1025-blog-visualWhat elements need to be included in your lead generation program? From content to calls to action, here’s what you need to know if you sell a product or service.

 

 

The content you create and the experience visitors have when they arrive at your website has a huge impact on your ability to generate leads. By creating and sharing educational and informative content on a variety of channels you can make sure your prospects know where to turn when they need help. Once they decide to read more, you have a valuable opportunity to tempt them with premium content, your best offers and an ongoing stream of useful information. Having a lead generation program in place takes the guesswork out of planning the customer experience and helps ensure that your buyer’s journey ends up in the right place

Attract Prospects with Free, Useful Content

Your lead generation efforts won’t amount to much if the prospects you’ve worked so hard to get have nothing to see. Creating good, solid content that people actually want to read across all of your channels is essential. From the tweet that triggers a customer to visit your website, to the content on your blog and even your PPC ads, your content needs to be compelling and interesting and fully support your brand. Poor content = few leads and none of the side benefits associated with inbound marketing, from expert positioning to increased brand awareness. –

Trigger Buy-in with Premium Content

That first piece of free content intrigued your prospect enough to get them to your site – now what? You’re going to want to collect some contact information so you can continue to court this process and you’ll need to offer something in return. Offering an enticing piece of free premium content can help a prospect hand over their email or contact information. You can offer a whitepaper, a series of videos or even an eBook; the thing you offer needs to have value for your prospect and be uniquely yours; if they want it, they’ll have to sign up to get it.

Landing Page

A landing page can serve customers in several ways; those who are in the decision making process can be prompted to take the next step with a strong call to action, while those still gathering information can continue to acquire more of an idea of what to expect from your offer According to inbound experts at HubSpot, your landing page needs a good call to action to be effective; you don’t have to close them at this point, but you do need to prompt them to take some kind of action.

Nurture with Automation

A nurturing program that utilized marketing automation can help score your leads and generate content based on interest. By nurturing and strategically optimizing your leads, you can direct them to the track that is most likely to lead to conversion. Automation allows you to create touchpoints and contacts on a set schedule and ensures that the leads you’ve worked so hard to get can actually grow and thrive.

A good lead generation plan has expert level free content, a tempting premium, compelling landing page and regular, reasonable follow up. If your conversions are hit or miss or you’ve been relying on guesswork to convert prospects into clients, then examining each step of the process can help.

Posted by, Lisa Rogerson, VP of Digital and Operations at initiate-it, a digital first, full-service agency located in Richmond, VA.