How to Execute a Successful Lead Generation Campaign in 17 Steps

You’ve got an amazing brand. A product that will solve your customers’ pain points. Industry expertise that puts you ahead of the competition. You’ve got all the ingredients that go into a recipe for success…

But if you don’t have leads, all that effort will fall flatter than an overbaked soufflé.

No matter how great your product, your team, or your marketing, none of it will work without a lead generation campaign. Lead generation is a method for attracting and nurturing your audience into and through your sales funnel, so you can turn them into conversions and repeat/referring customers.

If you want to get all the inside scoop on how to launch a successful lead generation plan, stick around because we’ve got the 17 steps you need to take to get leads and keep them. But first…

What Is a Lead Generation Campaign?

A lead generation campaign really is your recipe for marketing success. The aim of a lead gen campaign is to get leads into your funnel, score them and qualify them, and then nurture them through the buyer’s journey.

But how do you know you have all the ingredients you need to achieve your goals? Before you begin, ask yourself these questions:

Once you understand what a lead means to you, how you’ll implement your process, how much you can budget per lead, the kind of content you’ll create, and how you’ll manage sales enablement, you’re ready to begin.

This knowledge will equip you to plot out your lead gen campaign, following a process that takes you from the initial audience research through the execution of the campaign, to its analysis.

There are few things to keep in mind when planning your lead gen campaign. First, lead generation is not the same as demand generation. Most of the time, you’ll want to use both for maximum impact. Also, your lead gen campaign has to work in conjunction with your other marketing channels, especially content and SEO, if you want the best results.

What Is a Lead Generation Funnel? 

As we said, your lead gen funnel might look a bit different from others, but all follow the same general concept — your leads enter at the top (the wide part of the funnel) and then move through the stages, getting closer to the narrower part of the funnel until they become a conversion.

The lead gen tactics you use will differ based on where your leads are in the funnel at any given time. Moving leads through the funnel is a combined effort between marketing and sales. While marketing usually handles the top of the funnel (getting leads in) and sales handles the bottom (turning leads to conversions), there’s a significant overlap. 

Understanding the lead generation funnel is the first step in crafting a lead gen plan that boosts conversions and grows your brand.

What Are the Lead Funnel Stages? 

Remember the structure of the funnel — wide at the top, narrow at the bottom. Leads usually enter the funnel near the widest point. This is the attraction stage, where they’ve just become aware of the brand or aware that they have a problem that needs solving.

From there, leads move into the consideration stage, where they understand they have an issue and that several brands (including yours) can solve it. 

Toward the bottom of the funnel is the decision stage, where the lead has weighed their options and chosen the brand they feel best meets their needs. Once they make a purchase (or take the desired action of the lead gen campaign), they’re a conversion.

But that’s not all! While those are the fundamental stages of the lead gen funnel, you can also invert it (think of an hourglass shape), and on the other side, the lead — who’s now a customer — becomes part of the referral process, bringing new leads into the funnel.

Each of the major stages of the funnel (awareness, consideration, decision) is denoted by widely accepted abbreviations: TOFU (top of the funnel), MOFU (middle of the funnel), and BOFU (bottom of the funnel).

TOFU 

This is the very first stage when leads first enter the funnel. At this point, they don’t really know your brand, and they may not even know they have a problem to solve. TOFU leads are cold leads — and they need plenty of nurturing to warm up to conversion. 

If you’re targeting TOFU leads, you want to make sure any content you offer them is very broad and general and not sales-oriented. Go too aggressive, and they’ll probably shy away. Instead, focus on supplying them with information they need to become aware of your brand and what it offers.

MOFU 

MOFU leads are in or near the consideration stage. They’ve got a problem, and they’re in search of a solution. MOFU leads can come into the funnel at this stage, or they may have moved here from TOFU/awareness.

MOFU leads tend to want more information than TOFU leads — they’re looking for in-depth content that provides specific details on what they’re trying to solve. Whitepapers, ebooks, and research reports are all great forms of MOFU content.

BOFU 

BOFU leads are the warmest leads. They’ve gone through the funnel, so they understand their problem, they’re aware of your brand, and they know which solutions they’re looking at. Now, they’re ready to make a purchase decision.

The only thing standing in their way? Your competition. This is the point they’ve narrowed down their options, and your brand is in the running with some fierce competitors. Free trials, case studies, and product comparisons are all highly effective forms of BOFU content.

The Lead Generation Process 

Having fun yet? Don’t worry — we’ve got a few more funnels up our sleeve.

