Lead Generation: What Is It and How Can It Help Your Business Grow?

So you’ve got a great product or service that your business is offering. 

But where are you going to find the customers who value what you have to offer and are actually interested in making a purchase? 

That’s where lead generation comes in. 

In this article, we’ll take a look at lead generation: what it is, how it works, and why it’s so important to use it if you want your business to grow.

What Exactly Is A Lead?

A lead is a marketing term for someone who expresses an interest in your product or service. 

There are a number of ways that leads can show interest in what you have to offer. 

They might complete a contact form on your website, click on a Facebook advertisement, or follow your social media account. 

If your business uses cold calling to find leads, they might be put off by you initiating the first contact. 

A much more effective technique is to attract leads to come to you. 

When a lead initiates that moment of first contact, they are much more likely to be genuinely interested in becoming a customer.

What Is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is the process of finding potential customers for your business. 

The first step of lead generation is identifying people who seem like they would be interested in your products or services. 

The second step is attracting those people (leads) to make that initial contact with your business. 

And the third step is converting those leads into prospects. 

In digital marketing, you use online tools and strategies to identify, attract and convert people. 

These strategies could include running a Facebook ad campaign, producing videos for Youtube advertisements, offering a discount coupon on your website, or sending out an email marketing campaign.

Why Is Lead Generation Important?

Whether your business is B2B or B2C, lead generation is an important thing to focus on. 

If you don’t have a stream of new leads coming in, your business won’t be able to grow. 

Lead generation makes sure that your business is growing and succeeding. 

When you cold-call potential leads, you end up with a lot of unhappy people who feel like they’re being bothered by you. 

This certainly doesn’t help your business to make a good name for itself.

Lead generation is a smart alternative to cold calling because it gets you qualified leads – people who are actually interested in what you have to offer them. 

Lead generation makes people feel comfortable starting a conversation with your business, and it allows them to go at their own pace through the customer journey. 

When lead generation is done the right way, your business will thrive. 

You’ll have leads flowing in by themselves, and becoming customers.

3 Effective Lead Generation Strategies

There are a number of different ways that your business can generate leads online. 

Let’s take a look at 3 of the most effective methods of lead generation.

1. SEO 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. 

Most people search every day on Google, Bing or other search engines for help with a problem they’re having. 

The aim of SEO is to have your website come up in those search results. 

SEO is an important part of digital marketing strategy. 

It optimizes your website so that it’s more likely to come up at the top of search results for certain words or phrases. 

When your business is featured at the top of search engines’ results, leads are going to start flooding in. 

They will come to you rather than going to your competition. 

Optimizing blog posts and articles will generate leads by providing helpful information your leads are looking for. 

Optimizing your products and services pages will allow people to discover what you have to offer, right when they need it most.

2. Paid Advertising 

Another way to generate leads for your business is to use paid advertising. With paid advertising, you can reach potential customers on websites, social media and search results. 

Pay-per-click advertising is the most effective form of paid advertising for lead generation. 

With this type of digital advertising, you will only pay when someone clicks on your ad. 

Paid advertising has the benefit of being able to target your audience to a very precise level. 

Because of this you can specifically reach the leads who are going to be most valuable to your business. 

With paid advertising, you can even use remarketing ads to draw in customers who have already looked at your products or services. 

You’ll also have access to valuable data that show the results of your advertising. This can help with future lead generation marketing.

3. Email Marketing 

When it comes to generating leads for your business, email is one of the most important tools you have. 

It helps you to communicate with your leads in a personalized, friendly and helpful way. 

Email marketing lets you break your contacts down into audience segments, based on actions they’ve taken or interests they have. 

This lets you personalize your conversation with your leads. 

With email marketing you can build a relationship with your leads, and position your business as a solution to their specific problems. 

You can give them the right information, right when they need it.

4. Social Media Advertising and Marketing 

Want to get seen on social media networks? Social media marketing and advertising is a lead generation strategy that’s tricky to master, but when it’s done right it can yield massive results. 

One part of this process is posting awesome content that your leads will love to see. 

This will encourage people to follow your social media account and engage with you. 

If it’s done well, social media marketing will open a friendly, human conversation with your leads. 

Another part of the process is creating ads that encourage people to follow your social media account, or like and share your content.

Need Some Help With All This? 

Lead generation is absolutely vital for the growth of your business. But it’s a whole lot of work. 

It can be time consuming and confusing to try and do all of these things yourself. 

If you need a bit of help with your lead generation strategy, reach out to us and let us know. 

Here at Hyper Fame Digital we’re seeing clients get an average of 300% ROI with our help. 

From pay-per-click advertising to high converting sales pages, our expert team can handle it all for you. To find out more, click here, or get in touch.