Tips & Guides — 16 Dec 2021
8 Lead Acquisition Channels You Need To Try
When was the last time you clicked on an ad to buy a new product? Today, most people prefer to search for products and services on their own.
For young people, social media has become the preferred source to discover brands before making a purchase, according to Hootsuite’s report. Undoubtedly, brands that invest in different channels and new ideas generally improve their chances of attracting potential customers and increase the number of leads.
As you have probably heard, we call a lead a person or company interested in buying a product or service from a brand. Someone can express interest in a brand in various ways, such as filling up a form on a website to get more information about an offer. Acquiring and nurturing leads is one of the marketer’s most common methods to drive sales smoothly.
Let’s discuss the lead generation process, take an in-depth look at the most commonly used channels, and find out how to develop effective tactics for your business. Here’s what you’ll find in this article:
Before a person is regarded as a lead, they typically interact with a brand multiple times through different touchpoints – blog, landing page, a post on social media, or others.
Let’s picture an example: Visitors click on a CTA on one of your channels (blog, social media, email, or other) and are directed to a landing page. There, they see a form or pop-up to sign up for an offer, and if the person is interested, they fill it out and become a lead, as illustrated below by HubSpot:
Using multiple channels for lead generation allows a brand to gain many opportunities to increase lead generation. Additionally, new customers get to know about a brand through multiple channels, which impacts decision-making. This means that when a person is ready to purchase, they are more likely to become a potential customer of a brand they already know.
Let’s mention that the lead concept is directly related to the customer journey, and we can divide leads into two main types:
We can say that a lead is qualified if it meets the sales requirements to buy a product or service. This means the product fits that person’s needs. More than quantity, a lead generation strategy should consider the quality of leads, which, according to a survey, is the most important metric for business success for 58% of marketers.
Image source: Outfunnel
By working with multiple channels, brands get leads of varying quality. With a multi-channel strategy, companies can figure out how to generate leads on each channel and which ones are the best for them.
Undoubtedly, cross-channel marketing strategy employs more than just ensuring message consistency and is also a key element to running lead generation campaigns properly. A multi-level approach takes into account all of your marketing channels and networks and how you use them. However, it’s not easy to determine the best path for each channel, and choosing the best tactics can be challenging. Below, you’ll find the steps to build a strategy:
The most critical part of a lead generation strategy for many marketers is tracking. In this case, it’s a good idea to start by accurately measuring the performance of your landing page for each channel.
One of the tools that can help set goals and UTM tracking for your marketing objectives is Google Analytics. You can use the landing page for each promotion and have UTMs appended to the end of the URL. The more accurately you can track each action, the better your reports will be, and consequently, your campaign results will be. Below, we will better explore metrics to consider:
Channel-level conversion rates: This metric refers to understanding how your campaigns are performing and converting your audience.
Conversion rates of each channel’s landing page: This is when you use identical but separate landing pages for promotions on multiple channels.
Cost per conversion: These are the records kept over time to calculate the actual costs of acquiring new customers.
The number of quality leads: Refers to filtering leads and requires special attention, resulting in higher costs.
Take into account your company’s sales cycle. Some brands may have a shorter, 15-day cycle and others a longer, 1-month cycle. Know which is your case to determine your metrics and costs more accurately. To do this, have a system in place that allows for proper tracking of your customer’s entire journey to understand how your marketing channels can complement each other to improve your results.
By providing insights, solving problems, and more, content marketing is one of the ways to generate leads at a lower cost than other channels. Thus, it would help to use marketing strategies to create and distribute interesting, engaging, and relevant content to attract leads.
Essentially, the better your content marketing strategy is, the more leads you’ll be able to capture, and, as we can see below, many B2B marketers found that high content marketing success is related to the value their content delivers (83%).
Image source: Content Marketing Institute
For better results, your content needs to be natural and connect with your audience. Thus, have in mind that content should first be helpful to your customers, and here are some ways to provide value with your content:
Canva, for example, has a design school where you learn how to use the platform to create engaging designs for promoting a brand, entrepreneur, or influencer.
Image source: ClickFow
As a result, the better a business’s organic search ranking, the higher the click-through rate (CTR) and the chances of getting new leads, which explains why SEO is crucial for lead generation.
One of the common ways to work with SEO is by creating blog content. It’s an excellent tactic for a brand or business and can work in many ways, such as increasing the number of pages indexed and improving ranking for specific keywords.
In addition, blogging keeps your website constantly updated, which increases your chances of ranking higher on Google and makes your brand more competitive in search results as you publish new blog posts with keywords.
As more and more people use their smartphones and tablets, mobile ads have evolved and can now provide accurate analytics and new business opportunities. As we mentioned earlier, young people are turning to social media to find brands and services rather than using search engines, according to a recent study.
Image source: Hootsuite
As everyone pays attention to mobile devices, this should prompt marketers to develop exceptional strategies, such as giving special consideration to pages in mobile device format, using tactics like SMS marketing, and more.
