Lead Generation Concepts
People think of lead generation in multiple different ways, because like many other terms in marketing, it’s meaning has been lost in the mess of jargon.
However, what it means to most people is the process of attracting interested buyers who SUBMIT their contact information to learn more about products or services.
A lead is basically someone who shows interest in a product or service by OPTING in to learn more.
As you can see, this loose definition can be understood in many different ways.
Some could say that a follower on social media is a lead.
Some will say that an email subscriber is a lead.
Some will only qualify a lead as potential buyer who has shown interest in a product by submitting their name, phone number, email, and address, so they can be contacted.
Before the internet, many magazines had advertisements which came with small postcards that were meant to be filled out by interested buyers. A “lead” would fill out the postcard and mail it to the company, then a representative would reach out to them weeks later.
This still happens in many industries (real estate, finance, home services) and many companies send out mail with forms attached.
In 2020 we can apply this exact same concept digitally, and it’s faster, easier, and much cheaper.
But in the world of digital lead generation, most companies focus on collecting as much information up front as possible. EX: name, phone, email, address (some go much further).
So the first thing you need to do is to identify what information you’ll need to collect in order to grow your business or your clients business. Then you need to figure out a process of collecting leads (people call this a funnel), and then you’ll need a way to entice people to give you their information so you can communicate with them (sell them).
In this guide we’ll give you two different lead gen strategies you can take to develop leads and two different lead magnets that feed into these strategies.
What Information Do You Need?
Most people who are in the business of lead generation need to book appointments with their leads.
And if you’re booking an appointment you’re going to need at least a name, email, and phone number at the minimum.
Many lead generators will need much more information. In fact, the more information a lead gives you the “better quality” the lead it is.
Well, that’s what they say but that’s not necessarily true.
The quality of a lead typically depends on how much the potential lead has been “pre-framed” to your product or service.
Meaning, how convinced is the potential lead – that your solution is the best – before they submit their information and become a lead.
Regardless of the amount of information you need to collect or pre framing, there are two strategies you should consider.
Let’s take a look.
Direct Lead Generation
Lead strategy number one is what I call the direct lead capture.
This is when you focus all of your marketing efforts on gaining as much lead information as possible, as fast as possible, as directly as possible.
Here’s an example.
Let’s say you’re capturing leads for a coding school.
You’d create an enticing advertisement that explains the benefits of coding schools and builds up the desire to attend coding school.
When the user clicks the advertisement they’ll be taken to a landing page with a form where they can request to be contacted by the coding schools representatives.
They’ll need to enter their name, email, phone, address, area of interest, level of education, earliest start date, and campus of interest.
This is what most people do when developing leads.
They send people directly to a landing page that explains a little bit more about the product or service and they ask for contact information immediately.
Using this (direct lead capture) strategy I was able to generate $64,000 for my business in just one months time. More on this later.
..
But there are some very serious negatives to this strategy.
Negatives Of Direct Lead Generation
Your advertisement has to attract the right people and then convince them that your solution is the best.
And this can be tricky to do in just one advertisement.
The average person needs to see or hear something around 7 – 10 times before taking action, which means it’s not easy to create an effective and compelling advertisement that gets people to take action after one exposure.
That’s why retargeting is so powerful.
I digress…
Additionally, if you want to convince someone that your product or service is the best solution, then you’ll need to explain your opportunity well, which means you’ll need to write a few paragraphs (or create a video) to really prove your point.
Writing more means that people have to read more.
When people have to read more, less people finish reading the advertisement, and less people click through to your landing page, which means you’ll usually pay more for your leads.
On one hand, your leads might be of high quality (because they’ve been pre framed), but they will usually cost more.
If your advertisement is short and semi convincing, you’ll usually get cheaper traffic and you might even get cheaper leads, but the leads you get may be less interested in your product or service.
We call them looky loos, they’re NOT hot leads.
Also, if you don’t warm up your traffic before sending then to your lead capture page, a good majority of the visitors will be scared away by your form asking for all of their personal information.
By nature, people don’t want to give up their information and that’s why there is so much drop off with direct lead capture. And drop off typically increases with the amount of information you ask for.
And less leads means less people in your database (or email list) which means you have less opportunity to capitalize on down the road.
