Category Archives: Content marketing

10 Tips to Help You Generate Inbound Sales Leads

It can feel like an uphill battle to generate enough inbound sales leads to make marketing campaigns profitable. We have been there ourselves and know what it is like because we have experienced the same thing. Every successful marketing team has to struggle with testing too many strategies and variables until they get what works best for them. 

After years of experimenting, we finally discovered the right formula and the truth is that getting the basics exactly right is all it takes. Here are ten ways to generate inbound sales, and once you understand them, they will continue to work wonders for you with little maintenance. 

1. Let your Blog be a Valuable Resource

According to the HubSpot State of Inbound 2018 Report, 61% of marketers consider blogging their number one inbound marketing strategy, while 61% cite generating traffic and leads as their biggest ongoing challenge.

In contrast, Ahrefs’ research reveals that 91% of online content receives no Google traffic whatsoever.

It’s no wonder that traffic and leads are major concerns for marketers, but what’s going on here?

The Ahrefs study identified two primary reasons content is not getting the traffic it deserves:

  • Lack of user intent when creating content. The new Google algorithm in 2022 gives a clear picture of how important user intent is when creating content. Google prefers content by people, for people. Creating content that people won’t look for completely removes you from the search process. 
  • Lack of backlinks. One of the most important ranking factors by Google is having backlinks. Chances are you’re not going to be visible on SERPs if you don’t have links. 

You must make your blog a valuable online resource to turn it into an inbound lead generation tool. You must discover what difficulties your target audience is facing (business management, purchasing choices, work-life balance – whatever) and strive to create the best online resource for them.

Creating content that people actually engage with is what the other 9% of the people are doing, and it’s what converts their blogs into inbound sales generating vehicles.

2. Creating Evergreen Email Content

With your blog being constantly updated with valuable content, you will produce long-lasting evergreen emails that provide some of the best ideas in your industry. You must provide cutting-edge content with headlines people find difficult to resist. Something that turns even the ice-cold traffic into potential customers. 

Preferably, this content has to be so excellent that people are almost willing to pay for it. Unless you plan to give it away for free—all they need to do is download it and give up their email address—you must give them something of excellent quality.

3. Go on Social and Promote Your Content

Well, if you’re creating attention-grabbing and evergreen content on your blogs and emails, why not boost your reach by posting it on social media? To optimize your reach, have a mix of organic and paid social media strategies depending on the networks you’re advertising on.

It’s still possible to generate organic traffic from Twitter without paying for ads, but it’s very difficult to do so from Facebook these days. On the other hand, Twitter ads are quite expensive and Facebook’s ad targeting options will take your marketing to the next level. 

We suggest focusing on paid ads on Facebook and using Twitter to reach a wider audience organically in this scenario. You still want to do the necessary organic work on Facebook—post your content, engage with relevant pages and groups, etc. But keep in mind that you must pay for ads to get the reach you need.

4. Write Guest Posts

By now, you should be used to publishing industry-leading content and you have your blog to prove it. The next step is to reach out to industry-leading online publications and offer to write for them.

By collaborating with other businesses, you can reach a new audience with the same interests as the people you want to generate leads from. Show these people what distinguishes you from other companies in your field, and give them a reason to learn more about your company.

5. Use Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads

Creating the content you need and getting it to rank well in search is a time-consuming strategy. One excellent way to generate consistent inbound sales leads is through PPC advertising. This works instantly. 

With organic content-driven inbound marketing strategies, you largely generate leads from people who are very interested in your products or services, but they are not yet ready to purchase them. Even after a lead has expressed interest in your product, you still have to nurture him or her along the sales funnel.

However, there is a small (and highly profitable) group of people who have already decided to purchase what you are offering; they just haven’t decided where they will purchase it yet.

People search “best email marketing software for large retailers,” “top PPC agencies in Manchester,” or “emergency plumber near me Sunday” to discover the best providers.

Google Ads allows you to get your brand seen by these people at the crucial moment when they are ready to buy.

6. Set up Remarketing Campaigns to Reach Visitors Who Leave without Converting.

Google Ads is a great way to capture inbound sales leads from people who are ready to buy now, but not everyone is willing to pay immediately. Some people may get cold feet, go back to the results page, and check out the competition.

Well, don’t panic, it happens. 

You can keep reaching out to these prospects and keep them on-board with your brand with remarketing. You already know that these leads are really interested in your service/product since they clicked your ad. Give them an extra incentive to return to your site and close the deal.

7. Public Speaking at Industry Events

Face-to-face contact is still one of the greatest inbound lead generation methods. You can become a real industry leader by speaking at industry events, where people will pay to hear you. CEO of Venture Harbour, Marcus Taylor, after speaking at every marketing event from 2012 to 2015, realized that speaking at big conferences is largely ineffective. 

“First of all, there are too many competitors pitching for the prospect’s attention. It’s like trying to promote your book in a bookstore: Unless you have something truly exceptional to say, you’re soon forgotten. The bigger problem, though, is that most of the audience assumes that you’ll be busy after your talk – so relatively few people come up to speak to you.”

Instead of attending events such as TEDx, you’ll generate higher volumes of genuine leads by speaking at events with 50-100 people. So look for small-audience speaking engagements to generate face-to-face inbound sales leads. 

8. Have Multi-Step Forms to Maximize Inbound Lead Generation 

There are a lot of impediments to converting website visitors into inbound leads, but one of the largest is keeping them engaged with them as their needs evolve. Having the ability to convert traffic into email sign-ups via is one of the most effective ways to do this. Email marketing segments your leads and addresses their pain points as you lead them along their buying journey. 

Fortunately, you already have all of the sign-up content for email subscribers, but you still have to address the fact that most brands have average conversion rates of about 2.35%. Don’t settle for mediocrity, though. Work on your page content, headlines, and CTAs to get people excited about your offer. You can boost conversion rates by up to 300% by using multi-step forms.

Multi-step forms reduce form friction, increase incentive, and segment leads in order to increase conversion rates and help generate high-quality leads.

