One of the most important aspects of marketing your business is generating leads.
In theory, generating leads should be your top priority. Especially if you’re running a small business hungry for growth. The more leads you generate, the higher the chance of your leads converting. However, what's the point in generating hundreds of leads that aren't interested? That won't convert? That will bog down your sales team? You want to attract people who are more likely to become happy, lifelong, paying customers.In this blog we’ll cover some basic tips and tricks that will help you generate high quality leads that with some work and a bit of nurturing, you’ll be able to convert.
What is a high quality lead?
Using qualifying questions on your contact forms gives you a greater understanding of your lead. We know shorter contact forms are more effective when it comes to getting people to actually fill them in, but in a lot of cases people will just fill them in with only a mild interest because well, what do they have to lose? So, while this creates more leads, it will also give you more work, having to sift through trying to find the ones who actually will convert. Whereas, with a more in depth form, you know they’re interested in what you have to offer as they’re taking the time to answer the questions to get the best result for them. You’ll be able to help them better, and in turn they are more likely to become customers.
Having a live chat option on your website is a fantastic way to generate interested leads when you’re not around. Let’s face it, if you have a question you want it answered as fast as possible. Having this option will allow people to get answers quickly and 24/7, the faster the reply to their queries the faster they’re likely to become your customer. Quick service comes hand in hand with good service.
Lead scoring is important when it comes to generating quality leads. It's a way of using data from your forms to score your leads generally on a scale of 1-10 or 1-5 based on who is more likely to become a customer. You can decide how to use your own data but it usually comes down to the professional data they’ve submitted to you and how they’ve engaged with your website or brand. It’s quite simple, the higher the score, the better the lead.
Using a lead scoring process will help your marketing team prioritize your leads and respond accordingly. This way you’ll be able to filter out people you’re not best suited to help and focus more of your time on those who will benefit from your service.
Offering content upgrades to leads is a valuable way of determining who, of the people that read your content, has the potential to be a high quality lead. For example, we’re going to assume you already post blogs etc. on your website, so to differentiate between casual blog readers and potential customers you offer a content upgrade of an e-book, all you want in return is the readers name and email address. This way, not only are those who submit their information to you becoming leads, you know that they have an extensive interest in what you have to offer, therefore becoming a high quality lead.
Guest posting is great for attracting leads who have never heard of you before and who are interested in your sector. By guest posting on high quality publications you’re enabling a wider reach for your content. People who frequently visit whichever high performing publication you choose will be able to see your work and can click through to your website. If you’re featured on a website that people know and trust then they will in turn be more likely to trust you right from the offset.
Make sure to apply to guest post on sites that have a lot of traffic and engagement. Study what else they post and what their readers are interested in, this way you’ll be able to specialise what you send to them.
Arguably the most important of them all!
Lead nurturing helps transform leads who aren't yet ready for your service into crucial conversions. The process is simply continuing to provide your lead with relevant information, in conjunction to where they are in your buyer journey, until they are ready to become a paying customer. You can do this by targeting your content, doing timely follow-ups, personalising/ segmenting your emails and lead scoring as we talked about earlier. Everyone can do this, it just takes a little time and effort.
Research conducted by Forrester shows that there was an average of 20% increase in sales opportunities from nurtured leads in comparison to non-nurtured. This process allows you to mould and create your own high quality leads right from the beginning.