Like marketers at every stage of their careers, business owners large and small say that while prospecting plays an important role in increa...
Like marketers at every stage of their careers, business owners large and small say that while prospecting plays an important role in increasing net revenue and/or profits, it is also one of their biggest ongoing problems .
In this blog post, we will discuss the important points to consider when developing a potential customer discovery strategy. We will also explore various methods for generating leads digitally. We will examine business-to-business (B2B) ways of finding potential customers and the idea of lead scoring, and talk about how we can evaluate the activities organized for this purpose and improve their performance.
In short, in this article, we will prepare you to use lead generation methods to start achieving the marketing and business results you want to see.
What is Lead Finding?
There may be thousands of potential customers out there who are aware of your brand; But until these customers somehow establish a relationship with the brand, they remain strangers to your business. How do you successfully attract the attention of such target customers—so much so that they won't hesitate to share their personal and even contact information with you? By finding potential customers, of course.
In summary, the concept of finding potential customers is to turn people who are interested in the products or services you offer into potential customers and start the process of turning into a real customer.
At the end of the day, if you cannot attract the attention of people who are interested in your brand and have difficulties in how to communicate with them and how to describe them, it will be impossible to capture a target audience where you can implement your marketing strategies and make sales. That's why it's so important to make sure that the methods you use to find potential customers are working well.
Lead Generation Strategies And Key Points
If we define the concept of "finding potential customers" as "transforming people who are interested in the brand into potential customers", we can explain the concept of " potential customer finding strategy " as "approaches used to support this process and make it the most performant". Essentially, we can say that these are planned actions to attract the attention and attention of potential customers.
Of course, there are a number of concepts you need to understand and a number of decisions you need to make when developing an effective lead generation strategy. In this part of our article, we will cover basic definitions and outline important factors before putting certain methods into practice.
Evolution of lead generation with digital transformation
First of all, it's important to understand that today's lead generation process is different than it was 40, 30, or even 20 years ago. With the development and spread of the Internet, the way brands reach potential customers has changed greatly.
You can find our article in which we talk about some of the developments related to digital transformation that affect this aspect of marketing here . We recommend that you become familiar with these changes in order to create your strategy and take advantage of opportunities.
Information overload and attention deficit
With the increase in digital channels, consumers are exposed to a huge amount of information. These people had to learn to ignore certain messages and became more selective in the content they consumed. As a result, brands have to raise their voice and attract the attention of consumers. Creating a solid potential customer finding strategy is also inevitable on this path.
Transition from “finding” to “being found”
Because of the abundance of information out there, consumers are now very self-oriented . They do their own research and are constantly looking for brands that appeal to them. While in the past businesses spent most of their time searching and finding potential customers, today they invest in tactics to acquire these consumers organically.
The rise of new media channels
In the past, businesses were limited to non-digital lead generation strategies (more on the details in a moment). Nowadays, with digital transformation, businesses attract the attention of customers by using blog posts and Facebook posts, advertisements containing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Pay-Per-Click.
Access to data
Thanks to Analytics, we can now closely examine user behavior and measure the impact of marketing activities. The insights gained from the data collected provide us with invaluable information about prospective customers and the types of messages they respond to best. As a result, lead generation strategies can be less broad and intuitive and more personal and based on absolute facts.
More focus on relationships
Previously, prospecting was about generating interest in order to ultimately make a sale. Nowadays, customers expect to interact with brands. They want two-way communication and meaningful interaction through multiple channels. Lead finding is now more about building long-term relationships with potential customers than anything else.
Approaches to finding potential customers: Inbound marketing and outbound marketing
One of the first decisions you need to make when developing a lead generation strategy is whether to rely on inbound or outbound marketing tactics, or a combination of both.
Inbound marketing concept
The goal of inbound marketing lead generation is the “ being found ” we mentioned before . These efforts rely on a strong digital presence.
