Leads are the lifeblood of any successful business, from insurance companies to banks to SaaS companies. When a business has more qualified leads, it stays stable and grows in a better way. So it’s not surprising that marketers can’t sleep because they keep thinking about how to get more consistent leads.
But it’s not always better to have more. You also want qualified leads so that your sales team is always busy and working with new leads who end up becoming customers.
With a steady stream of leads, you can be more selective, charge more, and steer the business toward better-quality accounts that fit your strengths.
The more reliable lead generation funnels you can set up that consistently bring in qualified leads, the stronger your pipeline will be and the more sales you can make.
How to get quality scores to bring in leads
Lead scoring is a way to rank leads based on how good they are and how ready they are to buy. The score of a lead may depend on a number of things, such as:
- Steps along the way
- Interest in what you have to offer
- Level of engagement
- Product worked
- Size of the chance
- Geography
Your lead scoring system might use information about the industry, size of the company, and job title, among other things. It should also have information about how people use the site, such as clicks, keywords, pages visited, downloads, registrations, etc.
What's the point?
By treating higher priority leads in a certain way, you can improve the efficiency of your marketing and sales by giving your leads a score. In some situations, a lead should be sent straight to sales. In other situations, the next step is for marketing to keep in touch with leads. Sometimes, you may need to get rid of low-quality leads so that your time and money spent on marketing and sales don’t go to waste.
Your pipeline will be stronger and more reliable if your sales team knows how to prioritize leads, where to spend their time, and how to talk to prospects in the best way.
In most lead scoring systems, different qualities or actions of a potential customer are worth a certain number of points. People who signed up for your mailing list downloaded a white paper or signed up for a webinar fall into this category. It could also be someone who is further along in the sales process and asked for a demo or wanted to compare your products to those of your competitors.
When a lead reaches a certain point total, you should have clear rules for what actions or automation should happen. For example, sales should follow up right away if they become a “hot lead.” If they haven’t done much yet, give them more information about the pages they’ve already looked at on your website.
How to get people interested in your business
As you look into how to get leads online, you should keep two things in mind. Build trust, and deliver value to your audience. Most people won’t give you their contact information or set up a sales call unless they trust your brand and have already gotten a lot of value from you.
In other words, you need to build the foundation for your lead generation strategy before you can get leads for your business. In our demand generation guide, we explain everything you need to know about this process. In fact, if you’re not sure what the difference is, you might want to save our explanation of the difference between demand generation and lead generation.
But if you already know what it’s about, this guide will focus on 17 ways to get leads for your business that will bring in money
1. Make buyer profiles
You need to know who your buyers are before you can figure out how to find leads on the Internet. Make buyer personas with detailed information about what they want, what they want to achieve, and what bothers them. You should also include important moments that make your customers want to do something.
Here are some examples of other brands’ personas to help you get started. Just remember to think beyond basic demographics and create psychological profiles that include the person, their environment, and the times when their behavior changes.
2. Make a map of the customer's trip
The first step in your framework is to map the customer journey for each persona in each audience segment you want to target. Why do they set out on their journey? What problem or frustration are they trying to solve, or what want or goal is driving them to look?
Where do they get their news? Which sites do they go to?
What do they want to know, and where do they look for answers? How do they use Google to look for answers?
How do they go from looking for general information at the top of the funnel to looking at specific solutions and comparing them in the middle of the funnel?
What do they think about when they decide whether or not to buy something?
3. Make the right offer at every step of the way
If you want to get more leads, you need to make the right offer at each stage of the funnel. If they are still at the top of the funnel and just looking for general educational information, answer their questions as usefully as possible. Give only blog posts, articles, and videos that are meant to teach.
If they are in the middle of the sales funnel and want to know more about your solutions and how they compare to other options, give them all the details and the key points that set you apart.
Think about how they are trying to make a final choice at the bottom of the funnel. Help them make a good decision by giving them calculators, tools, offers, comparison charts, case studies, and any other content that shows the return on investment they can get.
4. Use creative marketing content
If you can’t figure out how to get leads, these content marketing examples can help.
Content marketing is a powerful way to get new customers because it lets you connect with your target audience on a subconscious level and really connect with them in a way that they will remember.
What makes something interesting to read?
Engaging content is writing that makes people want to read more. It makes people feel something, gives them advice they can use, and keeps them interested so they read every word. Really interesting content also makes people want to do something. This is very important if you want them to share, link, bookmark, or fill out a form.
