Lead generation is one of the most critical and, at the same time, most challenging digital marketing activities.
Filling your pipeline with high-quality leads is the first step towards growing your business and establishing predictable revenue. And yet, recent surveys show that 61% of marketers struggle to generate traffic and leads.
However, attracting prospects and securing new business opportunities doesn’t have to be an insurmountable task. After all, you have a wide range of tools and strategies at your disposal. More importantly, you can trace every lead back to its source. This will enable you to identify what works and what doesn’t and replicate successful activities and processes.
This article will discuss proven digital marketing lead generation tactics to help you acquire high-quality leads that convert and bring value to your business.
1. Offer Free Tools
Free tools and trials are your golden ticket for boosting lead generation efforts.
Although giving your products or services for free might come across as counter-productive, the thing is that people love freebies. That’s what will immediately grab their attention, and that’s where the plot thickens in your favor.
Here are the benefits of offering potential customers a test drive.
Building trust
People tend to be skeptical about purchasing a product or service because they’re unsure about how useful it is. Offering a free tool or trial is a way to bridge this trust gap. When your potential customers can experience your product firsthand, they get a sense of reliability and quality. In other words, their doubts are removed, and they don’t have to rely solely on your promises — they can check if you deliver on them.
Low-risk entry point
The fact that you give potential customers an opportunity to see how your product or service works without having to make payment upfront reduces friction and the perceived risk of a purchase. This makes them more likely to engage and convert.
The reciprocity principle
Humans are hardwired to return the favor when they get something for free. By leveraging this tactic, which social psychologists refer to as the reciprocity principle, you will foster a positive interaction with potential leads. They will feel obliged to reciprocate you for these gifts, usually in the form of loyalty, making a purchase, and even word of mouth.
In short, by offering free tools and trials, you add value to your potential customers. And that’s what makes this tactic such a powerful asset in digital marketing lead generation.
Example
MarketBeat’s stock ratings page lists the 250 largest public companies and provides detailed insight into their analyst stock ratings, dividend information, earnings results, social sentiments, insider trading, and a number of other parameters that can help potential investors make informed decisions. This tool is a great example of a value-packed and engaging lead magnet that results in capturing high-quality prospects.
Source: MarketBeat
2. Optimize Your Landing Pages
The main goal of every landing page is to convert.
To achieve this and get your leads to share their personal information with you, landing pages have to be clear, engaging, and straightforward. Your potential customers don’t want to decipher a complex, verbose sales pitch.
The best practices for building an effective, high-converting landing page include the following:
- Eliminate clutter. Design plays a significant role in how your visitors perceive your brand and offering, so opt for a lean and clean outlay. You don’t want to distract your leads, so make sure to give your copy and imagery some breathing space. A minimalist approach will allow you to highlight the most important landing page elements and core messaging.
- Create an attention-grabbing CTA. Make it stand out from the other page elements and background by selecting a contrasting color. Use powerful and compelling phrases to encourage your leads to take action. An attractive, visible call-to-action (CTA) button can work wonders. It’s also crucial to place your CTAs both above and below the fold so that leads don’t have to scroll up and down when they want to convert.
- Optimize for mobile. With more than 50% of web traffic coming from mobile devices, you can’t afford to ignore mobile optimization. Cater to the preferences of leads accessing your landing page from their mobile devices and make sure it’s easy to navigate and click on smaller screens.
- Go for the WIIFM (What Is In It For Me?) angle. Instead of talking about your solution’s features and specs, let your leads know how they will benefit from using it.
Example
The Going Cheap Flights to Anywhere page checks all the boxes. It leverages plenty of negative space, which allows them to direct their leads’ attention to the critical elements of the page. The copy is clear and benefit-oriented, so visitors understand what the service does and how it can help them. CTAs are visible and there are several of them throughout the page, reminding leads to click and get cheap flights delivered to their email address.
Source: Going
3. Create High-Quality Content
High-quality content is a quiet, often understated powerhouse that can help you crank up your lead generation results and boost your online visibility in the process.
That’s easier said than done, so it’s crucial to define what superb, show-stopping content is. These are the pieces that resonate with your target audience, answer their pressing questions, help them solve their pain points, and, generally speaking, educate them. By doing so, exceptional content also builds trust with your leads and prompts them to take action.
To start creating relevant, high-quality content that will amplify your digital marketing lead generation efforts, you should:
- Develop detailed buyer personas. This step will allow you to align your articles, ebooks, videos, and other content formats with these buyer personas and focus on their needs and preferences. Consider leveraging the Invoice Template feature provided by these apps to simplify your invoicing further.
- Add value. Don’t create content just for the sake of it. The point is to make sure every single piece you craft is useful and relevant to your audience.
- Include credible data and authoritative sources. Numbers, facts, and infographics go a long way as they help break down complex ideas into digestible, potent bites, making your content compelling and shareable.