Today, social media channels like Instagram provide all the marketing tools needed for businesses to sell over the phone. Regarding mobile selling strategies on social media, we can say that users are not just browsing through feeds and clicking “buy now” buttons on sponsored ads, as shown in Hootsuite’s report. Instead, customers are using social media for every step of the customer journey.
As such, it’s vital to include e-commerce tools on social media in your strategy and develop your presence on the platforms, which you will see in more detail in the social media topic below.
Word of mouth has always been a powerful strategy to generate sales. A referral program has a similar principle: finding customers, employees, or partners and encouraging them to spread the word about your product or service.
Referral programs incentivize word of mouth by offering rewards like discount coupons, gift cards, or free products. For instance, Revolut gives 60 € for clients to share their links with friends. In the end, rewarding people for finding potential customers for you is a way of generating high-quality leads, which are more likely to result in sales.
Influencers can quickly reach a large audience and attract much attention, especially in countries with large populations such as Brazil, China, Mexico, and many others. This is an excellent opportunity for brands looking to promote their business, increase awareness, and enter markets in other countries without building an audience from scratch.
Hootsuite’s report points out that the most crucial element for businesses looking to build online communities is to enlist the help of influencers and content creators. By getting their message in front of thousands of followers, brands can gain many new customers. This is why many B2C companies are already working with influencers. Recently, B2B brands have also started to take advantage of this tactic, even if there are fewer influencers available in their case.
It’s important to remember that the number of leads an influencer generates is not directly related to their follower base. As long as the audience is engaged and potentially interested in the product or service you are offering, even an influencer with a few thousand followers can deliver good results.
Image source: Freepik
A strategy with partner marketing offers many benefits, especially when it comes to lead generation. While partners receive commissions for promoting products and services, a brand increases reach, generates more leads, and pays for actual results.
Partners help to find where your public is. This way, advertisers know they are investing in generating leads in a specific location where their target audience is, which increases the chances of getting qualified leads. Using this tactic, marketers can also figure out which channels they are using to get quality leads.
By using partnerships to explore new channels where your brand is not as well known, you’ll reach new audiences and work on your brand’s relevancy while learning more about your customers. Many brands and businesses already use partner marketing because it’s a low-risk strategy, especially for building and maintaining relationships with target audiences.
If you want to make the most of this lead generation channel, consider using a platform like Affise Reach, a global place where you can expand your partnership. With Affise, your business will be ready for great opportunities as you have access to many partners to promote products and increase your lead generation.
Image source: Freepik
Undoubtedly, email marketing is a great solution to generate leads and direct them into the sales funnel. For example, you can increase the conversion rate by sending relevant emails to your previous customers. With that in mind, try to make emails more attractive.
Think about how you can grab the attention of your customers with an appealing title. Try out different titles to see which one resonates better with your target audience. Another tactic that can help create an engaging email is using the person’s name to add a personal touch.
Pay special attention to the text and make sure your message is objective yet relevant. Use visual elements such as images, emojis, gifs, videos, and anything else you deem appropriate to make your email engaging.
More than ever, the power of social media lies in building trust and relationships with potential customers. To cultivate an excellent social media presence, you should create relevant content that teaches something new, answers questions or entertains your audience. You can do this in various ways, such as hosting live events to improve interaction with your audience.
Another common way to attract leads is using paid campaigns. For 2022, Hootsuite’s report shows that marketers will spend more money on ads. However, to stand out from the crowd, they need to understand the different experiences on each social media and create ads that connect with people as they use each network. Customers will expect marketers to be more creative and provide content that enriches the customer experience.
With Pinterest and Tik Tok downloads growing at impressive rates, research from Hootsuite shows that consumers are more receptive to advertising on these networks right now. One of the reasons for this is that social networks are not yet saturated and want to promote content that organically fits the platforms.
To get the most out of this channel, follow our guide to lead generation through social media. In it, you’ll learn more about engaging audiences and how to create strategies to connect with your potential customers.
Probably, seeing brands give a product for free, at least for a few days, is nothing new. However, it is something to consider to add to your strategy, as a free-trial step may convert more leads into paying customers because free trials reduce the risk to the consumer.
This strategy is even more welcome if you are a new brand. For small businesses or startups, reducing the risk of the unknown is extremely important. Thus, it allows you to demonstrate why your product is better – when compared to your competitors.
We can assume that leads are essential because they allow a brand to acquire more customers smoothly. Knowing this, you need to master each lead generation channel you will include in your strategy to succeed. So, let’s do a recap:
To find out which lead acquisition tactics work best for your business, you should test each of them. Learning from surveys and having a close look at the tactics also helps, so take a look at the examples we listed in this post as many times as you want.
Written by
Affise Academy
Affise is a partner marketing platform for brands, advertisers and agencies to scale via all possible performance marketing channels. Synergy of technology and our long standing experience lets you expand your partnerships, automate every step of the campaign lifecycle and make data-driven decisions.
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