Great lead generation is the heart and soul of any successful business. But to be fully optimised and effective, you need to be tuned in to the process and understand how you can learn from your data to keep improving your results.
If we were to ask you right now, would you know what percentage of your leads currently turn into sales? When did you last review your process, and if you identify any leaks in your sales funnel, what should you do about it?
This 12-step guide will give you everything you need to know to answer those questions and create a well-oiled lead generation process.
You might find that for some points, your existing practices will be sound, but you’ll probably identify some areas that need more of your time, thought, and resources.
1. Define your target audience
You’re not selling to everyone – so who is your target audience(s)? How many different audience segments do you have? Are you selling to individuals or entire buying teams – and if it’s the latter, have you worked up brand personas for each role on that team?
Defining who you’re talking to is foundational to any lead generation strategy. Revisit your ideal customer profiles and update them with your current market research. Digging into the details of your clients’ thoughts, preferences, feelings, and pain points gives you invaluable understanding.
You need to know:
Demographic information
- Where they live and work
- Their age, sex, gender
- Who they live with, their family structure
- Their race, religion and marital status
- Their level of education
- How much they earn
- Where they hang out – online and in-person
Psychographic information
- Lifestyle: How they live their lives, day-to-day – identifying regular habits can be particularly revealing about how they prioritise spending
- Personality: What personality traits do your target audience share? For example: Are they introverts or extroverts?
- Social status: What their current social status is and, more importantly, what they’d like it to be – are you a means to that end?
- Activities: What do they do when they’re not at work? Where do they spend their time and money?
- Interests: Unsurprisingly, what are they interested in?
- Opinions: What do they think of the political situation or the latest viral TikTok video?
- Attitudes: All kinds of factors influence an individual’s attitude towards life, including family and cultural background. Questions about attitudes often give useful indicators of their preferences and motivations.
Behavioural information
This section specifically focuses on the buying behaviour of your current and past customers.
- What did they buy? When? Why?
- Are they a regular customer? Yes or no, ‘why’ is the most useful question
- What feedback did they give? Are there things about your product, service or customer experience that are praised or criticised?
Usefully segmenting your audience into manageable groups needs all these market research insights to see where there are shared pain points and aspirations that you’re helping to solve with your product or service.
Once you’ve got a clear idea of who your customers and ideal clients are, your lead generation activities become a lot more meaningful. Your buyer personas, customer journeys, messaging and brand positioning will all be much more focused and resonate more deeply.
2. Develop high-quality content
Now you know exactly who your target audiences are, you can create content just for them. The subject matter of the content should address their needs, pain points, interests and aspirations – and help them see your offering as the solution.
The type of content you create depends on how your ideal clients prefer to learn or be entertained. There’s a whole range of format possibilities:
- Webinar
- eBook
- Podcast
- Blog article
- Case study
- White paper
- Original research
- Video
- Infographic
- And anything else you can think of!
There’s a strong argument for content redistribution, to both make the most of your quality content and cater for your audience’s different engagement preferences.
For example, you create a piece of original market research into a key aspect of your industry. This can be downloaded as a written report, spark a series of blog articles that go deep into each conclusion, a video of a key person of influence giving their opinion on your findings, and a panel webinar where a small group of industry experts discuss their responses. All of that quality content from one market research report!
Of course, you want your content to reflect the status of your business and deliver the best user experience, so it needs to be high-quality and useful. Content quality is an increasingly important factor when it comes to Google’s search rankings.
Google stated in March 2024: “We’re making algorithmic enhancements to our core ranking systems to ensure we surface the most helpful information on the web and reduce unoriginal content in search results.” This includes pages that “feel like they were created for search engines instead of people.” By April 26th these changes reduced the amount of low-quality content in our searches by 45%.
Not only does this make search results better across the board, it means that Google rewards your high-quality content with increased traffic.
3. Optimise your website
Your website. The digital home of your business. Always there, representing your brand, displaying your wares. It’s very easy to forget to give it a spring clean – even though you’re popping in to add new things all the time.
But you want it to do its best work for you, so you need to regularly check your website. It needs to be:
- Mobile-responsive
- Optimised for SEO
- User-friendly and easy to navigate
- Set up for individual landing pages for each campaign, with straightforward forms for visitors to complete
- Clear what the CTA is on each page
Establishing a cycle of checking is the easiest way to maintain full optimisation of your website. Whether that’s monthly, quarterly, every 6 weeks – there’s no perfect timing. As long as you decide on a schedule, get it in the diary, and make sure it gets done, your website will always be at its best.
