What is Lead Generation: How to start getting sales leads
Lead generation is set to be the way small businesses grow, and progress from one scale to another. One might say that the number of rotations of the earth on its axis is directly proportional to the different tools and schemes available for digital marketing today. The ability to be able to capture inbound leads is a task that requires patience and dedication to master.
What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation refers to the process of identifying and attracting potential customers or leads for a business. It involves capturing the interest of individuals who have shown some level of interest in a product or service and then nurturing those leads to eventually convert them into paying customers.
Data is the most valuable asset in the world right now
With its value of $1 million per data point, it exceeds anything and everything. One might believe oil is leading the industry; this claim is not even close to being true with technology taking over the world. Cambridge Analytica came under fire recently for using digital data points as securities to trade on. They sold it off to big companies in an attempt to know their audience before they advertised the product. Essentially, they were able to know their customers beforehand and used that to market their product accordingly.
Tip#1: Understand your inbound leads before selling
The movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” made $400M in the first year of its release. If you’re somehow living under a rock, the movie was based on Jordan Belfort, an Australian securities and trading fraud who has done official time for his actions. The same guy who also only got $1M for the movie rights of the film. However, this guy isn’t all bad.
Jordan Belfort’s Straight-Line theory emphasized the need for building rapport to gather valuable information of the leads which would ultimately help you get a better grip on your sales in the future. You can’t sell a pen to a person who can’t write, right?
The same theory in the discussion was talked about almost 20 years ago when the internet wasn’t a thing. Market manipulation is dodgy but can still be implemented on the right track by using simple tools to improve your customer or lead base. The core idea is to understand the need of every inbound lead no matter where they come from, as you move down the sales funnel.
Track your leads’ footprints across every channel
It is impossible to generate inbound leads and convert customers if you are not aware of their needs. However, tracking their online movement using legal methods by their clicks on various ads is monotonous and not possible on a larger scale with the large data sample unless automated using bots.
The ability to maintain and hold on to your customers is key. Knowing their needs, and building up an audience to talk to them is needed for the world we live in. A low-scale e-commerce website has anonymous inbound users they are not able to look after. Is this something you are struggling with?
If so, investing in chatbot or tracking tools that collect customer data from multiple channels at the same time could be a brilliant idea. You will start seeing a greater picture of your leads’ bases over time, on where they come from and what they are usually interested in. A cohesive experience across all your customers' preferred channels, no matter if it’s Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, or Website, is also very essential.
Tip#2: Get every inbound website visitor to chat with you
Maintaining traction on your lead base is necessary to ensure that you can reach them at the right time with the right context. Building an audience is crucial to scale up your business. There is a stringent to have conversations. Networking is key and knowing the needs of your leads is always right. It is pivotal to be interactive with your inbound lead to be able to know what they expect from you, and how you can offer more varied things if it’s catering to a wider audience.
Using various instant messaging and social media platforms would help you connect with a lot more inbound leads and gather logistical data which can then obviously be marketed.
Remember to grab the following:
Demographics – age, gender, ethnicity
Location – countries and regions of residence or business operations
Contact – for further communications and campaigns.
Background & Footprints – where the person comes from e.g. IP address, company name
Interests & Intents – the kind of products and services the leads are looking for
Unlike physical retail stores, it is very difficult to get to know the identity of the anonymous. However, most of the above information can be revealed automatically with bots and integration with social media profiles. One needs to keep their customers’ values. If the customer has to get back to you for a previous inquiry or has to double text you just to receive a reply from you – the relationship isn’t on a steady track at all.
Handle it this way – don’t have the leads come out to you unless it is an inquiry – let it be the other way around and reach out to them. Using social media or instant messaging as a tool to answer the most generic and common questions you can think of is a step in the right direction to help build and maintain traction.
With a simple click on the WhatsApp widget, they can reach out directly for answers. This not only offers real-time assistance but also lets you collect their WhatsApp contact information seamlessly.
Here’s a free WhatsApp Widget tool for you to create and embed a WhatsApp chat widget on your website in just minutes.