If you really want to dig deep into the lead gen process, you’ll find that the funnel stretches as leads move through it, so there are actually more steps than the primary three stages of awareness, consideration, and decision.

In the example below, the funnel has been repurposed to show different types of leads, along with the transition from marketing to sales.

So what steps does the lead gen process include? Let’s find out:

Acquire leads 

To get leads through your funnel, you first need to get them into the funnel. Most of the time that means you have to give them a reason to give up their personal information, like a phone number or email address.

One of the best ways to capture leads is by offering them a lead magnet. A lead magnet can be any of a wide variety of content assets that are designed to offer value to prospective leads. Often, lead magnets are gated content, so in order to get the download, they’ll have to exchange it for their details. 

Nurture leads to become prospects 

Nurturing is very commonly done via email and happens after your lead is in the funnel and has expressed an interest in your brand or product. At this point, they haven’t reached the consideration stage yet, so it’s up to you to show them your brand is reputable and trustworthy and that you offer solutions they need.

Nurturing is a delicate balance between building a relationship and nudging them toward conversion. A hard sell is not going to work at this point — what they need is to feel welcomed and valued.

Qualify leads 

As noted in the funnel above, it’s important to qualify leads so you understand exactly what stage they’re in and what they need to continue moving through. 

There’s no overall accepted framework for lead qualification, and it might vary depending on the structure of your team and the relationship between sales and marketing. The two most widely accepted lead types are marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs). Again, depending on your company and brand, you might have other types of leads, like information qualified leads (IQLs) or product qualified leads (PQLs).

Whatever lead types you have, you’ll need to determine your lead qualification framework (which usually involves some form of lead scoring), then use that as your basis to move leads out of the funnel or further through to sales.

As we noted, the two most common lead types are MQLs and SQLs.

Marketing qualified 

An MQL is a lead that is primed and ready to move toward conversion. They’ve already shown interest in the brand, have supplied their contact information, and often have taken another step, like signing up for a free trial or scheduling a demo. 

Sales qualified 

When you begin the handoff to the sales team, they’ll have their own criteria for moving an MQL to an SQL. An SQL is ready to make a purchase, and it’s now up to sales to close the deal. It’s critical that you have a solid sales enablement strategy to make the transition as seamless as possible.

Opportunity 

An opportunity is what happens when a lead is at the decision stage and is leaning in the direction of choosing your brand. This is mission-critical — you need a sales team that can sway the opportunity in your direction. This is more than nurturing — it’s a negotiation. Discounts and exclusive deals may come into play at this point as you work to sweeten the pot so they’ll choose your brand.

Convert leads

All roads have led up to this point. This is where sales makes an offer so good that the opportunity becomes a conversion. This, of course, is one of the primary goals of all lead generation. You’ve put in the hard work, and now, along with sales, you’ve closed the deal. Job well done…but that’s not all.  

Recycle leads you don’t close 

Not every lead is going to become a conversion, and the funnel doesn’t end at a sale. In fact, let’s consider that hourglass-shaped funnel again:

Note the bottom section is for after-the-sale nurturing. You want customers to return and refer others, so this becomes a critical part of the lead generation funnel.

On the other hand, for leads that fall out of your funnel, you might think that’s the end, but it’s really just another opportunity. No matter where they drop off, make sure you have a plan in place to get them right back into the funnel. Design a specific nurturing strategy for this, like an abandoned cart or retargeting campaign.

5 Growth Facts About the Tech Marketing Funnel

The tech marketing funnel is essential to get your brand more leads and more revenue. Whether your product has hit the market or is still in the development stage, you need to be prepped for how you plan to get leads and how you plan to nurture them. In the digital age we live in, not being prepared is no longer an excuse. We’re here to help you get started with five growth facts that will keep you prepared for leads coming in and continually increase your revenue.

1. The Marketing Funnel Has Changed

A traditional marketing and sales funnel includes four main stages. At the top of the funnel, we have awareness, followed by consideration, evaluation, and purchase. The funnel is designed to get more leads and increase the probability of conversion.

Awareness: What platforms are your audience on?

Consideration: Map web, email, and social metrics to determine the phase your customer journey is in.

Evaluation: Use ebooks, whitepapers, podcasts, and webinars to get your audience to understand the benefits you can provide them.

Purchase: Give the buyer what they are looking for when they are ready to convert — discounts, guides, welcome kits can work great.

