phrases, use them in the copy, headings, title, and meta description. It helps search engines understand what the page is about and rank it accordingly.
• Link building. Acquiring backlinks from authority sites tells search engines you are a reputable website. It helps improve visibility and rankings, meaning target audiences are more likely to see you.
• Improve user experience. Improve page loading speed, ensure the site’s design is aesthetically appealing, modern, and easy to navigate. People shouldn’t struggle to get information from your site, otherwise, they will abandon it.

4. Make Cold Calls

Fortune 500, high-growth start-ups, and SMEs around the globe rely on the cold calling strategy to generate leads.

And rightly so, seeing as this tactic puts teams in direct contact with potential customers fostering much-needed human relationships. 

With businesses constantly seeking ways to drive growth, cold calling provides a platform for you to present your solutions in excellent light.

Best practices include:

• Familiarize yourself with your prospect. Look up information from their social channels and in the public domain to learn about their industry and the challenges they face. Are these challenges something you can tackle?
• Understand your offerings. You’ll need it if you want to field your lead’s questions properly. An excellent knowledge base builds your credibility and leaves a good impression on the prospect.
• Draft your script. Identify areas where listeners raise objections or cut you off and rework the script until those sections yield success. Keep in mind that the script should showcase your products/offerings as ideal problem solvers.
• Modulate your voice. Shed any hint of monotone to avoid boring your listeners and see them try to get off the call. Let the tone of your voice show enthusiasm about the solutions you’re presenting.

5. Incorporate Live Chat

Research showed that up to 53 percent of customers abandon online purchases when they can’t find quick answers to the questions on their minds.

So, here’s a question for you, “What do you suppose happens to your prospects when their queries can’t be fixed by your FAQ section?”

They probably jump to a competitor site that makes use of live chat. 

Live chat works like instant messenger facilitating real-time communication between businesses and visitors. In offering them immediate support and information, you improve engagement and satisfaction. 

Here are ways to improve lead generation with live chat:

• Providing timely assistance. The best time to capture leads is during the early stages of their search. By answering questions promptly, you can retain their interest, improving the chances of a sale. 
• Service on the go. People search for information on the go—they don’t have time to sift through multiple product pages on their mobile screens. Through live chat, they can access the information they need quicker.
• Analyzing data to better understand consumer behavior. Live chat software can provide detailed reporting on consumer behavior to help you organize effective marketing campaigns for lead generation.
• Sourcing qualified leads. By monitoring the page your visitor is on, like say the product information or pricing pages, you can be proactive and initiate a discussion. Where the visitor is actively considering a solution, this is your opportunity to nurture them.

Examples of lead generation software include Acquire, Giosg, MyLiveChat, Tidio, Zoho SalesIQ, LiveAgent, HubSpot Live Chat, and Birdeye, among others.

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