Generating Leads: We Show You How It's Done!

1. What is lead generation?
2. How you can generate leads
3. These are the methods of successful lead generation
4. These data and content are suitable for lead generation
5. Softwares that support you in generating leads

What valuable contacts and relationships are offline, in the course of digital transformation, are the leads for companies. They bring you important contact points to your customers via your marketing channels.

We show you exactly how to generate leads in this article. We go step by step into what matters in lead generation, and what channels and content are important. We also introduce you to suitable software that can support you.

What is lead generation?

Lead generation describes a strategy in new customer acquisition. Various means are used to direct the attention of potential customers to a product or service offered by the company and arouse interest in this product or service. Potential customers in lead generation can be both companies and private consumers. In this process, data voluntarily provided by the lead (the potential customer) are recorded and processed. The general form of this new customer acquisition is also known under the term lead management. This includes the various methods and means of lead generation, which can run individually or in parallel.

Nowadays the term lead generation is very much assigned to digital marketing and sales due to the increasing importance of digital sales channels. Strategically correct for you is to consider all relevant channels for a company and to organize the lead generation so that all leads are channeled in one central place (e.g. CRM or lead management software).

How you can generate leads

If you actively and systematically use lead generation, you have the opportunity to identify interests, evaluate them and win new customers from them. We'll show you exactly what you should consider when generating leads with the expert knowledge of Software Leads Core in the next steps.

Build visibility

An important prerequisite for lead generation is a constant increase in visitors to your marketing channels, including your website, shops or industry portals. The more visitors you have on your websites, the higher the chance that visitors will convert to leads. So always pay attention to how you can increase traffic to your websites.

There are many different ways to increase traffic. One very basic way is to analyze keywords, SEO and your channels. Lead generation only works if there is an online demand for your products that is measurable. Therefore, you should first find out whether and how your products are being searched for. With a suitable SEO strategy, you can examine how your products rank, how your visibility in the market is, and how your competitors appear online. An advantage: The operational roadmap, i.e., the processes that need to be initiated so that you can expand your visibility in digital media, is derived directly from this.

In addition, you should carry out a channel analysis. Here you can analyze exactly which digital channels are relevant for your target group, e.g. social media channels, portals or trade magazines.

User identification

There are different methodological approaches as to how website visitors become leads. But the principle behind it is always the same: Your website is equipped with a technology that can identify anonymous website visitors. A distinction is made between quantitative and qualitative lead generation. We go into the exact difference and the methodology behind it further down.

Use of digital channels

As already described, the use of digital channels is indispensable for you if you want to generate leads. There are a multitude of possibilities through which you can address your customers in a targeted manner.

• Social media: You can use campaigns or posts to call on your users to visit your website. At the same time, LinkedIn, for example, offers its own lead management functions via LeadGen campaigns.
• Digital trade portals: Digital trade portals, for example online magazines, offer companies various advertising options. Important: Always check here whether a trade portal is relevant to the target group and has good traffic figures.
• Trade fairs and events: Digital leads should also be generated offline at trade fairs and events to ensure that not only the leads with which conversations are held are stored. Many event visitors also move around trade fair stands, collect brochures and form their own picture. Through clever digital lead generation mechanisms, you can identify a part of these interested parties.
• Industry portals: For almost every industry there are industry portals, for example WLW, Kyoto for the B2B sector or comparison portals in the B2C sector. Many of these portals offer you the possibility to create your own profiles and generate leads directly on the platform.
• Influencers, blogs: Bloggers do place ads, but it is ideal if they dedicate a blog post to you (content marketing).
• Newsletter: Using external newsletters, e.g. from industry portals, activates prospective customers and brings new traffic to your website. Particularly in combination with topic-related landing pages and the offer of registration-required content and services, you can generate additional leads this way.

These are the methods of successful lead generation

Once you implement your online marketing measures successfully and the traffic increases, it is worth taking a look at the methods of lead generation, or using them. This way you can identify the traffic faster and generate your leads more easily. Next, we'll show you what methods you can use to implement this.

Standard lead generation

Standard lead generation is about contact forms and telephone numbers that just about every website should contain. These contact points are standard and are an important tool for lead generation. However, be aware with this method of lead generation that it can have a lower conversion rate than others. Both a call and the use of the contact form mean a direct contact initiation, for which many interested parties may not feel ready.