9. Automate your Inbound Sales Strategy

Once you know that your inbound lead generation strategies are working, you want to automate as much of each process as possible. Reducing the manual workload of your wider inbound marketing strategy, you’ll increase the number of leads you can generate. 

At Get Going in Business, we help you automate your lead generation process. We’ll help get prospects to your door, build a database and automate the prospect follow-up process, and have your prospect book your calendar. 

You can also automate most of your email marketing strategy, technical SEO reporting, lead segmentation, and much of your social media activity. Tedious daily tasks such as creating quotes and proposals, invoicing, accounting, etc. can also be automated. If you automate these processes, your lead generation results will skyrocket.

10. Automate your Sales Process

Your inbound lead generation strategy is bringing in more prospects than you ever imagined, and now the challenge is how to handle all of those leads. You have two choices: build a bigger sales team to handle the surge, or you can automate your sales process so that your existing workforce can still take care of everything—which is much more economical.

By automating the sales process from the moment users submit their email addresses, you are able to nurture them along the sales process without any (or minimal) manual input. Your sales team only needs to get involved when a lead drops outside of the automation processes, fails to respond, or contacts your teams contact for any reason.

Wrapping Up

You may be thinking at this point that you already have a wonderful blog and it is not bringing in enough leads or that paid advertising is too expensive. It’s true; these things are difficult. But if your blog isn’t producing enough leads.

If you’ve tried these strategies before and they didn’t work for you, give them another shot and put in the time and effort to get the basics right (great content, compelling ads, etc.). And if you haven’t used any of these techniques yet, now is the time to put them into action in your marketing process.

Learn more today! Book a call with us.

Importance of Inbound Lead Generation to Your Business

People have become resistant to any effort to generate leads online. As a result, outbound lead gen has become more difficult while requiring significant expertise and skills. Many modern businesses have adopted inbound lead generation as their primary approach. The strategy has become popular and is now the go-to approach for targeting low-hanging fruit and accelerating the sales cycle.

In this article, we’ll explain to you everything you need to know about inbound lead generation—including the benefits and a step-by-step process to help you get started.

Are you ready?

Let’s get started.

What Is Inbound Marketing Lead Generation?

Inbound Marketing Lead Generation is a way to attract new prospects to your business through customized educational content. Rather than reaching out to potential leads, you’ll target them with content that answers their specific questions.

Having inbound content on your site will help you generate marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) via organic traffic. Visitors will be encouraged to take an action (download an ebook, get a product demo, gain access to a case study, etc.) which will entice them to provide you with their contact details.

Advantages of Inbound Lead Generation

There are many ways to generate new leads and grow your customer base, but due to limited time and the intense competition in your industry, it’s crucial to prioritize lead-generation strategies that will help your company thrive.

Let’s find out why inbound marketing lead generation is such a popular strategy among major B2B corporations around the world.

1. High-Quality Leads

When comparing lead generation techniques for B2B businesses, quality should always come first. A strategy that does not help you find quality leads who are ready to convert should never be prioritized.

Currently, your prospect’s pain points and interest in your offers determine lead quality. These two factors are difficult to ascertain using outbound lead generation techniques. When you use inbound lead generation, the prospect will come to you seeking assistance. They will find your blog post, which answers all their questions and establishes you as an expert in your field. This will encourage them to reach out to you.

This way, there’s no guessing whether r or not your ideal client profile (ICP) fits your customers. Google will send you dozens of qualified prospects if you rank high in the SERPs for the right keywords.

2. Increase Your Reach

Where do we all turn to when we are looking for a solution? Most of us go to search engines, specifically Google.

Over 92% of the search engine market share is controlled by Google, which has 4.3 billion active users. People turn to Google for quick solutions from established experts to overcome the many challenges they face daily.

You can reach tens of thousands of potential buyers through an SEO-based content marketing strategy. Through the use of proper SEO techniques, a single keyword with a high search volume may draw hundreds of potential clients to your website each month.

With inbound marketing, you can both expand your search engine presence and make it more difficult for competitors to dominate you. Your market share will be fairly divided, and you’ll stay on your potential customer’s radar no matter where they go.

3. Affordability and Efficiency

It’s significantly cheaper to generate leads with inbound marketing than with outbound marketing. You won’t face any unexpected or excessive expenses down the line if you use this approach to find new customers.

For example, you need to create high-quality content for an inbound lead generation campaign and optimize it for SEO. Your website must also be improved and you must build more authoritative backlinks to outrank your rivals for keywords. Even before you begin your inbound campaign, you can anticipate and prepare for all of these costs.

The best part is that you can recycle the content you created into other marketing or sales campaigns later on. You may also use it in your social media campaigns or turn it into infographics or videos, among other things. It helps you develop new prospects and keep them as customers for a long time.

4. Sustainability

Inbound lead generation is a game changer if you want to sustainably generate organic visitors to your sales funnel. It can take weeks or even months for a website to be indexed and ranked on Google, but once it does, it can drive a lot of interested leads.

What’s interesting is that organic web pages are here to stay as long as they are SEO-optimized and up-to-date with Google’s latest trends. You can keep your rankings on search engines and capture new leads from a blog post you published many years ago.

Infographics, YouTube videos, audio podcasts, and guest posts are all examples of content that can be used on social media. It’s crucial to be patient when striving for sustainable results because it is impossible to achieve them right away.

Furthermore, even if your inbound lead generation results are sustainable, you should continue creating new content. Google has always preferred active websites and updated pages when it comes to SEO. Make sure to develop a long-term content strategy to keep your customers’ attention.

5. Scalability

There is no limit to the number of inbound leads your business can generate. Creating new infographics, podcast episodes, and videos is just one way to target thousands of keywords in your content. You can engage more prospects across different platforms by regularly publishing new blog posts. You can also make the most of your initial investment by later updating or recycling each piece into a different form. 

To scale your content, you won’t have to grow your in-house team or train any newcomers in order to scale up your content creation efforts. You can easily outsource the work to freelancers or third-party agencies to assist with the development of your content. You can easily scale up and down based on your content needs and lead generation objectives. 

What Are the Key Elements of Inbound Lead Generation?

