Lead generation is the online marketing technique where, as discussed above, you want to attract a potential customer or lead to your website and then leave his / her details. In exchange for this information, the lead receives a reward, eg a brochure or e-book. The goal of lead generation is long-term cooperation, but of course also increase the turnover of your company in the first place.
To have a healthy funnel, you need a constant influx of customers. Profiles that really have a chance to become a (paying) customer of your company. We call this process lead generation. And we tell you how to approach that.
You probably also know the following annoyance. Just when you are incredibly busy, you get such an annoying telemarketer on the line. He clearly realizes that you are not interested, but stubbornly ignores your polite rejections until you have no other choice but to end the call in the middle of his muddle. What a nightmare!
These days, however, such cold calls are no longer necessary for anything. After all, companies can also use lead generation. This solution is not only much more customer-friendly, but also more effective! Read along and discover why.
The defination of SEO leads
SEO leads are a technical term from the marketing world. You can translate them as prospects, or potential clients obtained by SEO. Simply put, they are people who are interested in your company, your services or your products, without necessarily being ready to make a purchase. Examples of a lead or prospect are in particular people who fill in their personal information to receive an e-book, a brochure, quotation, contact or some other form of content.
Unlike cold calling, lead generation never has to impose itself to get that personal info. After all, lead generation aims to let a user take the first step towards a company, and not the other way around. That is a much more constructive approach.
Lead generation with SEO
So. You know what an SEO lead is now. Then we now tell you what lead generation with SEO means. It is a marketing strategy designed to entice potential future customers to enter their details on one of your web pages. Of course, to entice them to do so, you must offer them something in return. That something must be of value to them at that time. Good examples are podcasts, e-books or a brochure. After all, they build on the long-term relationship that starts once these people have entered their data.
This strategy is quite recent. That explains why many discussion partners hear it thundering in Cologne when I describe my job as “creating content for lead generation”. So recently I started using this somewhat longer description of my daily tasks: “I present our products and services in various tempting ways to attract potential future customers. For example, I write blog posts to pique their interest. And as soon as their interest is strong enough, they themselves naturally take the initiative for a purchase. ”
An explanation for the efficiency of SEO lead generation
When you compare SEO lead generation with more traditional marketing techniques, you immediately notice how natural the relationship is between prospects and the company. To the extent that prospects themselves will contact your company to make a purchase.
However, lead generation does not stand alone. It’s part of a larger process called inbound marketing that consists of converting, closing and pleasing. In that larger context, lead generation is part of the conversion phase. In other words, at the stage where your target audience is attracted and “converted” into prospects. So you can safely call lead generation an indispensable milestone in your buyer journey.
Qualifying SEO Leads
Let’s recap: SEO leads are people who are interested in your services or products. But what kind of interest is meant here?
In the case of lead generation, the interest should primarily lead to the collection of personal data. People can have different reasons for sharing their data. Receiving a coupon is still a good driver. But it can also be a brochure or an e-book. And who would not leave his details if he can use it to submit his candidacy for an exciting vacancy?
Lead generation can therefore be based on the most diverse motives depending on the situation, the target group, and your services or products. The only constant is that you always ask for data. Because only when a visitor to your website has entered his details, you are completely sure that you have a lead with sufficient interest.
What do you need for SEO lead generation?
Now that you know what SEO lead generation means, it is important to also explain what lead generation consists of. Lead generation makes frequent use of a few basic components. We list the most important for you:
Landing page: a landing page is a specific type of web page that has been created specifically to meet the search query of a particular type of visitor. For lead generation, that landing page will also have to contain a form.
Form: a lead fills in their personal information on a form with multiple fields. In return, the lead receives something of value to him.
Call to action: to encourage a surfer to hand over his personal information, we use what is called a call to action in marketing. That is an encouragement to take a specific action. In the case of lead generation, this is of course sending personal data via a form. A call to action is often a long or short text, but an image or a button sometimes works just as well.
Offer: A call to action in itself is usually not enough, the visitor should really get something in exchange for his data. We call that the offer. With lead generation, this is often the content he was looking for on the page. That content can take the form of a brochure, an e-book or something else. As long as the content is attractive enough to leave data behind.
Buying leads: a good idea?
We admit it: buying lead is much easier and much faster than lead generation. Many marketers and sales people do not shy away from it. But is that also a good idea? Not at all! After all, buying leads will rarely give you valuable results. In fact, you run two major risks with it.
The first big risk is that you cause just as much frustration as the cold caller we started this story with. After all, when you buy leads, you end up with a pool of people who don’t know your business or at least have never handed over their data to your business themselves. That makes you just as unwanted as a cold caller.
The second risk is even greater if possible. If you send an email to people who have not asked for it, you run a significant risk of them clicking the spam button. That in itself is bad in itself. But if multiple people click on that spam button every time one of your emails falls into their mailbox, you risk email providers blacklisting you. And once you end up in that blacklist, it is difficult to get out again. And as if that were not enough reason to avoid this risk, a blacklist is also very harmful to your delivery rate and your IP reputation.
Conclusion about lead generation
If you had to learn one lesson from this article, it is no doubt that you should not buy leads. Never. We have not denied that you will have to put more time and work into this. But you now also know that you will get tangible results from it. Like real sales. And, of course, the wonderful satisfaction of a real reward for your hard work.
Now you would of course like to know how to enable lead generation for your specific needs. However, in order to find out, you will have to approach Leadstalents with marketing experts. They are happy to help you with tailor-made advice!