Lead Generation Foundations

Lead Generation = to attract people to your business. It's getting a customer interested in the products or services your business has to offer. It's about identifying and managing prospects throughout all stages of their decision journey, from unqualified leads to satisfied repeat customers, to advocates.

Customers do a ton of research as part of their decision journey, especially in the beginning.
The great thing with Lead Gen is people will feel like they're starting the conversation.

I. Set business goals
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1. Set goals
Otherwise, you'll have no way to track your success.

SMART = Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound
- Specific = precise, well-defined, clear, achievable
 A goal like increase leads, is vague and it lacks clear direction. A more specific goal would be increase leads by 10% by year end.

- Measurable = How much? How many? When?
- Attainable = Realistic, Accountable, Competitive, Motivational
- Relevant = Deliverable, Realistic
- Time-bound = establishes deadlines, what needs to be done by when

Eg. Sales goal: $50k, Avg. sales price: $2000, Close rate: 10%.

Avg. sales price x Close rate = Value of each lead (= $2000 x 10% = $200)
Sales goal / Value of each lead = New leads you have to generate this year ($50000 / $200 = 250)

Avg. number of leads x Coversion rate = Future sales

Eg. avg leads per month: 40, Conversion rate: 5% = 2 new customers per month

2. Decide on key performance measures

Use KPIs to achieve business goals
Say you have a business goal to generate 250 more leads this year. Which KPIs will help you understand how your lead gen program will progress toward that business goal.

Website KPIs:
- unique vs. returning visitors
- page views
- downloads
- contact information
=> Google Analytics

Social media KPIs:
- followers
- shared information
- click-through rate

Search KPIs:
- page rank
- viewers

Email KPIs:
- click-through rate
- unsubscribers
- shared content

KPI dashboard:
What you'll measure
When you'll measure
How you'll measure

- increase visitors from 500 to 600 in each quarter
- increase website downloads by 5% each month
- increase followers on Linkedin by 100 by year end
- increase opt-ins to email marketing by 20 leads per month
- obtain an avg email open rate of 45%

3. Benchmark before launching
= Understand where you stand right now

By using your company's data OR industry data

Benchmarks help you understand what's successful about your program that you should keep doing and where you might be running into some problems and need to improve.

II. Entice prospects
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1. Define your target

Know your customers, who they are, how they buy
Age, gender, income, profession?

Today, most customers research online before they buy whether it's a small candy bar or an expensive new car.

Key phases in a customer's decision journey:
- consideration

- evaluation: they'll ask trusted friends or family and research peer reviews, and a company's marketing online

- purchase: if they buy at a store, they'll have a lot of influences like packaging, availability, sales people. If they buy online, they'll be influenced by the checkout experience, ability to chat or ask a question online, or by peer reviews available directly on that site

- experience:  After a customer makes their purchase, they'll interact with the brand and product or service. If their experience is positive, they might advocate by adding to reviews and communicating with other customers online.

You want your customers to feel loyal to your brand and actively recommend it to others!

2. Create content
- refer to your KPIs
- conduct a content audit: review of all your contents you currently have

Determine which content and formats will work best for each KPI, eg. emails with links to website

3. Publish in social channels

Writing content:
- be concise
- be brief (Twitter: 100 chars, Facebook: 40, Email subject line: 40)

Where to publish? Focus on your customers, be there where they are
How often to publish? Consider expectations and resources
Tips if you can publish infrequently:
- write in-depth content
- repurpose content
- ask customers

4. The role of SEO

Promote your content: social media, reviews, blogs and Twitter

5. Make your website design inviting

The customers' first impressions
Figure out the right balance of information and visuals and leave plenty of white space.
The homepage: what you do, and what makes you different and better than the competition

The fewer items at the navigation tab the better. So focus on what's really important.

Visuals should align with your brand guidelines, your text font, colors, and overall style, because customers expect an unified, consistent brand experience. Use a lot of high quality visuals. Infographics, photos, videos, illustrations, or maybe even comics to communicate key messages and customer benefits.

III. Convert prospects to qualified leads
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1. Create a compelling offer

= depends on the value your customer's looking for. It's subjective, in a way. Your idea of compelling may be way different than someone else's. For some people, it's a free consultation. For another customer, it might be a product discount. A valuable offer will get people's attention and solve a problem.