4. Leverage social media
Part of your lead generation process is an integrated social media strategy – things to consider:
- What’s your goal? Do you want to increase awareness by gaining more followers? Maybe you want to understand your audience better, around a particular topic. Or perhaps you want to get more qualified leads through social media, rather than your current ‘high volume but low conversion’ situation. Get clear on what you want to achieve with social media before you start.
- How will you know you’ve achieved your goal? It’s also wise to decide on the key metrics you want to measure so you can analyse the success of your social media campaigns.
- Are you going to invest in targeted ads and sponsored posts to get things moving more quickly? Perhaps it’s worth doing a trial period where you polish your presence before you commit further budget.
Social media platforms give you direct access to your audience – strategically share all that fabulous content on the platform(s) where your audience is most active. Adapt your content to fit the formats of the different platforms. For example, edit a long blog article into a series of LinkedIn posts.
Quizzes are a great way to drive engagement across the board because they’re different, immediately engaging, and easy to share. They’re a brilliant way to turn followers into subscribers – securing their details on your list removes the risk of your relationship being entirely dependent on the vagaries of the platform.
5. Implement lead magnets
So, what are you going to give your audience in exchange for their personal information? Everyone loves a freebie, like a downloadable report, free trial, or discount code. But you can use all those juicy data insights to create something that’s truly magnetising to your target audiences. (You see what we did there?!)
Would something that plays to a sense of exclusivity be more attractive? Like a ‘be in the first 50 to buy’ opportunity. Or would your ideal audience be more drawn to a straightforward ‘save me money’ discount price? There are so many options when it comes to lead magnets, you can get really creative.
Quiz lead magnets
Confucious is credited with the saying: “Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand.” Often used in education philosophies, the underlying concept equally applies to creating a connection with your customers. Involving them in a quiz increases their understanding of the benefits of your product, service and brand.
Using a quiz as a lead magnet is a double whammy for prospective clients:
- Engagement: Quizzes are interactive by nature – but this isn’t just about the fun element of gamification. Audiences are invested and involved because they’ve taken the time to think about their answers.
- Immediate value: A Scorecard quiz gives participants personalised, immediately actionable insights that help them with an area of improvement that they define by their quiz answers.
For you, a Scorecard quiz delivers detailed insights into how your leads think and feel, which fuels deeper connectivity – it’s just about asking the right questions.
Freebie examples
There are so many different free lead magnet ideas you can use – you’re only limited by your imagination!
Here are just 3 freebie examples you can use to attract perfect leads.
1. Calculator tools
Calculators are brilliant for clients who want an answer to a particular numerical problem straightaway. As they’re less common than other lead magnets, they also have a bit of novelty value. Because they give an immediate answer, they don’t get forgotten or left unfinished like some other formats.
You get access to insights from your strategically created number-based questions. They might be more complex to create, but a calculator tool can be an invaluable source of information for the right businesses.
It’s worth bearing in mind that people may be more than usually reluctant to share both their details and financial information in the same form – which could impact uptake. So you may want to have a calculator tool that visitors can use without entering their personal details and a different kind of lead magnet to capture information.
2. ‘Free! Just pay for postage’ offers
This is a particularly good idea for e-commerce businesses selling an actual product. Who wouldn’t like to get the actual product you want for free? But there’s still some investment on their part, by asking them to pay the shipping costs. This gives you warm leads that are primed for the upsell.
3. Become part of a community
Use that natural desire to connect with like-minded people and lead a community full of ideal clients. By offering people access to a closed community, you increase their sense of belonging to something both valuable and exclusive – especially if you pack them full of your expert knowledge and targeted incentives.
It’s easy to stay top of mind when it comes to buying time because you’re interacting regularly with members. And their continued engagement signals enthusiasm for your brand and offering that can be fostered into a team of brand advocates. All of these individual points of communication can be analysed into some amazing insights – and even ideas for your next new feature or service.
Of course, you need to build on the right platform – there’s no point setting up a Facebook forum if all your customers are on TikTok! And you need to be prepared to invest a decent amount of time in maintaining and growing your community. But in the right business setting, community building is a solid place to find quality leads.
