Why our biggest obsession with Lead Generation should be yours too

Let’s face it, most entrepreneurs, Business owners or sales persons like you in Nigeria feel that you can get more customers through networking, cold calling or massive Traditional publicity (TV & Radio). Let me ask you an honest question, Television or Netflix? Your guess is as good as mine, you chose Netflix because the audience is on the internet. Now that we’ve established that. How can you introduce your target audience to your premium service products and service ?

That is through Lead Generation.

Truth be told, from our onset as a firm, we’ve been obsessed with offering global standard services to our target audience (Whether it was Digital Marketing Services or Web Design Services, or Web hosting services or Training or other Ors. Our drive has been singular ‘Purpose over profit’ I digress to point out, we needed customers to offer our services also.

Since we hacked the secret of Lead generation, we’re focused on providing these solutions for Brands and companies all around Nigeria. This post is an expose into what lead generation is and how you as a brand can benefit from it.

What/Who is a Lead ?
As a rebuttal to cold calls and wasted business cards, A lead is any person who indicates interest in your company’s product or service. You are 100 percent sure when you contact them that they need your service.

The communication lines became opened when they submitted their personal information for an offer, trial, or subscription which you gave.

What is lead generation ?
Lead generation is the process of attracting prospects to your business and increasing their interest through nurturing, all with the end goal of converting them into paying customers.

Some ways to generate leads are through blog posts, coupons, live events, and online content.

If you were a layman and I needed to explain Lead generation, here’s what I’d say “It’s some unique ways to attract people to my business. I want to provide them with enough goodies to get them naturally interested in my company so they eventually warm up to my brand enough to want to hear from us!

The Simple Lead Gen. Process everyone misses
We’ve come to realize as a firm that the key activity for every business is closing sales, and lead generation is the easiest way to have more brands ask for your services. Even though most digital marketers will tell you how complex a lead generation process is, we’ve covered the basics to get you started in this post.

• First, a visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page.
• That visitor then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action.
• That CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, which is a web page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer.

Note: An offer is the content or something of value that’s being “offered” on the landing page, like an eBooks, a course, or a template. The offer must have enough perceived value to a visitor for them to provide their personal information in exchange for access to it.)
• Once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer. (Forms are typically hosted on landing pages, although they can technically be embedded anywhere on your site.) Voila! You have a new lead. That is, as long as you’re following lead-capture form best practices.
  That’s an easy process to go through, right? I believe from this post you’re learning why it’s important you always have an offer for your website visitor.

The concluding part of this post is where I show you lead generation strategies you can start adopting across different social media platforms.

What are Lead Generation Strategies
Online lead generation covers a wide range of campaigns, and strategies depending on the platform used to capture leads. We understand that on these different platforms campaign ads are run and leads are generated on a landing page but how can you get them to the lead generation page in the first place ?
Let’s have a look at lead generation strategies for a popular social media platform.

Facebook Lead Generation
Facebook has been a method for lead generation since its inception. However, when Facebook Ads was launched in 2007, and its algorithm began to favor accounts that used paid advertising, there was a major shift in how businesses used the platform to capture leads. Facebook created Lead Ads for this purpose. Facebook also has a feature that lets you put a simple call-to-action button at the top of your Facebook Page, helping you send Facebook followers directly to your website.

Twitter Lead Generation
Twitter has Twitter Lead Gen Cards, which let you generate leads directly within a tweet without having to leave the site. A user’s name, email address, and Twitter username are automatically pulled into the card, and all they have to do is click “Submit” to become a lead.

LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn has been increasing its stake in the advertising space since its early days. When it comes to lead generation, LinkedIn created Lead Gen Forms, which auto-populate with a user’s profile data when they click a CTA, making it easy to capture information.

PPC Lead Generation
When we say pay-per-click (PPC), we’re referring to ads on search engine result pages (SERPs). Google gets 3.5 billion searches a day, making it prime real estate for any ad campaign, especially lead gen. The effectiveness of your PPC campaign relies heavily on a seamless user flow, as well as your budget, target keywords, and a few other factors.

B2B Lead Generation
Referrals are the top source for capturing business leads. Not to mention, effectiveness varies by channel used.