Inbound marketing; It is the process by which businesses attract potential customers organically by offering products or services that they are actively searching for (things like useful, educational, etc.). Businesses attract attention in this way, and potential customers are the ones who open the communication channels.
Examples: Blog posts, organic social media posts, podcasts, opt-in emails, optimized content, YouTube videos
Outbound marketing concept
Compared to inbound marketing, outbound marketing focuses on spreading messages to find potential customers regardless of location. In this case, organizations attract attention, and it is the business itself that initiates the communication, not the potential customer.
Examples: Cold calling (calling a potential customer with whom you have not previously contacted) is a prime example of outbound marketing and also a popular tactic in the past. The cold calling methodology is not as effective today as it used to be as it relies on contacting cold leads (more on that later) . For this reason, if you are considering using this technique, it is crucial that you first master the art of cold calling.
In addition to the above example, television, radio and print advertising; Examples of outbound marketing include billboards, direct mail, and mass e-mail to purchased lists.
Offline potential customer discovery: Why you shouldn't neglect it?
With all the emphasis on digital, it can be easy to forget that it is possible to find potential customers through physical means. Although many people will try to convince you that finding leads digitally is the way to go, we can say that physical methods of finding leads are still valuable. Here are some benefits of choosing this path, in addition to your efforts in the digital environment:Leveraging the offline (physical) market. Some of your target market may not be very active digitally, depending on your brand identity and offerings. As a result, this audience is more open to physical methods than blog posts and Pay-Per-Click advertising.
Building relationships the old fashioned way. As mentioned before, today's customers want to establish a relationship with the brand. There is no more effective way to build trust and strengthen bonds than interacting face to face. This may be why 51 percent of B2B professionals name trade shows and industry events as their number one source of leads.
Playing where there is less mess. With marketers moving into the digital environment, encountering physical lead generation techniques is becoming less likely. If consumers are not exposed to a flood of content in this area, they may become more open to messaging and attention deficit becomes a smaller problem.
Finding potential customers offline with examples
Some of the non-digital lead generation activities:Setting up a stand at a trade fair
Making a presentation at a seminar or conference
Sponsoring an event
send direct mail
Publishing entertaining or educational content in print media (offline content marketing)
Lead finding, lead management and sales funnel
Prospecting is just one part of a broader process in which individuals and businesses transform from strangers to dedicated customers. The marketing-sales funnel, or lead funnel , is a visualization of this process, showing the various stages that consumers move through in their purchasing journey. The marketing-sales funnel aims to help marketing and sales professionals better understand where potential customers are in the process and what information they need to convert into customers.
To develop a solid lead generation strategy, you need to understand where this particular part of the process fits into the big picture. It's also important to remember that marketing doesn't end with finding leads. Once you have a potential customer, you need to direct that customer down the funnel towards sales.
Let's take a look at the classic lead funnel and its components.
Top of the funnel (ToFu – Top of funnel)
Awareness
Potential customers at this stage are aware of your business (they may have seen your social media ad or heard about it from a friend), but they haven't interacted with your brand in any way yet.
Interest
Potential customers have performed an activity that shows interest in your product or service. They moved into the early stages of research and agreed to share some of their personal information in exchange for some kind of offer.
Lead generation is a ToFu earning tool. It occurs throughout the awareness phase, and at the intersection of the awareness and interest phases. Essentially, this is the process of taking pure awareness and turning it into active interest. Thus, you can add your potential customer to your Lead Management System. So what does this look like in practice? Typically, they are a website visitor who fills out a form on the landing page and gives you their information in exchange for an offer.
Middle of the funnel (MoFu – Middle of funnel)
Thinking
As the name suggests, this stage of the funnel indicates that targets are starting to take your product or service more seriously. Targets are using more direct means of gathering information, but they have not yet made any purchasing decisions.
Intent
At this stage, potential customers take an action that indicates they intend to purchase. This means they are interested not only in what you offer, but also in the act of making it their own (for example, customers adding a product to their online shopping cart).