While the ultimate goal is increasing lead conversions, the method for attracting new clients to your landing page varies. Inbound marketing aims to capture leads by getting them to come to you instead of reaching out to them.

What do you need to get your first inbound lead generation campaign off the ground?

A Piece of Content

Content is what draws new leads to your company. For example, a blog post ranking on Google, a YouTube video, a tweet, a post on LinkedIn, or something similar would be effective.

An effective content piece must fulfill the following criteria:

  • Relevant to the pain points of the reader.
  • Easy to digest and engaging. 
  • Provide an easy, step-by-step solution.

You’ll only convert quality leads with better-performing content pieces.

Landing Page

A landing page is a web page where visitors can locate your lead magnet and engage with it. It includes a headline, marketing text, the lead magnet, a call-to-action, social proof, as well as gorgeous design and visuals to catch the eye of your target audience. Organic traffic refers to people coming to a blog post and then clicking through to a landing page. With social media, you can drive traffic directly to a landing page and receive direct leads by providing your contact details.

Lead Magnet

This is an incentive or bribe to entice people to visit a website. A visitor remains on a website after finding the information they desire when a lead magnet is present. The lead magnet may be part of the initial solution provided to prospects, or it may be an added piece of content that addresses a more advanced issue.

Here are a few examples of lead magnets.

  • Webinars
  • Ebooks
  • Case studies/whitepapers
  • Demos
  • Discounts
  • Free training sessions

When a target lead enters their contact information (usually name and email address) in order to access your special offer, that counts as a conversion.

Call to Action

An immediate action is prompted by a button, link, text, or question of any sort. It is the next step the visitor must take after they have finished reading the page. When it comes to inbound lead generation, your leads may be prompted to do the following: sign up, download, subscribe, start a free trial, register, etc. 

An inbound marketing lead generation campaign can be maximized by using the CTA as a fundamental component in your marketing copy. It will make your copy more engaging and guarantee that you are making the most of it.

A Thank You Email

A thank you email is an automated message you send to new subscribers once they sign up for your email list.

Do you really need it? Yes. Many salespeople and marketers consider the thank you email to be an optional component of their sales funnel. In reality, it represents the first real connection you will have with any prospect. It also serves as a reminder for your new leads that they are now part of your email subscriber list.

Creating an Effective Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Strategy

So far, we’ve discussed the advantages of inbound marketing lead generation and the key components required to build your campaign. 

It’s time to dive into how you can build a smart inbound lead generation strategy. The good news is your current lead generation strategy and inbound marketing practices have a lot of overlap. Both require a strong brand presence to capture interest and a lot of quality content to nurture new prospects and push them down the funnel.

Let’s begin.

Determine Your Target Audience

You must already know what an ideal customer looks like in terms of demographics, industry, interests, and purchasing preferences if this is not your first time with lead generation. Creating a content strategy tailored to your target audience is critical at this point. You will know which subjects to address, what questions to answer, and what content format to use to maximize engagement.

Knowing your target audience’s preferred channels allows you to focus on the most effective inbound marketing tactics. For example, if you know which social sites your leads are active on, you will be able to dedicate more time and resources to boosting your brand there.

Pick the Right Communication Channels

Where will you publish content to attract new leads? There are many inbound marketing channels you can focus on, depending on your strategy and preferred content. The most popular ones are organic search, social media, email marketing, podcast hosting sites, and direct traffic (from industry websites).

The best inbound marketing approach is one that generates the greatest number of qualified leads. To get you started, here are a few things to consider:

  • Organic search can provide hundreds of leads each month at a minimal cost. 
  • Social media sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter are also terrific for keeping your target audience interested and reaching new audiences.
  • Industry podcasts can be an excellent way to engage with others and keep conversations going if you’re a natural speaker who can speak with people. You can invite a new guest with each new episode to cover trending topics and answer important questions.

Still not sure where to start?

You can try multiple mediums at first, and then compare your lead generation results and drop the ones that aren’t working. Keep three to five channels at once so you can redistribute your content or recycle it into different forms.

Curate Tons of Helpful Content

Content is King. No matter how cliche that statement is, it’s the core of your inbound marketing lead generation. The quality of your content matters if you want to leave a positive first impression. When organic visitors land on your website, they expect to get precise, informative answers to their questions. They want an outstanding user experience with comprehensive solutions to help them overcome their daily challenges.

Here are some things that make high-quality content. 

Longer educational content provides detailed answers and is preferred over shorter pieces. Google, for example, prefers longer content and ranks it higher because it provides more value. Longer videos perform better on YouTube in terms of analytics, as well.

It’s crucial to keep visitors engaged and eager to read more articles on your site. Improve readability by dividing your write-ups into headings and subheadings, using high-quality images, and keeping paragraphs short.

Additionally, increasing your internal linking structure is a great way to increase rankings and keep visitors on your website for longer. In order to optimize your content for SEO, include low-difficulty keywords and long-tail phrases to increase relevance in the SERPs.

By adhering to these principles when creating content, you will make new leads adore your brand before even seeing your products or services. This makes it simpler for you to send more visitors to your landing page and get more individuals interested in what you have to offer.

Landing Page

A landing page is the living room of your website; it’s where visitors come to gain access to your lead magnet and learn more about your offerings. An excellent landing page keeps leads interested in your product. It makes your potential customers connect with the product and recognises its significance.

What makes a great landing page?

  • Have an attention-grabbing page title, headings, and subheadings. 
  • Generate engaging and captivating web copy. 
  • Have high-quality videos and images. 
  • Have strong CTA buttons that encourage visitors to take action. 
  • Create a unique lead magnet that your visitors just can’t resist.

When a prospect wants to get your freebie, they must first complete a form that captures their contact information. That is why lead magnets are crucial to the lead generation process.

Create Ads for Your Lead Magnet

You’ve researched your target buyers and created loads of content to help you draw them to your business. You also created a landing page and a tempting lead magnet that entices inbound leads to give you their contact information.

What’s next?

Now is the time to promote your free offer and make the most out of your inbound marketing strategy. Every visitor to your website must see your lead magnet and fill out the form to obtain it. The process of promoting your lead magnet doesn’t have to be too complicated or cost you an arm and a leg. You can use PPC lead generation to get more leads to your landing page. Depending on the marketing channel you choose and the content format you create, you can show potential leads what you have to offer and encourage them to convert.