Learn more about WhatsApp Lead Generation and 4 types of WhatsApp Lead Generation campaigns
Tip#3: Leverage Call-to-action to hold on to your inbound leads
Call to action (CTA) is a marketing tool extensively used for the purpose of advertising a product, and boosting sales. Moreover, CTA is essentially a device allowing you to show prompts on your platform – thereby encouraging sales. This is easy to implement efficient inbound lead generation tip.
CTA is necessary for inbound lead generation in an effort to hold on to the visitor. The go-to way to attract leads today lies in the power of advertisements. Enticing your lead base by pitching ad offers such as Buy 1 Get 2, and another % off on various products through website banners, or wallpapers are not effective anymore.
The most common way people try to market their product would be through a form asking you for your name, email, location, budget, website, payment details, maiden name of your mother, etc. The conversion rate on such platforms is a laughing stock, and not worth the hassle.
No customer wants to fill in a form just to hold on for a few days to get a reply back. That is too much valuable time drained away – not the right way to go about it.
Conversational marketing is the way to go. It allows lead generation and converts the same lead base into customers at a conversion rate much higher than traditional Contact Us pages.
1. Interaction
Interaction is key. It is vital to be able to hold on to your inbound lead while he/she is on the site even if it is for a few minutes. It is necessary for you to hold on to the lead for the time you have.
Therefore, the type of generation displayed below is the future to increase retention and the conversation rate of visitors on your website. Using schematic words strategically placed to ensure that the customer thinks in the flow you want him/ her to think is the key practice here,
2. Strategic prompting
For example, an opening prompt “Are you having trouble maintaining a unified chat base for all of your socials for user interaction?: Having pre-fixed answers like “Yes, I need help!” placed on the reply button – ready to send after a click is an efficient way to take this on.
This is a great way for you to have visitors stay there on the website – and focus on the conversation you wanted them to have.
3. Steer away from questionnaires ✈️
Try to stay away from traditional pages asking for a basic questionnaire to be filled like the first name, last name, etc. Try to focus on smooth and sleek conversations to land your lead base, and increase traction, and have the chatbot do your dirty work.
Tip#4: Invest in an all-in-one conversational platform to deal with auto messaging workflow
Data is tough to manage. A survey claims that there are 5 billion data points for each active user. The ability to be able to store this in a unified central location is difficult. There are various channels today – Facebook, WhatsApp, Line, Twitter & Telegram, etc. and it is obviously close to impossible for one to be able to remember the needs of each and every query or interaction with the customer looking out for your product.
The problem lies in the ability to be able to maintain a conversation with multiple users. A unified platform allowing you to do the same is key. This accelerates collaboration by having a space to reach various leads. It is also hard for you to be able to reach your leads on a larger scale. Being able to remember key points about say 5-10 users are still plausible, but doing this at a larger scale where you’re dealing with leads who are still in the process of conversion is the real deal.
Learn more about how to deal with leads in a large scale by using WhatsApp with multiple users
How to generate leads on WhatsApp with Flow Builder
To set up a WhatsApp lead generation campaign in SleekFlow, proceed to the Flow Builder and follow the steps below. To provide a better illustration, we will use a music academy that utilizes click-to-WhatsApp ads as an entry point to generate leads interested in their music lessons as an example.
Click Create new flow > Start from scratch.
Choose Messages from new contact.
At the Start point, enable Filter by condition, select triggered message keyword as the condition. Then select contain or contains exactly and enter the keywords. Paste the pre-filled message you suggest the ads viewer use to start the conversation here.
Click Set your fist node here, select Action > Messaging > Send Message. Within the setting, enter the greeting message. For example: “Hello! Thank you for your interest in our music lessons! May I have the student's full name please?” Turn on the Save reply to save their response as a contact field, which will be stored in SleekFlow Contacts database as your CRM data.
Then, add a second Send Message action. Here, you can begin asking questions that will help you better personalize your services for them. You can also provide options as buttons for them to choose. In our example: “What is your musical goal”, with 3 options: Hobby, Exam preparation and Performance. Similarly, you can enable Save reply to store their response as a contact field, allowing you to have this data stored in your CRM for lead nurturing.
Repeat step 5 to create additional Send Message actions to ask further questions about the lead.
In this example, we will present our offer in the last action by asking, “Which instrument are you interested in?” with three options: guitar, violin, and piano. Enable Button as branch. Under each respective branch, create a new Send Message action to share the relevant offer details.
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