Bottom of the funnel (BoFu – Bottom of funnel)
Evaluation
Potential customers are very close to purchasing, but they make final comparisons with similar products and services and make a decision based on the good aspects of the products.
Buy
Potential customers buy a product or service and become a customer.
The importance of developing buyer personas for an effective lead generation process
Before you attract leads who are closest to conversion, you need to have a clear understanding of who you're trying to attract in the first place. In other words, you need to understand who your ideal customer is and what motivates them to buy. That's why creating buyer personas (research-based counterparts of customer types) is a critical early-stage step.
Develop a solid understanding of your target audience;Choose the most appropriate potential customer finding channels,
Develop content that addresses targeted concerns and is therefore likely to be valuable,
Personalize messaging for different audience segments,
Help you choose appropriate lead magnets (see below for detailed information),
It helps you decide which leads are closer to conversion based on their similarity to the target audience, and which leads are worth nurturing as a result (more on qualifying leads below).
Questions to ask yourself when creating buyer personasWhat is the income and education level of our target customer?
What are your main interests?
How do they prefer to communicate?
How much power do they have to make decisions (B2B – business to business)?
What are some of the key challenges in their industry (B2B – business to business)?
Answer the above questions by conducting market research, examining your existing customer base, conducting focus groups, and analysis.
What are the differences between cold leads, warm leads, marketing qualified leads, and sales qualified leads?
So far we've talked as if each potential customer was equal; But actually this is not the case. Some leads are warmer than others, and some are more qualified. It is important to understand the difference and have the tools to make this distinction. This way, you won't waste time on leads that aren't worth pursuing, or who miss the chance to turn into a promising lead.
Cold leads. Customers that you are aware of (whose contact information you may have purchased), but they are not aware of you and have not yet shown interest in the solutions you offer.
Warm leads. Compared to cold leads, warm leads are customers who are aware of your business and have taken a high-level action to show interest in what you have to offer. However, they have not yet seriously considered purchasing and have not decided on the details of what they are looking for.
Qualified leads. These types of leads meet the basic criteria that shows they are worth pursuing. They are closer to the buying stage than warm leads, are more likely to match your buyer personas, and will take an impressive action like downloading your company brochure. Qualified leads fall into two groups:
Marketing qualified leads (MQL). Marketing qualified leads (MQL) ; They are potential customers who are more likely to become customers than others, but are still not quite ready to buy. Although they have shown that they are aware of your marketing efforts and engaged with your content, they have not yet decided to purchase. They guarantee further growth; but one sales call may be too much.
Sales qualified leads (SQL). Sales leads are lower in the sales funnel than marketing qualified leads. These are potential customers who indicate that they intend to purchase, and are therefore ready to be handed over to the sales team for conversion.
An overview of lead scoring: Sorting and qualifying leads
How can you MQL or SQL tag a lead to use to achieve your goal? You use lead scoring to qualify potential customers .
In lead scoring, you assign points for different attributes and actions to determine a final score that indicates purchase stage and intent. The higher the score, the closer the lead is to conversion.
You must decide the weight (or point value) you will give to different attributes and behaviors, and set a point threshold for a lead to rise to MQL or SQL status. This requires collaboration between marketing and sales teams in larger companies. Once the definitions are in place, many businesses use lead scoring software to assign scores and measure leads.
Businesses often determine scores based on: Demographic information. How closely do potential customers match your target B2C customer profile?
Company information (in case of B2B sales). How closely do potential customers match your target B2B customer profile?
Behavior on your website. Did potential customers visit high-value pages? How many pages did they view?
Email interaction. Do potential customers open your emails frequently? Do they frequently click through to your website from newsletters?
Social interaction.
Do potential customers regularly like, share or comment on your social media posts?
What is a lead magnet? 22 effective examples
Prospective customers don't just give out their personal information. For this exchange to be fair, you need to offer them something of value (beyond the product or service you're offering). This valuable thing is your lead magnet. The reason why it is called a potential customer magnet is that it attracts potential customers by giving them something they want or need.
