The short answer:  A visitor to your landing page or website fills out a form to get more information about your business or a special offer on your product or service. It's simple, right?

Setting up a lead generation system does not need to be complicated or expensive.  As a matter of fact, lead generation may be one of the most affordable inbound marketing strategies for a small business.  So now that we understand the basic goal is attracting interested prospects to your business to learn more about your product or service, what is the process and how does lead generation work?

The short answer: A visitor to your landing page or website fills out a form to get more information about your business or a special offer on your product or service.

The Lead Generation Process

Potential customers can find your business through one or many different marketing methods.  Search engines are one of the most popular places many consumers start when looking for a particular product or service.  For this reason, a good SEO strategy to funnel organic traffic to your website or blog is important.

Landing pages are an equally important tool in the lead generation process, and this is where you will promote your best products and services using paid advertising and create your call-to-action message.  This page is designed to capture the lead information and allow you the opportunity to move forward in the sales process.

Different Lead Generation Strategies

There are no "one size fits all" strategies for lead generation.  While the flow of a lead generation process is similar, the strategy can vary in a fast-evolving market based on consumer behaviors, economic conditions, latest trends, opinions, etc.   The need to evaluate, on a constant basis, the different methods used like blog articles, social media ads, landing pages, and keywords to target the right audience and ultimately convert to leads is important for any successful campaign.

Can I Just Buy Leads?

The urge to just skip the process and buy leads is tempting.  While buying leads may be easier, it is typically more expensive and the prospect you will be marketing to has zero knowledge about your brand or service.  These types of leads opt-in for a special offer from a third party, not necessarily an offer from you or your business so the conversion rate can be much lower.

While not all lead farms that sell their opted in data are bad, purchasing leads may not give you the best ROI for your business.  Consider this, the lead you purchase has never visited your website and knows nothing of your product or service. Now they are receiving a potentially unwanted message from you, rarely remembering what they initially opted in for, so you immediately get flagged as spam.

Generating leads from your own marketing sources will always outperform buying them and the long-term benefits of becoming the go-to resource in your industry is infinite.

To learn more about how to get started with your own lead generation strategy, contact Easy Computer Systems for a free consultation and quote.