17 Digital Marketing Experts Share Their Most Successful Lead Generation Strategies

One top lead generation strategy is driving organic search visits to blog posts carefully targeted to solving specific problems. Every post should end with a relevant call to action, often a content upgrade of some sort—a related checklist, assessment, white paper, or ebook.

A second is sharing those posts selectively in carefully targeted LinkedIn groups. Groups can’t be used just for promoting content, of course. But combining post sharing with being active in group discussions—commenting on other posts and answering questions—can drive traffic that converts well.

A lot of my agency’s leads come through SEO (good thing, since it’s an SEO agency), but the biggest source of leads was when I started writing for Forbes, and then expanded into writing for TechCrunch, Mashable, Entrepreneur, etc. Call it thought leadership, or personal branding, or becoming an influencer, or whatever, but that has been HUGE for lead generation.

At Socedo, we’ve found the most success with a healthy mix of inbound and outbound lead generation strategies, and social media data is core to both approaches. We engage organically with net new contacts on Twitter who are already having relevant conversations, and these leads typically respond to us at 5x the rate as other channels. We also enable our sales development team with social intent data to target lists of leads with hyper-personalized messaging. But no matter the channel, data and relevancy are key to generating and converting qualified leads.

When I think about lead generation strategies, there are two things that stand out as most effective for me. The first is landing page testing. Any lead generation efforts rely on converting people who visit your landing page into signups. We need them to fill out that form, or click that button. The more who do, the more leads we will have to follow up with. And so I never stop running A/B tests on my landing pages in order to improve the conversion rate.

The second is a tool Facebook offers, called Lookalike Audiences. What Lookalikes allow you to do is simple – upload a list of existing leads or customers, and use Facebook’s algorithms to target ads at people who are most similar to them. Because of the size of Facebook’s user base, you are likely to find thousands or more who resemble your existing customers and are ripe for your advertising campaigns.

Local networking groups (either BNI or groups using a similar model) and podcasting.

#1 – Craft a stellar LinkedIn Profile. Your customers are looking you/your company up on Google and social media. You need to make it readily apparent that you’re the perfect match for them.

#2 – Be authentic and consistent. Your customers expect you to be authentic and true to your brand, as well as, showing up consistently in the channels that matter most to them. Be a part of the conversation consistently, and you will win their business.

First would be consistent quality content. Taking the time to really get to know my audience and answer real questions from real people.

The second would be personalization. Leveraging the power of AI and smart algorithms to deliver the right offer at the right time. It really comes down to context. “Does this content, ad, offer match what the user wants/needs.”

The best lead generation advice for any marketer is to romance your prospects before, during and after the sale (or you’ll waste your marketing investment!)

Remember: Good customer relationships are a lot like good marriages. Everyone’s needs must be met!

This requires knowing your customer, providing relevant information when, where and how it’s needed, and being honest and transparent about your capabilities (Translation: Don’t over-promise!)

Organic SEO has always been a major player in our digital strategy. It allows for longer term visibility across relevant terms and drives sustainable growth. Over time Digital Next can optimize our keyword plan towards better performing terms and thus yielding higher lead quality and ROI.

Paid Media, with focus on remarketing and audience management, comprises the rest of our direct response offering. Powerful Cookie cutting and demographic refinement allow for our messaging and narrative to be well aligned to the person and their relative position in the buying cycle.

1) Landing pages with a gated offer of relevant value, such as an eBook or webinar
2) Twitter chats (surprisingly) – as long as the links I promote are of relevance to the conversation

There’s only one strategy that I’d recommend. And the good news is that it supports a very wide range of tactics that you can tailor to suit your own business and customers.

The strategy is to attract, convert, nurture and close.

The tactics that have been the most successful for me are to stay laser focused upon the needs of my customers. Publish articles and content that goes some way towards solving their unique problems.

Trade up via conversion to deeper content and product access.

Nurture over time with original content and feature access.