Generally speaking, good lead magnets are specific , accessible , easy to consume, and solve an identified problem or address a specific need while positioning you as a thought leader in your field .
While your ability to generate leads depends on the strength of your lead magnet, it's important to identify suitable options early as you develop your strategy. What works depends on the buyer personas you develop and the type of offers potential customers might find valuable.
We cover 22 examples below.
22 great lead magnet examples
Useful lead magnetsControl List
Template
starter kit
Downloadable recipe
Calendar
Spreadsheet
Educational lead magnets webinar
resource guide
Case study
Report
infographic
Technical Report
Entertaining lead magnets Knowledge competition
Video
Draw
desktop wallpaper
Game
Product-focused lead magnetosphere trial
Special offer
Coupon
Free consultation
Finding Potential Customers Digitally
Once you have a solid grasp of the practical details that form the basis of your lead generation strategy, you are now ready to strengthen your lead generation process.
According to a recent study from The Kellogg School of Management , focusing on digital rather than a physical (offline), face-to-face approach tends to generate more leads and ultimately more sales. (While a variety of tactics can be successful in revving up your lead generation engine, digital may be your best bet.)
This may vary for different businesses and specific industries; But if you prioritize finding leads digitally, you first need to create something that provides value for them beyond just offering a product (Revisit the lead magnet section above for some ideas).
Once you've identified your lead magnets, use these four simple techniques to encourage your prospects to convert.
Create a great lead generation site
Your website is ground zero in the potential customer discovery process. 63 percent of consumers say a website is their preferred way to search for and interact with a brand.
This marketing channel, which is very important beyond providing information about who you are and what you offer, is the area where you collect your potential customers with a lead capture form.
This form can come in all kinds of shapes and sizes; but the main purpose is to collect contact information of potential customers in exchange for your lead magnet. This way, you can continue to convert potential customers, ideally into buyers.
For example, you could use a lead generation form to collect email addresses in exchange for notification of special offers, or perhaps have helpful downloadable tutorial content that users can access after filling out a form that requests their job title, company name, company email address, and phone number.
However you decide to capture leads (and regardless of the information you find important and worth collecting), you should make sure that the lead generation forms on your website are optimized and fully functional.
7 great ways to capture potential customers through your websitePop-up with lead form
Optimizing the lead form
There were times when creating lead generation forms and embedding them on your website required the know-how of a development team; But today, services like Jotform have revolutionized this process and made it easy for anyone to create a form and publish it on their website in minutes.
With the technical challenges removed, you can truly focus on optimizing your lead form to get the best results possible. Here are the six best ways to help you create a lead generation form that converts :Forms should be a single column, with one question per row (according to a Google eye-tracking study ).
Place your form at the top of your web page (above the fold). In this way, users do not have to scroll down the page to see this form.
Create a headline that encourages users to take action.
Don't add too many fields to your form (and don't ask for too much personal information). A study by HubSpot showed that the conversion rate of users to leads increased by 50 percent when the number of form fields decreased from four to three.
Choose the color of your call-to-action button carefully. Research says that the color red is the most effective color .
Think twice before asking your prospective customers for their phone numbers; because requesting this information leads to the highest form abandonment rates. If you still must collect this information, consider providing it as an optional field.
Five real-converting lead generation form templates for your websiteSubscription (Opt-in) Form to Be Informed About Innovations Free via Email
Technical Report Download Form
Webinar Registration Form
General Information Contact Form
Referral Program Form
Focus on your email marketing and carefully consider cold emails from purchased or rented lists
Over the years, email has won the blue ribbon as a communication channel that is both the best source of leads and the path to the most valuable leads.
And if you do it right, it's generally a low-cost tactic that won't eat into your valuable marketing budget.
And when I say right, first and foremost is to start with a strategy that can help you build your opt-in contacts list. The days of buying-renting email lists from third-party providers and sending cold emails are over. Don't be fooled into thinking that the instant pool of 10,000 potential customers promised for a good price is some kind of magical solution.
