There are five key building blocks to generating leads for your B2B company: the offer, the landing page, the call to action, the lead capture, and the sharing tool. Here’s how to use each of these as part of a step-by-step process for generating and capturing B2B leads for your business.
STEP 1: Come up with the right offer or promotion
You need to lead off with an offer, promotion or incentive. Have you ever noticed how some companies give away free samples, offer a free contest entry, or give users a discount? Those are all examples of the offer or promotion in action. In other words, you have to attract the attention of a prospect. And there’s nothing better at getting attention than a “freebie.” This might be free attendance at a webinar, or a free e-book, or a free case study.
STEP 2: Create a sticky landing page
In 80% of cases, this landing page is going to be your landing page. But it doesn’t have to be. It could just as easily be your Facebook page, for example. But the landing page has to be inviting, and it has to showcase your product or service. Prospects arriving on this landing page should immediately recognize what you can offer them. The messaging should be simple and direct. Remember – most people will only give your landing page a few seconds of consideration. If you haven’t hooked them immediately, they’re off to explore another corner of the Internet.
STEP 3: Add a compelling call-to-action
The call-to-action is more effective when it’s combined with a very clever creative. For example, have you ever seen those YouTube videos where characters physically point to the subscribe button below, and ask you at the same time to subscribe? That’s an example of using creative to enhance the call-to-action. In most cases, the call-to-action will be something like “Subscribe to our email newsletter” or “Sign up for our new webinar.” But see? You’re telling the prospect exactly what you want them to do.
STEP 4: Capture your leads
OK, so far, so good. You’ve managed to nurture the lead along. But that’s not the end of your job. You now have to capture that lead. That usually is some kind of form where you can ask the user to add their name, email address or zipcode. All of that information about your lead can now be added to your company’s CRM system. And presto! You’ve just captured the lead.
STEP 5: Optimize for sharing
The sharing button is an important way for people to share information about you and your product with the wider world. The most common sharing buttons are those for Facebook or Twitter, and in fact, some sites offer you a full complement of every social sharing button possible. The more people talking about you, the better.
So there you have it – those are five of the most important steps in building an effective lead generation campaign. By giving careful thought to each of them, you’ll have a very structured way of thinking about how you are generating and capturing leads.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.