How do sales teams select who is most likely to purchase their products or services? After all, there are only so many hours and so many days to pitch their brands, and they want to use that time wisely. Fortunately, many sales organizations rely on lists of leads to make these decisions.
What’s a lead? It’s a person who has already indicated an interest in a brand, product or service. This interest is expressed through a variety of contact methods or behaviors like email, contact forms and website visits. To generate these leads, however, organizations first must employ some sort of strategy to attract them.
What is lead generation?
Lead generation describes the process of attracting prospective customers to a brand and increasing their interest and awareness. Like other sales and marketing functions, the ultimate goal is converting prospects into paying customers.
Strategies to generate leads include blog posts, coupons and social media engagement. Of course, the types of lead generation strategies are far from limited to these examples since people can be drawn to a brand through a plethora of unique methods. What’s important is the strategy effectively introduces potential customers to a brand and places them on the path toward making a purchase.
Popular lead generation strategies and how to execute them
What common strategies do marketers use to generate leads, and how do you implement them? A lead magnet is a pivotal element of lead generation that attracts potential customers’ attention and encourages them to provide their contact information. Read on to learn how some popular lead magnets can be effectively implemented to generate lists of prospects.
1. Offers and promotions
Whether the offer is a giveaway, a coupon or some other item of value, promotions are a highly effective lead generation strategy. The more irresistible the offer, the more likely potential customers will take the “bait.” Of course, the secret is designing an effective promotion. It should be original enough to stand apart from the competition and enticing enough to attract interest. Not only will the lead gladly hand over their email address or phone number, but they’ll be more interested in the brand when the sales rep makes contact.
2. Blog content
Regularly posting new blog content to a brand’s website serves a variety of marketing purposes. It keeps the website fresh, optimizes a site for visibility with search engines, enhances a brand’s authority and credibility and serves as an effective lead-generation strategy. Useful and interesting blog content can draw users to a website, where the brand can hook them with offers for valuable lead magnets like whitepapers or webinars. In fact, according to a HubSpot report, companies that blog at least 16 times a month generate 4.5 times more leads than brands that blog four or fewer times a month.
3. Free trials
Product-qualified leads are those prospects who have already used a product or service when indicating their interest in making a purchase. By offering free trials or other limited versions of a product, brands can generate interest while offering leads the chance to upgrade to paying customers. If a customer uses the free version or agrees to try a product for a limited time, they’ve provided a channel through which sales teams can make contact and nurture their interest. Plus, simply using a proven product is often enough to overcome many prospects’ objections or concerns.
4. Case Studies
When brands offer written case studies that expand on popular blog content, they are able to attract the target audience and exchange something of value for prospects’ contact information. Case studies are valued because they often address common consumer challenges and offer practical solutions. Instead of choosing one case study demonstrating how a product or service can deliver, why not offer leads a round-up featuring multiple success stories? Variety offers more chances to connect with different perspectives and creates more opportunities to convert leads into customers. Beautiful.ai users can customize a case study presentation template with perfectly curated slides to highlight and organize multiple studies in a single engaging slide deck.
5. Webinars
Online seminars are another popular lead-generation strategy. Brands can generate more leads by offering webinars only to those who sign up with their email or other contact information. In fact, as many as 40% of those who attend a webinar ultimately become qualified leads. For best results, brands shouldn’t stop with creating the webinar. Instead, designing a webinar recap presentation offers a tangible takeaway for attendees while offering an alternative way to engage prospects following the webinar’s conclusion. Beautiful.ai features a customizable webinar recap presentation template that already features slides chosen specifically to share additional resources with an audience, capture emails from prospective customers and promote upcoming webinars.
How presentations can help execute lead generation strategies
Need more help executing a flawless lead generation strategy? A visual presentation can help pull together the details and get teams on board with the plans. By customizing a presentation template designed to support specific sales and marketing topics, leadership can save time in creating an effective slide deck.
Beautifu.ai users can support their lead generation strategies by customizing the sales strategy presentation template. This engaging slide deck helps users present lead-generation strategies to their teams and get everyone up to speed. Likewise, the KAM presentation template features slides chosen to define the key accounts that sales teams should focus on once they’ve entered the sales funnel.
Of course, Beautiful.ai users don’t need to worry about being professional designers to create the highest-quality visual presentations. Most presentation templates feature the brand’s Smart Slide templates, so artificial intelligence automatically adjusts the design each time content is added based on professional good design principles.
