What is Lead Generation and How to Do It

Lead generation

A lead represents a data set with relevant personal data and contact information that the interested party voluntarily provides. Lead generation actively promotes the acquisition of such contacts – both in the B2B and in the B2C area. Various methods are available online and offline for this.

contents

1. What is lead generation?
2. Lead Generation Tactics: Lead Generation Strategies
3. Types of lead generation
4. Lead generation: pros and cons
5. Push vs. Pull: From classic dialog marketing to inbound solutions

What is lead generation?

The so-called lead generation is the start of the lead management process and describes the process of attracting interested parties. Because it all starts with potential customers who have shown some kind of interest in the product and service and with addressing them. Because before you work with the leads, qualify them until they are “ready for sales” and hand them over to sales, you have to establish contact first.

But the mere acquisition of data sets is rarely the goal of lead generation – quality plays a central role in this. It’s about high-quality contacts: that is, qualified leads that are very likely to become new customers.

Lead Generation Tactics: Lead Generation Strategies

There are different approaches and practices in lead management that determine the methods and strategies used later. In the beginning, you should define the strategic direction of your campaign, i.e. determine the lead generation tactics. Central questions that need to be clarified are:

• Which media and channels do you use?
  What media does a company use to communicate with its customers?
• Do you follow the push or pull principle?
  How do you want to implement the campaign in principle: according to the classic push or pull principle? How do I generate the leads? While in direct marketing you actively approach customers, in inbound or permission marketing you let them come to you.
• Do you place more emphasis on the quality or quantity of leads?
  The answer to this question is strongly linked to the nature of the products and offers. While a single, high-quality lead is worth a lot for an expensive product that requires explanation, you need a large number of leads in other business areas in order to make the process profitable. The quality assessment of leads is the task of lead scoring.

Even if marketers keep coming up with new methods to establish contact with potential customers, certain variants have proven to be particularly promising over the years. Here are a few examples:

• Direct Mails: Leads are specifically addressed by letter. You can use a form with a return envelope to show your interest in the product and request further information.
• Sweepstakes: In order to enter a competition, many people willingly provide their contact information. If you give your consent to this, a company can also use this data to contact you further.
• Landing Pages: An interested party has reached the landing page via a search engine and can leave their data there to obtain additional information about the offer.
• Newsletter: Leads can also be addressed via regularly sent e-mails about the company and new offers.
• Personal conversation: salespeople can collect customer data, especially at trade fairs and in B2B business.
• Social media: Users can follow the online profiles of companies via social networks. The fans and followers can then be addressed via the corresponding platform.

Types of lead generation

There are different types of lead generation – these differ significantly in terms of communication. They can be roughly assigned to the following categories:

• Outdoor: Outdoor, often also called offline or face-to-face lead generation, is the classic effort to attract interested parties: for example, through participation in trade fairs, promotion stands, raffles, or event cooperations. Passers-by or trade fair participants are addressed personally by company employees or promoters. This form of lead generation is very complex and often also costly.
• Print: Leads can also be generated through advertisements in journals or magazines. One often works with so-called response ads, which contain a prominently placed telephone number or a response coupon. Direct mail with reply elements is also a classic lead generation method in the print area.
• Telephone: When generating leads over the telephone, a distinction is made between inbound calls and outbound calls. Service hotlines and call centers play the central role. You take inbound calls and can win over interested parties for a specific topic. Outbound calls are also possible, but strict legal regulations must be observed. Without a valid opt-in with additional information, the law does not allow you to be contacted for advertising purposes.
• Online: Online lead generation takes place on virtually all online channels: via emails, social media, on your own website or blog, or via banners and advertisements that lead to special landing pages.

Lead generation: pros and cons

Any business can benefit from lead generation. Those who actively establish contact with the target group ultimately have greater opportunities to expand their customer base. However, this additional step in marketing and sales can cost small businesses important resources that are actually needed elsewhere.

Push vs. Pull:

From classic dialog marketing to inbound solutions

If you want to describe the difference between pull and push marketing measures as simple as possible, you could say that it’s about who takes the first step: the company or the customer. With direct or dialogue marketing, the company takes the first step, addresses potential customers, and enables dialogue. With pull marketing, you go the indirect way as a marketer: You invest in high-quality content that attracts the interest of customers (pull = pull).

Dialog marketing: classic lead generation approach

Dialogue marketing is a form of direct marketing in which the employees of an entrepreneur address potential customers directly with individual offers. But dialogue marketing generally encompasses all measures that one takes to establish a dialogue. This includes e-mails and postings as well as social media measures. The decisive factor is a so-called response element, i.e. a return channel for the customer.

In contrast to traditional advertising, the main aim of dialogue marketing is to provoke a reaction in the customer, to get him to open a dialogue. If you use dialogue or direct marketing for lead generation, the goal is of course that the potential customer transmits his contact details.

Increased use of inbound and permission marketing

E-commerce is an increasingly important branch of the economy in Germany. The shift in sales from stationary to online retail is continuing. The e-commerce boom has also influenced lead management and created new opportunities.

Instead of addressing potential customers directly and actively, people are increasingly trying to win their interest through indirect marketing measures.

When inbound marketing best, trying to attract the attention of potential customers by good content. You publish multi-valued, interesting, and useful content on the net and make sure that it is easy to find.

The right content strategy and professional search engine optimization are key success factors in inbound marketing. If the strategy works, however, the first result of successful inbound lead generation is a high-quality, qualified lead.

Aside from classic push channels, so-called permission marketing is gaining importance. The term describes an approach in marketing in which you first get the recipient’s permission before you hit him with advertising. Because nowadays it is a very bad idea to bully customers with unwanted advertising messages. Many Internet users now react very sensitively and negatively to such advertising content. The flood of advertising in recent years has also led to so-called banner blindness, the deliberate hiding and ignoring of advertising.

In order to increase the acceptance of their own marketing measures and to reach more customers again and attract their attention, companies are therefore increasingly pursuing the strategy of first asking for permission. So-called incentives play a major role in this. With giveaways, discounts, free samples, or competitions, they want to create an additional incentive for users to voluntarily provide their contact details. The users should get the feeling that they are taking advantage of the contact. If a company succeeds in doing this, it makes successful lead generation much easier.What is Lead GenerationWhat is Lead Generation