The Lead Generation cycle

Paton Digital is a lead generation agency. Our services allow you to leverage the most cost-effective advertising methods to earn leads for your business. Whether you’re looking to build an email list, find potential customers, or sell your product, our lead generation marketing tactics will put your business ahead of the competition.

Ready to chat about how we can help generate leads for your business? Fill out this form to book an appointment:

What is a Lead Generation Agency?

Paton Digital acts as an agency partner, a leader in digital strategy, with targeted execution for tested marketing strategies.

Our lead generation services revolve around efficient audience targeting through SEM (Social Engine Marketing) and SMM (Social Media Marketing).

What is Lead Generation?

Lead Generation agency analytics
Analytics are key to any digital strategy

Lead generation is one of the most vital needs of every business. It describes the marketing process of capturing interest in a product or service for the purposes of pushing potential customers through a sales pipeline or funnel. While most organizations understand its importance, when it comes to implementation, they are uncertain about where to start.

According to the statistics, about 61% of the businesses consider lead generation as the biggest challenge. To help you understand the right way to generate successful leads here is all you need to know about lead generation.

Why is Lead Generation Important?

The lead generation process is imperative for every business and cannot be overlooked at any cost. Being important for both the sales as well as marketing team, it helps in generating the right leads and earning revenue.

Lead generation is often referred to as the starting point of the sales journey towards becoming a satisfied and happy customer. It is an inbound marketing strategy that occurs after you have successfully attracted an individual towards your business. It helps in converting the interested visitors into leads for the sales team of your business. 

The conversion process for a consumer has changed. Digital marketers need to reach buyers through a noisy atmosphere of varying mediums and content from television to Facebook ads.

Businesses need to identify potential customers and build long-term relationships. Digital marketing is the most efficient strategy for acquiring leads for your business.

Hiring a lead generation agency is a practical solution to a problem facing most businesses.

This image from Marketo shows exactly how the buying process has changed:

Unprecdented changes in buying
(SOURCE: Marketo)

Potential consumers and buyers do not rely on being contacted by a sales professional. They perform research through search engines, social networking, and other digital mediums.

Businesses can use the acquired information to find potential customers through digital advertising campaigns. Whether you’re a podiatrist trying to find new patients or a restaurant owner looking for customers, there is a solution.

Without a digital presence, your business cannot expect to compete in the modern landscape. By utilizing an effective lead generation strategy you build trust with the consumer or buyer before they are even prepared to contact sales.

How Do Digital Marketing Agencies Get Leads?

The Sales Funnel for lead generation
The Lead Generation Sales Funnel

Generating cheap leads is easy. These ‘cold’ leads are not costly and almost any digital marketer can create a campaign to get your business any amount of cold leads. The problem is, many are not invested in your business.

You may find some nuggets to earn revenue, but you will have to waste an enormous amount of time to plow through worthless leads. The answer is an effective sales funnel. Facebook, for instance, allows you to create a top of funnel to the bottom of funnel strategy for your lead generation activities.

Chances are, customers are not ready to make a purchase or enlist your services at the drop of a hat. They need to be warmed up. Good digital marketing campaigns use lead nurturing techniques to build relationships with consumers through engagement.

The sales funnel is different for each business depending on your needs and goals, but the principles remain the same. You must begin by creating interest through entertaining and informative content through distribution channels (i.e. social media) used by the consumer.

This will also weed out people who have a casual interest, or no interest at all, in your product or service. This funnel process could take a few minutes to a few weeks. It all depends on your advertising goals. Paton Digital helps businesses set up the proper funnel to maximize quality leads.

An Effective Guide to Generate Successful Leads for a Business

Lead generation is one of the vital needs of every business. While most organization understands its importance, when it comes to implementation, they are uncertain about where to start.

Lead Generation Tips

The lead generation process includes the following steps:

  • Lead generation campaigns start when an individual finds out about your business through channels like websites, social media, or blogs.
  • When the visitor finds the content interesting, the individual clicks the call-to-action button, and that encourages him to take action.
  • Clicking on the call-to-action will take the visitor to the landing page of your website. 
  • The landing page captures the information of the lead in exchange for something valuable for the visitor, such as a lead magnet.
  • When your visitor fills in the form on your landing page, you can get your new lead. 

Challenges of Lead Generation

While lead generation may seem easy, it actually comes with a number of challenges. Knowing about challenges that may come in your way and the right way to overcome them can help you generate successful leads. Here is a list of the potential lead generation challenges.

The Right Offer

Making the right offer can only help your business attract your visitors and generate new leads. Apart from knowing the basic information about the individuals you want to target like age, gender, and location, you must to dive deeper.

You must also have knowledge about the goals, challenges, and daily tasks of your target customers. Knowing your target customers inside-out can help you create attractive offers that are sure to drive their attention. 

Sufficient Workforce

The lack of adequate digital marketing experts dedicated to lead generation for your organization is another challenge faced by many businesses. When you lack the required manpower, you should consider automating the lead generation process as the ultimate solution to the problem.

Hiring a digital agency like Paton Digital is the perfect solution to manpower issues.

With the help of advanced lead generation tools and techniques, generating qualified leads and sales becomes easy. Without the need for additional salespeople, you can enhance your productivity through automation. 

Measuring Success

Measuring the success level of your lead generation efforts is yet another challenge that most businesses suffer. Analyzing success is crucial to make informed decisions.

If you are facing such a problem, there are various metrics that can help you overcome this challenge effectively. Some of the more important metrics include conversion rate, click-through rate, cost per click, cost per lead, time to conversion, and ROI. 