Nowadays, people are not only savvy and keen to stay informed about the brands they engage with (their inboxes are more selective, too), but they also frequently filter out spam and recklessly delivered promotional offers from brands.
And when you buy or rent a list, you lose control over the quality of the people on that list. In other words, you will have little or no information about whether the email addresses you purchase are active, authenticated, or legitimate (in which case you may be breaking the CAN-SPAM law and risk being fined thousands of dollars). you won't.
Instead, spend time brainstorming some lead magnets (e.g., a how-to guide, a webinar with an industry thought leader, or a white paper carefully comparing service offerings).
Once you identify the appropriate lead magnet and learn the basic details, the magic of email marketing can move your new lead further down the sales funnel, and ultimately to conversion.
To do this well, create customized marketing leads based on the information you collect from your future customers. This information may include demographic data (for example, job title, geographic area, or income), or it may be based on a behavior or action they took (for example, they may have clicked on a Pay-Per-Click ad or viewed your demo).
Every successful email marketing campaign should include emails that are as personalized to your prospect as possible, both in terms of the substance of their offering and the messaging (think subject line, email copy, and call-to-action language).
Moreover, you'll want to find a sequence and timeline that makes sense for each of your segments. This may take some experimenting; But by constantly testing everything from the email text to the nature of what you offer when you send your email, you will be able to optimize your lead generation efforts and get the return on investment (ROI) you want.
Finally; If you really want to scale and operationalize your efforts, you can make it easier to track, score, and grow your audience by using customer relationship management (CRM) software .
These tools automate data collection and lead generation; It makes it easy to collect basic information about your potential customers and deliver the right message at the right time.
Harness the power of social media
Another potential customer finding tactic is social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter). More than 66 percent of marketers agree that spending as little as 6 hours a week on social media campaigns can have huge benefits in generating leads.
What's more, while 76 percent of people are ready to engage in conversations via social media, only 10 percent of decision makers would be open to cold calling.
When it comes to acquiring customers through social media, there are 3 main ways to collect information from users: Creating posts that direct users to a landing page with a lead form and lead magnet
Embedding lead generation forms within social media posts, company pages, or ads
Encouraging potential customers to follow your social media account
Some platforms, like Instagram, don't yet have the ability to embed lead forms, but others (like Facebook and LinkedIn) offer different embed-embed options. We will explore these topics more as we progress.
Facebook lead ads
With the advent of lead ads in 2015 , Facebook has enabled businesses to easily and quickly market products to more than 1 billion users.
These powered, mobile-friendly ads essentially allow Facebook users to click on an ad, triggering a lead generation form popup. This form is automatically populated based on information from a user's Facebook profile. It even has a sync feature with your customer relationship management (CRM) software so you can instantly start selling to your new potential customers .
The most popular uses for Facebook lead ads include newsletter sign-ups, quote requests, and even event registration. Developments in personalization; It allows businesses to give new potential customers the option to call with a click, specify appointment preferences, and even find the location of your nearest physical store.
Finally, if you are a small business without customer relationship management, you can download your leads from the Facebook ads manager .
LinkedIn lead gen forms
LinkedIn is an invaluable source of leads, especially for business-to-business (B2B) marketers. Thanks to LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms , businesses can acquire high-quality leads without having to direct them from social media platforms to their own sites.
Like Facebook's lead ads, this business-centric platform gives brands the opportunity to collect contact information in just a few clicks through some carefully crafted ads (like webinar ads, e-book download ads, etc.). LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms can also be integrated with customer relationship management (CRM) software, allowing marketers to download leads through the tool's Campaign Manager.
Finally, thanks to in-platform analysis, it becomes easier to measure the impact of campaigns by examining cost-per-lead and form fill rate metrics.
