Digital lead management for the win, but how does the lead generation work in practice? We’ve summarized a few hands-on features and tactics that are valuable for you to consider when embarking on the digital lead management journey.
Quizzes and self-assessment tools are interactive ways for you to engage with the visitor while at the same time collecting useful information about who they are. Quizzes are typically used in the early phase of the customer journey and helps the visitor to identify their need(s). Self-assessment tools, on the other hand, are frequently used and displayed lower down in the funnel as they give more concrete information about the offer (price, bundle package, capability…) and is a direct recommendation of products/services based on the visitors’ answers.
To receive leads in the first place, you need to drive traffic to your site. The right type of content can through specific keywords increase your SEO scoring, which in practice means that your website ranks higher on search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) when someone is searching for related information or products. Thus, a good search engine ranking increases the likelihood of someone clicking on your website instead of your competitors. Your content will also need to have relevant keywords to support your paid media campaigns to improve your ad ranking, a value that determines where your ads are shown on a page relative to other ads, or if your ads will show at all (yes, that’s how important the right type of content is).
Laying the foundation for your lead generation efforts with the right type of content does, however, not only drive traffic – it can also create leads on its own. If the content is targeted and interesting enough, gated content such as guides or checklists can be accessed in exchange for the visitors contact information. In essence, it can serve as an enticement. But in addition to driving traffic and creating leads, let’s not forget that purposeful content and messaging will also increase engagement, create interest, and support the decision-making process for your prospects. Tip: Prioritize moving images as a content format over still images as it captures the viewers’ attention more.
Nurture your leads by customizing your content based on your visitors’ characteristics and behaviors to create a more individualized customer experience. For an example, all images, website texts, articles, videos etc. that are displayed on the website pages can completely be customized based on which segment they belong to or what they have showed interest to previously. Contrary to generic content, personalization allows the visitor to resonate with the message and feel like you know what their needs and challenges are. On top, it can be highly beneficial for businesses in terms of optimizing their offerings by only showing the products or bundles that are relevant to the specific visitor in question. Hence, it can open the possibility for businesses to nurture the leads by providing them with targeted information and resources as they move down the funnel.
Did you know that ad clickers are 50% more likely to purchase than organic visitors? A well-worked paid media strategy will serve countless benefits; raise awareness, increase brand recognition, drive traffic, and increase conversion rates. Using several campaign landing pages with different purposes will even allow you to tailor the flow and user journey depending on where the ad clickers are in the funnel. For an example, retargeting ads can be used as a gateway into more conversion-heavy landing pages.
If you want to boost your lead generation strategy, you should consider using email as a primary channel. It gives you the opportunity to not only boost conversions, but also nurture leads into becoming sales. The most classic yet highly effective type that can be seen throughout different websites is the opt-in form, which is also called an inbound email lead generation strategy. This is when someone willingly gives you their details and permissions to reach out to them with marketing material in exchange for your offer. It can be everything from a discount code to a whitepaper (see, you just stepped into the rabbit hole) and is a type of exchange where the visitor receives something in return for sharing their email.
Regardless of which email strategy you deploy, however, it is important that the emails are relevant, personalized and triggered at the right time. There are multiple ways to achieve this, but A/B testing your emails is a first step in water-proofing your email strategy and improve it where necessary. Remember that timing your emails can increase your conversions with as much as 53%, so make sure the emails are triggered based on individual patterns and not sent to everyone at the same time.
Even though the flow of your web pages does not generate leads per se, it does facilitate the process of becoming a lead from the prospects point of view. A well-planned customer journey with detailed flows, optimized site linking, and perfectly placed CTA’s will make it easier for the visitor to navigate the site and have a more comfortable digital experience. We’ve summarized a few action points that are important to remember when working on your on-site planned customer journey:
If you want to turn your website traffic into leads, the lead generation form should be the first feature on your list to implement. They come in different shapes and forms (literally) but they serve the same purpose of capturing useful information about your prospects. Forms can be placed in different stages of the funnel, thus look different based on how close the user is to convert or which landing page they are placed on. There are many types of forms, but here are a few examples:
Regardless which type of form or design you decide to go for, they must, however, be optimized to fully serve their purpose. For an example, it is important to keep the threshold as low as possible for someone to convert. If a contact form has too many rows to manually fill out, it can be deemed as too time-consuming and the prospects bounces.
On average, you can generate 30-70% leads from your existing traffic with the help of a chatbot. The interactive conversation tool allows your visitor to interact with you 24/7 and provides an easy way to leave their contact information, request a quotation or even get recommendations on which products or bundles fits them best. The conversation can also be tailored depending on which phase of the funnel that your visitor is in. For an example, it can during the awareness stage focus on answering FAQ’s or provide valuable insight about your products – or even have different conversations based on which landing pages that the visitor is on when starting the conversation. They can also create a better user experience and facilitate lead generation by:
In addition to supporting your lead generation efforts by serving as a disguised contact form, you can also spawn a great deal of data about your visitors. Data that, in turn, can turn into insights about your prospects’ behavior and their customer journeys.
By now you have a fair understanding on how to drive the leads – but how do you optimize your digital lead management strategy, making sure that no lead slips through the cracks before becoming an opportunity and eventually a paying customer? There are several tactics to look to.
