If you’re a business owner or are interested in digital marketing, you’ve probably heard of new online lead generation techniques.
There is always something new that can serve to take advantage of the competition, but these innovations are rarely supported by data.
The online lead generation (the generation of lists contacts looking to buy through the online channel) is an extremely important aspect of any modern B2B business, and recent studies have shown that companies that generate 60% or more of their lead through the online channel is twice as profitable as those that generate less than 20%.
In today’s post, 5 lead generation techniques that work very well according to my experience, and that your company can start using (if it is not already doing so) to increase the number of contacts acquired thanks to the internet.
1) Create a web form to collect customer data, in exchange for access to premium content
What is the idea?
The easiest way to increase the number of contacts from your website, provided you already generate some traffic, is to use some premium content.
When the user fills out the form on a landing page, leaving his data (such as email address or phone number), he gives him the link to access or download the premium content.
A widespread way is to create a free eBook.
If you do not have time to create webinars, eBooks or other content, you may be able to use content you already have. For example, you can take a presentation PowerPoint to the customer and turn it into content that your potential customers might find useful.
How can I do this?
The easiest way to create landing pages like these is to use appropriate tools or plug-ins for your site. For example, for our eBook we used Email Before Download, an excellent free plugin for WordPress.
Then using a newsletter submission tool – such as Mailchimp – you can create targeted e-mails to people who have downloaded the content.
In these e-mails, an easy way to get started is to ask them questions / feedback on the content, then offer them a free demo, advice or any other service that will get them into the sales funnel.
Why should I do it?
Websites with landing pages like these generate more contacts. It’s very simple. The more content your site offers, and the more landing pages you have to lead to the sale, the greater the chance that a visitor will linger on your website to meet his needs.
In a study done by HubSpot, companies with 31-40 pages of destination get 7 times more contacts than those with only 1-5 landing pages.
2) Start a pay per click campaign on LinkedIn
What is the idea?
LinkedIn is a marketing channel often overlooked by businesses. Companies often have a company page, actively participate in groups, and set up personal profiles for their staff, which is excellent, but they often do not consider experimenting with paid ads on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn gives your business the ability to target ads to specific people and specific organizations, or even specific sectors. For example, if you want to target your ads to business owners in Italy, in the pharmaceutical sector, you can do it. In the same way, if you want your ad to be seen by every single Coca-Cola employee, you can do it.
A great way to use LinkedIn ads is to promote landing pages that offer free content. By creating targeted ads for your key content, you’ll be able to generate many contacts with LinkedIn paid ads profitably.
How can I do this?
Setting up a LinkedIn advertising campaign is simple enough. Press “Start”, enter and choose “create an ad”. LinkedIn gives you advice on how to move forward, and “holds hands” throughout the process.
You’ll need to be able to write a good ad for running a successful campaign, and even constantly experiment with new ad texts, different target characters, new images, to see what works best. Start with a low budget and increase it when you start generating results.
Why should I do it?
In general, it is quite under used. For B2B companies with a fairly high average price, LinkedIn ads should be able to provide an excellent return on investment. LinkedIn has over 70 million registered users around the world, 50% of which are responsible for decision-making in their company.
3) Create a company blog and keep it regularly updated
What is the idea?
Blogging is a modern phenomenon, and it’s all about creating and sharing valuable content with visitors to your site. A valuable content is what helps readers solve their business problems (for example, this post helps you – I hope – to learn some new methods to use to generate more online contacts).
How can I do this?
Unfortunately, blogging is not as immediate as some of the other suggestions in this post. The quickest way to get started is to sit down with your sales and marketing team, and to note down all the common problems your potential customers face.
Then assign to the people between your team the task of writing blog posts that solve every problem one by one, and program them on your blog (it is good not to publish the articles all together, better a little at a time, so to update the blog on a regular basis).
This should be a good way to get a lot of posts written fairly quickly. In the long run, try to write a couple of blog posts a week.
Why should I do it?
There are a lot of reasons to open a blog …
- B2B companies with a blog generate 67% more contacts per month on average. (source: Social Media B2B)
- The blogs give websites 434% more pages indexed and 97% more links to your site. (source: HubSpot)
- Blogs are 63% more likely to influence purchase decisions than magazines. (source: Contentplus)
- Companies that write on the blog 15 or more times a month get 5 times more traffic than businesses that do not have a blog. (source: HubSpot)
- Companies that switch from publishing on the blog 3-5 times a month to 6-8 times a month, almost double their contacts. (source: HubSpot)
- A media company will see a 45% growth in traffic going from 11-20 to 21-50 articles on the blog. (source: HubSpot)
4) Create and distribute infographics
What is the idea?
Infographics are easier for readers to digest quickly than long text content, in many cases. An infographic takes a lot of data, or otherwise difficult content to consult, and places them in an easy to read and catchy way. If you do not know what it is, look at this example of infographic on how to create the perfect post on various social media (on this site you can find many more).
How can I do this?
You will probably need a designer available to create infographics, be it within your company or a partner, like a web design agency. The best ideas for an infographic usually come from analyzing your company data, to give visitors an overview of the industry that other companies cannot provide.
Why should I do it?
As I have already explained, the infographics are extremely easy to assimilate, moreover, they often get a viral effect, being shared by many people, greatly increasing the awareness of your brand.
- Sites that use infographics get an average 12% increase in traffic each year compared to those that do not. (source: AnsonAlex)
- The images are processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than the text. (source: Zabisco)
- 40% of people will respond better to visual information than the plain text. (source: Zabisco)
5) Optimize your site for search engines
What is the idea?
Modern search engines (Google in particular) are very advanced, but they are not as intelligent as human beings. For example, they may not know what the pictures are on your website, unless you tell them. They struggle to determine the meaning of your pages without a little incite, and cannot find parts of your website at all if it is not properly structured.
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all based on how to optimize your site for search engines, so that it will come up higher in the rankings of search engines for keywords that people use to find your products or services.
How can I do this?
SEO is a fairly complex and rapidly evolving sector, and entrepreneurs who try to do “do-it-yourself” SEO, or pass the job to an inexperienced or busy employee in another, often end up not getting results, or even worsening situation using deprecated practices.
If you want to take your SEO seriously, you need a web marketing agency with in-depth SEO experience, or an SEO agency, which specializes in search engine optimization websites. A good agency can keep your site at the top of long-term search engines for the most suitable keywords to generate traffic and qualified contacts.
If you do not want to rely on an agency, consider doing (or having your collaborator do) a good SEO course.
Why should I do it?
All use search engines to find companies. If your company does not show up in search results, you’re losing business. If you do not trust me, read what the research says:
- Worldwide, we carry out 131 billion searches per month on the web. (source: Comscore)
- 70% of users click on organic links (not paid). (source: Marketing Sherpa)
- 60% of all organic clicks go to the first three search results. (source: Marketing Sherpa)
- 75% of users do not scroll beyond the first page of search results. (source: MarketShareHitsLink.com)
- 70-80% of users ignore paid search ads, focusing on organic results. (source: Search Engine Land)
- Search engines are the first source of traffic to sites, beating social media by over 300% (source: Outbrain)
Conclusion
So, what are you waiting for? Implementing these lead generation methods will result in faster growth of your business, generate more leads in less time, and increase profitability.