Use straightforward language
Be action oriented
Get people's attention

Establish credibility: company phone number and address
Create trust: testimonials from satisfied customers or the number of people who have taken advantage of your offer so far

2. Create a call to action

CTA: a button or link to take action (eg. free trial, contact us, subscribe)

6 tips:
- easy to find
- place it above the fold (it must be visible without scrolling down to the page bottom)
- brief, action oriented words (max. 5 words)
- use first person speech, eg. create my account
- correctly placed
- creates urgency, eg. "50% off today only!" vs. sale

What motivation leads the customer to take action?

3. Optimize your landing page

Where someone lands after clicking on a call to action (CTA)

Content:
- stay focused
- use concise language
- build trust: include testimonials or customer reviews

Layout:
- keep consistent
- display clearly your signup form
- whitespace is your friend, keep it clean
- use visual cues, eg. arrows
- create urgency
- use high quality images to demonstrate your product / service

Testing:
- content
- design
- headlines
- language
- images

4. Create an effective form

CTA and landing page: you provide information to customers
Form: you request information from customers

Less is more: only what is absolutely required: name, email, company, phone, job title, and maybe an optional field for messages.
If your offer is of greater value, you may have permission to request more information.

Repeat your CTA!

Instead of 'submit' text on the button use
- 'start your free trial'
- 'download your free report'
- 'sign up for our newsletter'
- 'claim your coupon'
- 'get started now'

Label fields clearly (what are required fields)

Reassure visitors, that their information is safe with you.
Include link to your privacy policy, website terms and policies

Customers have high expectations for real time responses.

Say thank your after people fill your form, and be clear about any next steps.

5. Develop a database

name, company, industry, title, email, phone

Maintaining a database
- obtain information
- create categories, and select based on key criteria
- keep current

Comply with laws!

6. Raise vs. lower your lead quality

To decrease responses, narrow your lead: charge a fee, request more information, use strict terms
To increase responses, broaden your lead: use free offers: services, toolkit; request less information, loose terms

7. Use keywords to identify opportunities

Google Alerts: monitor the web for conversations about you

IV. Transform leads to customers
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1. Stage in buying process

Identify when a lead is ready to purchase, and when you should follow up
How to determine if a customer is ready for sales contact

Lead scoring: assigning a value to a lead based on their information and behaviour on your website
Collect demographics on your leads
The lead is ready to buy: they fill the contact us form, request a free trial, search by company name, view pricing page

2. Customize the experience

Knowing the customer's name and preferences help you closing the sale.
Segmentation: dividing up your marketing list (geography, product interest, gender, income, lead source, ...)
Create targeted content fits their profile

Dynamic (smart) content: personalized information in the subject line (or in the body) of an email
Personalisation works

3. Nurture leads through email marketing

Email is a really effective, targeted tool
Email best practices:
- inviting layout
- attention getting subject
- concise copy

From address: company name or your name
Include a link, so people van forward it
Make social media links clear (only if you are active on those sites!)
Bold keywords, bullets, and ample white space to avoid cluttered look
Avoid underscore
Offer text/plain version as well besides text/html
Subject line is max. 30-40 characters

Use short blocks with links if they want to read more

V. Create a positive purchase experience
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1. Make the purchase process clear and simple

Avg shopping cart abandonment: 71%
How can the purchasing process be really simple?
- allow purchases either with or without online registration
- guest checkout: let people checkout as guest if they don't want to fill your registration form
- request shipping information before billing
- offer a variety of payment options
- visible checkout (image or link)
- consistent branding (colour, font, images, buttons, ...)
- clear availability: let the customer know if something is not available at the moment
- make cart modifications easy (add/remove item)
- visuals (image of the items, quantity, link to the item page, ...)
- multiple shipping options
- delivery estimate
- clear return policy
- say thank you

2. Fix problems immediately

Customers expect immediate service
News of bad customer service reaches more than 2x people as good service experience
Customers are more forgiving: mistakes happen (failed delivery, faulty product, ...)
Monitor the issues and make sure they are solved and customers are satisfied

Provide options: live chat, feedback form, email address, phone number

Monitor social media (both of yours and the competitions)
Social media is a powerful marketing tool
Watch online shopping reviews
88% of customers research a product online before they buy
-> what people say about your product is really important

Respond to calls: customers love to complain over the phone

It costs 6-7x more to get a new customer, than to keep an existing one -> invest time and money to resolve complaints
91% of unhappy customers won't do business with you again
70% of customers will do business with you if you solved their problems

Monitor customers after they make their purchase, and fix their problems immediately

3. Know your competition

Consistently analyze your competitors
Make sure that your purchase experiment is positive compared to other options found out there
What's the best way to understand your competition? Become a customer, and understand what your competition does well, and what doesn't.