As Jeffrey Bussgang and Jono Bacon say in their Harvard Business Review Article:
“We are in the early stages of truly harnessing the potential of carefully crafted, productive communities. Done well, and when intentionally woven into the fabric of the business, communities can offer a sustainable competitive advantage and drive brand awareness, value production, and therefore overall commercial valuation (oh, and delivering a world-class, personal, gratifying member experience.)”
What a compelling business case!
6. Use marketing automation
The days of sorting leads, calls, follow-ups and sales into physical trays are over! Marketing automation tools are here to unite and streamline all your lead generation activities. This gives you back time previously spent on repetitive tasks and puts you back into ‘doing’ your business.
It just makes sense to use something that makes life easier for you and delivers a better experience to your customers. Marketing automation helps you:
- Manage email sequences
- Meeting reminders
- Track lead interactions
- Nurture those leads with personalised content through their designated sales funnel
- Lead scoring
- Schedule social media posts
- A/B testing
- Running ad campaigns
- Abandoned trolley reminders
And that’s just some of the time-consuming tasks automation software can take off your hands. The positive effects of marketing automation can be felt on the bottom line, too. Companies that use marketing automation to nurture their leads reported a 451% increase in qualified leads. And these nurtured leads made 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured ones.
This is because automation increases your ability to personalise customer journeys to each audience segment – going all the way from their initial signal of interest, through the sales process, and into a cycle of retention.
7. Align sales and marketing
Yes, your marketing and sales teams have separate definitions and specific goals. And they have different, but equally important parts, to play in the lead generation process. Uniting the considerable skills of both teams behind one lead generation strategy will give you a real edge over your competition.
But collaboration isn’t always easy. Marketing departments are traditionally held accountable for the outcome of lead generation campaigns and sales teams are always focused on the final sales figures. It’s really important to share the invaluable insights from quiz lead generation activities together, so that your sales team can see the benefits like:
- Not wasting time on unqualified leads: By using quiz or waitlist-style lead generation formats in your marketing, you can include key qualifying questions. This means the sales team only meets leads that are the right fit for your service or product.
- Deeper understanding: All those juicy data insights from carefully crafted lead generation gives the sales team the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of who they’re talking to.
- The awkward ‘in’: You can open a sales call with information from dynamic lead generation activities. For example, if your quiz generates a report that highlights an area of improvement for the participant, your sales expert can start their call by discussing one of those outcomes. It reminds the prospect of their position and piques their interest in the further solutions you’re offering. It also makes for a much less cold, awkward opener to the conversation because the relationship with your brand has already begun.
Genuine collaboration between your sales and marketing departments means:
- All relevant information is shared
- Everyone is heard
- No good ideas are missed
- Lead generation strategies are continuously refined
- Everyone’s invested in improving lead quality
- Customer journeys are flawless
8. Utilise data analytics
Is it working? How well is it working? Why isn’t it working? You need current data about your lead generation campaigns to answer all of these key questions. Analysing your key metrics should be a regular part of your lead generation process. You can use these insights to stay in a constant upward spiral of improvement and optimisation of your lead generation strategies.
Your data analysis needs to be on a permanent loop, using the key performance indicators (KPIs) that make the most sense to your business, like:
- Click-through rates
- Quality of leads – number of people who took the next step and sales conversions
- Repeat visits to your lead magnet – why did they keep coming back?
- Completion rates – how many people get to the end of your quiz or survey
- What device are users on when they interact with you?
- What platform are prospects using when they connect?
- Likes, shares, comments
- Where do they lose interest and drop out of your sales funnel? For example, is it usually when they get to the same question on your quiz?
- Average time spent
As well as all this revealing quantitative data – you’ll also benefit from the opinions you’ll gather from the excess of quantitative data you get from every comment section and feedback form.
Automation makes the process of collecting marketing and sales data much more efficient – so you can focus on how to action the insights.
9. Keep testing
Now you’ve got all those insights about how well each element of your lead generation process is working, you can focus on improvements. You can A/B test each part individually to maximise engagement with your audiences.
For example, if your data analysis shows that a particular page has low click-through rates, test different CTAs until you find one that’s more resonant. Then it’s down to regular data monitoring to see if the click-through rate improves.
Companies that regularly use A/B testing are 116% more likely to improve conversion rates. So it’s no surprise that optimisation using split testing results gives you a 33% higher chance of outperforming competitors.