Here are some tips to increase the conversions of your lead magnets: 

  • Make it possible for all organic visitors to see your lead magnets after reading your content. 
  • Use social media channels and YouTube informational videos to promote your lead magnets.
  • Showcase your landing pages on social media pages and business profiles. 
  • Create targeted ads on search engines and Facebook. 
  • Host live events, webinars, and workshops to promote your landing page.

You put a lot of effort into creating an attractive lead magnet that answers their needs. Make the most of it by promoting it repeatedly whenever you can.

Summary

The use of search engines and social media marketing has become more popular as a result of inbound marketing lead generation. Creating excellent content and utilizing it to capture highly-targeted leads at a low cost has become a popular B2B tactic. Understanding the key components of inbound lead generation helps you focus on the right aspects and spend more time improving on what matters in your strategy.

Develop a strong landing page with a lead magnet tailored to address your prospects’ pain points. Then create content to reach your leads where they are and increase your brand reach.

Want to learn more about Inbound lead generation? 

Book a call today!

11 Effective SaaS Lead Generation Tactics From Industry Leaders

Predictability is key to achieving real SaaS business growth. Predicting your revenue accurately allows you to make better decisions regarding expenditures, new hires, and product development. It’s critical to know whether you’re on track to hit your revenue goals and whether you’ll have enough cash on-hand to pay your bills at the end of the month. 

You can forecast your revenue if you know how many new leads your business receives each month and how many of those leads convert into paying customers. You’ll inevitably grow your revenue if you can improve and increase your lead generation.

Unfortunately, generating leads for SaaS can be one of the biggest challenges a business can face. In this post, I’ll share 11 ways to improve your SaaS lead generation and generate real results.

Have a Defined Goal

How do you define a ‘lead’?

Is the lead someone who might purchase? Is it someone who signed up for your email list or liked or shared one of your LinkedIn posts? You must define what makes a lead and what does not, since SaaS marketers work with a variety of leads. You may even be targeting a variety of leads in different campaigns, so you will require a system that can automate lead qualification. It can be extremely powerful and simple to automate.

It’s especially crucial in SaaS marketing for startups to get this right, or else you risk causing a lot of confusion and making inaccurate growth projections. There are three types of SaaS leads:

  • Information Qualified Leads (IQL)
  • Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)
  • Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)

These three categories represent three different levels of customer intent. Let’s have a look at each of them. 

Information Qualified Leads (IQL)

Cold leads, also known as IQLs, are prospect leads at the beginning of the buyer journey, aka the awareness stage. They are typically people who have encountered your top-of-funnel content (blogs, e-books) and have given up an email address in exchange for more valuable information (such as signing up for your blog or reading an e-book).

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)

MQLs are in the consideration phase of the customer journey, and are referred to as “warm leads.” They are closer to purchasing than IQLs, but not as hot as SQLs. Prospects have continued to express interest in your product, have probably watched a few webinars, downloaded some whitepapers, and view your company as an option for solving the problems they are facing.

Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)

Most of us want the SQL kind of leads but, unfortunately, we have to start with IQLs and nurture the leads until they become SQLs or “hot leads.” A SQL is in the decision phase of the buying cycle and is ready to make a decision. Salespeople typically get involved here, offering a bottom-of-the-funnel type offer (such as a free demo or trial) and striving to close the deal. 

Content Creation for Lead Generation

Creating content is a great way to generate leads. Today, content marketing is the future of marketing. With a plethora of content tactics at their disposal, SaaS marketers are well on their way to victory if they start with just these three: blogging, gated content, and webinars.

SaaS Blogging

In the 90s, blogs were all the rage, and soon after they became “uncool” very quickly. They have now come full circle. There are over 70 million blog posts published every month on WordPress websites alone.

Creating mediocre SaaS blog posts and publishing them on a semi-regular basis isn’t enough to achieve real success. You must ensure that your blog aligns with your SaaS marketing objectives. If your objective is to generate leads, you must be dedicated to doing so. Remember, consistency is critical. You will not turn a reader into an opportunity unless you provide such remarkable value that they are desperate for more.

Keep these questions in mind when creating blog content:

  • Is my post directed to my specific target audience? Does it provide a solution to them?
  • Is the search volume of my keywords good enough to justify why I’m writing this topic?
  • Are there clear and actionable insights in my post?
  • Is the post impressive enough for me to give my email address after reading it? 

No matter how great your post idea is, if it doesn’t answer at least one of the above questions, your blog isn’t ready to publish (or your topic idea doesn’t need to be written). Always include a clear customer persona and give the reader real, actionable value.

Gated Content

It’s all about give and take. You’re doing trade with your audience. A good example is giving away a valuable e-book in exchange for a prospect’s information (typically an email address).

How can you expect prospective customers to give up their email address when there are so many valuable in-depth blog posts and videos available for free online? The key is providing value that no other company can offer. You will have a better chance of winning if you have already shown your exceptional proficiency, which is why you will often find this approach employed on SaaS blog pages.

Here is an example of how it can be done from Shopify:

Shopify places gated content above the fold on their blog page, as shown here. They offer you content that you’d normally pay to get. It’s impossible to turn down an offer like that. Free business lessons?

You can very easily build a large email list of leads by offering exceptional value in exchange for just an email address.

Webinars

Hosting a webinar is the best way to show your expertise and authority on a subject.

Choose a subject you or your company is an expert in, then decide on the format. Here are a few choices to consider:

  • One speaker—pre-prepped content that can be presented with or without a live speaker. 
  • Two speakers—an interview scenario that can be live or pre-recorded.Get industry experts and authority figures for these interviews. 
  • Multi-speaker—this involves one main host and guests in a panel. This format is quite popular in the SaaS niche as it helps drive conversations around specific topics. 

Once you’ve decided what the webinar is going to cover and how it will run, it’s time to get some sign-ups! Targeted social media ads are one of the best ways to accomplish this. You should create a dedicated landing page and add CTAs to relevant pages on your website.

