Your First Lead Generation Campaign

Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you’ve decided that you want a cost-effective method of increasing your sales and brand awareness. With a lead generation campaign, you can reach people who want your services instead of wasting your time on those who aren’t interested.

Let’s Start Your First Lead Gen Campaign

First, let’s take a look at the terminology. Understanding these key terms is the first step in creating your very own lead generation campaign.

• Lead: a person that has already shown interest in your product or service.

• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): a person that has already shown interest in your product or service, and meets your business’s criteria to be considered as a client. Qualified leads are more likely to convert than regular leads.

• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): these are leads that have been deemed worthy by the marketing and sales team of a sales follow-up.

• Conversion: the process of a lead becoming a customer.

• Lifecycle Stage: where a person is in your sales cycle. Your sales cycle could look something like this: Subscriber – Lead – MQL – SQL – Customer.

• Call to Action (CTA): this is a piece of content created to entice a user to perform a specific action, like clicking on a link to go to your website, or filling out a subscription form.

• Pain Points: a pain point is a problem that a potential customer is experiencing.

Now that those pesky definitions are out of the way, let’s start planning your lead generation campaign.

1.    Outline and Plan

Start by setting a clear goal. What do you want to have achieved by the end of the campaign? How many leads do you want to have converted? In order to set your objectives you need to ask yourself the following questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• How are you going to reach them?
• What is your CTA?
• What will you offer your audience?
• How and when will you follow-up?
• How will you record the results of the lead?
• When will you evaluate your lead generation efforts?
• What will you consider a success?

2.    Define Your Target Audience

You may want to use an existing database for your lead generation campaign, or you could create a new list of potential leads. Either way, ensure that your product or service is the answer to their pain points.

3.    Choose Your Channel

There are a number of different channels you can use, from email marketing and social media to landing pages and online advertising. Make sure you choose the channel best suited for your campaign.

4.    Make an Offer

Giving your leads a special offer (like a 20% discount) has a twofold benefit. Firstly, it could persuade your lead to choose your business over your competitors. The decision-making phase is an important step in your sales funnel! Secondly, this offer takes the form of an exchange. The user can only cash in on your offer once they’ve willingly given you specific information, such as their contact details.

5.    Create a Communication Strategy

A communication strategy is imperative to your lead generation campaign as it details what your follow-up process is going to look like. How and when will you respond to leads, the kind of response each lead receives, who will contact them, and so forth.

We hope that this guide has helped you to plan your first lead generation campaign! Keep an eye out for our practical guide on setting up a lead gen campaign on Facebook.