Every sales team wonders how to generate leads, but the answer can be very complicated. Consistent lead generation is the only way to stay ahead of the competition. But it’s a very comprehensive process that requires lots of dedication.

Don’t feel intimidated, though.

Below, we’ve created a thorough article to help you build a strong lead list to maximize your sales and revenue.

Ready? Let’s dig right in!

What Is Lead Generation?

Lead generation refers to the process of identifying prospective customers for your business with the end goal of creating a sales pipeline.

But to create this sales funnel, you need leads – people who have a genuine interest in your company’s product or service.

How To Generate Leads for Your Business

The whole process of generating leads boils down to two channels: outbound marketing and inbound marketing. Instead of giving you a technical definition of the two channels, we’ll explain these two concepts with the help of an example.

Imagine a situation where two girls want to sell cookies.

The first girl adopts a more hands-on approach and starts visiting her neighbors to convince them to buy her cookies.  This is outbound marketing, which includes marketer-driven tactics like cold emailing, making phone calls, putting up newspaper or TV advertisements.

The second girl gets more creative and starts posting images of her cookies on social media platforms and posters and flyers, which she puts around her neighborhood. She even offers a 15% discount to her first 15 customers to make her product even more appealing.

This is inbound marketing, which includes email marketing, blogging and SEO, and social media marketing.

Despite having the same objective, they adopt two completely different techniques to achieve their goals. The good news is both approaches can help them sell more cookies by getting new leads.

Best Strategies To Build an Effective Quality Lead List

If you want to scale your business, you need to figure out how to generate leads continuously as well as retain your current customers. And to ensure this supply, you need to come up with lead generation strategies that appeal to your ideal customers.

Here are a few effective tactics:

Identify Your Target Audience

You can have the most beautiful and jazzy product on the market, but it’s useless if it doesn’t solve the pain points or meet the needs of your target audience.

This is why the first step of building a lead list is knowing the kind of leads you want. You have to research your audience, their likes and dislikes, pain points, budgets – basically, every other significant and insignificant detail.

You need to know your target audience, and you need to know them well.

Create and Optimize Your Conversion Funnel

Every buyer interacts differently with your company and at different stages of the sales funnel. Your job here is to optimize every touchpoint of the buyer in the conversion funnel to make sure they convert.

Still confused?

Think about how you would shop for a pair of shoes and a washing machine.

Of course, there’s going to be a difference in how you’d purchase each product. After all, the shoes will cost you about $50, but a washing machine will cost you $500.

Before buying the shoes, you may do some research, read blog posts, and do some comparative shopping. The overall effort invested isn’t much.

But for the washing machine, your research would be more thorough. You’ll read online reviews, find out about model warranties, and contact customer service to find out more about the machine’s features, etc.

You have to change your approach according to your target audience. If your product is expensive, make sure you have more detailed information to satisfy all the queries of the customer.

Remember, you have to ensure the potential customer’s interaction with your brand remains positive.

Optimize Your Homepage, Landing Pages, and Webpages

Your website is your first impression on a visitor, which is why everything about it needs to be perfect – whether it’s a blog post or an opt-in form.

Use tools like scroll maps, heatmaps, and confetti maps to understand what appeals to your users and what doesn’t, and then optimize your landing pages and homepage accordingly. In our experience, when you create a website and use it for lead generation, understanding how users behave can make a huge difference.

You must also add a compelling call-to-action (CTA) on every page, along with your contact information, so the visitor knows how to learn more about what you can provide them. Adding case studies, whitepapers, and other freebies can help make a good impression on prospects too.

Increase Your Social Media Presence

Nearly everyone is on social media. So it makes perfect sense for large and small businesses to improve their online presence through effective digital marketing techniques.

The best way to do this? Publish valuable content on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to boost engagement and generate the right kind of buzz.

You can also enhance your marketing efforts by opting for paid ads. For instance, you can start highly targeted Facebook ads to direct more traffic to your Facebook page. You can follow the same approach for other platforms.

You can choose between the various social media channels, but make sure you post insightful content, like questions, infographics, and quizzes that get people talking.

Create and Offer a Free Tool

You might have come across free tools that include calculators, analyzers, and so on. The one common point for these tools is they provide value to prospects and are relevant to the needs of the target audience.

If you’re in the fashion industry, for example, you can offer a free sizing tool. But if you offer debt-related advice, your free tool can be an interest rate calculator.

Just simple stuff.

Use Referral Marketing or Influencer Marketing

Referral marketing is basically word-of-mouth publicity where you get more customers through your current customers. This can actually be a cost-effective method for lead gen – all you need to do is provide a high-quality product and exemplary customer service.

Influencer marketing can also be an excellent strategy to generate more awareness and lock in more leads. You’ll need genuine influencers for this, though – ones who have expert-level knowledge or good social media influence to give you the exposure you want.

Create an Excellent Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing – when done properly – can be very useful to generate new leads. Plus, having an up-to-date email list has several advantages. Not only can you engage with your current and potential customers, but you can also advertise your product or service without incurring any additional expense.

Make sure to put in the necessary effort to create good email templates that catch the attention of the reader. You want to make a solid impression here.

Automate Your Digital Marketing Campaigns

If you haven’t already automated your digital marketing, be assured other business owners already have. So if you want to continue to stay in the competition, automating tasks should be the first on your priority list.

Here’s a quick list of automation tools you can use:

1. QuickMail for automating your email drip campaigns or personal inbox. This includes getting the best cold email templates, automating follow-ups, A/B testing campaigns, and inbox integration. You can also create predictable pipelines using the platform’s Schedule feature to boost the effectiveness of your cold outreach.

2. MobileMonkey for generating leads through live chat. This technology allows you to instantly connect with customers across multiple channels, including messaging apps, SMS, and live chat. Although there are many other top live chat software available in the market which can automate your workflow.

3. Pardot for automating marketing campaigns, allowing you to manage and qualify sales leads. It’s definitely an impressive customer relationship management (CRM) tool that can help streamline lead generation.

4. Google Ads for enhancing your paid advertising campaign efforts. You can also find important keywords to improve the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy.

5. ReferralCandy for setting up customized referral programs to collect customer data and offer exclusive discounts to purpose scale businesses.

How to Generate Leads With Dedication and Automation

Once you learn how to generate leads, scaling your business and maximizing revenue will become relatively easier.

All you need is to maintain a dedicated plan to attract, nurture, and convert leads into customers.

You can also use automation tools to streamline your lead generation efforts too. Get the email marketing part of your digital marketing campaign right by signing up for QuickMail’s free trial right away to stay at the top of your sales emails.