As we pace ourselves towards the end of the year, let us not waste momentum. There’s still plenty of time to inject proven lead generation strategies into your business.
As a business owner, if you’re finding that lead generation is too hard, let me start with a fact:
Every day, thousands of people become financially active. The total combined buying power of U.S. consumers grew from $11.3 trillion to $17.5 trillion in the last decade.
That’s a 55% increase from 2010 to 2020! And the consumer buying power is more diverse than ever too.
This means potential customers are out there. You see, there’s no shortage of buyers. No matter how hard the economy is, there’s always purchasing demand for something by someone.
Leads! I see leads everywhere. My point is: what you really need is a better lead capture tool and the right lead generation strategies to tackle the market.
So, without further ado, let me show you why lead generation strategies are important, what are the lead generation best practices (with examples!), and how MightyForms enables you to collect more and better leads.
What is a lead generation strategy
Let’s break it down into parts and layout some terminology so we’re on the same page:
- Lead – a lead is any person or any business that hints interest in a product or service.
- Lead Generation – lead generation is the process of attracting and converting prospects (leads) or potential customers.
- Lead Generation Strategy – lead generation strategy is the approach chosen to acquire prospects.
Lead generation strategy is categorized into inbound and outbound, for Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Consumer (B2C) types. It can range from social media interaction, online content, trade shows, live events, direct mail, newsletters, cold-calling, and so on.
Preferably, lead generation should be combined in more than one strategy, known as the multi-channel approach.
Once the lead generation strategies are implemented, you need a process to collect and qualify leads. Then, those leads are nurtured along into the Customer Journey towards becoming a customer, or even better, hopefully, an ambassador.
Businesses that need lead generation strategies
A lead generation strategy can be – and should be – employed by any type or size of business.
Whether you’re a freelance makeup artist, a mid-sized company, or even an NGO collecting donations: you need to acquire leads to build a customer database aimed at growing and sustaining your business model.
If a budget allocated for marketing and sales initiatives for outbound lead acquiring efforts is within your means, that’s great. But keep in mind lead generation doesn’t have to be complex nor expensive. It has to be effective.
We’ll go over how MightyForms enables you to establish a successful lead generation process with a powerful automated custom form.
A lead capturing form can be the most beneficial resource especially to those lacking a large staff, big budget, or even in-depth knowledge since it eliminates the guesswork.
Why do lead generation strategies matter
Allow me to tell you a little personal story. My dad was a sales representative for this big textile company when I was a little girl. He’d be all day long out and about town on sales calls, visiting prospects. Some were even out of town, like a three-hour drive.
When school was out, sometimes I’d go with him on these sales calls and he’d introduce me as his secretary to customers. It was just a cute way to justify he had to bring his kid along that day. But I actually did have a job along the ride.
My job was to spot potential buyers from store facades and billboards. Then we would look for a payphone and I had to reach over this huge bag of quarters my dad would always leave in the back seat of the car in order to call those prospects.
I was lead capturing in the early 90s!
Fast forward to 2021.
Online lead generation
Lead generation doesn’t require you to travel three hours to meet prospects. You can call or send an email to customers from your mobile phone right where you are. Now potential buyers google about products and services and land on your website.
My now-retired father chuckles about how easy it is nowadays. But he also understands that there’s so much more competition today that it makes it a whole new different ball game.
And THAT’s the importance of a lead generation strategy. We have plenty of access to tools and resources for prospecting and lead capturing. But so do our competitors.
Lead generation strategies benefits
Lead Generation Forms directly impacts any business, after all, no customer, no profit.
If big well-established companies can’t afford the luxury of not constantly acquiring new leads, even less so smaller or new businesses.
Therefore, if leads are essential, it only makes sense to establish a lead generation strategy as a roadmap. In fact, here are the four main benefits for your business from implementing lead generation strategies:
1. Optimizes Resources
Whether it’s actual financial investment or salesforce efforts, having a clear lead generation strategy will help your business waste none. Targeting exactly where and who has the most potential to become customers will bring more results faster than flying blind.