There are many webinar platforms for SaaS applications. Some of the most popular include WebinarJam, Demio, Zoom,  LiveStorm, EverWebinar, ZohoMeeting, WebinarNinja and GoToWebinar. You must secure a platform to host the webinar, as well as handle sign-ups and SMS or email reminders.

Recorded webinars can be a tremendous asset for content marketing after the event is over. You can utilize old live webinars as on-demand webinars, video guides, or even have them transcribed into e-books or blog posts. 

The Best Lead Generator Is Your Website

Whether you’re focusing on organic traffic through content marketing, paid social media campaigns, or extensive email marketing programs, you’re probably directing prospective clients to your website. As a result, you must ensure that your website is optimized to increase your conversion rates if that is the case. 

There is an entire field dedicated to conversion optimization, but here are some pointers from experts that will get you started.

Have an Exit Intent Popup

Have you ever been browsing a website and noticed that as you moved your cursor towards the top of the screen a little popup box appeared? The box is referred to as an exit intent popup. 

When a prospect clicks on the exit button, the popup is activated. It’s the holy grail of website lead gen as it acts like a last ditch effort to get your audience to give you what you’re asking. The contents of the box are entirely up to you, but it’s usually a good idea to give away something of incredible value for free (such as a free email course).

You should consider establishing different exit intent popup windows for different web pages. The customer may be interested in a different offer if they are exiting a blog page (e.g. subscribe to our blog) than if they are exiting a product page (e.g. how about a free trial?).

Get a ChatBot

Your chatbot should function as your store’s virtual assistant to get your customers talking. A chatbot can play the same role as a physical store employee, by helping customers find their way around or offering service. Even if they are just looking, an employee is always present to help them.

You can set up a chatbot to answer a number of common questions, or to direct the prospect to their area of need. If the chatbot is unable to answer a particular question, don’t shy away from saying “give us your email, we’ll get back to you.” Cha-ching!

Here is an example from RingCentral:

RingCentral’s chatbot eliminates barriers and makes it simple and instant to start a conversation with a salesperson.

Offer a Free Trial

A free trial is the best way to snag hot leads at the bottom of the funnel. Having a prospect go deep into your product during a trial is not only a great way to capture some prospect information, but it also gives them an opportunity to determine if it works for them. If the trial lasts long enough, they will begin integrating it into their company processes, which ensures a yes every time.

In addition, it provides your salespeople with a good reason to connect with customers. Would you like a free demo, Mr. Customer? Here’s what we have to offer…

Rather than having prospective customers only clicking “free trial” buttons, helping them use and understand your software will increase the conversion rates. It’s one thing to click a “try it free” button, but it’s another to actually spend some time diving deep.

One way to accomplish this is by pairing up a sales representative with a free demo. This will also open an avenue for you to know how serious they are about using your solution. You can also assist prospects by creating quality content to guide them through using your product. 

Videos are excellent content for this, as they help show your prospects the features of your software. Prospects can follow along and experiment with your video in real time, and that’s what makes it so effective here.

Social Media as a B2B SaaS Lead Generation Solution

Choosing your SaaS marketing channels wisely is critical to success. Recall that you are marketing to business decision-makers, so you will likely not reach your target audience on platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok.

Despite that, you shouldn’t write off social media entirely. Far from it.

Many social media platforms still function well for SaaS lead generation, particularly LinkedIn, which is fairly business-oriented. You should also consider using Twitter and, especially if your customer personas are the right demographic, Facebook.

Run Targeted Ads (In-Stream Ads)

When users are scrolling through Facebook or LinkedIn, they’ll most likely see a display ad. SaaS businesses typically use them as a type of native advertising based on their customer personas. This strategy pushes ads to users that match the criteria you’ve set such as interests, occupation, and location.

Have you ever wondered why sometimes after you’ve searched for something online, you start getting ads on that particular thing on your social media pages? Well, LinkedIn and Facebook have pixels that help businesses track the traffic that comes to their website. These pixels are also used to remarket content to those prospective customers on social media. 

Pixels allow you to construct what is known as a lookalike audience. In other words, you can request Facebook to locate similar individuals (in terms of demographics and interests, for example) to those who have been to your website and show them an ad. An ad being shown to highly relevant people is more likely if they share several aspects with prospects who have already shown an interest in your company.

Your ad must direct viewers to take a specific action when using social media for lead generation. The best approach to accomplish this is to encourage viewers to click through to a particular landing page in an effort to convert prospective customers into leads on your website.

LinkedIn InMail

InMail on LinkedIn operates a bit differently than in-stream advertisements. It’s similar to sending an advertisement directly to someone’s inbox, rather than displaying it in their social feed. Yes, it is a more assertive approach, but it gets stuff done. InMail on LinkedIn has a 300% higher reply rate than emails using identical content.

Email Marketing

Everyone is attempting to improve email at the moment. Slack is calling themselves the “alternative to email.”  Some businesses are returning to physical mailings in response to InMail killing email. But to be fair, these guys drinking craft beer and listening to their favorite indie bands on vinyl are probably still twirling their mustaches, you get the point.

Despite this, the fact remains that email marketing is still a very lucrative field with an insane return on investment. You can get some pretty sweet open rates if your headlines are strong.

Here is how to achieve this:

  • Include a CTA button in your email signature.

Companies send hundreds, if not thousands of emails on a daily basis. If you send tens of emails daily, imagine the number of emails sent by different businesses in a day. Unless you have a strong call to action in your email signatures, you are missing out on a chance. Yes, it is important not to overstuff your signature. You have undoubtedly already included your social media links as well as your contact information. The trick is to keep it simple but also include a link to sign up for a free trial or subscribe to your blog.

  • Request for email sign-ups EVERYWHERE.

Avoiding going overboard as no one wishes to wade through endless popups to reach a website. You can, however, include several CTAs in your marketing content without being excessively pushy. You can have about four CTAs on a page, with all of them requiring an email address. Be subtle and smart about it and you’ll accomplish this without intrusive popup ads.

  • Create an email series campaign.

