Lead generation is important for Inbound Marketing

“B2B customers have already gone through almost 60% of their purchasing process before they contact a sales representative – regardless of the price category of the offer they are looking for. In other words, 57% of the sales process has simply been eliminated.” – The Digital evolution in B2B Marketing

For many companies, however, the focus is still on generating traffic and getting a good ranking on Google. But the ranking of a website is not the key to success, because 80% of the users leave a site if they feel disturbed by advertising. Even a large scale paid strategy that gets you the first place on Google is of little use, because 70% of the links that are clicked are organic. This leads to a simple result: Marketing must not disturb, it must appeal and offer me added value.

For this very reason, the interest in and use of inbound marketing is growing. Inbound marketing goes the other way round and has the approach to address users with helpful content. It is not about promoting your own product massively, but to reach customers who are already resistant to advertising with the help of content, inbound, online marketing and PR. This evolution requires a rethinking from push to pull marketing. In order to use successful inbound marketing, 4 different phases must be considered.

First of all it is important to be found by your target group and to appear in the research process. Since many people obtain information in advance with their own research at Google, the topic of SEO, social media and blog is very important here. Through a blog, attractive content can be created and also the search engines can be satisfied. The better known a brand becomes on the net, the more influence you get over its own reach.

As soon as people come across the self-created content, they need to be so enthusiastic about it that they are willing to share it with their network via social media. As soon as there is a closer interest, a company can concentrate on getting a lead from this visitor. The best way to do this is to use content that helps the target group. Content can have the most different formats.

Whoever makes a purchase decision always goes through a certain purchase process in which he has to deal with the most diverse topics and decisions. As soon as a company gains a more detailed insight into its own process, this can be used for the 3rd phase, which is about guiding the customer to buy.

Content can be used to support the different phases of the purchasing process. In the end, it is all about turning the acquired customer into a promoter, because Mouth-to-Mouth communication is still very effective. It is not for nothing that one happy customer can quickly turn into 2-3 others. The persuasive power of a satisfied customer is worth more than any advertisement placed. To make a customer happy, you have to constantly strive to make him feel that he is important.

If you want to orient your company towards inbound marketing, then you must be aware that it is not just a small part of marketing but a complete corporate strategy. Each department must be aligned according to the pull principle so that the overall impression to the outside world is complete. If you manage to integrate this process into a company, then you can build a brand that combines emotions, relationships and loyalty.

What is lead generation and how can it be implemented?

As part of lead generation, marketers are looking for ways to draw consumers’ attention to their company. They want to offer these people incentives to develop interest in their company and to contact them. The idea is to familiarize potential customers with your company and thus prepare the ground for future purchases.

As part of lead generation, marketers are looking for ways to draw consumers’ attention to their company. They want to offer these people incentives to develop interest in their company and to contact them. The first step is to get visitors interested in your company through one of your marketing channels (e.g. website, blog, social media). These visitors must click on one of your Calls-to-Action (CTAs). These are either images, buttons or notifications that contain a call to action.

The CTA takes visitors to a campaign-specific landing page. Such an offer could be content such as e-books, training courses or templates. To do this, you use a form on your landing page consisting of a series of input fields. There, visitors must enter some information to be able to use your offer. It is common to use these forms on landing pages, but theoretically you can embed them on any page of your website. Once a visitor has filled out and submitted the form, you have generated a new lead.

Absolutely to be observed – Lead Scoring

Lead scoring – also known as lead evaluation – is about qualifying leads based on quantitative data. This involves assigning a numerical value (or score) to leads in order to classify them on a scale from “interested” to “ready to close”. The criteria used in your evaluation depends on the individual circumstances in your company. However, your marketing and sales teams should use the same criteria to avoid inconsistencies.

They would then be just one step away from becoming customers. It is quite possible that you will have to change your criteria and ratings over time, because only experience shows what actually works. However, this adjustment process is a very valuable preparatory work, which turns your lead generation into an effective preliminary stage for customer acquisition.

Nine errors that should be avoided when generating a lead

1. Your lead generation content is not tailored to the individual phases of the buyer’s journey
2. You dispense with the best tools for lead generation
3. You think only black and white when testing
4. They do not use social networks strategically to generate leads
5. Your forms are too long or too short
6. You are not optimizing your most important pages for lead generation
7. You are not using the full potential of your blog for lead generation
8. You buy leads – instead of generating them organically
9. You and your sales department do not agree on the definition of a qualified lead

Conclusion on Lead Generation with Inbound Marketing

There are patterns that repeat themselves – because they have proven themselves. So a banner CTA on the main page is always a good start to make the way to contact already informed visitors as short as possible. It is also indispensable to repeat the CTA at the bottom of the page. And most successful lead generation websites use the space in between to enumerate product features – enriched with invitations to premium content. So you would do well to build your website with lead generation functionality in a very similar way. Of course, it is also a good idea to entrust an agency with the implementation of lead generation.

Roman Swoboda

Roman ist ein digital Native. Er war bereits in diversen Agenturen für Inbound Marketing aber auch Messenger Marketing tätig. Er beschäftigt sich immer wieder mit Themen rund um Digitalisierung, Technologie, Schnittstellen und Lösung von problematischen Strategien. Strategieansätze, Herausarbeiten von digitalen Wegen oder auch Problemlösungsansätze sind sein Steckenpferd.