2. Improves ROI
By implementing well-planned lead generation strategies will not only help you target your market better, but it may also help you discover a new one. Besides, targeted efforts improve profit margin since it will cost less to convert the right audience than to waste money insisting on the wrong one.
3. Generates Brand Awareness
When you implement a lead generation strategy, you’re also promoting your brand, in a way. Since marketing and sales efforts are employed to attract visitors, you’re actually educating people about your products and services. And if leads are converted, they’ll be telling other people about your business, advocating for your brand. The word-of-mouth outcome not only is more effective for building brand awareness and reputation, but it costs less than paid advertising too. It’s definitely a win-win situation.
4. Succeed at Pareto’s Principle
The Pareto’s Principle, also known as the “80/20 rule” is widely applied by businesses in their strategic and tactical planning. In general, it means that 80% of results (or outcomes) are derived from 20% of efforts (inputs). The key to success, therefore, is to invest resources and prioritize tasks on the critical 20% that will yield the chunk of the 80% results. By focusing on the right targeted lead generation strategies, especially with an automated lead capture tool, that’s where you’ll ensure the most return.
Lead Generation Best Practices (with Examples)
As you’ve must realize by now, there’s no downside to planning and implementing lead generation strategies.
It’s just a sound business decision to proactively draw prospects into your lead generation channels instead of counting on luck that people will discover your business on their own.
And make sure that when visitors are indeed drawn into the customer journey set up for them, whether with inbound or outbound tactics, a responsive form is there to back it up and collect information.
A custom lead capture form by MightyForms will be on duty 24/7, so you don’t miss any conversion opportunity, not even people who drop out, with our Abandoned Form Recovery feature.
Even before you unlock advanced features and functionalities, that leave your form on autopilot, you get to easily create and fully customize your lead-capture tool from scratch or from a template.
In fact, MightyForms free templates are already optimized with lead generation best practices. As promised, let me show you ten lead generation strategies with MightyForms templates as examples:
1. ChatBots
The freshest, hottest trend for lead generation in 2021 is definitely a chatbot. At first glance, chatbots on a website casually greet visitors and offer help. But this lead generation strategy can employ AI to identify potential customers and support their decision-making.
The Lead Generation Bot Template was designed to initiate the chatbot support. It’s eye-catching and straightforward. Perfect to welcome visitors and invite them to engage in a conversation.
2. Pop-Ups
Pop-up forms are definitely not a new lead generation strategy. But the reason why it’s ranked high on this list, it’s because it still works like a charm! Actually, popups make up for more than 66% of all enabled email capture forms, performing better than landing pages. This Pop-up Lead Capture Form Template instills urgency to secure more leads.
If your website is published on WordPress, we have covered before how to add a pop-up form within the platform. But don’t worry if you use other publishing platforms, besides seamless integration with Wix and Webflow, for instance, MightyForms helps you add a pop-up button directly on any page in order to prompt a lead-capture form.
3. Webinars
You might be surprised how much high-quality content is valued by prospects. That’s why 73% of B2B marketers rely on webinars as a lead generation strategy. The ROI is amazing since, with a single webinar, it’s possible to acquire around 500-1000 new leads! Besides, people have fully adopted remote meetings and events since the pandemic. It’s convenient and cost-effective for attendees and hosts.
The Free Webinar Registration Template is designed as a conversational lead generation form in order to collect key customer information in a friendly way. Waste no time by adding a Scheduling Field enabling Zoom and Google Calendar integration into your Webinar registration form.
4. Waiting Lists (Scarcity)
Lead generation strategy can and should leverage psychological behavior. The buyer decision-making process is heavily influenced by mind tricks. Even deciding what to buy when you’re hungry, for example, a rational problem/solution decision, can be influenced by colors and portion size (does the McDonald’s menu come to mind?).
