Choosing the right lead generation strategy is crucial for achieving your business goals, as it makes all the difference between a pipeline filled with quality leads and a complete disaster.
In this guide, we’ll share the best lead generation tactics, tips, and best practices backed with practical examples, helping you design the optimal lead generation strategy for your unique needs.
TL;DR
A lead generation strategy is a set of systemic approaches designed to attract, nurture, and convert high-quality leads.
The best lead generation strategies include:
- Website optimization
- Chatbots and live chat options
- Content marketing
- SEO
- Lead magnets
- Lead-capturing forms
- PPC advertising
- Free trials and freemiums
- Webinars and other online events
- Referral and affiliate programs
To ensure the efficiency of your lead generation strategies, focus on defining your target market, lead nurturing, and prioritizing quality over quantity.
Warmly can help you unlock your website’s full lead generation and conversion potential by covering all the important segments of the lead generation funnel.
What are the best lead-generation strategies?
Before we get to the best part, a quick reminder of what a lead generation strategy is.
A lead generation strategy is a set of techniques designed to attract potential leads, coax them into sharing their information with you, and guide them further down the sales funnel.
Although there’s no simple answer to which strategy is the best for you - as it depends on your goals, needs, industry, budget size, etc. - several lead-generation techniques are bound to yield results for just about anyone.
We hand-picked such strategies, which resulted in a list of the 10 best lead-generation strategies for attracting qualified sales leads and nurturing them into conversion.
Let’s begin!
Pro tip: You don’t have to stick to a single strategy, as most of these tactics can be combined into a multifaceted approach that covers more than one lead gen channel, as you’ll see in more detail below.
1. Optimize your website and landing pages
No lead generation strategy can be complete without website and landing page optimization.
The digital era we live in means that most of your buyers - and all of them if you’re a SaaS business - will look for solutions and products online.
As a result, the first thing they’ll come face-to-face with regarding your brand is your website.
To make the most of your website’s lead generation potential, you need to take several measures:
➡️ Ensure that it’s optimized for your target audience and ICP - When designing landing pages and your website, always keep in mind who you’re aiming to attract. For instance, a company that sells clothes to young adults and a company that offers credit ratings and data must have websites structured for their ideal audience (i.e., more casual vs a more professional approach, focusing on sentiments and personal preferences vs business value, etc.).
➡️ Make it easy to navigate - Ensure that all the vital segments of your website, such as product descriptions, pricing, case studies, etc., are easily accessible. No one wants to spend ages looking for pricing information or a help center.
➡️ Take care of loading speed - Optimize your website for desktop and mobile devices, or you risk losing quality leads.
➡️ Sprinkle CTAs and lead magnets across important landing pages—Make the CTAs and lead magnets relevant to the page they appear on and provide leads with enough incentive to click on them. For instance, you can include a “Try For Free” or “Book A Demo” CTA or add a downloadable case study on a product feature description page, as they all enable leads to learn more about your product or experience it firsthand.
➡️ Include social proof - There’s nothing that leads love more than to hear about your product from satisfied customers, meaning that strong social proof is one of the most powerful weapons in your lead generation arsenal. Include case studies, testimonials, reviews from G2 and Capterra, etc., and let your customers become brand advocates.
Pro tip: To determine how successful your website is in attracting and engaging the right audience, invest in a website traffic tracking tool like Warmly.
With it, you’ll be able to:
- Identify website visitors.
- Figure out how they interact with your website, as the platform lets you monitor their sessions in real-time.
- Detect hot leads based on intent signals, such as visiting high-intent pages (pricing, demo landing page, etc.), frequently returning to your website and specific pages, downloading resources, etc.
2. Use chatbots and live chat
This lead generation strategy is directly related to website optimization, as chatbots and live chat options are essential parts of most well-designed websites.
For instance, Warmly’s chatbots can greatly leverage lead generation, as they can be trained to do a range of valuable actions:
- Engage leads in conversation by sending personalized messages and asking questions aiming to qualify them (e.g., what they’re looking for, what they need to know more about, whether they’re interested in buying or just looking around, etc.).
- Capture leads’ contact information by offering something in return, e.g., a valuable and contextual resource such as a case study that breaks down a feature a lead inquired about.
- Answering leads’ simpler questions, such as those regarding a specific feature or the existence of a free trial.
- Book qualified meetings.
However, although chatbots are available 24/7 and can handle more straightforward requests and operations on their own, it’s wise to include a human rep in the flow, as human interaction is essential for conversion.
This is why having a live chat option is critical. With it, your sales team can personally engage leads in conversation and guide them down the sales funnel.
Inside Warmly, you can set up an automated workflow that will notify sales reps via Slack or email when their attention is required, for example, when a lead asks a high-intent question or asks to speak with a real human.
That way, you’ll ensure that a rep will be kept in the loop, enabling them to jump in when necessary.