With the rise of digital marketing, though, what we know as a traditional funnel has evolved, but with the same goals in mind. Funnels are no longer linear because neither is the buyer’s journey. The sales process is becoming more and more complex.

This means you need to be ready to meet potential customers wherever they are in their journey, and their path toward conversion will likely be a tad…well, convoluted.

2. Marketing Automation Can Save Time and Increase Revenue

Saving time while increasing revenue is probably on every brand’s wish list. Well, you’re in luck because that wish can come true. Marketing automation can boost the efficiency of the entire team. Who doesn’t want that? With marketing automation, you can:

• Complete tasks quicker
• Be consistent in your marketing
• Achieve more brand goals and achieve them more efficiently
• Reduce costs due to less errors and fewer resources needing to be utilized
• Increase revenue
  

There are endless advantages and benefits for your business, your staff, and your customers. For instance, data collection will become simpler because you can have software to collect and send the data for you. Data provides valuable and actionable insights that you can then use to make decisions that are best for your customers.

This will then allow you to deliver a personalized experience for your customers through unique and targeted content based on the data you’ve collected. Need more help with marketing automation? We’re a HubSpot partner and can help.

3. Zero-Party Data Gathering Is the Future

Having the right lead generation and lead nurturing strategy can make or break a brand. If you don’t take care of those who are going to be crucial to your success, someone else will. An essential step in your strategy is data collection.

With global privacy rules changing on what seems to be a daily basis, being proactive with the changes will keep you ahead of the competition. This is where zero-party data gathering comes in. Zero-party data comes directly from customers volunteering their information.

With zero-party data collection, you are following global privacy rules, getting new insights on your customers and building trust with them. How do you do this differently than how you’ve collected data in the past?

• Build personalized email campaigns that dive deeper and deeper to gain pertinent, yet volunteered information
• Use the data you’ve collected to release content and products based on what you’ve gathered
• Tailor your website to individuals based on their feedback – such as opt-ins or pop-ups for something they specifically are looking for
  

In addition to zero-party data collection, form design and the length of the forms to collect data are also factors that can impact your next launch and user engagement. Keep in mind that finding the right leads is still important, but giving them a clear and concise process to become a lead is just as important. Along with your marketing funnel, building and optimizing a lead funnel will help you really focus on getting and nurturing the leads.

4. Content: The More You Share, the More They Care

When we say the more you share, we don’t mean share unthoughtful or unplanned content. What we do mean is to have a plan to consistently share well-thought-out content that is going to benefit future and prospective leads. It also needs to be shared where your future and the prospective audience is. Just a few reasons creating content should be at the forefront of your marketing funnel:

• 93% of businesses that are currently active on Facebook
• 55 million companies use LinkedIn
• 200 million businesses on Instagram
• 30 million businesses on Snapchat
  

Gone are the days of creating content simply to buff up your website or to use on your favorite social media platform. As social media changes, your content strategy needs to evolve too. For example, with TikTok being the most popular platform, depending on your audience, your strategy should include content for TikTok.

What’s just as important is making sure your content resonates enough with your audience that they engage with it. The more you share relevant content, the more your audience cares, which results in increased revenue.

5. Customer Loyalty and Advocacy Are Key

Providing high-quality service to your customers to retain them and keep them loyal can go a long way for your brand. With there always being a digital footprint left behind, consumers have more influence than ever on what others will purchase or use. Let’s get to the facts and the stats on the importance of customer loyalty and advocacy:

• 58.7% of consumers believe earning rewards/loyalty points is the most valued aspect of a shopping experience.
• 87% of Americans are OK with details of their activity being tracked in exchange for personalized rewards.
• The probability of selling to an existing customer is nearly 70%.
• 70% of consumers are likely to recommend a brand if they like their loyalty program.
  

The stats about customer loyalty can create a list over a mile long. So how are you going to use this knowledge to your advantage? Personalization, referral programs, and offers.

Use personalized profiles of your customers to create products and content based on the insights. Interact with your customers and prospects on social media through polls to determine their preferences. Use referral programs to make your customers feel like they are an insider. It builds trust and provides high ROI. Lastly, provide your most valued customers with special offers such as discounts or rewards for being a loyal customer.

As you move from a traditional sales and marketing funnel to a digital marketing funnel for your tech company, you will begin to see small differences that make a huge impact on your ROI. 

How to Build an Effective Lead Generation Funnel in 11 Steps 

Ready to build your own lead generation funnel? Let the games begin! We’ve got all the steps you need to create a lead generation funnel that pulls traffic in and drives them through to conversion.

