Lead generation is the process of identifying potential customers and then initiating processes to attract, nurture, and guide their interest so they become paying customers. This article explains "what lead gen is" and its importance for business.
It's crucial to find creative ways to cut through the noise and reach your customers, just as it's essential to create marketing strategies that cause potential customers to pay attention to you once you do.
This is what lead gen does. This article explains "what lead gen is" and its importance for business.
Lead generation is the process of identifying potential customers and then initiating processes to attract, nurture, and guide their interest, so they become paying customers. Think of lead generation as the act of providing excellent reasons that naturally attract the interest of a customer to the point where they become loyal to your brand.
So, without a lead gen strategy, your company is solely relying on a target audience that might not even be aware of your brand, without actively trying to sell your products or services to them.
Any person interested in your business, products, or services is a lead. Sometimes, a business offers a lead-capture form where a person willingly fills in their personal information, like their contact information, which opens communication with the company. The person becomes a sales “lead” after voluntarily filling out the form, in essence indicating that they need or have an interest in your service or product. These leads then become potential customers and are essential for improving your revenue and maximizing your growth.
However, the lead quality is different for every lead based on its qualifications and stage in the lead generation process. Here are the different lead types:
Typically, a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) engages with any of your marketing efforts in a way that shows a genuine interest in your products or services.
When a customer service representative identifies a customer who wants to become a paying customer, they categorize them as service qualified leads (SQLs). An excellent example is a customer that calls the customer support line to upgrade their subscription.
Think of your product qualified lead (PQL) as the customer who has used your products and shows a willingness to become a paying customer. For instance, if you provide a free sample of your product at your retail store, any person that engages with your business with follow-up questions about the product is a product-qualified lead.
B2B companies are also PQLs, especially if they show interest in the additional features not offered from a free trial of your services.
While an MQL shows interest in your business and offerings, a sales qualified lead (SQL) takes it further by indicating the willingness to convert their interest into a sale. For example, if you have a sale on your website landing page and a lead fills out the form to get more information about the offering, they are high-quality SQL.
Therefore, SQLs deal with the sales team.
You can determine your conversion rates and the sustainability of your market using lead generation. This is how lead generation can help your business.
Social media is one of the best platforms to increase your brand awareness and is the crux of content creation and communication. Every time you curate quality content worthy of starting conversations, you build a community of people willing to follow or upsell your brand and are seen by potential leads.
Therefore, you get two direct results with every message you put out on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms:
By creating brand awareness, you position yourself as a leader in your market, which, in turn, creates brand followers and advocates, within whom you'll find loyal customers. All of your customers start out as leads.
Successful lead generation involves creating content highly targeted to a specific audience and market. This means that everything you write and post shares a common message, whether it is on social media, on your email marketing copies, or even in advertisements.
As a result, the type of lead you get for your business is very high quality. In a nutshell, lead generation is excellent at targeting desired customers.
High-quality leads and greater brand awareness result in more sales. You reach a large number of prospects who are additionally explicitly targeted. This means that the people you communicate with are more likely to buy your products or services.
As a result, it is easier to convert them for sales revenue, especially when your focus is on your customers’ needs.
Think about using targeted ads that get relevant customers to your business. The aim is to create personalized advertising that leverages your potential customer's interest and encourages them to join your sales funnel.
The most common yet effective business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B) lead generation strategies in this category include email marketing, social media marketing, webinars, online PR, PPC ads, and display ads. At Hoist, we've designed the automated Marketing Feature to keep your leads pipeline healthy at affordable costs.
Our team of marketing experts achieves this for your business through local direct mail, setting up and managing ads on relevant platforms like Google AdWords, and creating marketing materials like merchandise to boost your brand awareness. And by aggressively championing your marketing goals, we ensure that your marketing efforts convert to sales.