- Engage and interact. Each conversation takes two, so ask your readers for their opinions, address their comments, or even crack a joke or two. Real interactions humanize your brand and help you build meaningful relationships with your audience.
Example
Smash.vc does a great job with their comprehensive blog post 7 Best Investing Newsletter in 2023. It’s a carefully curated list of versatile resources for investors and entrepreneurs looking for investment opportunities. Each entry contains a summary that tells readers what kind of content and value that particular newsletter offers, who can benefit from it, and helps them choose between different pricing tiers.
Source: Smash.vc
4. Leverage Social Proof
We’ve already mentioned that people tend to have certain reservations and concerns, especially when it comes to purchasing products and services online. They can’t go to a brick-and-mortar store and inspect the item they want to buy in person. Plus, when you’re running an online business, your potential customers might wonder whether it’s legit.
All these factors can create friction and cause your sales opportunities to slip through the cracks.
Social proof can help you avoid such a scenario by demonstrating the value and credibility of your brand to your leads. According to this psychological phenomenon, when they find themselves in an unfamiliar situation or are unsure how to behave, people tend to copy or mirror the actions of others around them.
That’s why presenting your leads with customer reviews, testimonials, case studies, influencer endorsements, or user-generated content can do wonders for convincing them to give your product or service a chance. Reading about your happy customers’ positive experiences with your brand will influence their decision-making and encourage them to convert. It’s safe to say that lead generation in digital marketing is substantially facilitated thanks to the ability to use social proof across all digital channels and materials.
For social proof to work, it has to be genuine. Otherwise, it can backfire on you and ruin not only your digital marketing lead generation efforts but also your reputation and credibility. Similarly, having exclusively positive reviews could raise suspicion of manipulation, so don’t delete negative feedback. It grants you a certain degree of legitimacy and makes your social proof more authentic.
Example
Bay Alarm Medical relies on social proof to a great extent since trust and confidence are critical in the healthcare industry. Given that the brand offers products whose purpose is to keep their target audience, consisting mainly of elderly people, safe, signaling reliability is paramount. Therefore, they prominently feature real-life video testimonials and a floating Reviews tab on their site, which helps foster a sense of trust and reassurance.
Source: Bay Alarm Medical
5. Optimize Online Forms
Capturing your potential customers’ personal information is the final step of your digital marketing lead generation process, and it has to be executed well. This means your web forms have to be balanced and user-friendly while allowing you to obtain all the necessary data fields you can later use in your marketing campaigns.
The trick is to hit the sweet spot between too short and too long. You don’t want your prospects to roll their eyes when they see countless fields to fill out, but at the same time, having a simple form means that you won’t be able to filter out low-quality leads.
One way out of this Gordian knot is to use simple forms earlier in the customer journey. In a similar vein, more complex forms that allow you to get more data should be used later on, when your leads are more engaged and invested in learning more about your solution.
Example
The Vivion homepage features a very simple, three-field form that asks leads to submit only their first and last names and email addresses in order to subscribe to the company’s newsletter. This won’t scare leads away, allowing the brand to filter out low-quality leads in time and focus on nurturing those more likely to become paying customers.
Source: Vivion
6. Make the Most of Referrals
77% of people are more likely to buy a new product if they hear about it from their friends or family members.
This stat means creating a referral program is low-hanging fruit that can easily land you lots of new, high-quality leads. This digital marketing lead generation tactic allows you to recruit your happy customers and turn them into your advocates who will bring you more potential customers, likely to be interested in your products or services.
The power of referrals lies in the fact that the leads they generate are more qualified, convert faster, and have a higher lifetime value. After all, these potential customers have been referred by someone who already knows, likes, and trusts your brand.
Here are some tips for a successful referral program:
- Offer enticing rewards. Everyone involved should benefit from this program, meaning that you should offer something both to your existing customers and the persons they refer.
- Simplify the referral process. Make it easy for customers to forward your application to their friends and family.
- Promote your program across different channels to expand your reach.
- Encourage sharing. Although this may seem obvious, don’t forget to ask your customers to share your referral program. Leverage in-app or in-service messages and reminders to encourage users to invite their friends.
Example
T-Mobile offers different types of referrals to their customers, and it has special plans for first responders, the military, and those 55 and older. Their existing customers get $50 per friend they refer for up to $500 a year, while new customers who use referral links get hefty discounts. The entire process is intuitive and user-friendly, which also boosts referrals.
Source: T- Mobile
Key takeaways
These five digital marketing lead generation techniques can help you attract prospects and drive them down the conversion path. It’s worth mentioning that lead generation isn’t a numbers game — quality is more important than quantity. Your goal isn’t just to collect leads but to identify those that have the potential to convert into loyal customers.