5. Use video marketing
The Aberdeen Group says that marketers who use video get 66% more qualified leads than those who don’t. A recent survey on the state of video marketing by Wyzowl found that 83% of video marketers say that video has helped them get more leads and 80% say that video has directly helped them make more sales.
When your videos are well-made and optimized, they add an element of experience to your marketing that is hard to find in other formats. Videos are good at making people feel something, remembering things, and remembering them better.
Think about how Geico is the undisputed king of pop culture-friendly videos that people love to watch and share, and how the company uses video to get new customers. Geico may sell insurance, which could be as boring as butter, but they sure know how to have a brand voice that speaks to customers.
6. Make sure your site and content are set up to bring in the right visitors
SEO is the only channel that fits the way your audience thinks as well as it does. Organic search shows every question, every frustration, and every solution they’re looking for.
When you use these insights and optimize for them, you can create pages and content that meet the needs of your audience at every stage of the purchase funnel. So, you won’t just get more people to visit your website. You’ll bring in the right people.
First, you can use content to get people to sign up for your mailing list and other types of leads and keep track of them. After the initial capture, you can continue to nurture leads through the sales cycle with organic search by matching their interests and searches throughout the funnel.
Best of all, SEO lead generation makes sure that prospects find your content exactly when they are looking for the topics and solutions you talk about. That’s a good way to get leads who are interested, active, and high-quality. This is shown by Google’s Economic Impact Report, which says that the average return on investment (ROI) for organic search is 5.3X.
7. Make sure your web pages and landing pages are set up to get sales
When making web pages and landing pages for lead generation, you should start with the goal of getting people to buy. Your pages must match what the reader wants to do. But they also give you a chance to build conversion funnels that are smarter and help you get more leads.
One important thing to remember about how to get leads is that it’s all about figuring out what your ideal customer will do next.
From there, you can build this kind of direction into the page’s layout, design, messaging, and calls to action (CTAs).
Do you want them to join that webinar? Then, draw their attention to it in a way that makes sense for the context. You can even repeat the CTA on your pages to see if that helps your conversion rates.
8. Use PR to get people to notice you
Public relations (PR) is another way to get leads that work well. PR often focuses on the top of the funnel to boost activities that raise brand awareness.
If a campaign is creative enough, people will talk about it on their own. That means it can make a lot of media coverage, social activity, and impressions, which can help you reach a lot more people.
When looking at specific ways to use PR to get more leads, byline articles, guest blogging, newsjacking, events, and sponsorships are all good. With these PR tools, you can reach new audiences, build your credibility, and bring leads right to your door.
For instance, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson started the company Basecamp, which makes software for managing projects. They are always writing editorials or giving interviews for other websites. Fried has written more than 75 articles under his own name for Inc. Magazine. He and Hansson have been interviewed by many well-known media outlets, including the New York Times, CNBC, Vox, The Tim Ferriss Show, and Forbes. Basecamp has more than three million client accounts and is worth more than $100 million.
Meltwater, MuckRack, and Prezly are all examples of good PR management software.
9. Put your attention on referral marketing to get good leads
Word of mouth (WOM) and referral marketing are two of the most natural ways to get new leads. A lead is more likely to turn into a customer if it comes from someone the person trusts.
A Nielsen study showed that 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family more than advertisements. People trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts, like friends and family. On the B2B side, about 91% of purchases are thought to be influenced by WOM.
91% 91% of B2B purchases are affected by what other people say.
Dropbox became very popular when it started giving customers more free storage space if they told other people about it.
Referral marketing can be a strong source of new, high-quality, likely-to-close leads for your business, no matter what other marketing you do.
Software like Influitive, Insided, and Crowdvocate can help you get more word-of-mouth marketing.
10. Use display ads at the top of the sales funnel
Display advertising is one of the fastest ways to reach a large number of people and get them interested in your funnel.
Display advertising comes with a lot of challenges, that’s for sure. It costs a lot, and once you stop paying for it, there are no more benefits. Literally.
Also, banner blindness is real, which makes it hard to get good results from display advertising without spending a lot of money.
But if you need to spread the word quickly, display advertising is a great way to do it.