#1: Define your buyer persona 

Creating a buyer persona is one of the first and most critical steps when building your lead gen funnel. You’ve likely already done some in-depth research on your buyer persona, but if not, there are a few tips to keep in mind:

Your buyer persona should be more detailed than a general target audience (so you’re not targeting every possible SaaS lead – just the right ones). You want to have not just demographic information but psychographic and behavioral attributes as well. 

#2: Identify problems your audience faces along their journey 

Remember that your buyer persona has a problem, but they may not yet be aware of it, especially if they’re at the very top of the funnel. Once you have your buyer persona nailed down, you can begin to do some specific customer research to find their most pressing pain points.

Remember, as depicted above, a pain point is not a solution. When they’re still early in the funnel, they aren’t looking for a solution yet, so if you come storming in with one, you’re likely to scare them off. 

Instead, focus on figuring out what those specific pain points are, then work to make sure they’re aware of them and slowly begin to guide them toward solutions (that only your product can offer, of course).

#3: Map your customer journey 

Usually, the buyer’s journey falls into the same general stages as your funnel. But a customer journey can be a bit more in-depth, with more steps along the way and more teams and individuals involved. This is especially true for B2B brands that tend to have a much longer buying cycle.

While there are stages of the buyer’s journey that remain consistent across industries and business types, some will be unique to your brand. 

#4: Create lead magnets that solve the identified problems

As we mentioned earlier, lead magnets are assets that persuade your leads to exchange their contact information for a piece of content that offers them high value. 

For instance, you’ve probably noticed the free templates sprinkled throughout this article. Those are lead magnets, and we’re hoping you’ll find them valuable enough to trade your email address to get them (fingers crossed).

#5: Create a highly-converting landing page for your funnel 

Landing pages are crucial to the success of your lead gen campaigns. If your landing page doesn’t push visitors farther along in your funnel or (even worse) leads them to drop off, you’ve got big trouble on your hands.

Make sure you have a landing page for each specific offer and that it’s optimized for lead gen.

Be sure your landing page has one clear CTA on it and that it’s the only action you’re asking visitors to take. Also make sure your messaging is consistent with your offer and that it speaks directly to your buyer persona and addresses their pain points.

#6: Use inbound and outbound methods to drive traffic 

There are many ways to interact with leads and move them through the funnel. At FPS, we’re huge proponents of inbound marketing, which brings leads to you (rather than you going in pursuit).

There are, however, times when an outbound approach can be highly effective — the trick is knowing when to use each.

Inbound lead generation 

Inbound lead generation falls under the umbrella of content marketing. It involves creating content assets (usually called lead magnets in this context) that draw leads into the funnel. Content can be gated or ungated and can be designed to align with each stage of the funnel. Inbound also includes other types of organic and paid marketing, like SEO and PPC.

SEO 

Search engine optimization is one of the most effective ways to connect leads with your brand. It involves targeting keywords related to your brand so you’ll pop up in search results. SEO works best when you target specific, long-tail keywords that fulfill user search intent.

Content marketing 

Content marketing will vary depending on where in the funnel you’re targeting your leads. TOFU content will include more general information, blogs, listicles, etc. MOFU content gets more in-depth with ebooks and whitepapers, and BOFU content really pushes the brand with free trials, case studies, and demos.

PPC 

PPC is a form of paid inbound marketing. You can target PPC campaigns to raise brand awareness or make a specific offer. Your goals will guide the type of PPC campaign you run. If you want more traffic (so, more new leads in the funnel), you’ll probably run an awareness campaign. If you want warmer leads, a retargeting campaign may be your best bet.

Email marketing

Lead gen relies heavily on email marketing, which is often made easier through marketing automation. Inbound email marketing involves getting leads to sign up or subscribe to your newsletter or mailing list. Once you have them, you can follow up with a variety of campaigns to nurture them through the funnel.

Social media 

Your social media platforms are a powerful asset to bring leads to your brand. You can run paid social posts to gain new followers and also use your platforms organically to engage with and nurture existing followers.

Outbound lead generation 

Outbound lead gen shifts the power dynamics — in this case, you become the pursuer trying to woo the lead into your funnel. Here are some of the most popular methods of outbound lead gen:

Social media outreach 

Outbound social involves reaching out to leads directly, usually through direct messages (DMs). This can be a risky approach, as people don’t always like it when strangers (especially brands) slide into their DMs. Make sure you’re doing the inbound work first — creating an organic presence for your brand — before you get too personal.