Pro tip: Warmly offers an option for hopping on a live video call with website leads while they’re still hot. This allows you to have a qualified meeting with them then and there, increasing the chance of a successful conversion.
Check out our Warm Calls best practices to boost your video call response rates.
3. Create engaging content
Regardless of industry, most modern businesses invest in content marketing strategies for a good reason - it works.
Providing prospects with valuable resources such as highly educational blogs, how-to-videos, valuable newsletters, and engaging podcasts helps with several things:
- Positions your brand as a thought leader.
- Brings value to leads, building trust and nurturing loyalty.
- Increases brand awareness and visibility.
By offering valuable resources to potential leads without necessarily asking for something in return or trying to sell upstart, you’ll encourage those leads to choose your products or services over your competition’s precisely because you’re already familiar and credible.
To achieve optimal efficiency of your content marketing strategy, make sure that the content you deliver is:
- Relevant to your target market - If you’re in the medical industry, writing blogs about current fashion trends won’t get you anywhere, regardless of how popular that content type is at the moment.
- Focused on bringing immediate value—Create content that educates leads on an important topic or helps them solve a particular problem. For example, if you’re in the marketing industry, you could create step-by-step guides on conducting targeted lead generation, produce podcasts with industry leaders, etc.
- Not too salesy - It’s ok to promote your product. After all, that’s the entire point of content marketing. However, aim to find the right balance between shameless self-promotion and product-led content.
Pro tip: You can take content marketing one step further by creating gated content, but we’ll discuss that in more detail in the section dealing with lead magnets.
4. Invest in SEO
If you ever wondered why Search Engine Optimization is a non-negotiable in the lead generation process, just remember: “The best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google search results.”
Good SEO ensures a high SERP ranking, increasing brand visibility and greatly improving the chance that leads will click through.
The further down you are, the less likely it is that anyone will bother to check what you’ve got to offer.
This means that even if you have the world’s best product in a given category, you wouldn't be able to monetize it simply because you’d go under your ideal audience’s radar.
To get optimal SERP positioning, there are several aspects to take care of:
- Keyword research - Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can help you find keywords and phrases your target audience uses when searching for your products or services. Focus on less competitive keywords while ensuring they’re still relevant to your business.
- Drilling down on the competition - Keep an eye on what the competition’s doing and how well it’s performing to get a better idea of what approach to take to attract quality leads. Again, platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush offer free tools for website domain checking, which you can leverage to see how your competitors are faring and what they’re doing to stay competitive.
- Technical SEO - This includes everything from loading speed to mobile-friendliness and URL structure.
- Building backlinks - Try getting backlinks from reputable sites to improve your own domain reputation. You can achieve this through guest blogging or by creating content that’s good enough for other websites and bloggers to cite and use as reference.
Pro tip: Note how SEO, website optimization, and content marketing have multiple touchpoints. This proves you should combine several lead-generation techniques and strategies to generate more high-quality leads.
5. Leverage lead magnets
One of the best things about creating quality resources is that leads are often willing to give something in return for access to them.
And that’s the entire philosophy behind lead magnets.
You take your most valuable content - templates, industry reports, ebooks, etc. - and offer it in exchange for leads’ contact information.
If the resources you offer provide sufficient value, leads will have just the right incentive to provide their names, email addresses, job roles, etc., to access them.
So, to ensure that this strategy will successfully generate leads, use only first-class content as lead magnets.
6. Use lead-capturing forms
Lead-capturing forms are a typical way of getting leads’ information.
However, for them to succeed, you have to place them strategically.
For instance, you can use lead-capturing forms when leads:
- Subscribe to your newsletter.
- Book a demo.
- Request a quote, etc.
You should also keep in mind the stage of the funnel your leads are in when crafting these forms.
Leave more detailed and elaborate forms for later funnel stages, when leads are more likely to provide more information.
Conversely, use short and simple forms for leads at the beginning of their buyer’s journey.
Pro tip: Some lead enrichment tools include lead form optimization, which means that the platform will auto-populate most of the form’s fields based on the basic contact info the lead provided.
That way, you can display only very short forms to leads, which increases the chance that they’ll take the time to fill them out.
7. Craft compelling ads
Advertising can further increase brand visibility by displaying your brand wherever your target audience is.
This is why running targeted pay-per-click ads on search engines and relevant social media platforms is always a good investment when it comes to lead-generation campaigns.
To improve the lead generation efficiency of ad campaigns, focus on:
- Choosing highly-targeted keywords to bid for while trying to avoid those that are too competitive.
- Defining your target audience.
- Continuous optimization of your ad campaigns (e.g., identifying negative keywords, analyzing performance and adjusting strategies accordingly, etc.).
- Retargeting, which shows ads to users who have previously visited your site or interacted with your content to remind them of your product and encourage them to return.
