Magnet symbolising inbound marketing

Lead generation strategies for your business

The main purpose of your online lead generation strategy is to get people to visit your website. 

Online lead generation encompasses a wide range of tactics and digital marketing campaigns depending on platform you choose to capture leads. So, we thought we’d take a closer look at some of the tools and the strategies you can employ to help increase website traffic and increase your chance of quality leads.  

PPC lead generation  

Pay Per Click or PPC is a way of advertising on Search Engine Results pages (SERPs). Google ads are generally the most popular. With Google getting 3.5 billion searches a day, you can see why. PPC is a great option for lead generation but it’s important to get the content of your ad right to entice a click in the first instance. 

We also recommend creating a specific landing page so that your web page reflects what people have clicked to see. This will help you avoid bounce rate as those clicks will be from warm leads.  

You then need to make sure you have good keywords targeted to your audience as well as negative keywords to help extend your budget further.  

Our blog what is PPC has further background detail on this lead generation tactic.  

LinkedIn lead generation  

LinkedIn is a great B2B social media networking platform. When attending events, even virtually, there’s always the networking opportunities to add contacts to your network post event. By messaging either prior to an event or post event, you have a great hook to personalise your message of introduction which is likely to get a connection made.  

With more remote working, LinkedIn has really come to the fore for networking and lead generation. The LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a great asset to grow your network by being truly targeted to find the right prospects for your business. Learn more about how LinkedIn can help you grow you discover prospects.  

Facebook lead generation  

If you think of Facebook as a search engine, having your business present on this social media platform at the very least offers a place for you to be found with contact details, business hours and your latest updates. But most importantly it offers reassurance and brand awareness about your business services and products.  

For some businesses it may not necessarily be the primary social network platform but it’s always useful to post updates to help drive traffic organically back to your website. If anything, it’s important for increasing brand awareness and improving SEO (search engine optimisation)

Facebook Ads was launched in 2007. Facebook Lead Ads are all about lead generation and the process is simplified to attract prospects. Pre-populated forms make it easy for people to fill out forms on their mobile. You can customise forms to improve the quality of the leads you attract.  

Your website and lead generation tools  

Eye-catching call to action buttons are essential on a website. It helps guide the visitor – your potential clients – and helps them navigate the web page. Also create pop-up boxes for email sign up forms to your website. This can be achieved with a lead generation tool such as Hubspot. 

A virtual tool such as Hotjar has a heatmap which represents how visitors to your website are navigating their way around your site. You can see where site visitors spend time and where they don’t.   

Tips for campaigns  

It’s important to organise leads so that you can make it a successful lead generation campaign. This is where lead generation tools and software can help. They can help you understand more about the people visiting your website and what pages they are interested in so that you can tailor information accordingly. It can help you capture email addresses simply. Or understand what they looked at on your website before completing a form.  

As a Hubspot partner, we can help you with marketing automation and CRM for your business to help make a really effective lead generation campaign. 

What’s important about any lead generation campaign is to continue to be insightful with your communication, providing answers to challenges that you know your customers face. Your ongoing content marketing plan should factor in where prospects are on their buyer’s journey. Someone at the beginning of the buyer’s journey might be interested in insight like an ebook, whilst someone who’s now familiar with your company might be more interested in a free trial or demo. 

Inbound marketing agency in Surrey

If you’re looking for qualified leads become a lead generation magnet with the help of Smart Cow. Take a closer look at our marketing services or book a consultation and we can discuss a digital marketing strategy that’s best for your business.

We specialise in digital marketing for accountants as well as providing digital marketing services and web design for local businesses within Croydon.

PPC campaign mobile

Tips for setting up and running PPC campaigns

Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns create adverts online so when your business is not being viewed in the natural results, you can give it a little nudge with a paid campaign.

There’s a number of ways to conduct a PPC campaign and these include Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and social media boosts and ads. Here’s our tips for setting up and running a PPC campaign.

Google AdWords

While appearing on the first page in an organic search is the goal, if your website is new you need to give it a bit of time before your keywords and phrases start to take effect. So, this is where a paid campaign can give your website a boost in search as a paid for ad will pop up towards the top of the first page.

Understanding a Google AdWords campaign

  1. Set up the overarching Campaign: AdWords Accounts and PPC advertising are structured starting with a Campaign level, you can set up a number of Campaigns within this. Really think about your target audience for this campaign and the keyword you want to be known for.
  2. Create a subset of AdGroups: Each Campaign has AdGroups, so you can focus on targeting your audience with key messages. For example, you may want to focus on promoting CRM software so that would form one AdGroup within the Campaign. If you decide that you want to promote another service or product, you can create another AdGroup at any point Ensure each landing page is relevant in for said product of service.
  3. Focussed messaging for Ads: Each AdGroup has a number of Ads so you can have a range of messages per AdGroup.
  4. Maintain: Monitor and analyse the results and ‘throttle up’ or ‘down’ individual ads depending on how well they are preforming and how each PPC ad ranks.
  5. Be specific: Be specific with your keywords or negative keywords, and the geographic area you’re targeting.

Social Media Marketing PPC

You can also get targeted on social media with a PPC campaign.You need to carefully consider which channel is best for your business. If you’ve not already set up your channels, take a look at how we help our customers with their social media.

But firstly, let us explain the difference between ‘ads’ and ‘boosts’.  

Social media channels offer an effective form of advertising, but you need to select what’s right for your business and the purpose.

  1. Boost: While allowing you to use a relatively small budget to reach a wider audience, it’s more about awareness and ‘likes’ increasing visibility for a short time through sharing your post more widely.
  2. Ads: By setting up an ad you’re enticing people to take action by clicking through to a website or urging you to call. The goal is to get people to engage and encourage them to do this via your website.

Remember who your target audience is when you tailor your messaging. Most PPC campaigns have a limited number of words you can use, so be clear and concise. Campaigns that are very specific to the service, product and price are much more successful than a generic advert. In order to use PPC marketing effectively consult our SEO company in Croydon.

Digital marketing resources:

Read some of our PPC related blogs for further information.