Generating leads is the practice of obtaining people's contact information so you can contact them in order to hopefully get them to do business with you. This practice can happen in a variety of ways, some good and some bad. 

Simply put, generating good leads is not an easy process, and as a result some businesses have resorted to a variety of practices such as listing their company on an online directory or even purchasing a database.

The issue with listing and purchasing a database is that the people you want to contact are not interested in doing business with your company specifically. They have not been nurtured into wanting to do business with you.

Having people actually want to do business with your company specifically is what makes our Lead Generation Strategy different and better for your long term growth.

Understanding who you want to speak to and ultimately sell to, starts off with the right research. You cannot capture the right leads if you are targeting the wrong platforms or don't fully understand your target audience.

Understanding their questions, what they are looking for and where they are in the buyers cycle is imperative to know before you invest in a lead generation strategy.

Most of the time the companies who approach us for Lead Generation want to make immediate sales when they start digital marketing. This is not always realistic. Your potential audience needs to warm up to you, and the best way to do that is by offering value first.

There a few ways to offer value to your audience in a way that will entice them to enter their details in a way that is completely POPI Legal and you now own your own curated database.

We identify lead capture opportunities such as offering lead magnets (eBooks, brochures, whitepapers, guides etc) for download, content marketing offering valuable insights and thought leadership with strategic call to action buttons, competitions using Facebook Advertising, quizzes, performance graders (such as our SEO or AdWords grader tool), coupons or webinars.

These all serve to offer something to your audience first BEFORE you start trying to sell them on who you are and why they should use you.

Usually to get your offer in front of your target audience you may need to decide between leveraging paid advertising for quicker results or optimising search engine traffic for longer term results.

The most popular form of Lead Generation comes in the form of paid advertising through either Facebook or search engines such as Google. However if you have a consistent flow of traffic to your website, but are getting a low conversion rate, you may decide on optimising your website first using lead magnets or other opt in strategies.

If you decide on paid advertising you need to consider if you want to push your offer out to people using social media advertising or attract them while they are actively searching for your product or service using Google.

With this knowledge in hand the creative of your offer becomes vital. This is where Graphic Design becomes vital on your Landing Pages or Facebook Ads.

With your research, offer and strategy in place, your last step in effective lead generation is actually collecting peoples information and storing it inside of a CRM system such as Mailchimp, Active Campaign or Hubspot.

These systems allow you to nurture your leads through email marketing as well as re-targeting adverts on Google or Facebook/Instagram.

Further strategies then include linking your CRM systems with your sales software such as Pipedrive, Hubspot or Salesforce, Infusionsoft or Active Campaign if you have.

Without having purchased a database of people who don't know you or aren't looking for your products or services, and not been forced to pay for a potentially low quality lead from a an online directory, your business now owns it's very own database of high quality leads who know you and like what you have to offer.

And, because they visited your website or adverts, you can create detailed custom audiences on Facebook further helping you improve your lead generation strategy.