Most every CMO has experienced the pressure, usually from a sales team, to acquire new leads. While we’ve spoken before about the massive importance of customer retention and offering a seamless, top-tier customer experience from the first point of contact onward, the reality is that B2C lead generation is the number one priority for many companies.
So recognizing that there’s an incredible expectation for marketers to bring in healthy leads, let’s review some of the most effective marketing strategies that allow marketing teams to approach acquisition…
1. Raise Your Profile and Be Active Within Your Space
The first step in successful B2C lead generation is to raise your own profile. Make it easy for leads to find you. The most effective ways of doing this is to build your presence on social media, to have an active blog where you create added-value content like how-tos, reviews and discussions, and to then be an outspoken member of your community.
The point is to engage with people who are talking about topics related to what you offer and find ways to present solutions and/or bring people back to your website or blog to learn more.
2. Put Your Employees to Work Outside the Office
When you spread a positive internal attitude among your employees, they stand to become excellent brand ambassadors to potential customers. All employees, not just those on the marketing team, can get in on the lead generation action by sharing company accolades on social media, sharing their joy around the brand and simply further raising the brand profile.
3. Offer Incentives to Current Customers in Exchange for Product Reviews
It’s not always what you say about your company that matters, it’s what other people say, too. 90% of consumers read online reviews and 88% of them trust online reviews as much as reviews from their personal connections. When customers are saying good things about your offering, potential customers will associate your name with positive reviews.
4. Giveaways
One of the best ways to collect leads is to give something away for free in exchange for a few lines of personal information. When used for B2C purposes, this tactic holds the potential to reap a large quantity but low quality of leads, so be strategic in how you format your giveaways.
Case in point: don’t expect to get a high number of quality leads if you’re a landscaping company giving away a free iPhone. Almost anyone can benefit from a new mobile phone, but not all of those entrants will necessarily have a yard that needs tending. On the other hand, if you give away a free set of gardening shears or a free lawn mowing, you can be pretty confident that everyone who enters has the potential of becoming a bona-fide customer. Additionally, consider entry methods that include retweeting or reposting your content so that you’re always raising brand awareness.
5. Paid Social Advertising
Paid social advertising can work wonders for B2C lead generation, especially when you’re able to target users based on demographic data. Highly specific ads created with specific user behaviors and interests have proven to be incredibly effective. Idomoo’s Dynamic Video Ads for Facebook, for example have helped major brands design engaging campaigns that have raised brand recall by 4X, click-through rates by up to 7X and conversion by 53%.
When you have a firm understanding of strong lead profiles, you can tweak your data-driven advertising on a granular level so that it speaks to the best leads with the highest likelihood of conversion.
And because acquisition is half the battle – what good is a lead if you fail to mature them into active customers? — here’s one last tip for keeping your leads once you’ve acquired them.
Don’t Harass People with Too-Frequent Communication
We get it, you’re excited about all the new leads you’ve generated. And you should be! But don’t let your exuberance trick you into thinking it’s a good idea to communicate with everyone daily over multiple channels.
78% of consumers have unsubscribed from branded emails because they felt they were being sent too many. Empower your leads by allowing them to opt-in to blasts, to indicate how frequently they’d prefer to receive emails and by also including an easy unsubscribe button, you minimize your chances of disengaging leads and being marked as spam.
Recognize that less can be more for some leads, and let them choose how and when they want to hear from you.
If you found this useful and you’d like to learn how to take advantage of the latest trends in a fast-paced and ever-evolving marketing landscape, we invite you to download a copy of our “How to stay ahead of the game in the marketing industry” guide for CMOs
