Lead generation is one of the most important marketing steps that most businesses focus on.
91% of marketers claim lead generation is their top priority.
This is because having a list of qualified leads can drive more sales real quick, than most other sales campaigns.
But it’s one thing to want more leads, and another to actually find the tactics that reach the right people.
That’s what I’m diving into today.
I’ve lined up eight fresh, actionable lead generation ideas for 2024. Each one is crafted to help you not only grow your list but also attract leads that are genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
So let’s begin.
What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is basically the strategic process of stimulating and capturing interest in your service or product for the purpose of developing a sales pipeline. To be specific, it involves identifying potential customers (leads) who have shown interest or might be interested in what you offer.
For instance, if you run an online software business, lead generation activities might involve offering a free trial or a demo of your product through a landing page. When visitors fill out a form to access the trial, they provide their contact information, thereby becoming leads that you can then nurture into customers.
This process helps in building a database of potential customers and sets the groundwork for future sales initiatives.
Why Lead Generation is Important for Your Business?
Lead generation is crucial for several concrete reasons:
- Efficient Resource Allocation: When you understand where your leads come from, you can allocate your marketing resources more effectively, focusing on channels and strategies that bring the best return on investment.
- Enhanced Customer Insights: Generating leads allows you to collect valuable data about your prospects. This data includes their behavior, preferences, and feedback, which can be used to tailor your products, services, and marketing messages to better meet their needs.
- Higher Conversion Rates: With a structured lead generation strategy, you target individuals who have already shown interest in your niche. These leads are often more qualified and more likely to convert into sales than cold contacts.
- Strategic Follow-ups: Capturing lead information enables you to implement targeted follow-up strategies. Whether through email marketing, social media, or personalized offers, these follow-ups keep your brand top-of-mind and gradually guide prospects toward making a purchase.
By focusing on these specific aspects, you can better appreciate how lead generation activities fills your sales pipeline and enhances your marketing efforts and business growth.
5 Lead Generation Ideas For A Successful Sales Funnel Campaign
Normally, when you hear lead generation, you probably picture it to be an optin form where viewers can input data. And in return, they may be promised informative emails later, or they may be emailed a free resource. But lead generation activities are more than that.
For any lead generation idea you use, you need to have a clear goal of what type of leads you want and what goal you have with them in the future.
Based on these you have to choose the lead generation funnel strategy for the best outcome.
Following are some of the proven tactics to collect leads that will have high conversion potential.
1. Collect Leads Via A Free Session
If you are a consultant, counselor, or maybe a professional coach, then a free session is a great way to engage with clients.
You can set up a two-step lead generation funnel with a landing page to promote your free session and a thank you page to confirm the booking.
And then you may work on driving traffic to this funnel. Whoever signs up, you have a chance to impress him and then make an offer on your course service.
But that’s not all. Let’s say someone joined the session, but then he said “I’ll think about it.”
At that point, you have their emails and names, so you can set up email automation campaigns to try and reach them again, maybe after a week or two.
In fact, you know these leads are qualified. So when you run any promotional campaigns in the future, such as a discount on your service, then you may email them with the offer. This will give you a few instant exposures, but more importantly, a few of them may end up taking your service.
Let us look at an example.
Suppose, you provide divorce counseling to your clients. To attract the prospects you can offer a 15 minutes one to one free consultation & start your lead generation process.
Whoever subscribes to the free counseling is likely to have marital issues & will be your targeted prospect.
Now, you may nurture them and share your success stories with them via multiple emails in the following week, and then offer them a discount on your service via a sales funnel afterwards, maybe 3 weeks after the session.
Since a divorce is a sensitive matter, people need time to think. These type of lead generation examples work really well.
2. Running A Webinar Series
Webinars are a great way to interact directly with your target audience and impress them with your expertise.
Whether you are a business coach, a digital marketing specialist, a professional funnel builder, a motivational speaker, or any sort of service provider that requires time to build authority and trust before closing a deal, webinars can be one of the best ways to go by.
Yes, it is quite difficult to plan a webinar series. All your webinars have delivered real value, and there needs to be a proper transition from one webinar to the next. In fact, the next webinar should add more value than the next.
And with each step you move forward, you filter out your potential clients until the last webinar, where the attendees are the most interested, and finally you close some deals.
But that’s not the end. The ones who did not take your service or even did not watch all the webinars, you still have their data. Since they signed up for your webinar in the first place, you already know they are interested. So you can run marketing campaigns for them in the future.
3. The Squeeze Page Strategy
A squeeze page is one of the most successful lead generation activities for high ticket sales.
The idea here is to offer a free resource that is of high value to collect leads.
Now, the specialty of this is that the free resource you offer should offer real value, something that people would normally pay to get. But more importantly, this resource should refer to the core offer or be relevant to the main offer in some way.
Whoever claims this, will have a greater chance of converting when you run a sales funnel for your core offer.
Basically, once they sign up for the free resource, you can immediately initiate a nurturing email campaign to send them some more valuable content in the next week or two.
Then, run a sales funnel with a good offer on your core product and launch an email campaign to bring these leads to your funnel.
Many of them will end up taking your service, provided that you have a well-written copy that portrays the value for the money.
Here’s an example.
Suppose you are a fitness trainer. You can offer a free training hacks eBook that will help people with a balanced cardio. With in the eBook content, refer to your core service in a topic that requires advanced training guide.
Once someone signs up, send them the eBook, and then follow up with two emails in the following week to explain two types of exercises that can help increase stamina.
And another week later, prepar a sales funnel to and offer your personalized training sessions at a 40% discount.
Next, email your leads with this offer.