Cold email outreach 

Outbound email entails sending emails to people, companies, or lists you haven’t contacted or interacted with before. You’re casting a wide net with cold emails, so you want to make sure they’re as personalized as possible. 

Content syndication 

Content syndication is when you distribute the lead gen content you create across multiple channels to make sure it gets in front of exactly the right audience. Cold emails would fall under the umbrella of content syndication, as do other approaches like telemarketing.

Cold calling 

As mentioned above, cold calling, or telemarketing, is a form of content syndication. This isn’t an easy tactic, as you need to have a lot of data (valid phone numbers) to begin and a team that’s confident and comfortable on the other end of the line (and used to getting hung up on).

Referral programs 

Referral marketing is probably the most hands-off outbound approach because your existing customers do a lot of the heavy lifting. They’re the ones bringing new leads into the funnel, so what you need to focus on is equipping them to do that. Offer incentives for referring new customers or contest entries for social shares, etc.

#7: Use lead generation funnel software to build and manage a prospect database 

Basically, what we’re saying here is — you need a CRM. A good CRM is absolutely critical to effective lead generation, and you need one that’s reliable and user-friendly to ensure you always have the most up-to-date lists and a database that’s secure and robust.

As a HubSpot agency partner, we always recommend starting with their free CRM. It’s the best product available whether you’re just starting out or have an existing database to move over. It’s hassle-free with a very small learning curve, so you can start using it right away.

#8: Collect prospect data 

So, now that you’ve got the software, you need the data to populate it. But how do you do that?

Data collection is a big issue for lead gen — in fact, it’s one of the top issues marketers face when starting a lead gen campaign.

Source

Lead magnets are your best option to overcome these challenges and collect the data you need.

#9: Pass leads to sales to close 

This can be a tough one, depending on the relationship between your sales and marketing departments and whether or not you have a sales enablement strategy. 

You’ll need to set parameters around what triggers your team to push a lead to the sales department. That might be signing up for a free trial or requesting a demo. Just remember that once you’ve put all this effort into nurturing the lead and building a relationship, a smooth transition to sales is critical. You don’t want it to be a rude awakening if your sales department takes a different approach to closing the deal.

Ultimately, this will require collaboration and communication between teams to ensure the move from marketing to sales is seamless and hassle-free.

#10: Improve CRO 

Even if you’re satisfied with the number of leads who end up converting, you can always do better. And if you find that your conversion numbers are slipping, it’s even more important to focus your efforts on conversion rate optimization, or CRO.

First, you need to understand what your current conversion rate is:

From there, you can take action to improve conversions by using the foundations of growth marketing. You’ll want to test everything (A/B or split testing one element at a time), then track that data and make adjustments. Experimentation is key as you identify barriers and work to break them down. You may also want to look at digging deeper into segmentation so you know you’re delivering the most custom and personalized experience to your leads.

#11: Analyze, Experiment, Adjust 

That leads to our last step, which is what you’ll already be doing for CRO. You want to make sure you’re tracking all relevant data and, from there, building hypotheses you can test and experiment with. 

Keep a close eye on analytics, and track the metrics that matter most. You’ll want to look at your leads to customer conversion rate, along with your landing page conversion rate and ad conversion rate. You might find your overall conversion is high, but leads are dropping off your landing pages before clicking your CTA. Testing a new CTA or adapting your landing page to better align with your offer may increase your conversion rate even more.

17 Tips to Create and Execute a Lead Generation Campaign Strategy

Now that you know what a lead gen campaign is and how it should be structured, let’s dive into the details of how to create and manage your campaign. Here are the 17 top tips from our experts on how to do it:

1: Establish campaign objectives

Your campaign objectives are the goals you want to meet by the time your campaign has ended. It’s easy to say you want “more leads” and “more revenue,” but you first have to understand exactly what that means to you. Are you looking for a certain level of lead qualification (IQL, MQL, or SQL)? Are sales your only conversions, or can that be a downloaded piece of gated content or a form fill?

Once you know the answers to those questions, you can start to outline your campaign objectives against your lead gen funnel.

As you see above, your audience may be at various stages within the funnel, and your objectives will change depending on where they are and where you want them to end up. For instance, if your goal is to guide leads who are already aware of your brand toward the consideration stage, you’re going to want to see increases in traffic, views, and engagement. But if you want to raise brand awareness, that may be the hardest objective to measure. In that case, you’ll look mainly at reach and impressions.

