Building leads through inbound marketing has become one of the most powerful ways to generate new customers. Intrusive outbound marketing is becoming less effective as technology progresses and our patience for unwanted communication wanes. Think about it: after coming home from a long day at work, are you receptive to the telemarketer who just interrupted your family dinner? When watching your favorite TV show, do you watch all of the commercials, or do you fast forward through them whenever possible?
Building leads through inbound marketing has become one of the most powerful ways to generate new customers. Intrusive outbound marketing is becoming less effective as technology progresses and our patience for unwanted communication wanes. Think about it: after coming home from a long day at work, are you receptive to the telemarketer who just interrupted your family dinner? When watching your favorite TV show, do you watch all of the commercials, or do you fast forward through them whenever possible?
The diminishing effectiveness of these often annoying tactics has led to the birth of a new way of reaching potential customers – inbound marketing. Inbound marketing encourages your ideal customers to come to you. Here is a basic guide to generating leads with inbound marketing.
1. What is a lead?
A lead is a person who has shown interest in your business by either contacting you, requesting information, or requesting an offer that you extend to your audience. This could be someone who has called your office to ask about your services, someone who has downloaded an eBook from your website, or someone who has submitted a form on your website to request a quote. A lead is someone who you know is actually interested in something that your company provides.
2. What is lead generation?
Lead generation is the process of attracting these leads to your company and converting them from a stranger on your website to a contact in your database who has shown interest in your business.
By utilizing inbound marketing, you use online marketing tools like your website, blog, social media platforms, downloadable content, and targeted email marketing to draw the right audience to your website and capture their interest so they want to learn more and engage with your company.
3. What is the benefit of lead generation?
Lead generation through inbound marketing is one of the most effective sales tools available today. It empowers you to attract and engage with an audience that has demonstrated genuine interest in what you have to offer rather than bombarding a huge market in hopes of reaching the small percentage of that audience that has any interest in your products or services.
An effective inbound marketing strategy acknowledges that not everyone who comes to your website is ready to buy; most visitors are simply gathering information in the early stages of their decision making process. By creating offers that include valuable information about your industry, products, and services, such as eBooks, white papers, and case studies, you can exchange something of value for prospects' contact information. From there, you can nurture them through the decision making process, providing relevant information and resources along the way and increasing the likelihood that they will come to you when they're ready to buy. Generating leads through inbound marketing is easier, more natural, and a more cost effective way to convert strangers into customers.
4. How do you generate leads?
An inbound marketing strategy involves coordination of your website, blog, social media posts, email, and offers to drive traffic to your website. Once you drive visitors to the website, the goal is then to encourage them to contact you. One way to do that is with calls to action on your website that prompt visitors to take advantage of your offers.
- Create an offer for potential customers that is valuable enough for them to exchange their email address for it (for example, an eBook about a topic in which your company has expertise).
- Feature calls to action on your website that promote your offer.
- Direct traffic from your calls to action to a landing page that contains a form for people to submit their contact information in exchange for the offer.
- After a prospect has completed the form on the landing page, deliver the offer. Common ways of doing this are via email or by sending the visitor to another page where they can access a download.
As you can see, lead generation through inbound marketing is a brilliant way to drive potential clients to your business. Buying leads or using outbound marketing to reach out to a mass audience only results in wasted time and money because these tactics fail to connect you with your most likely customers in an effective and efficient way.
Are you interested in trying out inbound marketing for your company? Blue Frog has a staff of certified inbound marketing strategists who are ready to drive leads to your business today! Click the button below to read some case studies of the clients that we have helped, or contact us today to get started.