Use the best lead generation software and tools on the market
The efforts spent on finding potential customers in the digital environment have changed in the last decade, and the technologies that support this critical marketing activity have also been shaped in the same way.
Today, there are countless free tools and powerful software options that make the process of managing leads, identifying warm leads in large contact lists, and automating marketing to prospects even faster and easier. Some of the best (we tried to provide different options for different maturity levels):jotform
This powerful and affordable web application makes it easy and fast to create a custom lead form and embed it on your site (and no coding experience required).
While Jotform is ideal for a business of any size, it is especially useful for startups, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs who need a solution to easily collect contact information from customers purchasing products and services.
Jotform has a number of pricing options, including a free starter plan, and each plan gives you access to all the app's features.Callingly
According to Harvard Business Review , sales teams that reach prospects within the first hour are seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with prospects and decision makers.
Callingly is a lead generation tool that streamlines this process, automatically triggering connections between sales reps and potential leads as soon as a lead arrives .
This service syncs with apps like Jotform, as well as any CRM, and collects important analytics so you can monitor and improve search performance.
Callingly is ideal for small and large businesses; but it has an enterprise-level pricing option (as well as a free trial).HubSpot
HubSpot is perhaps the most well-known marketing software in the business world. The company's "all-in-one" vehicle; Dedicated to helping organizations large and small increase their traffic, convert leads, and track leads through the sales funnel.
Beyond just tracking, scoring, and managing leads, HubSpot allows businesses to create landing pages, lead forms, lead generation content, and advanced email marketing campaigns.
HubSpot has both a free option and a much more powerful pro version that comes with over 30 additional features.Marketo
One of the most reliable and formidable marketing automation solutions on the market compared to its competitors, Marketo is an invaluable lead management and tracking tool for more reputable businesses.
Marketo; It facilitates the conversion of potential customers thanks to a feature that allows you to create landing pages, email marketing campaigns and social media marketing campaigns.
Marketo's price tag is high. Therefore, the software is primarily useful for large companies that are well-resourced and regularly work with thousands of potential customers.Pipedrive
Pipedrive describes itself as “the first marketing customer relationship management software for sellers, designed by sellers,” and as expected, it improves sales efficiency by identifying the most qualified leads and makes it easy for marketers to reach, connect and continue communicating with promising prospects.
Pipedrive comes with comprehensive reporting and forecasting features, and its mobile functionality allows users to access the information they need anywhere, anytime.
Pipedrive; It has a number of different pricing options that make it ideal for both growing businesses and successful organizations in any industry.
B2B (business-to-business) Potential Costumers Finding Methods
B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketers face the same basic challenges: finding high-quality leads that are likely to convert into customers at the lowest possible cost.
At the same time, B2B marketing has some unique features that distinguish the process of finding potential customers and subsequently nurturing the potential customer base from the process of finding potential customers for consumer-based businesses. According to a recent study , the most obvious difference is that the process from first contact to sale can take much longer, with the majority of B2B marketers spending at least a month and as long as a year connecting with prospects before committing to a sale.
Similarly, B2B sales often involves multiple decision makers ( sometimes as many as seven ); This means that your prospecting efforts will be broader in scope, targeting a more comprehensive collection of buyer personas.
Getting more information at the point of prospecting is crucial because the marketing process that follows must be nuanced, with different materials and tactics tailored for each specific persona as they progress through the long process of lead nurturing.
Be sure to gather the size and type of business potential customers represent, the price points they are most interested in, and their title or job function.
Since B2B leads are other businesses, the ways to find people interested in your brand and convert them into leads differ from the B2C lead generation process. For example, a company looking to acquire B2B leads and convert them into sales may find more success by focusing on events such as trade shows and industry conferences rather than direct mail and consumer advertising (unpopular methods that still have a place in B2C brand marketing).
As a result, the B2C lead generation process differs from its counterparts in that it typically focuses on creating added value or enhanced experiences with a brand (e.g., offering a quiz focusing on your product through a popular consumer website). In contrast, B2B lead generation tends to be less entertainment-focused and emotional in itself, and more information-heavy and dedicated to proving return on investment.
