Lead-Generation Know-How for Novices: A Beginner’s Guide (6 Steps)

leader explains lead generation
Table of Contents

    Ready to kick off your first marketing campaign but not sure where to start? This guide is for you. Even if you’ve been around the marketing campaign block a time or two, it doesn’t hurt to review the essentials. Here are the 7 steps you need to cover from conception all the way to testing the final product.

    #1 Get to Know Your Demo Like Never Before

    Why generate leads if they won’t become reliable clients/customers? If you want to ensure your leads are worth the time and effort, it all starts with research. Who are your customers right now? 

    If possible, conduct interviews/surveys to get a picture of where they come from, what they’re trying to achieve, how they spend their internet time, their greatest struggles, and how they choose the companies from whom they buy products or services. 

    After getting a more intimate picture of your demographic, you can begin the process of shaping your lead-gen campaign to fit snugly over your target demographic. After all is said and done, even here in the 21st Century, it’s still about giving the customers what they want.

    #2 Use Data to Orient Toward Clear-Cut Goals

    If your marketing campaign doesn’t begin with clearly defined goals, you’re probably doing it wrong. Past performance makes for a pretty solid benchmark as you think up the numbers you’d like to see, ideally, for things like number of site visits, leads, rate of conversion, and so on.

    You have been keeping track, right?

    Alright – if not, that’s okay. It’s time to start! Working out the price point at which to value a lead comes first. From there, you move in reverse. Figure out your average customer’s value to get a picture of how many you’ll need to meet your set goals for the campaign.

    Then you’ll want to calculate—on average—how many leads you’re able to convert into clients within the given timeframe. Again, if you don’t have this data, just use industry averages to estimate it. 

    #3 Make Your Post-Click Landing Page a Work of Art

    One of your most important jobs in any digital marketing campaign is to convince visitors that your offer is worth their time. A lynchpin in this process is what’s called you “post-click landing page.”

    This is a standalone page but to convince visitors that you have something they need. You might find it strange, but the page itself is not actually connected to your website through things like nav links. A post-click landing page uses proven features to enhance the probability your offer will get that all-important click. Check out our blog post on building a killer post-click landing page that rakes in the conversions.

    #4 Milk That Thank-You Page 

    You’ll never guess what a “thank-you” page is for! It goes without saying that this is what shows up once a visitor clicks your offer. Yet there’s more to it than just that. Gratitude is all well and good, but a truly good thank-you page aims to continue molding and building your relationship with the lead in question. 

    Use your thank-you page as an opportunity to lead them to whatever resource they’ve accepted. Give them options: Download it now? Grab it from your email? Once you’ve reciprocated the visitor’s good faith by handing them a bit of control over their new resource, you can capitalize on that budding trust by driving them to similar resources that they might want to investigate.

    Remember, though, that the central purpose of this page is to let your appreciation show. Trust us – it matters.

    #5 Strengthen Your Marketing Game With Powerful Tech Tools

    A “technology stack” is a group of software that conduces to certain of your foremost marketing goals. Lead-generation software includes things like remarketing tools for visitors who don’t convert right off the bat. Ever noticed how ads seem to follow you around sometimes? 

    For instance, if you were just shopping for basketball shoes on www.bball4lyfe.com, and ads for suspiciously similar footwear seem to shadow you all the way to your next destination, www.trimmymoustache.com, there’s a good chance remarketing software is at work. 

    Basically, after leaving your site, visitors are exposed to follow-up ads on subsequently visited sites. This lures them back to your post-click landing page where they may end up reconsidering your offer.

    Other tools like CRM software can rank and organize your leads into categories once conversion happens, opening the door for a little follow-up action from you.

    And of course, email marketing software represents a crucial underlying structure at the foundation of your marketing campaign. If that lead converted once, they can do it again! 

    #6 Test your campaign

    Running tests isn’t just for the science crowd – before you get to driving traffic, you need to test your marketing campaign. Pretend you’re a potential lead navigating to your post-click landing page. The best way to approach this is to actually try to break things and cause dysfunction.

    If your campaign platforms and content can withstand curious users who explore every nook and cranny, then you’re ready to play ball. It may feel better to gingerly tiptoe around your pages and links, only visiting the best parts of the whole site. But that’s like testing your new boat in a small, peaceful lake to determine whether it’s ready to cross the Atlantic. 

    Good luck with that.

    So make sure that the links to your post-click landing page are functional wherever they may be. Do they take you to the right places? Does your content render properly on desktop and mobile? Abandon the page you’re on, realign the size of your window, and open multiple tabs to multiple different pages on your site. Are your CTA buttons working? Do you get retargeted with ads after abandoning the site? Do your email forms actually send the right content to the right address? 

    After that, evaluate your “thank you” page. Do the links on it work? If you’re sending an email with your content offer, does it end up in your inbox? Pixels ought to be rendering, tags need to be working, and your leads need to be organized and ranked in the proper format. 

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    Raek Content Team

    We're the folks behind Raek's lead generation software - the simplest new way to follow up with countless new leads. your business is about to boom, and we're thrilled to be a part of that.