Once you’ve got a good handle on your goals, it’s time to start analyzing your audience.

2: Research your audience

You may already have a good idea of who your buyer persona is or which target audience you’re aiming for. But if you’re a startup growing your brand, expanding into a new market, or just need new leads in your funnel, you’ll want to really dive into the research here.

There are many ways to research your audience. You could survey existing customers, invite loyal customers to participate in a focus group, or check out your competitors’ followers on social media.

Remember, you want your audience research and your buyer persona to be as detailed as possible. This should go well beyond demographics and should include psychographic and behavioral attitudes.

3: Choose campaign targets

Once you know who your buyer persona is, you can break that down even further into your campaign target. This is an incredibly specific and narrow segment of your audience that you plan to aim for directly.

Your campaign target will be a combination of several factors — your ideal buyer, their position in the funnel, and where you want them to be in the buyer’s journey. Then, you’ll need to consider how to reach that specific audience in order to achieve your campaign objectives.

4: Choose a campaign type

There are a wide variety of lead gen campaign types, and the one you choose will usually depend on the other factors you’ve considered up to this point — target audience, funnel, objectives, etc.

Let’s take a closer look at varying types of lead gen campaigns and how they can work for your brand.

Free resource

The advice we generally give to brands is this: Give your best stuff away for free.

That usually gets us a few confused looks (and maybe some language not quite suitable for this blog).

But it works.

Providing a free resource that has real, measurable value is one of the most effective ways to attract leads who will eventually convert into customers.

A few examples of free resources include:

• Ultimate guides
• Checklists and how-tos
• Downloadable tools and templates
• Ebooks and whitepapers
• Research reports

The resources you create will depend on the type of leads you want. If you’re looking to get new leads in the funnel, you’ll focus on top of the funnel (TOFU) content. That’s usually ungated, general content designed for a broad audience. As you get further into the funnel, you’ll want to create MOFU and BOFU content, usually gated, in which you receive contact information in exchange for a download.

Free trial

Free trials are the gold standard for lead generation, especially B2B lead gen because they’re highly effective. When you offer leads a freemium or forever free model, they get to have an authentic experience with your product.

The key is to make sure the trial is long enough to offer real value but limited enough to keep them wanting more. If you’re able to do a no-credit-card-required signup, you’ll get even more leads.

Contest

Contests are a great way to get leads to hand over their contact information. The chance of becoming a winner is irresistible, especially if you’ve done the work of targeting the right audience that’s interested and motivated.

You can get even more out of a contest when you incentivize your audience. Offer them more entries for completing simple tasks like sharing on social media, filling out a survey, or referring new entrants.

Quiz

Quizzes are addictive little content nuggets that everyone seems to enjoy (or at least feels compelled to take). Quizzes also offer a lot of room for creativity and fun within your brand. You can be as silly or as serious as you want as long as the topic appeals to your audience.

Make sure that you require a form fill for quiz-takers to receive their results. And make sure it’s a well-written quiz that offers something valuable (so, not just “What Type of Potato Are You?).

Webinar

If you’re going after a B2B audience, webinars are basically a must. The B2B crowd seeks out knowledge and looks for learning opportunities. They desire thought leadership, research, and data. A webinar is a great way to get them interested and provide them with a service they find valuable.

Make sure you follow up your webinars with a nurturing campaign. Send them a recorded version of the webinar, or urge them to sign up for another one or for a free course that offers deeper insights.

Timed discount or coupon 

Create urgency with personalized, timed offers for existing leads. Use retargeting to go after leads who’ve already visited your website, viewed a particular product, or clicked on an ad.

Countdown timers are a great way to motivate leads to take action, and they prove to be more effective than a simple reminder email.

5: Plan your content

Content and lead generation go hand-in-hand. You can get all the leads in the world into your funnel, but if you haven’t created the right content, you’ll see them quickly exit.

Consider your audience, your goals, your funnel, and the type of campaign you want to run, then work on plotting out the content you’ll need to support it.

Start thinking now about where you’ll distribute this content. You’ll likely want it on your blog and your social media platforms. But think outside the box as well. You may want to supplement with a paid campaign or look at engaging in forums like Quora and Reddit. You may also want to pursue guest post opportunities, appearances on podcasts, etc.

6: Create the right offer for each stage of the buying cycle

As we’ve mentioned, what you offer your audience depends quite a bit on where they are in the funnel and what stage of the buyer’s journey they’re at.

