1. CRM system
NetHunt CRM automatically collects contacts of people who download lead magnets and adds them to the database. Use the built-in NetHunt form to do this, which is easy to place on your website – all data will immediately enter the system. If you already have your own form, you can connect it to CRM via a webhook to automate the transfer of contacts as well. So NetHunt CRM easily implements an omni-channel strategy.
2. Social networks
A huge number of people today use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Social networks are very convenient sales platforms not only for companies, but also for the users themselves.
There are various ways to get leads from social networks. The first is to maintain a company page or personal blog . This method is attractive because it allows you to form an active target audience around your company account absolutely free of charge. Moreover, the mechanics of social networks are such that the page is recommended to people with similar interests, respectively, the audience grows by itself. The only disadvantage of this method is the relatively long time it takes to promote the account, and the need to constantly create new content.
But that’s in theory. In practice, social media has quickly become oversaturated with business accounts, and it’s become much more difficult to get organic views and followers. So most companies are faced with the need to pay for targeted advertising to engage with their audience. However, leads from social media continue to be very affordable.
The second way to get leads from social networks is advertising with bloggers
This is much faster than promoting your own page, but it requires financial investments and is not without difficulties. Until recently, native advertising with bloggers was a very effective way to get leads. But over time, there were so many purchased posts that the audience’s trust began to decline.
The disadvantages of this method are as follows. It is difficult to predict the effectiveness of advertising and the final cost of a lead. Many blogger accounts have an inactive audience, which mostly consists of bots and abandoned accounts. The more popular the blogger, the higher the price of advertising. In some cases, it can be excessively high. Given these difficulties, effective advertising requires experience, knowledge, and building an individual strategy for bloggers. For example, sometimes it is better to agree whatsapp data on 100 posts in suitable small accounts for an advertising campaign than on one post from a popular blogger.
However, advertising with bloggers remains a great way to quickly inform a wide audience about your product.
A new trend in getting leads from social networks is Live broadcasts . Recently, video content has become so popular that it has essentially become analyze your competition in the SERP the “television” of a new generation. But live broadcasts have earned special love from viewers. Live broadcasts allow you to be closer to your idol, communicate in real time. In addition, against the background of too impeccable photo content on Instagram, Live broadcasts are perceived as more lively and real.
3. Website or landing page
In order to get traffic to a website and convert it into leads, there are two main tools: contextual advertising and website promotion in search engines.
Contextual advertising has two types. Search bfb directory engine advertising is an ad in the Yandex or Google search engines that is displayed in the first positions in response to the user’s query. Today, this is the most effective way to attract leads to a website or landing page in many areas, since ads are shown only to people who already intend to buy a product or are actively interested in it. For this reason, it is the most expensive type of advertising on the Internet. An important advantage of contextual advertising is the ability to receive leads in the shortest possible time, high manageability and predictability of effectiveness.
The second type of contextual advertising is banner advertising
For obvious reasons, you should not count on a direct increase in sales: users who spend time on entertainment sites are unlikely to click on ads to buy a product right away. However, this is a fairly effective and inexpensive way to tell a wide audience about a product and remind users who have already visited the site about yourself.
But how can you get to the top of search engine results without advertising? After all, these sites collect the bulk of traffic, and it’s completely free.
When a user enters a specific search query, such as “top lead generation channels,” search engines analyze thousands of pages. The best ones, in their opinion, are ranked first.
To improve the reputation of a site in the eyes of search engines and raise its position in the results, it is necessary to perform a fairly large number of measures, which are united by the concept of ” Search engine optimization ” – SEO.
Promoting a website on your own in the 21st century is a thankless task. For this, it is better to hire an optimizer or contact an Internet marketing agency .
The advantages of SEO for lead generation are a large amount of conditionally free traffic from search engines that cannot be blocked by advertising.
There are also disadvantages and difficulties
First, increasing the site’s position takes time – from several months or more. The longer the site exists, the more chances it has to take top places in search results. Second, you will have to invest in high-quality and unique content, the work of programmers (technical parameters are very important, for example, the speed of loading the site), buying links and other measures.
Search engine optimization is a continuous process. Google and Yandex regularly update the algorithms that determine the positions of sites in the results. New requirements appear that must be implemented. In addition, illiterate optimization can have the opposite effect: lower the position of the site or even contribute to its exclusion from the results.
