What is Lead Generation and Who Needs It?
What is lead generation and who needs it?
If you are a business or organization trying to meet any kind of a goal to sell a product or service, chances are you need to generate leads. What are leads? Also known as prospects, leads are basically any person who has reached out to you with some kind of interest in what you are offering.
What is lead generation? Lead generation means actively identifying an audience of people likely to be interested in your business and targeting that audience with a crafted message to initiate contact.
Why you need to generate leads
While you could just start cold calling people from the phone book or going door to door, these approaches cast too large of a net and are likely to result in a very high proportion of uninterested parties. What’s more, it does not make good use of your sales or service representatives’ time, leading to problems like frustration and turnover.
Lead generation — quality lead generation — makes productive use of your organization’s time by making sure you are speaking with the right people.
Who needs to generate leads?
Basically, any business or organization who requires a direct response or a multi-stage process from consumers to talk about an offer, a product or a service should have a strategy to generate strong leads. This includes everything from medical practices to law firms, yard services, fitness centers, newspapers or financial institutions.
Other enterprises with a simpler transaction process, such as many stores and restaurants, can generally rely on brand awareness advertising over lead generation to drive footsteps into the store.
What does a lead generation strategy consist of?
The key to successful lead generation is a multichannel approach. Having a healthy mix of lead generators, both traditional and digital, is critical to collecting leads that are both high quality and at the right volume to meet your goals. Traditional and digital lead generators include:
- Traditional — This generally means any form of lead generation that was available before the advent of the internet. From networking events to print, radio and television advertising, these platforms are still effective ways to reach the audience you are seeking. However, the drawback can often be a higher cost to reach a smaller audience of potential leads. Even national advertising is seeing an increasingly shrinking audience with the rise of digital platforms.
- Digital — Digital lead generation uses the various channels that have become available thanks to the internet to reach audiences that are local or global. While digital lead generation can seem complex, it offers any organization with a computer the ability to reach millions of people. Lead generation channels include pay-per-click advertising (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing and more.
Start your lead generation strategy with Burg & Co. Marketing
If you’re looking to increase leads coming to your business, Burg & Co. Marketing can provide an integrated multichannel lead generation strategy. We provide social media marketing, content marketing, SEO and PPC services.
To learn more about how we can help you, contact us today.