You wouldn’t, for example, want to offer a top of the funnel (TOFU) lead an in-depth how-to or product spec sheet. You also wouldn’t want to offer a BOFU lead who’s ready to buy a generic, awareness-focused checklist.

Make sure your offers are strong and that they’re designed for each audience segment at the particular funnel stage you’re trying to target with your campaign.

7: Design and optimize the campaign

There are three phases to this process if you want to get the best results out of your lead gen campaign:

• First, create the landing page you’ll direct the audience to, where leads will be captured.
• Next, set up email automation to nurture leads once they’ve signed up.
• Finally, monitor your campaign through A/B testing and make adjustments as needed.

Each of these three elements is critical to the performance of your campaign. The landing page will hook the leads with a strong offer and clear CTA. The email nurture campaign will reel them in with other valuable and relevant content. And the A/B testing will keep squirmy leads from wriggling away by narrowing down the strongest content and creative.

8: Promote your offer

There are many ways to promote your lead gen offer, but most of them fall into two groups: paid or organic. Paid advertising is just as it sounds — you pay for ad placement, whether it’s in search, display ads, or on social media. Organic is unpaid promotion. This usually happens on owned or earned media — your blog, your social media profiles, your website, news releases, etc.

There’s no right answer to which is best for your brand. Often, you’ll want to use a combination of paid and organic channels to get maximum results. Wherever you distribute your content, be sure that it’s aligned with the audience and designed to reach your campaign objectives.

9: Choose media outlets

As mentioned above, you’ll want to explore all your options for your media outlets, whether that’s paid, earned, or owned. It’s very likely you’ll utilize a combination, but it may also depend on your buyer persona and your industry.

For example, in the past, B2B buyers were much easier to find through in-person and live events, such as conferences and industry networking. Post-2020, that’s changed slightly. B2B buyers have shifted more to online events, video conferencing, and calls as opposed to face-to-face interactions.

However, they still value the engagement and personal connection, so that should guide the decisions you make about where to push out your offer.

A live webinar hosted on your website will appeal to a different audience than a downloadable spec sheet. Knowing the difference and targeting the right audience in the right location is critical to lead gen success.

10: Use the right lead generation tools

When you’re planning out a lead gen campaign, the good news is that you don’t have to go it alone. There are numerous tools out there designed to help you find and capture the right leads for your brand.

To start, you’ll need a solid CRM, like HubSpot. Then you’ll want a form scraping tool, which gathers all the information from your lead gen forms and compiles it for you. You may also want additional tools, like heat maps that show you what actions visitors take on your page or CTA templates that help you design CTAs that convert.

11: Ensure your messaging is consistent and delivers on the promise

When you’re putting together an offer and the creative around it (copy, visuals, CTA, etc.), you want to make sure that you’re not overpromising. In this era of slick advertising and savvy consumers, your leads will know when they smell a rat.

Make sure your messaging — from ads to social posts to landing pages and emails — is consistent and accurate. Remember that your end goal isn’t just snagging an email address or a phone number — it’s nurturing a lead that will become a customer — one that will hopefully keep coming back for more and bringing others with them.

12: Perform lead scoring

Lead scoring is a methodology in which you assign points for certain actions and use those points to qualify your leads on a spectrum from cold to warm.

Your leads should look something like this:

• IQLs: Information Qualified Leads are the coolest and have likely only taken one action on your lead scoring model.
• MQLs: Marketing Qualified Leads are warmer and have taken a couple actions. They are familiar with your brand and are likely in or getting near the consideration stage.
• SQLs: Sales Qualified Leads are the warmest. They’re in or near the decision stage and are ready to choose a brand and make a purchase.

13: Collaborate with sales team to qualify leads

How do you know what actions take an MQL to SQL? You can’t know if you aren’t working closely with your sales team.

At the same time, if your sales team doesn’t know what you’ve done to nurture the lead to the point they’re handed off to sales, they don’t have the information they need to close the deal.

What you need is a solid sales enablement strategy to ensure that marketing and sales are working together for a seamless transition.

14: Create a social media strategy for lead generation

You’ve got to be strategic if you want to leverage your existing social media profiles for lead generation. The first and most important consideration is which platform to focus on. You want to be where your audience is already hanging out. So, for instance, your B2B crowd is much more likely to be on LinkedIn instead of Instagram.

Speaking of LinkedIn, it’s an excellent tool to use for lead generation. You can use a combination of organic content distribution, paid posts, and LinkedIn’s lead gen forms to maximize your leads and bolster your brand’s presence.