Without the possibility to measure and analyze the results of your lead management efforts, there will be no way for you to identity areas of improvement to begin with. The very key of optimizing your digital lead management strategy is to have clearly established metrics, tracking & reporting processes in place. Using automated dashboards is an effective way to continuously follow up on your performance and make swift data-driven decisions when needed. Important to remember though, is that while revenue related KPI’s are important, the behavioral metrics are even more essential in the domain of digital lead management. There are several tools available to measure these kinds of KPI’s, but you can also come a long way with traditional A/B testing. How are the visitors behaving on your website? Where are they converting and where are they dropping out? The answer to these kinds of questions can be particularly powerful for decision making.
To effectively manage digital leads, it’s important to understand the customer journey and identify the various stages that a lead goes through before converting into a customer. Once done, you need to establish the purpose of each content and website feature and which phase (awareness, consideration, or conversion) they support. If a potential lead is only at the beginning of their customer journey, it is important that their digital experience corresponds to this, and vice versa if they are in the conversion phase. In essence, each content piece and website feature have a purpose – and it should only be activated at the right time.
You’ve identified your customer journey and the lead funnel – great! How can you now track the progress of your leads through the funnel, as well as automatically identify and nurture the leads that are most likely to convert? There is great value in implementing a lead tracking and scoring tool. Lead scoring will enable you to separate high-quality leads who are almost ready to purchase, from those who are unlikely to become customers. A higher score indicates a higher buying intent, serving as an indication for your sales team on how to prioritize their time and focus on the most important leads first. But remember; don’t just focus on hot leads. Make sure that the leads in the awareness stage are also nurtured and moves down the funnel.
A cross-coordinated strategy allows you to connect the dots between the different channels. Which ad did the visitor come in via, which articles were read, through which element did he/she convert, and did the lead turn into a paying customer? Connected channels and systems will present you with a holistic view of your leads and the customer journey and through their data-points, create detailed inbound channel analysis & identify the optimal journeys to purchase. A few examples of data touchpoints that can be considered are:
On top of optimizing the lead journey based on the data-points, you can also refine the lead nurturing through omni-channel communication. We know… One of those buzz words. But put simply, omni-channel communication is an ‘always on’ communication strategy that taps into multiple channels and platforms and allows you to consistently communicate with the audience regardless of which digital platform they are interacting with for the moment. It is based on all relevant data-points, productions systems, channels, and interactions, creating a 360 view of the customer that enables you to trigger communication based on the customer behavior and needs. In other words – more than just a buzz word.
A visitor has turned into a prospect. A prospect has turned into a lead. But how do you turn the lead into a sale? There’s of course never a guarantee that a lead will turn into a sale, but the likelihood can greatly increase if the right measures are taken. Let’s start off with the first and foremost principle – you can never contact a lead too soon. Your speed to contact a lead can be the difference between winning and losing a deal and you want to make sure that you capture the lead while they’re still hot and in the thoughts of buying your products. On top, by connecting your sales process with the end-to-end data collection, the sales organization can use the historic data of the lead (which article was read, which product was viewed etc.) to have a better context and create an enriched experience for the customer through a tailored conversation. A sales representative calling a lead and not having any idea about their interests or needs can be time-wasting for both parties.
To summarize, there are many different tools & strategies to look to and choose between when working on your digital lead management tactics. Nailing the right strategy and features the first time around is quite unlikely, so make sure that you are end-to-end tracking and measuring your efforts to over time achieve the optimal results. And merely implementing the lead generating tools won’t do much for increasing your business’ revenue. Having a process where the marketing team and sales organization is working in collaboration will be key for a long-term flow of leads turning into sales. Further, to be able to make data-driven decisions (vital for any type of optimization), make sure that you have an established end-to-end data collection process that is cross-functional including paid media, web & sales. Without this, you will be working in the dark with little to no possibility of establishing an omnichannel communication strategy. Therefore, connecting the dots and having a holistic approach when drafting and implementing your strategy will be the key success factors that will help you win in digital lead management.
So where to start? The first thing you need to do is to engage the key stakeholders in your organization. Get them onboard and support them with better knowledge about the digital lead management area. Business owners that do not understand the concept or the purpose can become a challenge in getting traction.
Also, if you haven’t done so already, make sure that you have a clearly defined value proposition. This is arguably the most important element of your marketing strategy and will function as the guiding point when developing both your features, content, messaging, and paid media campaigns. If done right, it should even be persuasive enough to turn a prospect into a paying customer.
Creating a content strategy will also be of great help when setting up the landing pages, creating the paid media campaigns and to maintain a read thread on how you are communicating with your prospects.
Having a baseline of your customers buying journey will also be of great help when kicking of the lead generation project. Developing this early in the process will streamline many of the remaining building blocks that are needed in the process of generating leads.
Last but not least, while data integrations and new IT platforms is a big part of the project, the key to success is the business competence, business process and cross functional way of working. Remotion has extensive experience on digital lead management, both from a strategic standpoint but also in term of developing and implementing features needed. This includes both conducting a pre-study, procuring systems and platforms, business implementation and establish cross functional and agile way of working. We have all capabilities needed to support our clients in every step of the process regardless of your needs.
Ready to unlock your business’s full potential? Whether you’re looking to accelerate growth, enhance performance, or embrace greater business agility, we’re here to help! Let’s meet up to discuss how we can crack the growth code for your business.
Ready to unlock your business’s full potential? Whether you’re looking to accelerate growth, enhance performance, or embrace greater business agility, we’re here to help! Let’s meet up to discuss how we can crack the growth code for your business.
Whether you’re looking to accelerate growth, enhance performance, or embrace greater business agility, we’re here to help! Fill out the form below, and let’s start a conversation that could transform your business’s success.