At some point or another, some of your prospects will fall out of the pipeline. Whether they decided against making a purchase or preferred a competitor, you will inevitably have a percentage of leads that do not convert into a “yes,” and  others may never give you a sound “no.”

All is not lost. Even if a competitor wins the account, there’s still a chance that those prospects will become paying customers in the future, so don’t write them off just yet. Instead of hoping for luck, establish an email drip campaign in which you slowly and steadily demonstrate that you are the solution they require. At some point, their existing solution will not be adequate, and you’ll be there waiting for the jackpot.

Rather than creating lots of conversion-focused campaigns, these drip campaigns should be less frequent and less intense. A single email every month should suffice, and it should focus on providing as much value as possible rather than simply sending emails for the sake of it. For instance, you can invite them to your future webinar, offer them an e-book, etc. 

Wrapping Up!

It is crucial to employ a multi-channel approach when generating leads for SaaS. Putting all your eggs in one basket and expecting them all to hatch is improbable. You must experiment, find out what works best for your business, test, fine-tune, and try again.

Here is a list of the significant SaaS business growth lead generation techniques:

Content MarketingWebsiteSocial MediaEmail Marketing
Blog Exit Intent PopupsIn-Stream AdsAdd CTAs to email signatures
Gated ContentChatbotLinkedIn InMailMaximize email signups
WebinarsFree TrialsBoosted PostsDrip Campaigns

Sure, there are many other tactics you can employ, but these have been tried and tested to result in SaaS triumphs.

Do you want to learn more on SaaS lead generation?

Let’s talk! Book a call today!

6 Best Tips for Content Marketing Lead Generation

Sadly, for content marketing lead generation 30% of new businesses fail in their first two years, 50% in the first five years, and 66% in the first ten.  

Why do so many businesses fail? 

There are plenty of potential pitfalls:

  • Poor market research
  • Insufficient financing
  • Poor business planning
  • Bad marketing
  • Poor choice of location
  • Limited online presence

Poor content marketing can have a huge impact on your business. Many business owners and marketers fail because they approach marketing incorrectly. 

They do not frequently optimize their marketing campaigns to increase conversions, gather leads, and drive sales.

There is no doubt that marketing is one of the most effective methods to boost lead generation for business development. In fact, content marketing produces 3 times as many leads as other traditional marketing techniques, according to a DemandMetric report.

So how do you create excellent content that generates leads for your company?

This guide explores six effective ways to generate leads using content marketing.

1. Create a Buyer Persona

Did you know that you can generate a thousand leads and still not make a single sale?

Your content must be tailored to suit your target audience if you want it to be effective. If you create content that isn’t compatible with your audience, you risk wasting time and money on leads that won’t convert. 

Before starting with content marketing, you must first identify your target audience and develop a persona for them.

What Is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a research-based profile that describes the sort of person that would purchase a particular product or brand. A buyer persona provides information on the prospective buyer—their characteristics, preferences, and types of touchpoints that lead people to buy your product (or your competitor’s).

If you know who your prospective customers are and what questions they need to be answered, you will be able to create informative, valuable content that addresses their pain points and answers their questions. The process of turning visitors into leads begins with producing content that provides immense value.

You must know the customer’s needs in order to deliver value.

The following are some of the specifics that must be included in your buyer persona:

  • Biographical details: Name, age, gender, location, profession, family size, and so on. 
  • Values: What are the values, hopes, and ambitions that the customer has, or goals they are striving for?
  • Pain points: What are the issues that they need to solve? What problems are they struggling with and what questions are they asking?

Knowing who your target audience is can help you create content that meets their demands and boosts conversions.

There are a number of tools available to help you build your buyer persona if you are unfamiliar with the process.

  • Facebook Audience Insights

The Facebook Audience Insights tool is located inside the Facebook Ad Manager. Using this tool, you can discover a lot of information about your audience and use it to build a persona. You can also add interests that you want to research to get more information about your customers.

  • Quantcast

There are over 200 billion global internet searches each month, and Quantcast delivers real-time data on over 100 million of those. Using artificial intelligence, Quantcast helps you better understand your target audience. They help you accurately track and measure your audience using artificial intelligence.

  • Survey Gizmo

Survey Gizmo is a terrific tool for conducting surveys on your audience so that you can construct your own buyer persona based on real audience responses. If you already have an email list, you can use Survey Gizmo to examine data on your current customers.

2. Use the Content-Type Best Suited for Your Audience

There are hundreds of content types available, and in order for your content marketing efforts to have a profitable ROI, you will need to create content that suits your audience.

Creating content for your marketing strategy is the key to generating either traffic or leads. You need both to turn a profit— before you can generate any leads, you must bring visitors to your site.

Some examples of content you can use to generate traffic are:

  • Blog posts

Blog posts can be a valuable resource for generating traffic to your website. They provide value for your readers and increase the number of indexable pages in your domain. They are also excellent at directing people to your landing or sales page.

  • Video content

Videos are another terrific way of driving traffic to your site. Make engaging, audience-focused videos to boost the number of times they are shared. Also, focus your efforts on YouTube. YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. Creating videos that are appropriate for the platform can boost traffic to your website.

  • Social media posts

There are currently 2.95 billion social media users in the world. You should take advantage of this and publish posts on social media to drive visitors to your website. This means optimizing your social profiles, interacting with other users, and using targeted social media advertisements.

  • Podcasts

Production of podcasts has been on the rise in recent years, as indicated by a 2019 report on podcast statistics. As of now, there have been more than 700,000 podcasts created, with 29 million podcast episodes produced. You can communicate with your customers more intimately using podcasts, hopefully resulting in a bump in traffic to your site.

  • Infographics

The Demand Gen Report stated that infographics can increase your web traffic by 12% and receive 650% more engagement than normal guest posts. Visual marketing is very much in vogue, so you should seize the opportunity by increasing your visual marketing efforts.

Once you’ve begun seeing traffic from your content efforts, the next step is to create content that can be used for lead generation.

A new blog that hasn’t started generating any traffic yet can still generate leads through great content, but what happens then?

3. Use Content Syndication

People seeing your content is one way to leverage content syndication.

What is Content Syndication?