15: A/B test all components of your lead gen campaign

A/B testing is one of the surest ways to guide your lead gen campaign to success. In fact, all growth marketing hinges on testing and experimentation, and for good reason — it delivers results.

A/B testing works so well because of its simplicity. You test just one component at a time — headline, CTA, offer, etc. — and then make adjustments as you go.

Be sure you’re testing every piece of your campaign, from your ads to your landing page to your social media posts — but only ever one element at a time.

16: Create a communications strategy to follow up with leads

Getting leads into your funnel isn’t worth much if you aren’t following up and communicating with them regularly. Often, the next step in a lead gen campaign is an email campaign. A nurture campaign can be automated to ensure emails are sent whenever the appropriate trigger (a certain action or a period of time) is met.

Just remember how crucial this is. Because if a lead takes an action but doesn’t hear from you again, they’ll be in and out of your funnel at record speed.

17: Track everything

One of the last but most crucial steps of this process is to monitor and analyze your lead generation campaign metrics. The metrics and KPIs you track will be determined by your original campaign objectives, but some of the most common would include traffic, downloads, and conversions.

However, you likely want to pay attention to micro-conversions as well. Micro-conversions are those that don’t necessarily generate revenue but do move the lead further down the funnel and increase the chances of a full conversion.

Micro-conversions can cover many actions, like downloading a discount code, watching a video, or sharing a social media post.

5 Lead Generation Campaign Examples

Think you’ve got what it takes to launch a successful lead gen campaign? We’re sure you do, but if you still need some inspiration, take a look at these examples:

Freebies offer

Freebies can be basically any asset that has some value to your audience. It might be a downloadable guide, a checklist, or an ebook.

Get creative when planning out your freebies, and remember that you don’t need to stick to just the basics.

Quizzes

As we mentioned above, quizzes are fun and creative ways to actively engage leads and persuade them to supply you with their contact information.

Quizzes for lead generation should be valuable to the prospect and give them a direct path toward conversion. While some quizzes can be silly, you’ll want to make sure they’re also providing quiz-takers with a service they need, like the example above.

Overall, interactive content like quizzes provides many benefits that appeal to leads and keep them moving through the funnel.

Webinar

We’ve already established that B2B audiences love and respond to webinars because they crave knowledge and data, and webinars deliver.

You have a few options when determining how to execute a webinar for lead gen:

• Timely: A live webinar creates a sense of exclusivity and builds FOMO. While it might appeal to prospective leads who prefer events in real time and want to engage, it may also turn others off.
• Evergreen: Pre-recorded webinars are efficient because you can record them at any time and have them ready to send off when a lead is interested. They do not, however, create as much urgency or excitement.
• Combo: Why not get the best of both worlds? Create a live webinar with a limited attendance number to build that exclusive, urgent feeling. But then provide a recording of the webinar as a follow-up for attendees and offer it to leads who weren’t able to make the live event.

Email course

Also perfect for the B2B audience, an email course appeals to their love of learning but gives them the flexibility to participate at their own pace. The great thing about email courses is that they can be automated, so participants receive emails based on a set timeline or when they complete an action, like finishing a unit or taking a quiz.

Giveaway

Everyone loves a giveaway. But to get them right, they need to be planned and executed with lead gen in mind. Giving away a free vacation, for example, will probably get you the most leads, but hey, who doesn’t want a free vacation? But will they be the right leads? Maybe not.

However, if you give away your own product or service, you’ll get leads that are interested and warm.

The only caveat is that you probably won’t get as many leads. Still, they’ll be leads that will be much more likely to convert and purchase other products and services from you.

You may want to test different giveaways to find out what works the best or run different types of giveaways depending on your audience and objectives. If you just want brand awareness and lots of leads in your funnel, sure, give away that YETI tumbler. But if you want extremely qualified, warm leads, give away a six-month subscription to your service with a few exclusive upgrades.

Hire a Lead Generation Company to Create and Execute Result-Driven Lead Campaigns

Putting together a lead gen campaign comes with a lot of planning and consideration, and if you don’t have a dedicated lead generation team, it can be pretty overwhelming. It pays off in the end to go with a trusted agency partner and work with them to design a campaign that brings in leads and nurtures them through your funnel.

At FPS, we’ve got a lead generation team working in conjunction with experts in SEO, content, email, paid, and inbound marketing, so we’ve got all your bases covered.