Introduction
No matter the industry or business size, lead generation is a top priority for marketers. Lead generation is how you attract people to your business and help them become leads who have an interest in buying your product or service. There are countless lead generation strategies out there, including content marketing, employer branding, digital ads and social media, among many others.
Read on to learn about the best lead generation practices to add to your marketing mix in the year ahead.
#1. Generate leads with your live chat – but only if you can guarantee quick responses
Up to 83% of consumers need some type of support when they are making an online transaction or becoming your customer. With live chat, you can increase conversions by being there to talk to your prospects at key moments.
You can also use live chat to make announcements on your website, such as a product offer or upcoming webinar, or use a bot for automated lead gen. Some of the best live chat tools are Zendesk, Drift and Freshchat.
However, to get the benefits from live chat, you have to ensure fast responses. Otherwise, you might even be causing more harm than good. 45% of consumers would leave a website in the middle of an online transaction if there is no one to answer their questions and concerns.
#2. Make sure your pop-ups are optimized with A/B tests
73% of people dislike pop-up ads – and 81% of consumers have closed a browser or exited a webpage because of a pop-up ad.
If you’re going to interrupt your website visitors with a pop-up or opt-in form, it needs to be worth their while. When done well, you can use pop-ups to give your visitors extra value and automate lead generation.
You often see “sign up for our newsletter” as a pop-up call to action, but the best results usually come from a more compelling CTA. With A/B testing, you can choose the best lead magnet to show in your pop-ups. This could be your best ebook, template, blog post or email sequence.
To do your A/B test, set up two pop-ups with different content and compare how they perform. You can then do more in-depth tests for that pop-up, like the specific CTA text or visuals you’re using.
#3. Try out video marketing for lead generation
More than 50% of consumers prefer video content over other forms of content, so it’s no surprise there are more and more opportunities popping up here for marketers in 2021 and beyond. Some of the ways you could use video for lead generation are:
Creating a video of your sales demo and gating this behind a landing page form.
Using videos on landing pages. Marketers who incorporate video into their campaigns can achieve up to 34% higher conversion rates.
Collecting email addresses right from your videos using a tool like Wistia. This can require viewers to share their email to watch beyond a certain point of a video.
Including CTAs and annotation links in your videos (if you can’t do this with YouTube, try Wistia for this too).