Yes, to earn your “place in the sun” on the first page of search results, you’ll have to work hard. But competent website promotion is a method of getting leads that will definitely pay off over time.
4. Autocalls to your database
Whether or not to call the database is a business choice. If your company practices cold calling or calling current customers, a call bot is a good option.
Its huge advantage is the speed of dialing and the price. A bot can make several hundred calls per minute, while a manager is unlikely to make one. Many services charge per second, so calls interrupted by customers in the first seconds will be almost free.
Autocalls will be an excellent channel for obtaining leads in Upsale, that is, in additional and resale. The bot can remind customers that it is time to sign up for a service (car maintenance, medical examination, etc.), inform about promotions and discounts, offer a new product, and get feedback.
The capabilities of the bot for autocalls do not end there, because it is not just a voice recording. The bot recognizes human speech well. It understands not just words, but the meaning, even if a person uses synonyms. Therefore, with the help of autocalls, you can agree on a meeting time and solve other standard issues.
The disadvantages of this method are the same as those of “live” calls with an operator. In addition, people may be annoyed and confused by the need to talk to a robot. To gain the loyalty of customers, the bot should communicate in an informal style and immediately inform that it is a robot, but it understands human language perfectly.
5. Email newsletters
On the NetHunt blog, we often write about email marketing , as this method of generating leads has remained effective and inexpensive for many years.
Advantages of mailings: simplicity and low cost (by the way, in NetHunt CRM mass mailings are completely free), the possibility of complete automation of the process, high profitability with a competent approach.
Disadvantages include the need to have your own contact database, the likelihood of getting into spam, and very limited opportunities to influence the reading of emails.
Send personalized emails with NetHunt CRMarrow right
6. SMS mailings
Today, SMS messages are unlikely to help attract new customers, as they are perceived by people as extremely intrusive. But when working with an existing database, SMS mailings are a quick way to get leads. Interestingly, the percentage of opening SMS messages is very high and reaches 95%. People tend to read SMS from companies whose names are familiar to them.
SMS newsletters are suitable if you need to briefly notify your customers about promotions, interesting offers, or otherwise inform them about yourself (for example, remind them about an unfinished order). Disadvantages of this method: relatively high price, limited message volume, ability to send only text and links.
7. Messengers
The vast majority of people today have at least one messenger on their phone. Many users prefer this channel to communicate with the company, since correspondence is in many ways more convenient than telephone conversations. Therefore, recently, methods for obtaining leads in Viber, WhatsApp, Telegram and Facebook, Instagram chats have been actively developing.
Almost all messengers limit the ability to communicate directly with users who have not consented to correspondence. In fact, only Viber provides an official way to send mass messages via messages in the form of paid advertising. In other cases, when adding people to groups, users may complain about spam, which entails sanctions.
Thus, messengers as a channel for obtaining leads still have the same drawback: you need your own contact database. In Facebook and Instagram chats, communication is possible only if the user writes first.
However, messengers are actively used for lead generation. First of all, it will be necessary to ensure the number of users’ calls to chats: from the website, social networks, etc. Having gathered an audience, you can apply the selected sales strategy.
A big advantage of messengers is the ability to fully automate the sales process through the use of chatbots. We talked about their capabilities in this article .
8. Events and networking
It seems that lead generation in the 21st century has completely moved to the internet, but this is not the case. Personal contact continues to bring profit, and for some industries is the main channel for attracting customers.
As for events, these can be various competitions, open days, master classes, excursions to production, participation in various city events (festivals, fairs, etc.). For example, a craft store can organize a master class with the accompanying sale of its products.
Networking (i.e. creating and maintaining a network of acquaintances) to find clients and partners in the b2b sector is almost a must. But not only. People use word of mouth to find goods and services no less often than the Internet. “Don’t you have a good realtor?”, “Where did you order windows?”. Therefore, the surest way to ensure a flow of leads is to actively communicate about your business offline.
The big plus of this approach is the high loyalty of potential customers, which can only be ensured by personal contact. The disadvantages are the relatively high cost and/or labor costs, low opportunities to track the effectiveness of certain actions, and in the case of networking, unpredictable results (how many and how quickly will you find people who will be interested in your product?).
How to choose a lead generation channel
There are so many ways to attract customers, which one should you choose? At the very beginning, it is better to start with the fastest, most accessible and predictable channels: it can be advertising on social networks or Google, cold calls.
It is worth gradually testing all channels. Usually, customers do not make a purchase immediately upon first contact.