And… with direct lead capture you’re really only targeting people who are ready to buy now and you’re not doing anything to build awareness outside of your immediate buyer target.
To put things simply, it’s just harder, less opportunistic, and more expensive to generate quality leads with direct lead capture.
However, if you get good at copywriting and advertising and optimizing you can produce amazing results.
When it comes to Facebook ads, Google ads etc., there are a lot of things you can do to improve your chances of success with direct lead capture but that’s really a whole different guide and possible course that will appear here (when it’s ready) :0
Anyways…
Every month at knw media we generate 1000’s of leads through direct lead capture methods for our clients. And because we’ve practiced this skill over and over and refined our strategy, we’re able to create amazing results.
But let’s continue….
Positives Of Direct Lead Generation
When you get good at direct lead capture, you cut down your workload and get right to results driven activity faster.
Direct lead capture allows you to get on the phone with leads faster (although it might be a little more expensive upfront) and the faster you get on the phone the faster you can close deals.
Additionally, when you dial in your offer and advertisements, you can begin reducing your costs and increasing your quality.
In short, direct lead capture is an easier PROCESS and that’s why most people choose to do it.
Indirect Lead Generation
The second way to generate leads is what I call indirect lead capture.
And that means you’ll be collecting less lead information first (to get more results/leads) and then you’ll collect more lead information (from hotter leads) on the backend.
All while building your list of potential buyers and capitalizing on hot leads immediately.
Here’s an example of the process.
You’d create an advertisement about your product or service which drives people to a landing page that only requires that they enter email at first.
After they enter their email, they’ll be sent to a page to see more about your product or service and then they’ll be asked for more information like, Name, Phone, Address etc.
This process is used in a variety of different ways but the core concept is that it’s easier to collect and email from cold traffic than it is to collect all of their information.
And you should get the email first (the low hanging fruit) and then try and collect the rest of their information afterwards.
Positives Of Indirect Lead Generation
It’s easier to collect someone’s email than it is to collect all of their personal information.
So, collecting someone’s email allows you to stay in touch with them and EMAIL them and continue to nurture them until they become a hot lead that fills out all of their information.
Not everyone who enters their email at first is going to land on the next page and also enter the rest of their information.
In fact, most won’t.
But the people who do fill out the rest of their information on the second page are usually pretty damn hot leads.
And you’ll still get the benefit of emailing and convincing the rest of your potential leads – to become hot leads.
So the major benefit is that you can build your list of potential leads (and remarket to them) while capitalizing on hot leads right off the bat.
It’s also cheaper to collect less information upfront and it usually requires less convincing because you’re asking for less of a commitment.
So theoretically, you don’t need to “pre frame” people as much and your advertisements can be much shorter and less complicated.
In short, indirect lead capture is easier to advertise and you’ll be building some real value into your company via an email list of potential customers.
Side note: The only real difference is that you’ll be building a list of potential leads that you can remarket to that might convert in 1 week, 1 month, 6 months or 1 year.
But the point is you’re building an asset you can tap into over and over again.
With Direct Lead Capture you’re just collecting less future opportunity.
Here at knw media we have several nurturing campaigns that we’ve set up for our lead gen clients and many of our potential leads turn into closed deals within 4 months.
So our clients get the benefit of closing hot leads immediately – as well as closing deals from people that joined their email list 4 months ago.
Meaning month over month they close more and more deals and their marketing efforts begin to compound.
Negatives Of Indirect Lead Generation
The major negative of indirect lead capture is that you’ll get more low intent leads that need to be warmed up before they become hot leads. Which means you’ll have more systems and processes to nurture your potential lead list with.
In short, it’s just more work from a process standpoint because you’ll have to deploy an email engagement strategy that constantly remarkets to your list of potential leads.
But to be honest, it can be more profitable in the long run and less of an investment upfront.
Lead Magnets
A lead magnet is really a compelling reason why people will give you their personal information.
And lead magnets can work for both strategies listed above.
Most lead magnets are some sort of giveaway where you promise to give something to your potential lead in exchange for their information.
You see it all the time…
Get my FREE guide!
Get my FREE training!
Get a FREE t-shirt!
Win a FREE computer!
In this case, you gave me your email so I could send you this guide.
This guide is one of my lead magnets.