Suppose you don't have the budget to create and implement a paid lead generation strategy. In that case, create an organic lead generation strategy. This strategy generates leads for your online business by helping you rank on social media platforms and search engines like Google. Content marketing, through blog posts, infographics, memes, images, videos, GIFs, podcasts, and search engine optimization (SEO) are the best strategies for generating organic leads.
At Hoist, we help you optimize all your channels of organic lead generation. Our platform allows you to create a website for your brand from pre-designed templates that are SEO-optimized while also being easily customizable. This increases your chances of ranking high on search engines, thereby gathering more organic leads.
Big or small in-person events like trade shows, conferences, or sales events generate business leads when targeted correctly. For instance, a targeted B2B breakfast of ten business leaders creates home-based business opportunities for collaboration, which, as mentioned earlier, increases sales and leads.
This is why Hoist has an Expert Coaching Feature that provides access to remote and in-person coaching from subject experts who help businesses proactively find solutions to their lead generation challenges.
Referral marketing is another lead generation strategy that is highly effective at driving high-quality leads to your business. In fact, most customers today purchase products and services based on referrals. Therefore, use email marketing to acquire referrals from existing customers and offer rewards in return. Or, ask for feedback from your customers through reviews or Q&As on your site or social media. Influencer marketing is also an excellent referral strategy.
If there is one thing that most businesses agree on, especially in the start-up stage, it is that nothing beats positive word of mouth for generating leads. It is not only the most effective, but also the least expensive technique for promotion. If you can create a quality and seamless customer experience, it would encourage them to refer you to others, propelling your company forward. If referrals don't come naturally, don’t be afraid to ask. A good job and a satisfied customer will definitely not hold back on the referral.
Hoist has a Community Feature that provides a user-friendly forum where business owners form a community of entrepreneurs to share challenges and victories and promote healthy competition. This, in turn, provides opportunities for referral marketing.
Now that you know the fundamentals of lead generation, keep in mind these tricks and tips while planning your lead generation strategy:
The most popularly known way to use SEO is with an active blog, that contains essential keywords, backlinks, formatted content, and more. This will help your site appear more consistently on the first page of search results. Furthermore, make sure your website includes the location of the service. The first stage in on-page SEO is to ensure that your website's pages contain the correct geographical location – the full address. Make it obvious what locations you service, so users (and search engines) can figure out if you serve their city or region.
Make your business cards or brochures about the company available to your clients' neighbors or your personal network at all times. These casual in-person encounters could lead to future employment opportunities.
A large number of leads might sometimes be a huge waste of time. In the hopes of getting more customers, marketers often give importance to quantity over quality, targeting too wide a demographic and draining money on low-intent leads. Remember to inquire with other business owners whether they utilize a lead referral service and, if so, what they think of the leads they've received. In fact, if you don’t want to pay for lead generation right off the bat, consider other methods that don’t require money like referral marketing, content marketing, in-person networking, SEO-optimized content, and more.
Our dedicated team at Hoist uses multiple methods of lead generation to bring your brand guaranteed leads.
We comb through several organic and inorganic lead gen platforms like Facebook, HomeAdvisor, Google, Yelp, and more to find potential, high-intent customers. Then our highly-trained and US-Based Home-Field Agents call these leads and schedule estimate appointments with you for any painting service. And when we see guaranteed leads, we mean guaranteed. In case of any cancellation of appointments, our agents will reschedule the same or you will be refunded for the cancellation of that lead.
Hoist is the perfect partner to help you set up your business and navigate the avenues of marketing and lead generation.
The best lead generation tactics convert your target audience into long-term customers. You simply need to understand the different lead types and create appropriate paid, organic, referral, and in-person lead generation strategies to get the most out of lead gen.
With Hoist, you get high-quality leads and an increase in brand awareness and sales through our lead generation efforts. With the most-affordable subscription fees on the market, Hoist can help you set up a fool-proof marketing strategy and painting business, with guaranteed lead generation in only 30 days.
Get started with Hoist today, and let us help you grow your painting business.
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