Best B2B lead generation channels
According to data provided by researchers at the Kellogg School of Management and Spiegel Research Center at Northwestern University, B2B marketing experts; They state that they are more successful with blog posts and articles, webinars, white papers, branded digital content, videos and images.
Face-to-face seminars and workshops, once seen as highly effective, appear to be less popular and ineffective among today's busy decision-makers and buyers.
B2B marketers also note that the most common lead search channels are email, search, and digital content . More than 50 percent of B2B marketers consider email to be the most common source of leads, as well as the most effective and efficient ROI channel, the most reliable source of prospecting and nurturing, and the most effective lead-to-sale conversion method. is showing.
Demand generation versus lead generation for B2B
Another vital component of a successful B2B lead generation strategy is a strong demand generation approach.
Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and creating a long-term interaction between potential customers and your brand. Although marketers mistakenly use the term interchangeably with lead generation, lead generation is just one of many activities underlying and encompassed by demand generation.
Other marketing elements that are part of demand creation: demand capture (the process of directing existing demand in your industry to your brand), and increasing sales velocity by aligning sales and marketing (pipeline acceleration).
Think of it as a way for your marketing team (or you) to guide your prospect through their journey with your brand, from audience to customer and beyond.
Demand generation is marketing that focuses on creating meaningful interaction for potential customers. It communicates the utility and value of your brand, supports increasing levels of belief and trust from the top of the funnel to sales, and even paves the way for future interaction with customers; Champions your brand through social media posts, product reviews, promotions and more.
Lead generation is an aspect of demand generation that typically focuses on a critical point near the top of the funnel, an area where a targeted audience member begins sharing information that marketing and subsequent sales can follow up to strengthen the interaction between the prospect and your brand.
SEO Friendly Potential Costumers Finding Methods
There's no doubt that paid advertising works when it comes to prospecting, but when it comes to online search, the majority of people don't click on official ads ( only 2.8 percent, according to a study from Moz.com ).
Moreover, a study by GlobalWebIndex shows that approximately 50 percent of internet users use ad blockers.
Most searchers prefer to click on organic results, natural listings that a search engine deems to be closest to a user's search query and prioritizes accordingly.
So in order to find potential customers, you need to understand how to get search engines to prioritize your website to attract searchers' attention and drive traffic to your website.
What is SEO?
Understanding what people are searching for and how to create a website that increases the quantity and quality of your traffic is known as search engine optimization (SEO).
The ability to leverage the best methods of SEO, an optimized website with an ever-increasing flow of traffic (and additional leads and new business), a website that no one can find and acts as just a catch-all for your paid marketing efforts There may be a difference between .
Optimizing your website is one of the most cost-effective lead generation approaches as it does not require ongoing funding like advertising.
As Chad Reid of Jotform puts it, “ If you rely solely on paid search instead of SEO to find leads , you may miss out on valuable sales.”
Optimizing your website with 5 accepted SEO methods
Effectively optimizing your website according to accepted SEO best practices can be complex and require ongoing effort.
This is because major search engines like Google are constantly adjusting how they prioritize and rank websites. That's why you need to stay on top of critical changes and make sure your website implements these changes as they occur.
The structures that search engines currently have in place for evaluating websites function based on a solid mix of technical, editorial and social foundations. To harness the power of search and make sure this marketing channel works at its best, it's crucial to understand how all these components work together and what you need to do to ensure you tick all the right boxes.
There are a few tried and tested practices you can apply to your website to generate traffic and leads relatively quickly.Make sure your website is crawlable and indexable
First of all, make sure your website is discoverable by search engines. In SEO, this means your website must be crawlable and indexable.
Crawlable: A website built in a way that allows search engine bots to identify and download all data on the pages and easily navigate through each section of the site.
Indexable: A website built to appear in search engine results pages .
