5 minute read

Top Lead Generation Strategies For 2021

Businesses need a lot of leads. They keep you active in the agency and eCommerce industries. Building nurture funnels. If you don’t have the structure ready to generate these leads and nurture and sell them, they will reduce sales.

Generating High-Quality Leads

Why are nurture funnels important?

It doesn’t matter how many leads you start to generate. If you don’t have the right process from when that lead comes in, what SDR is then reaching out, do they then go into a nurture email series that will drip them? Do you have a second touchpoint after that from an SDR? Who’s scheduling if you have an appointment setter?

If you don’t have all of this in place, you’re going to lose out on that lead. That lead is not only submitting a form on your business and one on five others as well. Have this in place, if you want to truly reap the benefits of lead investment.

Build out those nurture funnels. Get a tool that dynamically does this, like maybe an active campaign.

Other options include a CRM like Zoho or Hubspot. Maybe you’re using MailChimp. It doesn’t matter.

Lead Generation Tactics And Strategies

Set up a nurture series. When someone comes to your site showing interest, are you just doing one-touch, calling them and giving up, or continuously providing value to them? Set up lead magnets. Many B2B businesses don’t have these.

Why is it so important?

What are you doing to incentivize that end-user to give you their information? If you’re promising to grow a business, that’s great. Everyone else claims they can accomplish that task.

Consider if you say, “Here’s a step-by-step checklist on how you can grow your business.” A prospect listens and gives you the information in exchange for that free checklist. They enter your nurture funnel. Then you can start re-targeting me and nurturing me into becoming a potential business.

You have to give value to get more value in return. These lead magnets are the result. You’re offering them value so that they will reciprocate.

If you don’t have lead magnets or nurture funnels, you’ll pay over several hundred dollars per lead. With nurture funnels and lead magnets, you are paying for a potential customer at a smaller amount. They may cost as little as ten dollars to acquire their email.

Suppose you are sending emails. Remember, as you’re sending them emails and providing value to them, that doesn’t cost you anything. A cost-per-click costs you something, but it doesn’t cost you anything when sending an email to somebody on your list.

Retargeting Qualified Leads

Only three percent of the people who visit your site are ready to do business with you. What do you do with the remaining percent?

Retargeting is important. If you go to Optimum7’s site, the firm will never leave you alone. You will see videos everywhere because retargeting is a high priority. Everybody needs to make the same approach because the billion-dollar companies are doing it.

Why is retargeting so important?

You need to remain at the forefront of that potential consumer’s mind. Let’s say they come to your site. If they found your site using organic traffic– Google search, for example–that person had the search intent to find your site based on the services that you provide. Therefore, that’s a potential customer.

During the consideration period of that consumer journey, remain at the forefront of their mind. They’re not just going to submit a lead form on your site but also on five others. Therefore, they’re looking at competitor sites.

Are your competitors retargeting them? Suppose they are and you aren’t. When it comes time to make that purchase decision, the first name that’s going to pop up in their head is the one that they have seen every single time they open up their phone.

When you get a lead, who is the first person to contact that lead, and how fast do they contact that lead?

Before, an Optimum7 salesperson would call those leads right away. Management changed that process. A VA or virtual assistant will log into the email address. Every lead that comes in gets an email introducing the salesperson.

They also visit LinkedIn and connect with that individual from the company account. When you send the lead to Optimum7, within a few hours, you’re going to get an email from me saying, “We’re happy to guide you in the right direction. Please meet Brandon. He’s one of our sales associates. He’ll be able to help you. We look forward to scheduling a time with you.” The email has the Calendly link to book an appointment.

Guess what happens? If the email goes out from me, they are three times more likely to book an appointment than it goes from the salesperson. So what you could do as the CEO, the owner, or the president, is cover the CEO touchpoints. They will significantly increase your conversions on the sales side.

Why do you think this is important?

An authority figure lets them know that you’re serious about their business. Some medium-sized business owners are very skeptical about their potential partners. Other sales teams and agencies have burned them out.

No one wants to talk to a salesperson. What do you do when you see spam risk on your phone? You don’t answer.

Having that real touchpoint, coming from a real decision-maker within a business, puts that potential customer at ease. They know that this is a serious opportunity for them. The company will take them seriously and help them grow.

If you were to buy from a company and sign up for the software, which one would you more likely purchase? One where you get a response from a CEO or a salesperson, aka the Accounting Manager? You are much more likely to say, “The CEO is paying attention to me. I’m going to do business with these guys.”

Customer Relationship Management For Lead Generation Efforts

CRM is a must. Ten to twenty million manufacturing companies make sales on Excel sheets. If you don’t have a CRM in this day and age, you leave millions of dollars on the table.

Expenses are not an issue. A CRM costs between $50 to $100 per seat or user. Get a CRM and integrate it with your lead forms.

Make sure that everything goes into a database where your salespeople or manager handles that nurture. It’s imperative.

Content Marketing

How about content?

The videos that you see increase visibility and leads, feeding the top of the funnel. This strategy allows us to retarget based on percentages viewed, based on engagement, shares, clicks.

Post content every month. If you’re not doing this, you’re not going to be feeding the top of the funnel effectively. Therefore, what’s the point of even having a nurture funnel if you’re not feeding it?

Many business owners think that this is very expensive. You can do a good job and get the structure ready for just $10,000. $10,000 is not that much money if you are running a legitimate business. $10,000 can then feed the growth of your business for the next six to twelve months.

Spend money marketing. Don’t be cheap with it or your structure. Invest in your business.

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A digital marketing strategy is the path to profitability. Optimum7 can help you set the right goals, offer and implement creative and technical strategies, and use data and analytics to review and improve your business’s performance.

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