It’s all about refining the details to make your customers’ experience as personalised and relevant as possible. It’s not a one-and-done thing. To really optimise your full lead generation strategy you need to – *’Strictly’ voice* – keeeep testing!
10. Follow-up and nurture leads
Engagement with your lead magnet is like a first handshake, the start of a (hopefully) long-term business relationship. Now it’s up to you to build on that strong signal of interest with a follow-up strategy that builds trust, deepens understanding and – eventually – seals the deal.
Hubspot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report reveals that segmented emails drive 30% more opens and 50% more clickthroughs than unsegmented ones. So it’s wise to invest in creating targeted email sequences that are personalised to each of your audiences and specific to each campaign. Consistently high-quality communication that educates and motivates prospects guides them towards conversions.
You need lead generation software that integrates with your existing email marketing tools to avoid any bumps in the lead generation process. Automatic scheduling takes that time-consuming job off your list. And your customers receive exactly the right information at just the right time in their journey.
Your follow-up strategy is about making sure your potential customers have what they need to complete their purchase, including:
- They feel like you understand their problem from their perspective
- They trust that you know what you’re talking about
- They understand that your product or service is their best solution
Leading potential clients towards a sale may include targeted content, phone calls, and in-person meetings, as well as nurturing email sequences. Each stepping stone on your customer’s path to purchase should be cemented in before you click publish on your lead magnet. Remember, each ICP treads its own path, so you’ll need to account for their differing pain points and needs with individualised plans.
11. Gather feedback
People are talking about you and to you all over the place: social media, direct emails, discussions with your sales and customer service teams, your feedback surveys, public testimonials and reviews, comparison articles, forums… literally everywhere, all at once!
The amount of feedback can feel overwhelming. But it can also be an absolute goldmine of information about how your customers feel about your brand, product or service, and customer experience. Establishing a way to gather feedback, using automation tools to scale, means you don’t miss out.
Collect feedback from leads and customers to understand their experiences and identify areas for improvement. Use this feedback to enhance your lead generation process and better meet customer needs.
A critical element of customer feedback is your response – it needs to be quick and relevant. We’ve all received an automated ‘please get in touch by DM’ reply – which is much less satisfying than a direct response and puts the onus on the customer to repeat their question or comment.
And you can’t just ignore the negative because you don’t want to hear it – embrace the conversation and get into how you can make this client’s day (even if they started out with a complaint).
It’s easy to forget that the feedback loop isn’t just customer-to-business. You collect the data, analyse the numbers, create word clouds from the positive adjectives and make business-critical decisions based on the insights. That’s a lot in itself. But you’re also part of the conversation.
No one wants to feel like they’re talking to someone who’s not listening – don’t let that be your clients’ experience.
12. Stay compliant and ethical
Legal and ethical – that’s the foundation of how successful businesses operate. In terms of lead generation, this means strict compliance with data protection laws in every country you do business.
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) summarises their guidance on lead generation:
“You must tell people that you want to collect and use their information for direct marketing purposes. You must be clear about what you want to do and your privacy information must be easy for people to understand.
“Getting new information about people from other sources or by profiling their interests and habits can help target your direct marketing more effectively. But you must ensure that doing this is fair and tell people about it.”
The aims of the ICO are to protect individuals’ personal data, define ethical behaviour for companies’ information handling practices and explain the consequences of non-compliance. It’s not enough just to have a company GDPR policy and officer – your lead generation strategy needs to explicitly demonstrate good practice. This means every time you ask for personal information, you need to:
- Explain what you’re going to do with their information
- Tell them if you’re going to share their information and for what purpose
- Explain their data protection rights
Being transparent and honest about how you handle your prospects’ data is another way to build trust – as well as being a legal requirement. Baking it into your lead generation strategy from the start is the easy way to ensure compliance.
Get your lead generation set up quickly and effortlessly with ScoreApp
Lots of companies have a ‘pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey’ approach to lead generation. Chaotic, excited about potential success, and blindfolded by a lack of robust data.
By following this 12-step approach you can create an efficient lead generation process that reliably delivers ideal leads, and guides them through their customer journey right to the checkout – and beyond! The insights from your analytics help you make confident, data-based decisions about business critical issues.
ScoreApp scaffolds your strategy by streamlining the practicalities and hitting the accelerator on generating quality leads.
Start optimising your lead generation with ScoreApp today, for FREE!