Since they are qualified leads and found your free resource helpful, many are likely to visit your funnel landing page, and some of them will sign up right away.
Learn how to use Squeeze page funnels in WordPress.
4. Offering A Mini Course For Free
If you are a course creator, then offering a free mini-course can be a great way to collect leads.
This tactic is pretty straightforward. If you have a large course, offer the first lesson as a mini course for free. Then run sales campaigns to try and convert them into enrolling for the full paid course.
For example, let’s say you have a complete digital marketing course where you cover several topics such as SEO, Content planning, Backlink, etc.
What you can do is, you can create a mini course by only teaching the SEO topics. And then create a dedicated funnel for people to enroll to this course for free.=
Next, drive traffic to this funnel to have people sign up. Once you have the leads, you can then followup with marketing emails to try and convince them to enroll to the complete course.
How To Create & Sell Courses Online In WordPress.
Apart from this, you may also consider offering a free course, and then reaching back with other courses that are relevant to this course, but not necessarily part of the same course.
For example, you may offer an SEO optimization guide for free, and then later, reach back with your Social Media Marketing guide at a discount.
Another great way of generating lead is to offer a free course and then reach back via email campaigns to sign up on your membership site where you have many more courses available.
5. Use A Survey Funnel
A survey funnel is more useful for businesses that require extra details to understand the right offer for the client.
For example, if you are a realtor, it is important for you to learn more about what the prospect is looking for such as the budget, the location, any special features of the house, etc. Only then you can know what to pitch.
In this case, you can create a landing page where you ask the visitor to fill out a survey form, and then once they submit the form, you take them to a Thank you page and inform them that they will get an email soon with suitable listings for them.
This form makes the buyer highly qualified for certain offers you can make.
In some niches, you can make it into a mixture of a quiz and survey for a more meaningful funnel journey.
For example, let’s say you are a fitness trainer and you have two main services, weight loss, and weight gain programs.
So you can add a few fundamental questions in your lead generation activities to know the person’s weight, age, and height, and you can add a few suggestive questions such as what he/she likes to eat or if he/she has tried any exercises recently.
Once you collect these data, you can then direct the person to the program that suits them based on the fundamental answers. The extra questions will give you valuable data if you choose to offer him a free session down the line.
Make sure to segment your leads in your crm/automation tool with tags based on their answers.
Even if they do not end up taking your service now, the leads are strong and you know exactly what they are looking for. So you may run personalized campaigns later on to convert them.
Creating A Lead Generation Funnel In WordPress
In WordPress, it’s actually pretty easy to create lead generation funnels.
Simply use WPFunnels.
WPFunnels is an easy-to-use funnel builder in WordPress that not only allows you to collect leads but also lets you plan and execute a complete sales funnel for your core offers as well.
It has amazing features such as
- Pre-built funnel templates
- Optin Form On the Landing
- Custom Checkout Page
- Order bumps At The Checkout
- Upsell & Downsell offer after checkout
- Integration with major automation tools
And many more.
To create a lead gen funnel with WPFunnels, it’s only a matter of a few clicks. Here’s a quick guide.
6. Host a Challenge
Challenges are a great way to engage potential leads by encouraging them to participate in activities that are relevant to your product or service.
For instance, if you specialize in fitness coaching, you could host a “30-Day Fitness Challenge.” Participants would sign up through a dedicated landing page where they enter their contact details to receive daily workout routines and nutrition tips.
As participants engage with the challenge, they become more invested in your brand. You can then follow up with emails encouraging them to sign up for a full program or membership, especially once they’ve seen the benefits firsthand during the challenge.
Here’s how it works in action:
Imagine you’re a nutritionist. You can set up the challenge to include daily meal plans and a tracker sheet for participants to submit their progress. As they interact with your content and see positive changes, they become prime candidates for your paid nutrition programs. You can then send targeted offers, such as a discount on your next nutrition workshop, to convert these engaged leads into paying clients.
7. Create an Exclusive Membership Club
Creating an exclusive club can be one of the creative ways to generate leads by offering membership-only content, discounts, or experiences. If you run an online store, for example, you could create a “VIP Shoppers Club” where members get early access to sales, exclusive discounts, and free shipping.
The membership signup page will collect their email addresses and other relevant information, which allows you to send personalized offers and updates about new products. This exclusivity not only helps in collecting email addresses but also builds a sense of loyalty and community among your customers.
For example:
Consider you sell handmade cosmetics. You could offer club members exclusive access to limited-edition products and special members-only events like virtual meetups with skincare experts. This creates a compelling reason for customers to join and remain engaged, providing you with a continually renewing source of leads.
8. Offer a Virtual Reality Experience
Take advantage of virtual reality to create engaging, immersive experiences that can effectively generate leads. This is particularly effective for products or services that benefit from a 3D demonstration, such as real estate or high-end retail.
Set up a virtual tour of your properties or products that visitors can sign up to experience. During the registration process, collect their details to follow up. After the virtual reality experience, you can send tailored follow-up emails offering more information or scheduling a one-on-one consultation to discuss potential deals.
Example:
If you’re a real estate agent, offer virtual tours of new listings. Once potential buyers experience a property virtually, you can follow up with details about open house dates or private showings, tailored to the properties they toured, increasing the likelihood of a sale.
Conclusion
Make sure the content on your website is helpful to your audience so they’ll keep coming back, no matter what lead generation examples you experiment with next.
In order to engage with your consumers and prospects as well, lead generation is a constant activity rather than an end goal.
Follow the best methods for lead generation to assist your businesses in attracting more clients, keeping them as clients, and accelerating overall revenue development.
Get WPFunnels today to create your own lead funnel.