Lead generation is the process of identifying and attracting potential customers. You’ve probably heard of it under a different, more casual term, like finding prospects or getting feet in the door.

The goal of lead generation is to convert potential customers, known as leads, into actual, paying customers. The ecommerce market in particular talks a lot about conversion – the act of convincing someone who arrives at your site via ad, word of mouth recommendation, search engine, a cold email, or whatever other source, to buy your product or service.

This article will tell you some of the common obstacles when it comes to lead generation, why leads are becoming more and more costly, and finally give six solid strategies on how to optimize your lead generation strategy while minimizing costs.

Common Obstacles In The Lead Generation Process

Lead generation is difficult; it’s a key growth challenge for most companies. There’s a lot of noise out there and a lot of terrible products and services, leading many – particularly younger internet users – to be wary of lead generation efforts. Here’s the big obstacles right now:

Inaccurate or outdated data

If the data used to generate leads is off, your marketing efforts are nothing more than wasted time. You’ll be chasing after leads who aren’t interested or no longer in the market.

Lack of targeted approach

A generic, one-size-fits-all approach to lead generation can also lead to wasted resources. A targeted approach that considers the specific needs and preferences of the target audience is more likely to generate high-quality leads.

Difficulty in capturing contact information

Without accurate and complete contact information, it can be difficult to follow up with leads and convert them into customers.

Low-quality leads

Not all leads are good leads. You don’t want to spend valuable resources selling hair dye to a bald man. Leads should be likely to convert into customers – this means narrowing in on a target demographic.

Why Leads Are Becoming Expensive

The cost per lead – the amount of money you spend on efforts to bring in new potential customers, can get very expensive, very quickly. Low-quality leads may be easy and cheap to bring in, but the effort of converting them will cost you a lot of money. As a result, there’s a premium placed on high-quality leads. This is because of several factors:

• Increased competition – As more businesses adopt digital marketing strategies, the competition for leads is increasing, making it more expensive to generate high-quality leads.
• More channels – With the proliferation of digital marketing channels, businesses are using a variety of methods to generate leads, each with its own associated costs.
• More sophisticated targeting – To generate high-quality leads, businesses are using more sophisticated targeting methods, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which can be expensive to implement.
• Higher customer acquisition costs – With more competition for customers and data privacy regulations on the rise , the cost of acquiring new customers is also increasing, making it more expensive to generate leads.

How to Find the Best Lead Generation Strategy and Optimize Costs

Lead generation is difficult and expensive. Here are the 6 best strategies to generate quality leads efficiently while keeping your costs in control.

Generate Value for Visitors in Each Stage of the Funnel

This strategy involves creating personalized offers based on the needs and interests of each visitor. By understanding a visitor’s intent at every step of the sales process, businesses can tailor their offers and messaging to be more relevant and appealing. Offer a customized discount for the page the lead visits the most, or offer a referral program on the social media ad through which they came from. This can help generate leads more efficiently by increasing the likelihood of conversion and reducing wasted resources on uninterested visitors.

A brilliant example is Amazon, which uses customer data to provide personalized recommendations and offers based on each visitor’s browsing and purchase history. When a customer visits Amazon’s website, they are shown a variety of product recommendations and offers that are tailored to their interests and preferences, making it more likely that they will make a purchase.

Use Paid Ads to Boost Lead Generation

Paid ads can be a powerful tool for generating leads, as they allow businesses to target specific audiences with their messaging. By targeting the right audience and using compelling ad copy and visuals, businesses can generate more leads from their advertising efforts. Paid ads can also be optimized for maximum efficiency, such as by using retargeting ads to re-engage visitors who have already shown interest.

Automating lead qualification with a scoring system

The idea of lead scoring is to assign a quantitative value to each lead to help your sales team discern which leads are more likely to convert. Every time your leads take a certain action, like downloading a whitepaper or attending a webinar, set up a custom workflow to add a certain score to their lead profile.

This will help you quickly identify and prioritize high-quality leads for further nurturing and conversion. This can help generate leads more efficiently by reducing the time and effort spent on unqualified leads.

By automating this process as well as other repetitive tasks, you’ll save valuable time and money that can be used to chase high-quality leads!

Offering extra value with content upgrades

Content upgrades are additional resources or information that visitors can access in exchange for their contact information. It could be a how-to guide, an exclusive video, an online course, a newsletter – anything.

By offering valuable content upgrades that are relevant to the visitor’s interests, customers will want to leave their contact info and businesses will see a large increase to their high quality lead generation and conversion rates.

Optimize Lead Conversation With a Scheduling Tool

Leads should have no obstacles towards setting up a meeting. Many, many leads are lost in the tiresome back-and-forth process of scheduling meetings via email.

Scheduling tools are pieces of software that integrate with your calendars to offer your leads one-click appointment scheduling so you can meet with them and hopefully convert them as quickly as possible.

Beyond that, many modern scheduling tools and alternatives to When2Meet allow automatic distribution of leads, custom booking pages, and much, much more. By simplifying the scheduling process and removing barriers, businesses can reduce no-shows and ensure a smooth, efficient conversion process.

Conclusion

Lead generation is hard. Quality lead generation is even harder. It’s easy to fall into the trap of paying a fortune on lead generation efforts to no avail. To achieve success in the digital marketing sphere, you have to be smart and diligent about the strategies you implement.

These lead generation strategies are proven to be effective by some of the most successful companies on the planet. Think about what works for your company’s digital marketing strategy and get started today.

Read Also:

• 5 Lead Generation Secrets Emerging Brands Can Rely On
• Lead Generation Databases: Top Tips For More Leads
• Top Tips for Effective and Affordable Lead Generation