Lead Generation

1. Introduction

What is lead generation anyway?

It’s not just a marketing term anymore. It’s a core part of what we do, and it's also an important part of our company culture even if it's not one of our primary functions.

We’ll spend more time talking about this than any other topic, because it’s such an important part of how we operate and how we treat our customers.

Lead generation is the process by which we try to get people to open up their profiles to us (and any other potential businesses which might be interested in them). It’s the process by which we try to get them to share their information with us so that we can build more valuable leads for ourselves and for businesses that might want to contact them.

Why does this matter? Because…

One of the main problems with lead generation is that there are many different ways to do it. As a result, there's a lot of confusion about what exactly you need when you're trying to get someone to share their information with you (or anyone else).

A good example of this confusion comes from The Verge where they wrote: “It's kind of like selling things online: many free sites don't have direct relationships with manufacturers or retailers, only passing along links and addresses that buyers can find on the internet or elsewhere. One site may offer hundreds or thousands of links (maybe even tens or hundreds) while another uses a list of retailers culled from past sales reports or complaints on forums like Yelp . Some sites are like Amazon .com, offering all kinds of products from big-box stores like Walmart , Best Buy , Target , etc., but others only offer products that shoppers have actually purchased from those stores. Most sites rely on ads placed on third-party websites—the kind you might see in Google Adwords , for example—to generate traffic, but some don't use ads at all."

I'm going to use Wikipedia as my standard source here since I find its coverage useful, but I encourage you to explore your own sources too. Wikipedia is often unreliable (it has some serious flaws), so I'm going to quote directly from Wikipedia here as well because it's reliable enough in my view and I feel comfortable basing my thoughts around such sources now instead of other sources - please do take note! - when necessary.

The main message here is that there are many different approaches for doing lead generation, each with their own

2. Background

It seems to be a cliché, but you really need to do well in the background if you want to get noticed. There is a significant difference between being noticed and being known. If you’re not in the background, no one will see your name. The difference between being known and being famous is that some people will remember your name; others won’t. So, it’s very important that you do well in the background, which means testing your product in front of lots of people (that are not necessarily prospects). Many of today’s startups are betting on business-to-business (B2B) sales; yet they do still need to build a brand for their product/service/application (and a great brand means building an audience).

So, if you want results right now, start asking people if they know anybody who might be interested in buying your product. This can be done through various channels: email lists, social media posting, surveys and so on. Get as many leads as possible before launch day and start analyzing them to make sure they are truly interested in buying what you have to offer and not just buying something new or simply looking for a referral for something else…

3. Target market analysis

When a business has a target market it is important to understand what that market is and what type of people fit into it. There are many factors that go into defining a target market (such as demographics, industry, location, etc.). One way to identify the potential market is through lead generation. A lead generation company is a company which will generate leads for you that you can buy to tell your story. This could be in the form of emails or information on social media channels.

One of the most talked-about lead generation methods is linkedin leads, which collects information about your target audience and creates an email list of people who are interested in your product or service with their contact info. This is referred to as targeted email marketing (TEM).

A problem with TEM is that most people don’t actually want to hear from you — they just want to know if they are suitable for something! It requires a lot of work on your part to convince them that they should give you their email address, so until this gets better we think it’s best not to use it unless you have some special reasons for doing so. For example:

? You need the addresses of people who might be interested in your product or service but aren’t necessarily customers (for example, potential partners who might have some interest in partnering with you)

? You need personal information about these people (for example, age range) in order for us to create more targeted emails for them

? You need email addresses from specific countries/regions/locations/countries (to reach people there using different channels and targeting methods)

? You want to get targeted emails out before others do and don’t want any spammy emails floating around making other marketers look bad!

So our recommendation here would be to use TEM only if:

1. You do not have the budget or time required for programs like Google AdWords (preferably not anymore than you can afford). You can get all these things done through our automation tool set

2. You do not have enough data at this point in time (which would mean: no demographic data, no location data) so we cannot help with this kind of lead generation more than we can now ?(but please do get in touch if there are any additional requirements). We will take care of getting these things handled but we suggest waiting till later rather than rushing into things before having

4. What is lead generation?

Initially, lead generation is a marketing idea that I wrote about in this post and explained in the How to Do Lead Generation chapter.

