Lead Generation: 6 Strategies to Attract and Convert Prospects

Effective lead generation has the potential to deliver both short term sales increases as well as long term brand-building benefits.

This makes it a process which deserves your full attention, and if you are not seeing the results you want, revising your approach is worthwhile.

To that end, here is a look at a few of the most impactful strategies that will let you generate leads and convert prospects into loyal customers.

Leverage LinkedIn with Efficient Automation Tools

As buymovingleads.co noted lots of businesses are already turning to LinkedIn for outreach purposes, and this social media site is certainly a convenient portal for connecting with your target audience.

Of course managing a presence on LinkedIn is a challenge in its own right, as the experts at Salesflow explain. This is where modern automation tools can make a major difference, enabling you to expand your network of connections, send messages to the most promising prospects, and most importantly track the performance of your sales efforts over time.

You might be dissuaded by the misconception that implementing automation in lead generation will lead to the all-important human touch being eradicated.

However, the opposite is true when the latest platforms are harnessed. Top tools afford you the ability to personalize messages at every step of the journey, from the first time you get in touch to when you follow up on leads.

Adopt Chatbots to Capture and Convert Site Visitors

If your website receives thousands of visitors a day, it is impractical to try and connect with them using human sales and support staff. Thankfully the age of automation has also extended its tendrils into this arena, with AI-powered chatbots giving you an excellent lead generation opportunity without eating into your other resources.

Chatbots are improving all the time, and you can configure them to field common questions and ultimately guide visitors deeper down your sales funnel, while also filtering out dead ends in one fell swoop. Just remember to be honest with users about when they are talking to a bot, as otherwise they could respond negatively.

Incentivize Conversions with Access to Exclusive Content

Another excellent tactic for bringing newcomers in from the cold is to give them an incentive to convert. For example, if you want more people to join your site and ideally make purchases, you can convince them to do this by letting them unlock valuable content once they have created an account.

So-called ‘gated content’ can come in many forms whether that might be a white paper, guide, industry report or e-learning course. Whichever you pick, you can then dangle this as the carrot to coax prospects who are on the fence to commit to your ecosystem.

Once you have snared the initial conversion, it will be much easier to promote your wares and keep customers in the loop going forward.

Gated content is also very well suited to including in social media posts. By mentioning that you have exclusive content that is relevant to your target audience, you can stimulate clicks and conversions from other channels. Making this content evergreen is obviously sensible, as it will allow it to pay dividends month after month.

Be Liberal with Discounts

While gated content might appeal to a particular demographic, for most businesses the main way to generate leads and boost sales is to offer would-be customers a discount on products or services.

Of course cutting prices comes with its own risks, but as long as you strike the right balance you will reel in prospects that can make an enduring contribution to your company.

Discounting is usually a means of getting consumers to overcome a lack of familiarity with a brand and take the plunge. Not everyone who uses an offer code will stay loyal, but if you pitch it right and impress those who take the bait then your order books should swell.

Mix Paid Digital Marketing with Organic Growth Efforts

A lot of sales and lead generation advice focuses on the often nebulous and challenging concept of engaging new prospects organically. This is definitely worth doing, but it has to be combined with more proactive, paid ads to help your brand gain traction quickly, and capitalize on the momentum it already has.

There are plenty of ways to go about this, and your approach will depend on factors such as the industry you occupy and the social platforms your audience tends to occupy.

The good news is that you do not have to use guesswork at any point, since the in-depth analytics that are baked into all good social networks make it comparatively straightforward to hone your paid ads and generate good ROI.

Likewise if you can see from the stats that your paid posts are not living up to expectations, making tweaks to increase clicks and conversions from an informed position is possible.

Make Existing Customers Your Brand Evangelists

While you can do a lot of sales outreach work yourself, it is always nice when your customers do this for you, spreading word-of-mouth recommendations to get friends and family involved and push more people towards your carefully-constructed sales funnel.

You can just cross your fingers and hope that customers will catalyze growth for you on their own initiative, but it is better to incentivize this by rewarding referrals.

Lots of organizations of all sizes have referral schemes in place, which not only give benefits to the referrer, but also to the person they bring onboard. This could come in the form of a discount, deal or exclusive access to content; whatever makes sense in your business.

However you handle referral benefits, it is sensible to make them symmetrical, so that both parties get an equal share. There are even software tools designed to manage referral initiatives.

Concluding Considerations

There are many more ways to generate leads and secure sales in the modern era, with digital tools making the lives of marketing and sales specialists much less taxing.

Ultimately it should be about selecting strategies that you can execute consistently and monitor reliably, with automation taking the tedium out of repetitive tasks. Do not be afraid to mix things up if they are not working, and you should be on track to transform how you attract and convert prospects.