According to a study by Forbes, 80% of entrepreneurs who start a new business fail within 18 months. What is the biggest difference between businesses that fail and those that succeed? It's not passion, talent, intelligence or a good idea. All of these things are important, and yet some companies - especially small ones - will survive without one or the other.
Processes make all the difference when it comes to business success. Processes aren't sexy, but they develop into habits, and habits determine whether a business grows and is profitable.... or not. This is true in every industry - B2B and B2C.
So which process is the most important there is? A consistent, repeatable Lead Generation Process.
Page views are not the lifeblood of your online business - leads are. The more leads you have, the more robust your business will be. You'll experience less "starvation" and more "feast," even if you're a one-person store or a lean, growth-hungry startup. Fortunately, the best lead generation process relies on a few simple ideas. We'll show you how to bring them together in a targeted way.
Step 1: Awareness
The first thing you need to do is make possible prospects and potential new customers aware of what they have to offer. It doesn't help them if they put very helpful content online that no one knows about and no one can find. But how do you do that?
The short answer is search engine optimization. The longer, more accurate answer is to build a digital presence that is authentic, authoritative, helpful and has good "visibility" online. This part of your lead generation process looks like this:
Create remarkable content with good design and lots of valuable and informative content - and do it consistently and permanently.
This content is the foundation upon which all of your lead generation efforts will be built. To show the best content to the right visitors, you need to understand what questions and problems are driving them online or what they are looking for in a product or service.... and then create content that directly addresses those needs, or offers a solution approach.
There are dozens of great keyword research tools you can use to find out exactly what search queries people are typing online. Once you know these, all you need to do is create very good content that deals with that exact topic expressed by the search query.
This content needs to be helpful, informative and interesting - in roughly that order.
Develop magnificent "lead magnets"
In digital marketing lingo, a "lead magnet" is what you'll offer your prospects as a download in exchange for, say, an email address. By accepting your lead magnet, they give you permission to contact them regularly via email. This is the first step in building and steadily growing a relationship with them.
Although your website is already packed with excellent blog content, your lead magnets should have even more substance and scope. We're talking about things like e-books, whitepapers, detailed guides, and videos that dive deep into a specific topic your leads are about to learn about.
These lead magnets will do the bulk of the work for you when it comes time to convert prospects into leads. With this in mind, you need to have them ready well in advance. Even if your product catalog is still thin, you should create enticing offers around lead magnets that showcase your expertise.
Strengthen your brand presence
At this stage, involve web traffic that will ultimately drive their online growth. It's time to start engaging with their target audience on social media on a regular basis. Every time you publish a new piece of content, promote it on all of your social media channels.
You should also set up analytics to help them understand how your posts are resonating with their audience. Pay close attention to what your audience likes, when the best time to post is, and when to listen to turn conversations into connecting moments.
Step 2: Convert
If they do the above things consistently, your online traffic will grow. Now is the time to make sure potential customers can qualify and convert to customers on your website. After all, that's what,
what really makes it a lead generation process: it turns all those site visitors into paying customers!
Roll out offers and focused landing pages
Now you need to make sure you have clear, compelling offers that will convince and help their leads. Each of your products and services needs its own focused landing page that is aligned with your keyword strategy and on which this offer is promoted.
Once you have these offers defined, go back through your blog posts and make sure each one of them directs views to the right offer. For now, just do your best to follow digital marketing best practices. Done is better than perfect - and it gets you to the next step.
Implement lead capture mechanisms
No matter how flashy your offers are, they won't convert on their own. You need some great lead capture mechanisms to ensure you squeeze every drop of potential value out of your growing geyser of web prospects.
