In recent times it’s no surprise that your audience no longer wants you to buy their attention but they want you to earn it. This means that your lead generation strategies or campaigns need to be revamped across the industry to better meet the needs of your desired target markets.
Lead generation is considered to be the lifeline of any company as its goal is to remain relevant in the ever-competitive world. Typically, new leads bring new prospects and new prospects lead to new clients.
One of the main factors in most lead generation strategies tends to be content. Which is why most companies have shifted to producing quality content as a means of lead generation.
This wave has attributed to the ease and cost-effective manner that content can capture an audience and ultimately convert them into actual clients.
So what is lead generation and why is it important?
Lead generation or “lead gen”—is the initiation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be created for several purposes such as list building, e-newsletter list acquisition, or sales leads.
Its basically, “the action or process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business’s products or services.”
You can further break lead generation up into two main categories:
- Inbound marketing
Inbound marketing focuses on providing the right content to the right people at the right time. As a business, this tactic can help you improve brand awareness, boost sales, connect with your target audience members, and engage prospects and customers. - Outbound marketing
While inbound marketing is all about generating a buzz, a well-rounded marketing mix should include both inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Inbound works for broad lead generation activities, but outbound is good to amplify your inbound efforts, and target specific opportunities. Outbound marketing refers to any kind of marketing where a company initiates the conversation and sends its message out to an audience.
So why is lead generation deemed important?
- Increases Efficiency
Automated lead generation software ensures that your outbound marketing is more efficient. Having the appropriate technology not only frees up time but is also more cost-efficient as it enables both marketing and sales to work in unison, thus closing any communication gaps that might have previously existed. - Enables Business Growth
Lead generation drives traffic to a website, thus helping acquire new customers which in turn increases a business’s sales and revenue which in turn enables growth. - Awards Competitive Advantage
Companies that use lead generation are always a step ahead of their competition. If they can acquire new customers and be more cost and time-efficient than their competitors, then their business will consistently have a competitive edge.
Here are some ways in which you can create a lead gen strategy for your target audience:
1. Understand your audience & embrace diversity.
Customers tend to have inherent needs which means they have tastes, preferences, inclinations, desires, goals, and objectives. They also have likes and dislikes, and each of them is unique. In essence, knowing your customer involves knowing all those details. This will make you determine which buttons to push when prospecting and recommending products.
Another thing to keep in mind is embracing all diversities. The implication here regarding content is to embrace all this diversity in your content. One way that you can realize this is by writing content in multiple formats. Identify the various buyer personas and establish where they fall regarding consumption.
2. Search engine optimization
Its been found that only 10% of search users go past the first page of search results when looking for information. This makes it difficult for any business to get their website in front of potential leads, no matter how well-designed or informative their website is. That’s why a key strategy in lead generation is having a great search engine optimization strategy in place. Basically, a good SEO campaign will help your website rank better in search result pages.
The benefits of SEO are endless as they improve the overall ranking of your website and its contents. What’s more, is that your content gets marked as user-friendly which gives a boost to your lead generation strategy.
Here’s how you can apply SEO to audience-specific content?
- Identify and determine relevant keywords that relate best to your target audience and subject matter.
- Increase your backlink count.
- Ensure that your title has your target keyword in it
- Use Meta tags, Meta descriptions, and Meta titles in your content.
3. Broadcast Advertising to Your Niche Audience
In recent years podcasts have taken over to be the next best thing to advertise or to connect with your niche audience. This is because each podcast is directed to only a very niche audience, so you can target only those podcasts that speak best to your company and its values.
No matter how niche the market, there’s likely to be a podcast out there that tons of potential clients are enjoying regularly. And the best part is that you can take comfort in knowing that you’re not taking the generalized approach to advertising that comes from radio spots, where a good part of your audience might not be interested in your product at all.
4. Build and Maintain a Modern Website
In today’s day and age it is crucial to maintain a website that is not only functional and easy to use, but one that is also optimized for search engines. You need a website that joins an elegant smart design with speed and efficiency.
When someone arrives at your site for the first time, it takes under two-tenths of a second for that visitor to form an opinion of the website, and, by association of the brand it represents which makes it crucial for it to be consistently checked and optimized.
Aside from getting found and creating a good and lasting first impression, your website also serves to legitimize your existence in the market. Whether that happens to be true or not often doesn’t matter, for what does matter is the lasting impression that your website leaves with your potential customers. A good website markets a good brand. You can also undertake website marketing to get more leads, traffic, or sales.
5. Try Content-Based Lead Generation
Content-based lead generation strategies allow you to increase your presence in search engines as long as that content is well-optimized. The more high-quality content you produce, the more you’re rewarded by search engines. It’s known that Search engines give preference to websites that give relevant results to questions and further rewards by ranking well in search. Relevancy in content as well as being consistent and informative is always a great way to generate leads.
6. Targetted headlines
Headlines set the tone of your entire content, it is what entices your audience to read first before deciding whether to take the plunge to read your whole content. You cannot afford to mess up the headline if your goal is to create leads.
When formulating a headline keep the following points in mind:
- Having a short and concise headline.
- Try to encapsulate your content in your headline.
- Add in the element of curiosity.
- Instill a sense of urgency.
Using long-tail keywords in your headline will improve your conversion rate. This entails choosing descriptive phrases or words. This is a part of search engine optimization, and it will help boost your headline’s rankings on search engine results.
7. Use case studies
What better way to reach your target audience than to write audience-specific content in case studies as they provide evidence that your product or proposition works and that there is also evidence to help back it up.
If a particular prospect wants to be your client, they will undertake some amount of research such as learning about the experiences of other clients that have previously dealt with you. A case study presents these experiences and other information that endorses your product or service. In this regard, a case study is an audience-specific form of content. It helps increase your credibility and trustworthiness.
8. Add Calls to Action
The best way to generate leads in your content is by writing compelling calls to action that appeal to your target audience.
The call to action is meant to evoke a response from your audience. It stimulates them to take any action that further guides them on the necessary steps to take concerning what you have offered.
Make sure your CTA copy is catchy but clear, as it needs to capture your customers’ attention enough to make them click. You’ll also want it to make sense based on your customers’ actions to be an effective lead generation strategy.
Most calls to actions are placed at the end of articles, but they can be placed anywhere.
Conclusion
Writing an audience-specific lead generation strategy takes a great amount of zeal and effort to pull off efficiently which is why we’ve attempted to cover some of the lead generation strategies that you can try for your business.
We hope this blog helps you and your business out in some way or another & if you ever need that extra helping hand we at Social Pill are always happy to help, with all your digital marketing and SEO leads.