11. Run PPC campaigns for the last step in the sales process.
You can count on PPC if you’re looking for a fast way to reach your audience at the bottom of the funnel. With paid search, you can reach people just when they are looking for your products, services, or solutions.
But it costs a lot, just like display advertising. And just like with display ads, when you stop paying for the effort, the results stop right away. So, PPC should be considered when thinking about ways to get leads, but it might not be a long-term solution.
12. Make friends with people who can help you
By working with influencers, you can get your brand in front of a passionate group of people who already trust the voice of the influencer.
But don’t just send your pitch to anyone you find influential. The key is to do your homework and reach out to influencers who are a good fit for your brand. If it’s business-to-business, that could mean the audience’s industry, department, title, company size, location, main business goals, pain points, etc.
13. Use software to find out who is visiting your site
When thinking about how to get more leads, don’t fall into the trap of thinking you always need to get their email on the first site visit. People who went to your website but didn’t fill out a form, sign up for a webinar, ask for a demo, or give you their email address in any other way are often forgotten when it comes to lead generation.
This is where software that finds IP addresses comes in.
The software lets you find out which companies are visiting your website, what they are looking at, for how long, and in what order. On top of that, if the person is already in your CRM database, it also tells you who they are.
Many people who visit your site don’t convert while they’re there, but they may still be good leads. With IP detection software, you can quickly reach out to site visitors and accounts with the right message at the right time and in the right context.
There is a software called Lead Forensics, Leadfeeder, KickFire, and WhoIs that can find IP addresses.
14. Turn back to them
In the same way, retargeting lets you get back in touch with people who have been to your website but didn’t buy anything. After they leave your site, show them ads. Make the effort even more successful by making the ads relevant to what the person was looking at on your site.
Retargeting works because you already know that they are interested in the kinds of solutions you offer. They might just need a little push or a reminder to visit your site again.
You can reach out to possible leads again by using search engines or software like AdRoll, Retargeter, and Criteo.
15. Talk to them through social media
If you don’t know where to find new business leads, social networks could be a way to do so, as long as you use them the right way.
Social media sites like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter let you connect with your audience in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re trying to sell something. This lets you show what you’re really like and lets your true personality shine through.
Social media is a good place to get leads by promoting free content like white papers, research reports, webinars, other online events, etc.
But don’t be lazy and just connect with people on LinkedIn so you can send them a sales pitch that is sent to everyone. Meet people who work in your field. Share their content and join discussions that are relevant to it. When potential customers see you as a leader, they will be more willing to talk honestly with you in the future about your services.
Even though this method takes longer, it’s worth it.
16. Use email marketing sequences to make things easier
Even if they sign up for your mailing list, that doesn’t mean they are a good sales lead. You can set up different types of automated email marketing sequences to get them to take actions that raise their lead score and make them “sales-ready.” This helps you figure out what your most promising prospects will do.
And don’t just send one automated email after someone signs up. Use behavioral segmentation to get the most out of email marketing sequences. This means setting up more automation based on how buyers act in the following ways:
- Content consumed
- How to use a website
- Level of interest in buying
17. Do A/B tests
Make sure to do a lot of A/B testing to get the most out of your lead generation. The key to A/B testing is to make a testing plan, think about your lead generation activities as a whole, and test as many different parts of them as you can.
For instance, you could A/B test your message. Test your landing pages. Find out which CTAs work the best. Check your web forms. A/B test your emails to them after they have signed up.
You’ll really be able to get the most out of your leads if you test in all directions.
Optimizely, VWO, A/B Tasty, Adobe Experience Cloud A/B Testing, and SiteSpect are all useful A/B testing tools.
Don't forget this about how to get leads.
The best way for your business to get leads is to connect with potential buyers at the right time through content that is search engine optimized.
At the top of the sales funnel, you can use infographics and free tools to create valuable content marketing campaigns that raise awareness. As they get closer to making a purchase, publish case studies and relevant content about the pros and cons they should think about.
Use pop-ups in a smart way to get people’s phone numbers or email addresses so you can add them to your email list. Lastly, use marketing automation to keep leads in good shape until they’re ready to talk to your salespeople.
Inbound lead generation is a blend of science and art. You should come up with unique ideas and messages for your campaign. But you have to carefully choose your audience if you want to be heard over all the noise. You also need a plan to make sure that the leads keep coming in over time. To do this, use the above lead generation strategies and tactics to give your marketing plan an edge over the competition.
