How to Grow Your Business with Lead Generation

Today’s customers have a wealth of information at their fingertips — blogs, review sites, social media, and so much more. Thanks to this information, most customers know what they want, who they want it from, and what they want to pay before they buy.

Growing your business means reaching potential customers before they’ve made up their minds. The key to reaching them is lead generation (or lead gen, for short).

According to the sixth State of Marketing report from Salesforce, 32% of marketers own lead generation and 65% contribute to it. Marketing leads, sales effectiveness, and customer acquisition costs are the most important metrics for measuring lead generation success.

Let’s take a closer look at how lead generation works, and how the right lead- generation strategies can help you grow your business.

What Is Lead Generation? 

Leads are people who are potentially interested in buying your products or services. Lead generation lets you reach potential customers early in their buyer’s journey, so you can earn their trust, build a relationship, and be by their side until they’re ready to make a purchase.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee, and let’s take a deeper look at how lead generation works, and why it’s so important to growing your business.

Lead generation used to require sales teams to cold call lists of people and hope for the best — but thanks to digital technology, we can now generate leads based on specific criteria.

Today, companies collect information about key prospects and tailor marketing messaging and sales pitches to their needs. This mainly happens through digital channels, using a combination of inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Because customers spend so much time online, developing a strong digital presence is a key part of lead and pipeline generation. This is best achieved through inbound marketing strategies like content marketing, website forms, and search engine optimization — all of which work together to drive prospective customers to your website.

Technology has made it easier for companies to understand and target prospects. With the right data, you can tailor your online presence to your buyers’ needs and set the stage for lead generation. When they engage with your brand, customers are looking for something more than an old-fashioned sales pitch. They want to trust your brand and feel good about buying what you’re selling. In B2C and B2B alike, it’s up to you to earn that trust and build a relationship with each customer. That’s where lead generation and customer journeys come in.

While customer journeys may vary by industry, managing journeys is always about turning prospects into long-term customers. And every customer journey starts with a lead.Lead generation isn’t about rounding up all the leads you can and forwarding them to your sales team. It’s about using the right channels to find high-quality inbound and outbound leads you can build relationships with.

Knowing the five different types of leads can help your marketing and sales teams identify how to generate leads and work together to grow your business.

• New — any potential customer you know something about.
  This could be customers who visited your website and entered their email address, stopped by your booth at a trade show and swiped their badge, or walked into your store and signed up for a mailing list.
• Working — a lead with whom you are having an active conversation.
  This person could be signed up for your email lists, following you on social media, or on the phone with you right now.
• Nurturing — a lead who is not interested in buying right now but may be in the future.
  Keep in contact with leads by sending them additional information like newsletters, product announcements, or upcoming webinar schedules so they remember your company when it’s time to buy.
• Unqualified — a lead who is not interested in what you have to offer.
  This is also known as a dead lead.
• Qualified — a lead who wants to do business. This is also known as a sales lead.

To learn more about lead generation and creating something that can elevate you to the next level book a call with VisionMark today on the home page of the website!