8. Offer free trials and freemiums
Giving potential customers a chance to test your product for free is a powerful lead generation strategy, as it lets them experience your offering firsthand.
Both freemiums and free trials are efficient, so you can choose the approach that fits your vision better:
➡️ Freemiums are free forever versions of your product that include some essential features.
➡️ Free trials provide access to all product features on a specific plan for a limited period.
The reasoning behind both strategies is pretty much the same—once leads recognize the value your product provides, they’ll be more likely to upgrade to a paid plan.
9. Host webinars and online events
Hosting webinars and other industry events is valuable for several reasons:
- It helps with networking by connecting you with other professionals and leaders within your industry.
- Increases brand visibility and establishes you as a thought leader.
- Lets you collect valuable lead information.
Namely, to register for your workshops or webinars, leads will have to provide their contact information.
As a result, you’ll get a rich new lead pool your sales reps can focus on in the future.
Moreover, if your webinars provide enough educational and other value, leads will likely opt for your product, as they’ll associate your brand with a positive experience.
10. Launch referral programs
Referral programs enable you to transform paying customers into brand advocates and generate scores of qualified leads.
You can use various methods to incentivize existing customers to recommend your product to their peers, such as special rewards (e.g., free shipping) or discounts (20% off their monthly subscription).
Source
Of course, first you have to ensure that your customers are satisfied with your offering. Otherwise, no incentive will be strong enough to encourage them to refer new leads to you.
Pro tip: In addition to referrals, you can also use affiliate marketing to generate more leads in B2B lead generation campaigns. Affiliates are usually influencers, industry experts, or established companies with a strong following among your target audience.
In return for a reward - a commission rate for each sale, lead, or click - affiliates promote your brand to their followers and peers, increasing your visibility and helping you get highly targeted leads.
What are the best practices for lead generation?
Finally, regardless of your unique lead generation strategy, there are some tips and best practices that you should always implement:
Define your target audience and ICP
Trying to perform lead generation without understanding who you’re supposed to target and engage is a lot like fishing in the desert.
You might have all the fancy equipment at hand, but it won’t do you any good if you keep casting your line in scorching sand.
The same goes for your lead generation efforts. You can design the best lead generation strategy the marketing world has ever seen and use all the cutting-edge tools, but you still won’t get any high-quality leads if you apply your strategy randomly.
So, before you start doing anything regarding your lead generation strategy, make sure that you’re well aware of:
- Who your target audience and ICP is.
- Where you can find them.
- What drives them.
- What problem they’re looking to solve.
That way, you’ll be able to focus on the right lead generation channels and create a tailored approach bound to resonate with your audience.
Focus on quality instead of quantity
Imagine the following scenario:
The lead generation strategy you invested lots of time and money into results in thousands of new leads. However, less than 10 of those leads end up converting into paying customers.
Is that strategy a hit or miss?
The entire point of lead generation isn’t just filling your pipeline with any leads but with qualified leads that are likely to convert and bring you ROI.
If most of your leads churn before subscribing at least once, you’ll experience serious revenue loss across levels.
Ensure that your lead generation strategy focuses on generating quality leads, i.e., leads that show actual buying intent for your specific offering.
In the end, it’s much better to generate 10 leads and convert 9 than to generate 10,000 and convert 2.
Right?
Don’t forget to engage and nurture leads
Attracting, identifying, and capturing high-quality leads gets you only halfway to your intended goal - conversion.
To make sure that most of your leads eventually become paying customers, you need to engage with them to build rapport and trust.
Regardless of the engagement channel you choose - i.e., social media, email marketing campaigns, etc. - make sure the communication is personalized.
You’ve surely received generic, spammy sales emails or offers at least once, so you know how off-putting they can be.
Make sure you have as much relevant information on your lead as possible, ranging from basic contact info and firmographics to more detailed insights such as their interests, pain points, etc., to draft compelling messaging that will resonate with them.
Pro tip: You can use automation tools to streamline engagement and nurturing. For instance, Warmly lets you create personalized email and LinkedIn outreach workflows to contact the highest-quality leads that match your ICP.
Start converting more leads with Warmly
Handling lead generation manually is no easy task in today’s competitive market.
Besides, some lead generation metrics vital for success can’t be tracked without help from tools designed to monitor specific lead generation channels and capture relevant data - such as Warmly.
Warmly is a revenue orchestration platform that lets you harness your website’s full conversion potential by:
- Tracking and identifying website visitors - both companies and individual stakeholders.
- Enabling email campaign attribution by letting you track visitors who come through specific campaigns.
- Revealing B2B and intent data on each identified lead, enabling you to score and qualify them.
- Providing automated and human-handled options for engaging leads on your website while they’re still hot.
Sign up for Warmly’s free forever plan and discover how it can help you generate and convert more leads today.
Or book a live demo to see it in action first.