Let's start off by answering this question: What is lead generation in digital marketing?
It is the first contact that a prospect initiates with your business. It can be by submitting personal information for a subscription, trial, offer, etc.
But what does this mean for your business?
Well, it's great news! You have successfully piqued their curiosity and interest.
Now, if you observe the present scenario, the biggest objective of any given digital marketing strategy is generating new leads.
However, determining the methods that bring you the most leads has become extremely challenging.
Even the statistics indicate the same: 61% of marketers rank lead generation as their number one challenge.
If you too face this challenge and are searching for the most effective lead generation strategies in digital marketing for your business, then don't worry! We have you covered.
In this post, we'll discuss the five most-picked strategies for generating new leads. It will arm you with sufficient knowledge to get quality leads for your business.
Let's dive right in then!
What Are Leads in Digital Marketing?
Before we discuss the strategies, let's clearly define a lead first. A lead is a person or an organization that has shown interest in the offerings of your business. They show this interest by sharing their contact information, such as an email id, a social media handle, or a phone number.
Top Lead Generation Strategies in Digital Marketing
All said and done, it's now time to discuss the different strategies for lead generation. Let's begin!
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process where you take steps to help a piece of content or a website rank higher on Google. It is a powerful way to reach your target audience.
SEO includes increasing the ranking of your website in search results for certain keywords and phrases. This helps your potential customers discover you when they search for information or services similar to yours.
Note: It's crucial for your website to show up in the first few results to help your target audience find you when they are looking for services that you provide.
SEO is regarded as an incredibly effective lead generation strategy in digital marketing. Now, you may wonder, how to start using SEO for lead generation? Here are a few major steps you can take:
A. Keyword Research & Selection
SEO involves optimizing your content for certain keywords and phrases.
To know which keywords to target, you need to carry out keyword research. As a first step, dedicate some time and brainstorm a list of possible keywords at your end.
Next, you can use online tools to find keywords that best suit your strategy. For instance, you can use the Chrome extension Keywords Everywhere. It displays the competition level and search volume for any particular keyword.
B. Use Long-Tail Keywords
Ensure you aim to choose long-tail keywords in your keyword research. These are keywords with three or more words. Here's an example to understand why you need to use them.
Suppose you are a company that sells classic furniture. Now, the chances of your web pages showing up in the top search results for the keyword furniture would be extremely low. This is because the competition will be too high, especially if you are a startup or a small company.However, if you specialize in, for instance, contemporary art-deco furniture, then using keywords such as contemporary Art Deco-influenced semi-circle loungeā can send people to your website looking for that very product.
Long tail keywords have less competition. These keywords are more specific, which means fewer businesses will be using them.
C. User Experience
User experience impacts the amount of time visitors want to spend on your website. Hence, it's imperative that you offer a positive user experience to your website visitors.
You can take the following steps to ensure that your site offers an impressive user experience!
- Design & NavigationYour site's design plays a pivotal role in how visitors perceive your business. It has the power to make or break your first impression. To positively impact the perception of the site visitor, ensure you design a clean, attractive, and modern website. Also, opt for a consistent design.Another thing you need to keep in mind to offer a great user experience is an easy-to-use, simple navigation. This helps keep visitors on your site for a longer time. It also helps them easily find the information they are looking for.
- Note: The factors we discussed above impact your website's ranking as they determine the bounce rate. Your bounce rate is when individuals leave your website immediately and go back to the search results.
- Pro Tip: You don't want potential customers to go back to the search results and choose one of your competitors, do you? Therefore, we recommend keeping a check on your page speed. Use Google PageSpeed Insights for the same. An ideal good page load speed is 2 seconds.
- On-Page Optimization: On-page optimization is critical for increasing your site visitors. Ensure you follow these steps for this.When trying to rank for a keyword, make sure to use the keyword in the meta description, title, text, and headings. This describes your page to search engines, which helps them rank it accordingly.
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing involves creating and sharing blogs, videos, and other online materials, intended to generate interest in your brand's offerings rather than to explicitly promote your brand.
Content marketing is yet another powerful lead generation strategy in digital marketing. It can considerably boost your online visibility and generate credible leads.
Along with blogging, you can use content marketing to provide valuable information in the form of infographics, online guides, videos, and long-form articles.
When it comes to infographics specifically, 65% of brands produce them to bolster their content marketing strategy.
Pro Tip: The content you put out needs to be useful, well-researched, and related to what your audience may be searching for. It should also provide in-depth information.
We say this because when individuals check out helpful content on your site, they are more likely to visit other pages on your site too. This can potentially turn them into a lead.
Also, when you post relevant content, your site visitors will start to spend more time on each web page too. This can positively impact your rankings.
All in all, if you are looking for ways on how to generate leads in digital marketing, content marketing is your quickest fix!
Content marketing even helps you gain the trust of your audience and establish you as an authority in your field. A lot of benefits from one single strategy!
3. Social Media
Social media is a fantastic way to generate new leads for your business.
Renowned platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook make it easy for businesses to connect with leads.
To determine which social media platform you should use for lead generation, check which platform your target audience frequently uses or hangs out on.
Here are some of the steps you can take on social media to maximize opportunities for your business:
- Share important details such as address, hours of operation, and contact information for users to get in touch with you.
- Share the content you create. For e.g. articles and blog posts.
- Share videos, pictures, etc. that showcase your company’s culture and give an inside peek into your business.
When you make yourself available by becoming active on social media, you create engagement and help users spread the word about your business.
This brings in more leads to your site!
The bottom line?
Use social media to connect with your target market, develop relationships, and generate leads. Then, convert them into customers by maintaining a presence in their feed.
4. Email Marketing
Famous as one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, email marketing is one of the most effective methods to acquire and nurture leads even today. With emails, you can increase your reach considerably and gain more leads.
Here's what you need to do to leverage email marketing:
- Build a subscriber list. For this, add sign-up forms to different pages of your site. You can include them in the footer, header, etc.
- After you build the list, send specific information to your subscribers, such as new offerings or links to your content.
Pro Tip: Test different kinds of emails to determine what your subscribers care about. Then, use the insights to adjust your strategy.
All in all, email marketing is an immensely useful lead generation strategy in digital marketing. It is one of the best ways for your brand to reach as well as convert clients.
5. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC advertising is yet another method that helps you gain leads.
These are defined as paid ads that show up at the start of the search results for specific keywords and phrases.
Same as SEO, PPC utilizes keywords. Hence, you need to determine the keywords you wish to target with your campaigns. These keywords will trigger your ads to show up in search results.
Now, you may be wondering, how does PPC work?
Basically, it operates on a bidding system. In such a system, advertisers bid the money they are willing to spend for every click' on their site for any particular keyword.
But the more important question is: How can PPC help you generate leads?
Simple! PPC attracts qualified leads for your business - people who are actively looking out to purchase products or services similar to yours.
These advertisements help your business because they let you target users who search phrases with clear intent.
If you are searching for different methods on how to generate leads in digital marketing, you can definitely consider PPC advertising.
The Bottom Line
Now that you know the most picked lead generation strategies in digital marketing, you are in a more informed position to choose some of the best methods based on your brand and business needs.
From SEO to PPC advertising, these strategies hold the potential to bring you the highest quality leads and take your business to greater heights! Get started with these strategies today.