Creating a good lead magnet is not complicated but they should be deeply thought out..
I’ll give you two examples of lead magnets that I’ve used and explain how they work.
One of them is the lead magnet that generated me $64,000 in one month.
Lead Magnet #1 (Direct Lead Generation)
The lead magnet that has been extremely powerful for us is the QUIZ lead magnet.
This is where you promise to help someone find out some information, related to your company (or clients company) that then sells them on the product or service.
Here’s the QUIZ lead magnet that we used.
We had a client that was a major for profit college similar to the University Of Phoenix.
These types of colleges spend an incredible amount of money on lead generation every year and they pay lots of money per lead.
It was our job to acquire quality leads as cheap as possible.
So, we created a short quiz that helped people figure out which online college was the best fit for them.
In the quiz we asked a series of questions about their interests, level of education, location, programs of interest etc.
The form was asking for a lot of information, however, because it was pitched as a quiz, people were eager to fill out the information to get their answers.
For the programs of interest we only listed the degree options available from our partner school (you’ll see why in a second) which was a ton of options and many other schools had the same options.
At the end of the form we ask for their contact info so we could send their college matches via email or text.
After they submitted their information we sent them to a page that said,
“Here is one of our sponsored schools that has the (fill in the blank) program that you’re interested in.
Would you like to request more information?
Yes or No.”
When the person clicked yes, their information was automatically submitted to our partner school.
If they clicked no, they were sent to another page to explore more school options.
On the back end we emailed the interested students a list of school matches.
But we also had our partner school listed as a premium sponsor again.
It was a win win for everyone.
The potential student got a list of school matches – and exposure to our partner school
And our partner school got thousands of qualified leads.
And we got paid $64,000.
A QUIZ lead magnet can be applied to just about any business but think about the outcome of your quiz before deploying this strategy.
Pro Tip: Think about the problem your ideal customer has and create a quiz designed to lead them to your product or service as a solution. In our case we realized people hated researching online colleges so we gave them an easy way to find schools that matched their needs.
Lead Magnet #2 (Indirect Lead Generation)
One of the greatest lead magnets for Indirect Lead Capture is the giveaway.
It can be used for direct lead capture as well.
People love free stuff and they’re willing to exchange an email to get the free thing.
Especially when the free thing has value to them.
One of our online education clients was struggling to build their email list and attract quality leads. After looking at their strategy in totality we realized what we needed to do.
All of their advertisements were direct sales pitches like,
“Coding School Is The Future, Speak To A Rep Today!”
We convinced our client to give away a Free Program Guide (which is basically just a brochure for their coding school) that listed their available classes with schedules and enrollment periods etc.
Then we ran ads that basically said, “Get your free coding school program guide”
And we dropped their leads costs by 85%
Now the people who opt in to get the coding school program guide just give their email – but 50% or more give their phone numbers, emails, addresses, and programs of interest, and ask to be contacted by the coding school.
The point is that people are willing to give up contact information in exchange for something free, even if it’s as simple as a program guide.
But it works incredibly well and our client gets enrollments immediately but also nurtures their list and gets enrollments months later.
Again, you’ll want to think about how the giveaway plays into your strategy for converting leads. This program guide worked perfectly to help people move closer to becoming a customer.
Creating Powerful Lead Magnets
Creating powerful lead magnets is crucial to your success whether you are doing Direct Lead Capture or Indirect Lead Capture.
I gave you two examples of lead magnets that work well – but they were also extremely well thought out.
Though it might not seem like it.
And…
They aren’t the only lead magnets you should use.
You should use multiple lead magnets.
You should also create new lead magnets that capitalize on events and trends in your industry.
And if you can do that on the fly, you’ll kill it.
This is important.
Almost nobody is creating good lead magnets.
Here’s why.
The biggest mistake that we see individuals and companies make is creating lead magnets that don’t push their leads closer to becoming a customer.
They don’t make the leads thirsty for more.
They usually satisfy the potential lead so well that they never come back for anything else.
Ever…
It’s a travesty.
Massive amounts of people are pouring time and energy (not to mention money) into creating lead magnets that end up repelling instead of selling.
And you end up with a giant email list of “leads” that never open your emails.
Never book appointments.
And never buy from you.
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