The Waiting List Form Template is designed to capture leads interested in a sold-out or super sought-after item through good-looking lead generation form. The scarcity marketing tactic is triggered by a waiting list, compelling prospects to submit faster to a form, even if the item is unavailable. Enable our MailChimp integration to automatically add email addresses to your mailing list to alert leads when the item is back on stock.
5. Pre-Orders (Anticipation)
Another lead generation strategy targeting consumer behavior. The Pre-Order Form Template tickles the anticipation psychological factor. Of course, it can be used when you legitimately need to produce products according to demand. But creating a buzz around an anticipated product never hurt any business (think Apple with every iPhone launch).
Another great feature that can be added to a pre-order form is a payment field, so you’ll secure payment in advance. MightyForms offers a payment gateway with either Stripe or PayPal, so you don’t even have to worry about financial complexities and security.
6. Discount Offers
Most of the time, the shortest path to convert visitors into customers is by offering a discount. A discount offer can work as a lead magnet, prompting visitors to submit to your form when they feel attracted to a deal.
Engage your visitors by providing a Pre-Sales Form, collecting complete customer database information. If you want to make the closing of a sale right away, then you can easily add a coupon field when you integrate your form to Stripe payment.
7. Freebies
Let us never underestimate the power of free gifts, free trials, and giveaways as a topic of lead generation form. Make your offer tempting enough and you’ll get yourself a lead! Granting something valuable for free can increase the conversion rate by a whopping 238%.
This Free Traveller Checklist Request Template is just an example of how you can offer a useful incentive related to your business as a gift. Customize it according to your business or goals to influence visitors to fill out your form faster in order to claim the free gift. You can then customize an automatic success message redirecting them to the prize page.
8. LeadGen Contests
Another lead magnet, especially among Millennials and younger generations, is employing contests as your lead generation strategy. Instagram users, for instance, are very familiar with contests and will happily engage with a brand in exchange for a chance to win a good prize.
Customize the Contest Registration Template with enticing details of your prize and absolutely do share it on your social media profiles. Studies show that social media can increase form conversion by almost 189%. All MightyForms lead generation forms can be easily shared on social media platforms so you can attract as many leads as possible.
9. Lead Generation Landing Pages
If pop-up forms perform better in terms of collecting leads, best lead gen landing pages have higher conversions rates (23%) though. And more landing pages mean even more conversions since it generates around 12x more leads. Therefore, having a best lead gen landing page for each product or service is a smart lead generation strategy. If you’re a service provider, you can easily generate thousands of location pages to nail the local generation game. Not to mention it greatly helps with SEO too.
This Simple Lead Capture Form Template is just what you need to embed into every leadgen landing page generated. Customize it with our brand identity and if you want, swap the image for a short presentation video and see the conversion rate skyrocket to 86%.
10. Lead Qualification (Screening)
As mentioned, MightyForms help you collect more and better leads. So why not set up your form as your screening department, qualifying leads for you? This multi-step Lead Qualification Form Template uses our Logic Rules feature to screen leads in real-time.
Quick tips for Lead Nurturing
Capturing leads is just half the battle. Here are some quick tips that will kickstart the customer relationship:
- Make it personal: Enable our Recall feature on the first question to have visitors called by their name on the following questions. This lead generation strategy is perfect to find out more about your audience so you can come up with your customer profile.
- Get notified immediately: You can set up automatic notifications (either email or SMS) to be sent to your sales team or customer support, for example, according to the data submitted.
- Send everything to your CRM: Whether the form was abandoned or submitted, nurture leads faster by integrating this form to your CRM of choice, like Clio Grow or Pipedrive, or to any other app via Webhooks or Zapier.
- Start an email drip campaign: Email marketing has proven its effectiveness again and again. Skip the manual labor and integrate with powerful tools like Mailchimp and SendGrid to convert new leads into customers automatically.
There you have it! Ten proven lead generation strategies with best practices all figured out for you. Discover all readily available lead generation templates by MightyForms for your business. And be sure to explore all of the powerful features to automate your lead-capture forms and to seamlessly integrate submissions to other platforms to help you nurture leads further.