The most important steps you can take to create a crawlable and indexable website; making navigation on your site understandable and easy, and not having robots that direct search engine crawlers to ignore certain pages.Identify keywords and create relevant and interesting content
Keywords, or search queries, are terms that internet users type into a search engine to find relevant pages. To direct the right traffic to your website, determine the keywords that best suit your business and your target audience's interests.
To create this list, start by brainstorming the kinds of topics people will want to find when searching for information about your product or service offering. To improve this list, you can also examine the information that competitors have.
Then, use keyword mining tools like Ahrefs or Moz Keyword Explorer to get a better idea of which topics have the highest search volumes.
Once you've identified a list of approximately 20 to 40 keywords that are most relevant to your website, produce content pages that address those topics and provide users with the information they're most interested in.Understand where it matters and adapt content accordingly
When search engine bots crawl your site, they mine data to get a clear idea of what your pages are about, and how relevant they are to certain keywords.
One way to do this is to examine places of importance on a page, such as the main title tag, title tags, and the first 100 words of content, to see if your keyword and other relevant topics are included.
Make sure you have a clear idea of the areas that matter, and write keyword-rich content to include in those areas.
Places that are important for website optimizationMain title tag
Meta description tag
H1 tag
H2 and H3 tags
First 100 words of content
Image alt text
URLCreate a great user experience
Recently search engines have started finding ways to measure and evaluate websites based on their user experience, which simply means how easy it is to use your site.
One of the best ways to evaluate user experience is page speed; An indicator of how quickly your website loads and appears for users on both desktop and mobile.
While there are a number of other factors that influence this accepted method, working with a developer is an absolute must to make sure your loading speed on Google's PageSpeed Insights tool is in the green zone.Create links, Create links, Create links
One of the most important parts of optimizing your website is making sure other websites link back to your content pages. This is because Google and other search engines use the number of links back to your site (and the quality of the domains from which those links originate) as a critical measure of how well-known and relevant your website is.
Think of it as a voting system where the number of links to your website is similar to the number of votes you would receive in an election.
It's important to make it easy for other high-quality sites to place backlinks to your site. Here are three ways to make this a reality:Create compelling content that people will naturally want to connect with.
Create content partnerships where you provide other websites with great content with links to your own site.
Ask your partners or customers to add backlinks to you in their posts.
How to measure results from SEO?
As the old saying goes, if you can't keep track of something, you can't improve it. Just like your lead generation efforts, you should have a solid approach to measuring how well you're doing in terms of SEO and how that relates to your lead generation approach.
The metrics attached to these elements can be broadly divided into search-related tracking and engagement tracking. While search tracking is directly related to how much traffic you bring to your site, engagement tracking deals with how people behave after they land on your site.
Either way, the most critical tool for tracking your numbers is Google Analytics , which can be easily set up with or without the help of a developer . Google Search Console is another free tool you can use that may be useful.
Search Related MetricsTotal organic users
Number of visitors to your site from free search over a certain period of time
Search engine results pages, where your keywords rank over a period of time
Tracking tool: Google Search ConsoleClick-through rates
Rate of users clicking on your website compared to how many times it appears on search engine results pages
Tracking tool: Google Search Console
Engagement Metrics Conversion rate
The rate at which users complete a task on your website compared to the number of visits to your website or page
Tracking tool: Google AnalyticsTime spent on page
The time a user spends on your website or a specific page
Tracking tool: Google AnalyticsBounce rate
The rate at which a visitor leaves your website without visiting another page, compared to those who visit multiple pages
Tracking tool: Google Analytics
When it comes to finding leads, the most important factor to watch is conversion rate; and this gives you an indication of the rate at which people complete a task on your website (for example, filling out a lead form).
This will give you some insight into which of your pages are most successful in generating leads and which ones need improvement. Once you understand the numbers, you can make strong data-driven decisions. For example, creating more pages like the successful pages or applying the same techniques that were successful on the effective pages to the low-performing pages.
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