When you post your content on a high-traffic third-party site, you immediately have the potential to generate a lot of leads. Syndicating your content means uploading it to sites that are larger than you to generate more traffic and increase engagement.

Netline is a B2B lead generation network that allows you to syndicate your content so that you can build traffic and generate leads faster. The best thing about this platform is that it is performance-based, meaning you only pay for the leads that are generated.

Make sure to use canonical tags to tell search engines which content is the primary one that should be given SEO value, to avoid having duplicate content issues or getting a penalty from the Google algorithm.

Medium, Slideshare, Quora, Outbrain, Taboola, Scoop.it, Facebook Business, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Tumblr are some of the best platforms for content syndication.

4. Pick Your Content Distribution Network

Creating content is one thing, getting people to see it is another. You must decide on a marketing channel mix to distribute your content. 

There are two main ways to distribute content—organic and paid channels.

You don’t need money to get started with organic distribution channels. Organic channels are the best option if you are on a budget. The only drawback with organic channels is that it takes time to build online authority and credibility. Organic channels grow over time, and it may take a few months before you notice a significant improvement in your audience size or site traffic.

Here are some of the most commonly used organic distribution channels:

Concentrate on spending your budget on the channels where your buyer personas spend most of their time. If you’ve done adequate research on your ideal customers, you’ll know which channels they spend most of their time on. You don’t need to distribute your content across all of these channels at once.

Paid channels generate results immediately but require money to get started. If your PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns are optimally configured, all you have to do is buy some ads and you will start seeing traffic right away.

Here are some of the most commonly used paid distribution channels: 

  • Social media ads
  • Display ads
  • Search ads
  • Content delivery networks
  • Native ads

Using both organic and paid distribution can make give you more comprehensive lead generation for your site in the long run.

5. Use Compelling Lead Magnets

An ineffective lead magnet is detrimental to lead generation, even if you have a lot of traffic.

What is Lead Generation (Lead Gen) Content?

Lead generation content is also referred to as a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a valuable resource that you offer to a prospect in exchange for information (typically an email address). You can also refer to these as gated content.

People are extremely protective when it comes to their email addresses. You must offer something valuable in exchange for an email address in order to convince a prospect to hand one over.

You can use the following types of content to generate leads:

  • Case Studies
  • eBooks/How-to guides
  • Checklists
  • Whitepapers
  • Recipes
  • Free reports
  • Webinars
  • Mini-courses
  • Quizzes
  • Free trials or demos of a product
  • Templates
  • Cheatsheets

An effective lead magnet should possess the following attributes:

  • It should provide a solution for your target audience’s needs. 
  • It should be specific, as it’s targeted to a specific user. Generalized content does not translate to high conversion rates.  
  • It should be easy to access. The user doesn’t need to follow a long process to get it. 
  • It should not only be easy to digest/consume but also engaging to the reader. 

6. Create Optimized Landing Pages

You may be squandering a lot of potentials if your website receives a lot of traffic but your landing page is not optimized to generate leads. Here are some strategies you can utilize to improve the conversion rate of your landing pages:

Delete the navigation bar

An opt-in or close button should be the only option at the top of your landing pages. Having a navigation bar up there can be a distraction and prevent visitors from converting.

An increase of 100% in conversions was recorded on the Yuppiechef case study by deleting the navigation bar from the landing page.

Make sure your call-to-action  (CTA) button is clear

The purpose of a great CTA button is to persuade users to take action. A CTA button should be simple and visible. The colors red, green, orange, and yellow work best for CTA buttons. Make sure your button attracts the visitor’s attention.

Wrapping It Up

For a business plan and marketing strategy to generate maximum return on investment, you need to follow the right steps. By applying these six strategies your lead generation goals are met, that increase your conversion rates, and ultimately drive more sales for your product. 

Learn More Today, Book a Call Today. 

7 Most Effective SaaS Lead Generation Strategies

Most marketing departments consider outbound sales strategies as their bread and butter. However, in today’s SaaS lead generation market, where prospects are increasingly savvy, these strategies may no longer work as well.

Prospects are no longer willing to be barraged with one spammy message after another. Who likes spam? For this reason, SaaS lead generation must adapt to more sophisticated prospecting and engagement methods in order to be effective.

Both online and offline marketing techniques are effective ways to gain new leads and potential subscribers for B2B SaaS companies.

In this article, we’ll explore 7 different lead-generation tactics to help you gain more clients for your company. But first, let’s have a look at what lead generation in SaaS is all about. 

What is the definition of lead generation in SaaS?

SaaS firms provide software that customers can access online rather than installing on their own computers, so users can access the program from anywhere and at any time.

Some SaaS business examples are Google Apps (docs), Salesforce (CRM), Dropbox (cloud storage), Slack (communication), GitHub (code hosting), and MailChimp (email marketing).

It’s wrong to say that lead generation is limited to websites since even social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter generate leads. However, the majority of leads nowadays are produced via online marketing efforts.

Picking up the right leads can be one of the most challenging parts of the sales cycle. Lead nurturing is a process of nurturing an active lead to a better stage of the sales cycle. This process includes sending emails, calls, offers, and other messages to a lead.

A lead could be someone who has started filling out a form on your website and stopped halfway through or someone who has downloaded a free trial of your software but never sent you their credit card information.

Even though money doesn’t grow on trees, customers must be directed to consider your company as a potential service provider. However, as we all understand, leads must be pursued and persuaded to convert to clients.

What makes a SaaS lead generation strategy important?

SaaS lead generation strategies utilize both organic and inorganic approaches. On one hand, organic techniques seek to get your website discovered naturally in search engines. Inorganic techniques seek to actively connect with your potential customers via social media, email marketing, paid advertising, and other digital channels.

The purpose of SaaS lead generation is to attract a qualified audience and convince them to purchase your product. Here are 7 tactics to supercharge your SaaS lead generation today.

7 Strategies to Skyrocket Lead Generation for SaaS Businesses

1. Find the platforms your customers use for lead generation.

When creating a marketing strategy for your SaaS product, you should be sure to find your target audience and make sure you stand out.