If you can turn the information your potential customers are searching for into a route to your product or service, you’re thinking in right direction.

Once you get the messaging right scale it up with marketing automation. 🙂

Ask an Expert form – I use this on a couple manufacturer client sites. It allows someone to ask a simple question and start a conversation. Works good on social media too! Another way to do this would be to Ask A Question…or Ask Brad a Question (put the business owner’s name). That ads another layer of personalization and the user feels they are directly asking a person more than filling out a form.

It might sound simple, but Request a Quote is a great options. I use this on a sign manufacturer client of mine and the form allows image upload so leads can upload designs for an accurate quote. This works great on specific product pages when you need more details from a visitor that is ready to make a decision to buy.

My biggest lead generation strategy is one that came about by accident at the time, and that was writing a monthly column for an industry site. I had no idea that it would become a major way to get new clients but we continue to get 5-10 good new leads a month from my articles. The only link to my site is in my bio so I’m not trying to write self-promotional material, but I do end up with some really qualified leads each month.

The business handshake has gone digital, and LinkedIn has made it even easier to promote your business or services through the ‘world’s largest business network’.

What works is a personalized approach if leveraging the new instant messaging app; avoid a copy/paste message that you will send out to everyone. Not only will it produce a low amount of actionable leads, but it can also lead to a complaint by other LinkedIn users for TOS violation and spam messaging. Rather than a cold proposal to offer services, consider sharing an article from your business blog that demonstrates your expertise. Offering something of value is effective, and professional if contacting someone new with a service offer.

Many professionals and businesses overlook the value of leveraging Facebook Live video webinars for lead generation. Create a three-email sequence to your existing contact list, schedule one-week before the Facebook Live event, two days before, and then three hours before you go live on video. Coordinate social media posts to promote the event, and consider placing pay-per-click budget on the event notice, to gain new audience.

After the Facebook Live video is done, re-market to the audience that showed up. Use the ‘Create a Custom Audience” tool in Facebook ad’s manager, select the criteria (I recommend audience that viewed at least 50% of the video for high conversion), and send them a special offer, or an invite to your blog subscription page. Turn audience affordably into subscribers for drip-marketing email campaigns.

In the B2B space, lead generation can be complex and has changed in recent years to become more buyer-centric, with many more decision makers involved in the buying process. Not to mention all the different mediums now available as lead generating platforms!

Therefore I don’t believe it’s a question of picking one or two strategies on their own; I think it is about using a blended approach of what works best for your industry type – based upon where each buyer is in the decision-making stage – awareness, consideration, or decision phase.

I find the mix of organic search, paid search, sponsored updates from LinkedIn, social media, and very focused email marketing work best for us. And we plan to introduce webinars into the mix too.

Targeted content syndication is one of the best methods we use to generate new leads as it uses a blend of segmented email, relevant content, buying signals, and competitive intelligence. (Feel free to download our Content Syndication Guide to Successful Lead Generation for B2B Marketers)

Ultimately, we identify, target, and engage with each prospect type with content that is both of relevance and of value.

My advice to anyone wanting to improve their lead generation is No. 1 – understand your audience. If you don’t know who your audience is, you can’t offer them what they want.
No. 2 – Build content that is relevant to each member of that audience depending upon where they are in the buying process.
Bear in mind that some decision makers will only become involved at the final (decision) stage, others, namely those searching for a solution to their problem or issue, will have involvement from the awareness stage.

Content marketing is a medium-to-longer term strategy, but if you are creating good quality content regularly and using keywords that target your intended audience, it will generate good leads for you. Plus it will generate better ROI over paid search over time.

Speaking and partnering. I’ve used speaking as a lead generation tool for years and while I am now a paid keynote speaker I still advocate the idea of getting in front of potential clients and demonstrating your expertise as a way to generate highly qualified leads. In terms of partnering the best way to do this is find partners that have your ideal client in their network and offer them awesome content that they can co-brand and offer to their network. Of course, you can combine the two tactics by offering to speak to their audience.