Learn about your competition: Google search, Google alerts, articles, news, customer reviews

Look at their websites: is it easy to find information? What do they offer? Are their prices competitive?
Join their mailing lists, and carefully read all the information you receive
Sign up for a free trial
Read their annual report
Contact their customer service
Follow them on online social media

=> do SWOT analysis with all of these info

* Strength: product quality, customer service, distribution, sales/marketing, public opinion, market share
* Weakness: lack customer service or product innovation, too high cost, limited inventory, difficult checkout process
-> Uncovering and capitalizing on your competitors' faults could create more business for you.
* Opportunities: Recent advances, Trends, Unmet needs you can capitalize on?
* Threats: s there a new emerging offer that will make your product or service obsolete or priced out of the market? Maybe the competition leads in technology or innovation. Is their market share increasing?
Understand the why behind your threats, and develop immediate action plans to address them

VI. Exceed customer expectations
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1. Create loyal customers

The customer experience doesn't end with the purchase.
Creating repeat customers:
- keep them informed, use followup communication (discounts, rewards, thank you messages)
- give them a voice: send them satisfaction surveys, reviews (eg. surveymonkey)
- respond: let them know you heard them
Ask feedback how to make your business better
How-tos, tips, tricks -> gives opportunities to cross-sell items, or up-sell addons or enhancements

2. Tailor email programs

Existing customers spend 65%+ than new customers
Make customers part of the club. Incentivize repeat business by giving something back to loyal customers.
This could be as simple as a point system, like earning a point for every dollar you spend, or a punch or stamp card, or, you can offer free items, discounts or some sort of special treatment. Whatever type of reward program you use, make sure it's simple to understand and the rewards are attainable.

VIP treatment: make customers feel special by giving them exclusive benefits (early access to new products, exclusive sales, or special discounts)

Personalization works best.
Before starting a loyalty program, define what success is and how to measure
Customer retention rate: how long customers stay with your business


3. Monitor social channels

Surprise and delight
JetBlue has a twitter team: all day long they monitor twitter, and try to figure out how to surprise and delight you

Have 1 person in your company to monitor all key social media channels

VII. Create loyal advocates
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1. Engage in social channels

monitoring their social media habits, and then engaging with them. Let's take a look at each in a bit more detail. Monitor social media to help you understand which sites your customers prefer and their behavior, such as liking, commenting, or sharing, and the time of day they interact.

There's a difference between just being present and engaging. You need to take it to the next level and actually interact with people.

2. Amplify followers

7 of 10 people share their reviews. If they have a positive experience, this may generate leads for you by tapping their followers who trust and respect their opinions.

- make it easy to comment on or endorse your product. Create a place for reviews and comments on your website.
Write posts about your business on external blogs. In social media, post information about your business to encourage customers to share reviews and comments.

- encourage your customers to share endorsements with their networks.

Include sharing/follow buttons on your website
Tailor your content for sharing
Respond frequently to comments or questions

3. Obtain referrals (word of mouth)

Referrals, consumer online opinions, and editorial content, rank in the top five forms of trusted marketing and advertising.

Customers: request referrals from them by telling them about your program
- send a coupon code to share
- add-on services for no extra charge

Employees:
- year end bonus
- extra vacation days
- recognition at company meetings

Partnerships: cross promote
- profit sharing
- discounts for both companies' employees
- bartering services

4. Obtain spokespeople or testimonials

89% effectiveness
90% trusted
4x likely to buy
= credible non-salesy way to promote your business
Real people talk about their honest experiences

Google Analytics to find testimonials by using their referral data. This could include other sites, visitors, or customers that linked or refer people to you. From this list decide who are qualified leads.

You also can review your social media channels to identify customers who actively share opinions or links. Now that you've identified your sources you need to invite those people to provide testimonials.

Get written permission from people!

VIII. Measure and optimize
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1. Review goals

How do you know if your lead gen program was successful? Check your KPI dashboard, benchmarks, your goals

2. Measure: Did you meet your goals?

Understand the why behind the what.

3. Optimize: Identify opportunities to improve

Did you target the right audience?
How's the messaging?
Are you present where you need to be?
Are your offers compelling?
Is your brand integrated across all channels?

= What went well and what didn't

Get a plan
- what to achieve
- what to do differently
- how to get there
- deadlines
- stakeholders

World class marketers constantly optimize their programs