It’s not always straightforward—for instance, Instagram isn’t just for beauty consultants and clothes stores—it’s also for SaaS photo editing companies. If you know who your target customers are and what they want, you’ll be able to determine which platforms they’ll be on. All you need to do then is reach them!

2. Share not only engaging but also informative content.

Your SaaS marketing strategy must be well-informed and consistent in order to make the most of your content. Do your homework, publish frequently, and optimize!

Before you begin writing about your industry, you must research your buyer personas and see what has been said on the subject before. Get on board with new trends and new developments.

Prioritize posting on a regular schedule. Once a month is not enough; your followers must have something new to digest at least once a week (if not more frequently).

The more content you generate, the more opportunities you will have to position yourself as an expert and leader in whatever field your SaaS caters to. This shows that you understand what your target market is experiencing and you can help them.

Remember SEO. Everything from a piece of content’s length to other websites’ links to it affects its ‘Google-ability,’ so be sure to keep that in mind when creating informative material.

3. Optimize your site speed.

Speed is one of the most important ranking factors directly affecting the user experience. Therefore, it is crucial to optimize your website’s speed.

Everyone has experienced the frustration of a slow-loading website. Even a short wait can make a person want to click away.

Your website is likely to lose 40% of visitors if it takes more than three seconds to load—and those visitors aren’t the only things lost. Poor website performance can also negatively impact your search engine rankings, lead generation, and sales conversion rates, in addition to lowering your visitor retention rates.

Use online tools such as GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights to monitor your website’s loading time and compare your results with those of similar websites. 

4. Ensure that your site is mobile-friendly.

The ratio of mobile to desktop use is growing in the marketing sector, so it’s crucial that your website is mobile-friendly.

Buyers don’t have the time to sit down at their computers to make all their purchases these days.  So having a mobile-friendly website is critical for expanding your business. 

According to ThinkwithGoogle, an average site should take 15 seconds to load on mobile. If you don’t have one, you may be losing leads right when they are most likely to convert.

The last thing you want is for a prospective customer to get irritated on your website and leave in search of a competitor that is more mobile-friendly. 

Make your website mobile-friendly and optimized now!

5. Write articles for other sites.

There have been a lot of mixed thoughts on guest blogging lately. Some people think it’s dead, while others are still employing it to drive traffic to their website and generate leads for their company.

Choose a site that has readers in line with your target audience. This ensures that you will get the right traffic back to your website. 

Pick a website with a high domain authority rating, since that means it’s regarded as a high-quality site by search engines. Your website will perform better in search engine results due to receiving backlinks from this site. You can use AHref and Moz to determine the domain authority of a website.

Ensure that your guest post on another site provides as much value to readers as what you provide on your own site. By pitching this way, you may be able to write another guest post for them in the future.

6. Use customer service automation tools to help with customer support.

Chatbots and live chats are excellent customer service automation tools, and they can help you grow your lead generation. Having them available 24/7 is one of their greatest advantages. Even if your company has limited working hours, this will impress your customers and demonstrate that you care about them.

You can use chatbots to automate simple tasks such as providing users with answers to frequently asked questions or instructing them on how to use the basic features of your software.

Having live support agents available who care about customer needs and are ready to answer questions will be appreciated by your customers.

7. Try out click pop-ups.

We will finish this list of effective SaaS lead generation tactics by suggesting click pop-ups.

There are many types of pop-ups, but not all of them are effective at generating leads.

Having a short signup process that asks for visitors’ email addresses and names means that visitors will not feel forced to provide their information when they encounter a click pop-up.

Platforms to Boost SaaS Lead Generation

GetResponse

Are you looking for a solution to help you create landing pages? GetResponse is it. 

You can utilize GetResponse to generate qualified leads with ease.

With its live chat, transactional email notifications, and landing page builder, it helps you to increase your sales. Using this platform, you can convert traffic, nurture leads, score, and segment them.

With GetResponse as your all-in-one marketing platform, you can: 

  • Make use of the email marketing services’ email creator, autoresponders, email analytics, bulk emails, transactional emails, and list management to upgrade your campaigns.
  • Build a website to advertise your own company using an AI-powered creator, predesigned templates, drag-and-drop editors, forms and popups, and domain management.
  • Tags and scores can help you automate your workflow by providing automation flows, abandoned cart emails, website visitor tracking, and product recommendations.
  • Use screen sharing, call-to-action buttons, on-demand webinars, whiteboards, and polls and surveys to draw in your target market.
  • Set up paid ads that request social media connections, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google—all supplied by GetResponse—that may be used to generate leads.
  • Using Facebook Pixel, create signup forms, pop-ups, countdown timers, and e-commerce tools to create landing pages that generate revenue.
  • By using live chat with customization tools, visitor capture forms, chat notifications, and chat analytics, you can improve user experience by staying in constant contact with your audience.
  • You can keep track of the conversion rates with custom prompts, unlimited notifications, web push analytics, and automated notifications.
  • Access an SMS editor, URL shortener, and SMS reports that can be used to automate the entire SMS marketing process.

Pricing starts at $15.58 per month for 1,000 contacts.

Hubspot

HubSpot provides a variety of tools to help salespeople generate more leads and be more successful. Sales teams can benefit from sales automation, pipeline management, meeting scheduling, tracking, goal setting, and live chat.

More sophisticated tools are available at higher tiers, such as sales forecasting, 1:1 video creation, smart send times, and predictive lead scoring. These features will allow your team to generate more leads with less effort.

Two users can be added for $45 per month.

MailChimp

There’s a good reason why Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms—it can significantly help you generate leads.

Using the platform’s easy-to-use, drag-and-drop email builder, you can create stunning emails and use email automation to keep things running smoothly. 

There are paid plans starting at $11/month, or you can get Hyper Plan for free.

Wrapping Up

With these 7 strategies listed above, SaaS lead generation can be a game-changer for online companies selling their products.

In addition to email marketing, you can utilize any of the strategies listed above to boost your marketing efforts and generate more leads.

All of these strategies are relatively easy and inexpensive to put into practice. Hopefully, just one of them will be sufficient to meet your objectives!

Learn More Today, Book a Call Today.