Lead generation: What is it?
Simply put, a lead is a person who has expressed interest in your company in some way. In essence, you can think of anyone who has provided you with their contact information—for example, to sign up for your newsletter, attend a webinar, or download a free guide. This person is now inside your sales funnel because they visited your company’s website and agreed to be contacted by you.
Best lead generation strategies for startups
Every startup is unique; Consider each one carefully in light of your revenue, resources, marketing objectives, and market environment. Let’s jump in.
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Use Gmail ads to target customers of rival businesses
Gmail Ads are effective methods for reaching your target market directly. No audience is more valuable to a startup than the clients of your rivals. You can direct your Ad Words campaign to only ever reach people who receive emails from your rivals using Gmail Ads, giving you direct access to customers who already use products that are similar to yours.
There are various methods for doing this. One strategy is to focus on keywords that your rivals are most likely to use. Join the email lists of your rivals, scan them for words and phrases they frequently use, and add those as target keywords. Targeting the domains of your rivals is a more effective course of action. You can reach the same audience through Gmail Ads at a fraction of the price of a search engine marketing campaign.
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Make a tonne of opportunities for opt-in and make them irresistible
Free reports, live demos, webinars… Obtain more opt-ins than just one or two. Every blog post should serve as an opt-in page. You can distribute worksheets, resource manuals, PDFs of your blog posts, etc. Make a pop-up instead of removing the opt-in box from the sidebar.
Make users choose a course of action. What do you think about this? Saying no is simpler when the option is simply present in the sidebar and can be done as easily as ignoring it. According to test results this improved conversion by 32%. You shouldn’t make it so simple for people to say no, but you also shouldn’t force them to say yes.
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Test the appropriate way
Receiving sound advice is beneficial, but it’s risky to assume that just because something worked for someone else, it will also work for you. This doesn’t imply that you should disregard sound advice, but rather that you should test repeatedly and correctly.
Even in cases where you may not think you need to, split test. Testing is essential because sometimes the results among your audience will seem counterintuitive. You might assume, for instance, that the use of “my” or “your” in this test would have little impact.
In actuality, the treatment decreased conversions by 24%! Point of view can have an effect. In this experiment, switching “your” to “my” increased conversions by 90%: You should also check for things like immediateness, concreteness, images, and more. Split-test your background image, button copy, and headline. You might be surprised by the outcomes, but you’ll be making smarter, more knowledgeable optimizations.
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Remarketing in additional
Remarketing allows you to identify website visitors and re-engage with them as they browse the internet, check their email, watch YouTube, use Google, or even just hang out on Facebook.
Given that 97% of visitors will leave your landing page without converting, it helps turn visitors into leads. By placing you back in front of your audience, remarketing enhances the impact of all of your other startup marketing initiatives, including content marketing, social media marketing, etc.
You can reach 92% of people with remarketing using the Google Display Network, which spans millions of websites, videos, and devices. Be aggressive because, according to research, remarketing ads fatigue about half as quickly as regular ads.
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Make better proposals
There is a tonne of room for conversion rate improvement unless you are one of the top advertisers. In fact, the top 10% of landing pages have conversion rates that are 3 to 5 times higher than the typical. What is their method? Making better offers is one inventive strategy.
Every software provider provides a risk-free trial. What do you have to offer that is distinctive, compelling, and provides the visitor with actual value?
creating a non-binding solution so users could benefit from it without having to go through the lengthy process of downloading, installing, and then actually using the software. This has so far proven to be one of the most successful lead-generation techniques.
If your conversion rates are 2% or less, you need to try something extreme, like drastically altering your offer. Small improvements will lead to small outcomes. The average conversion rate for the top 25% of advertisers is 5.31%, and the average conversion rate for the top 10% is over 11%! You have lots of potential.
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Improve your advertising writing
If you are the one conducting the search, there is really only one factor that matters: price. When everything appears to be the same, there is a great opportunity to offer something unique and outperform the competition. Better ad writing can increase your CTR above the anticipated average, improving your Quality Score; learn more about writing effective ads and how to reduce your cost per click.
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Make your landing pages clear and simple to use
Why does this work so well? unlike a 3-minute video or a page of copy, it doesn’t require the user to process a lot of information. Because many people are experiencing information overload and don’t want to download something else longer to read, it performs better than a free report.
Recently, video lead magnets have had a reputation issue, in part due to the abundance of launches and a lack of time. These factors contributed to this landing page’s success. Additionally, the fact that this satisfies people’s genuine desire to know what tools other people are using helped.
Anyone can do this, It only takes a few minutes to set up this kind of lead-generation landing page, which is definitely worth experimenting with.
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Acquire knowledge of SEO
One of the best lead generation techniques is search engine optimization, or SEO, which is particularly effective for online businesses, B2B companies, and even B2C companies. Utilizing the tools at your disposal and keeping search engine visibility top of mind are the first two steps in developing an SEO strategy.
You can begin by making sure that your website contains writing that is clear and concise, accurate information, and answers to frequently asked questions. Although it’s free to learn SEO best practices on your own, if your company operates in a highly competitive market, hiring an SEO consultant could add value to your enterprise.
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Produce downloadable resources
Are you an authority on the subject? If so, make use of your knowledge since it is valuable. To generate leads, you can provide free white paper and ebook downloads that highlight your industry knowledge and your company.
Potential leads can acquire specialized knowledge or information on demand in exchange for their contact information by downloading assets like white papers and e-books. Additionally, if your asset is of the highest calibre, you may find that peers share it, which will help your company’s reputation and brand name spread far beyond your own on-site marketing efforts.
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Sending out broadcast ads to your target market
Because podcasts are so well-liked and content producers need sponsors, you can convert listeners into leads. You already have a good idea of what this audience will find interesting and applicable to their lives because podcasts typically concentrate on particular themes, and listeners choose which ones to stream.
As a result, you can decide which podcasts best appeal to your target market and run advertisements to attract customers to your company’s website or online store. Offering podcast listeners a referral code with a discount on their initial purchase is another best strategy.
Conclusion
Priorities your lead generation strategies if you want to expand quickly, and employ strategies like the ones listed above to attract as many qualified prospects as you can to your sales funnel.