Channels Optimized for Lead Generation

There are many channels to consider for your digital strategy

Basically, there are two lead generation channels, namely, inbound marketing and outbound marketing. While most businesses focus more on inbound marketing, they should actually mix both the inbound and outbound strategies to get the desired outcomes. 

Inbound Marketing Channels

Inbound marketing helps potential customers locate your business even before they consider a purchase. With early brand awareness, inbound marketing helps in enhancing their brand preference and converting them into successful leads. Some of the popular inbound lead generation techniques include:

Website

In today’s digital era, having a website is vital for every business. A website can ensure a strong online presence and work wonders for your business. With engaging content and valuable information, attracting your target audience becomes easy. Adding relevant content to your website can offer them a personalized experience. To make your website a good source of attracting new leads, make sure to consider the design, layout, content, forms, and call-to-action on the web pages. 

Content and SEO

Content is a key element of the inbound lead generation strategy. Crafting unique, engaging, and valuable content can help in attracting your target audience effectively. Additionally, it can fuel marketing campaigns and achieve the desired impact on target audiences.

High-quality content is one of the best ways to win the trust of your target audience. Moreover, with engaging content, enhancing your SEO ranking also becomes easy. The more natural and informative your content looks, the better your SEO rankings will be.

Make sure to spend a good amount of time on SEO. Consult with an SEO expert to help formulate an efficient strategy.

Blog

Blogs are becoming a widely used inbound lead generation tactic among businesses. Creating SEO optimized content can increase the reliability of your business. Well-written blogs can initiate interest among readers and compel them to visit your website again to collect more information. With highlighted calls-to-action, the chances of generating more leads increase.

Social Media

The popularity of social media channels is continually on the rise. Social media channels can help your potential customer research as well as learn more about your products and services. Apart from generating buzz and effective branding, social networking also helps in successful lead generation.

Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing examples
Outbound marketing examples

Outbound marketing strategy is the process of introducing your business message via some external source, rather than your own channel. Combining the outbound process with the inbound process can help you get desired leads. The most important outbound marketing techniques for lead generation include:

Display Ads

Display Ads are one of the most used outbound lead generation techniques. You can place your ads in online publications where your potential leads are expected to spend their maximum time. Through online ads, you can easily reach out to your target audience and ultimately generate more leads.

Direct Mail

Direct mail marketing is still an effective communication tool to reach your target audience. High quality and targeted mail can prove to be a powerful means of generating business leads. Along with capturing the interest of a potential lead, direct mail helps in building more interest in your business.

Email Marketing

Email has become an important component of marketing. Sending an email to your target audience can help to stay in touch. Email marketing is a widely used lead generation technique that helps you in connecting with prospects, even when they are not looking for you. 

Events

In recent times, events have become an important lead generation strategy for businesses. A well-planned event can help to define your brand and promote services offered by your company. It also gives you an opportunity to build personal connections with participants of the event.

By delivering powerful content, events help in changing the perception of the audience about your business. It aids in making the process of converting prospects into leads faster. 

Pay-Per-Click Ads

PPC ads draw the attention of potential customers towards current offerings of your business. PPC Ads help in the generation of high-quality leads. Using keyword phrases that are relevant to your target market can help you generate more leads.

Latest Trends of Lead Generation in 2020

Here are some of the latest trends of lead generation you need to follow in 2020.

Video Marketing

The demand for video content is increasing at a rapid pace. Through video marketing, you can provide your target audience useful information about your product and services in an engaging way. Additionally, creative videos make lead generation simpler and easier.

Influencer Marketing

The use of influencer marketing is increasing. More and more businesses are incorporating influencer marketing to reach target prospects faster. Along with positioning your brand strongly, it also helps collect information about people interested in your business.

With the help of an influencer having thousands of followers, you can easily get more leads. Instagram is a powerful tool for influencer marketing.

Lead Generation Software

Another trend is lead generation software. Effective software tools enhance lead generation efforts and enhance the overall productivity of your business. 

Zoominfo and Sales Genie are two industry leaders.

Segmentation and Personalization

Grouping your prospects into segments on the basis of needs, interests, and characteristics is another effective technique. With segmentation, catering to the needs of the customers becomes more efficient.

Furthermore, personalization improves the effectiveness of digital marketing strategies. It delivers the right content to the correct audience, thereby increasing conversion rates.

More Tips for Successful Lead Generation

Finally, here are some tips that can help you generate successful leads.

  • Craft exceptional and valuable offers
  • Link call-to-action to the landing page
  • Use social media platforms smartly
  • Employ the best lead generation tools

Improve Conversion Rates

Lead generation should be a cornerstone of your digital marketing strategy
There are many options to consider for your lead generation strategy.

Helping clients improve conversion rates is one of our top priorities. If you have run digital marketing campaigns in the past, we can examine what worked and what didn’t work and build off of that data.

We improve conversion rates and cut down on wasteful spending on ineffective lead sources.

From there, we scale successful efforts and maximize lead quality. This will determine short and long term investments in your digital strategy.

Winding Up

With a complete understanding of lead generation, you can now generate more leads successfully. You can start with basic steps and proceed towards advanced techniques to get maximum leads and enhance the productivity of your business. 

Want an example of how Paton Digital can help your business? Check out our case study detailing how we built a digital marketing campaign for a client resulting in a whopping 72% completion rate on a landing page!

Ready to get started? Fill out the form below to schedule a free strategy session or call/text us at 571-248-1983. We’ll be in touch shortly!