Quantitative lead generation

In recent years, the market has been flooded with quantitative lead generation tools. These tools can show you which companies have visited your website. Every company is stored as a “lead”. In addition to the company, it is usually shown which websites were visited and how long the users spent on the individual pages. Some tools also provide information about people who work at these companies. An advantage of this method is passive lead generation, because it is enough if only one employee of a company has visited your website. On the other hand, the quantitative lead generation tools do not provide information about which exact people have visited your website. This makes it difficult for you in the sales follow-up, especially for larger companies with many employees.

In the quantitative lead generation method, companies are stored as leads (source: Leadz).

Qualitative lead generation

The surest way to generate qualified leads is through the identification of your website users via form-based processes. The website users are confronted with content on a website for which they have to fill out a form, for example to be able to download a document. By filling out the form, a visitor becomes a digital contact. The great advantage of this methodology is that you can generate qualified contacts. As a rule, only users register who have a concrete interest in your services and products. In the reverse conclusion this means that you must offer your website users information that has added value for them, such as in-depth information, sample orders or online configurators. The better the content, the higher the chance of converting the users into a contact. Another big advantage of this methodology is that you are able to build up large digital contact databases in a GDPR-compliant manner in the medium term. The registered users can be stored and used for professional lead management and online marketing. This presupposes that you use tools that offer GDPR-compliant data storage.

In qualitative lead generation, you collect individual contacts and can see exactly where they come from (source: Leadz).

These data and content are suitable for lead generation

For your users, it should be worthwhile to leave their data on your website. Therefore, an extensive offer of information material forms an important basis for lead generation. The craving of the data and content should therefore be greater for users than the inhibition threshold to fill out a form with data. We now show you which possibilities you can use to win data and offer content.

With these data you generate leads

• Downloads: Your downloads can be a strong asset for lead generation.
• Configurators: Offer your users configurators or calculators that help the users in their question in a simple way.
• Video & Multimedia: Use individual videos or build up a whole media library to serve your customers with valuable information.
• Order forms: Ideal for qualified lead generation are all kind of order offers, with which website visitors can retrieve free services, for example product samples, manuals/guides or presentation and brochure material.
• Online presentations: Whether as a recorded webinar or live online presentation: As a replacement for trade fairs, online presentations have gained even more importance.
• eLearning / Academy: Many media are already doing it and offer their readers premium content that requires membership. In the same way, you as a company can implement valuable content that requires registration.
• Whitepapers, guides & Co: All information that help your website visitors to get answers to your questions are suitable for lead generation. Whitepapers and guides are suitable formats for this.

With these contents you generate leads

In principle, all contents for which website visitors are willing to identify themselves are suitable for generating leads. Data evaluations have even shown that the lead generation rates in the EU are partly higher than in the US, which have to observe less strict data protection rules. Here is a selection of contents that you can provide for your users:

• Downloads (brochures, whitepaper, tech. documents)
• Online Services (configurators, consultations…)
• Webinars and (recorded) online presentations
• 3D applications, multimedia, video

With content formats such as e-paper, tutorials or brochures, you can successfully generate leads (source: Leadz).

Softwares that support you in generating leads

The strategic and content preparation for your lead generation is the first step. If you want to focus on the digital channels, you also need a technical infrastructure. On our software rating platform OMR Reviews you will find a large selection of suitable and verified lead generation softwares. One of these is Leadz, which we will now introduce to you in more detail.

Leadz

The lead management Leadz Core Software offers companies an economic solution for a profitable lead management. With a maximum degree of automation, Leadz Core takes over the lead generation, profiling, evaluation, campaign control and qualification until handing over to your sales team. The software starts with a monthly fee of 129.99 €, with which you do not have to pay any more Euros per lead. You can also request a free test and demonstration version via the website.

Leadz Core was developed together with medium-sized companies and was awarded the Top 100 Innovation Award in 2020.

Other software for lead generation

In addition, you can find more suitable software for your lead generation on OMR Reviews. They also include this selection:

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Hubspot Sales Hub

TecArt CRM

SuperOffice

Pipedrive

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales

Zoho CRM

Ocean.io