In modern marketing, it is not nearly as simple as pulling out an email address somewhere and sending it to 100 random people. That would be a very good idea if you are trying to sell something like an app or a product, but not if you are trying to generate leads for your business.

The way to do lead generation is by creating a relationship with someone who is likely to be interested in buying from your business. The relationship can be through social media (Facebook, LinkedIn) or email (Yahoo!). It can even involve more formal contact like phone calls or meetings. We’ll talk about each of these in turn:

? Social media: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are all great platforms for generating leads via social media. These platforms allow us to create community around our brand (and we all need communities), so they make great tools for communicating with people who might be interested in buying from us. But don’t let the fact that they are social networks make them so easy!

For some people, the only reason they have joined Facebook or LinkedIn is because they think they will get a “deal” on something they see their friends posting on Facebook or LinkedIn. You can tell them that it won’t work that way: at best, you will get a few people who will come back after seeing your posts; at worst, you will waste time making those posts yourself — instead of creating something of value for everyone else who sees them (which anyone would rather do).

Often you have more potential advertisers than there are posts on your page: if you want to generate leads for your business, then you need to create content designed for attracting potential buyers without wasting time doing so yourself! This means creating content with value (rather than just advertising). For example — rather than posting pictures of your dog or asking how many people own a dog — post a video explaining why your product or service solves whatever problem your audience has and highlights how it would benefit people like them (and maybe even show some examples). You can also take advantage of communities that already exist on these platforms by sharing useful information like tips that promote better online reputation management skills — this kind of information does not correlate well with “social networking” but everyone likes tips about being efficient online!

? Email: Just as there is no one

5. How to generate leads?

As a startup founder and an early adopter of LinkedIn, I’ve been hearing time and time again that there aren’t enough leads on LinkedIn. The constant excuse is that it’s not as much a business networking site as a social network. There are very few business-focused people there. On the flip side, the amount of business-oriented people there is huge.

LinkedIn is a great tool for generating leads — though you have to be able to identify what you need to do before you start collecting them — but there are other tools that offer better results, with less work and less frustration.

If you want to get as many leads on LinkedIn as possible, this post will lay out some strategies you can use to get more leads from LinkedIn (and hopefully grow your base of followers). I will also discuss how to avoid burning bridges by sending out too many unsolicited emails on LinkedIn or asking your contacts for “access” (which will only make them feel like you are putting yourself in the middle of their drama).

This post was originally published on my personal blog at www.scottwilson.com .

6. Conclusion

Lead generation is about getting leads but it also pretty much spells out everything else that needs to be done in lead acquisition.

Leads can be broken down into two broad categories:

? Consumers: This is who we are trying to engage. The goal of this type of lead generation is to generate inspiration, get people talking about us, and get them to experience our product or service.

? Businesses: This is who we are trying to convert into customers. The goal of this type of lead generation is to inform them about what we do and where they can get in touch with us.

The goals for both types of leads should be very different (but I’ll cover both in more detail below).

In order to generate consumers leads, you need a compelling message that focuses on immediate value (e.g., a giveaway) and provides a clear call-to-action so the person can take action right away (the more obvious the call-to-action, the better). At its core, marketing involves communication strategies that are designed to attract attention and motivate people's interest in your product or service — you don't want to just talk at people; you want them to say "yes!" If you have a compelling and memorable promise (and if your audience already has one), these calls-to-action will put you in direct competition with others for their attention.

In order to generate businesses leads, there's an equally important distinction between "attractive offer" versus "promise". For example, if your offer for free trial offers users the chance for an upgrade within 30 days then it's not enough just to advertise the upgrade; all you need is some content or other form of connection between your product or service and users who are already interested in it, so they have something else they're willing to pay for when they try it out. In fact, as long as you have something valuable even without sales (e.g., valuable features or features which work well with other products/services), this kind of linkup strategy may actually be stronger than through direct sales due to its ability to create demand without having direct personal contact with the customer — after all, what makes a good offer good isn't necessarily meeting their needs directly but rather providing them with an opportunity which excites them enough that they feel compelled by the prospecting process alone! So why not use this approach? It certainly has its benefits — creating business leads can help grow your.

Moro info: