The 4 Phases of Lead Generation Process:

Phase 1: Content Strategy Phase:

This phase should be kept in mind when establishing leads for your lead generation process. You have to ask yourself, “Who is my ideal audience?” This question will give you an answer on where you need to start with your company’s lead generation. Four main mistakes that companies tend to do are the following:

1. Using the wrong strategies.
2. Lack of content.
3. Having follow-throughs that aren’t good enough.
4. The landing pages are poor quality.

Another effective question you must ask yourself is “How will you attract & convert your audience?” In order to gain leads, and eventually turn them into customers, a business has to be detail oriented. According to a Marketing Manager from RM Friedland, you must pay attention to your audience’s pain points and create concise visuals that soothe them quickly.

Other strategies that will gain traction with your leads is through educating and informing. Rather than just interrupting and selling, companies need to educate and inform the audience. It’s better to let your audience know about your brand and what products you have to offer.

However, when doing so, remember that you want to approach this strategy in the most simple and effortless way possible. This means that your lead generation should show less, and expose more. The more visual you become with your marketing, the more engagement you will have.

Although there are two effective questions, there’s just one more that we thought you should know before executing an effective strategy for receiving effective leads. The question: “What’s your lead magnet?” Once you figure out who your target audience is and what your topics are, then the last step is choosing the type of lead magnet.

Lead magnets are incentives that you offer your target audience in exchange for their contact information, which would probably consist of an email or phone number. This is considered the last step to your content strategy phase because this is pretty much where the actual events get put into motion before moving on to the next phase.

Think about lead magnets as the final touches and garnishes to a dish before sending it out. It needs to be made to perfection for your customers.

Phase 2: Visual Phase:

The second phase in the Lead Generation Process is the Visual Phase. Here are some quick perks to using visual content:

• 65% of people are visual learners.
• Visuals that have color increase people’s desire to read content by 80%.
• Posts that have images produce 180% more engagement.
• 93& of all communication is visual. Hence, why visuals tend to attract our attention and affect our attitudes.
• People are 85% more likely to buy your product after watching a video about it.

In hindsight, visual marketing is an effective tool since you communicate better with your audience. According to Cognitive Neuroscientist Carmen Simon, “Visuals have the potential to impact the customer’s memory and memory impacts their decisions.” If this doesn’t say, “effective marketing for your lead sales”, then we’re uncertain with what else would be considered.

Overall, it’s important to corporate more visuals into your lead generation strategies. Besides generating leads and boosting up sales, here are the following examples of visuals that you can consider when deciding on your lead magnet and visuals.

• eBooks & Guides: These are great ways to connect with your audience because in order for a reader to “subscribe” to an eBook or a guide, the viewer would have to leave an email and other kinds of information in order to download the visual.

• Infographics: This is always a fun go-to tool for visuals. Almost anybody that views and reads an infographic on the Internet pretty much knows how helpful they can be. Marketers tend to choose this type of visual because it summarizes all the complex information in a clear format that’s beautifully depicted onto a colorful interactive template. In other words, it’s pretty easy to read through without any problems or confusion.

• Presentations and Webinars: These types of visual aids tend to take less time than eBooks guides and infographics combined. However, creating webinars or mini presentations for your business can attract your audience and keep them more engaged. Other ways that you can contribute to this type of visual are through blog posts, guest articles, online courses, and conference talks. Think of these as fun lectures that people can engage with before becoming a supporting customer to your business.

• Videos: As for videos, this marketing strategy is quite useful for generating leads. At least 87% of marketers currently use video content in their marketing strategies(1). With use of videos to your landing pages, your business can increase its influence through conversion rates. Although every business is different, it’s encouraged that you should always experiment to find out what is the best form of visual aid that can enhance your brand.

Phase 3: Promotional Phase:

As for being the third phase in the Lead Generation Process, the promotional phase is the most crucial part of executing an effective lead. How does one find an audience you may wonder? Well, it all starts with your landing page. One of the most common mistakes that businesses often do is forgetting to put any effort into a landing page.

It may sound silly and all, but thoughtfully designing landing pages to fit your brand will drive traffic and generate the type of audience you’re catering to. When creating the perfect landing page, every business should follow these five core elements:

 Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

• Your main headline
• A supporting headline
• Reinforcement statement
• Closing Argument

Following this format will allow you to create an effective USP for your landing page. Here are other solutions that can create a successful landing page for your business.

Benefits of your Offer: Create bullet points that will summarize the benefits/values of what your business offers.

The Hero Shot: Provide or create images and videos that present your brand’s value proposition.

Social Proof: Testimonials and success stories about your business will give customers insight on the  products that your business currently offers.

A Call-to-Action (CTA) : This will allow a single conversion goal and create more encouragement towards future and returning customers.

 Phase 4: The Nurturing Phase:

In this last phase, it’s important to know the significance behind building a relationship with customers. When referring to “lead nurturing”, you are seeking the process of developing relationships with your potential customers throughout every stage in their customer journey with the use of your product. Throughout the nurturing phase, a business must “enlighten” leads with the user of empowerment through your product.

A few ways that your business can do this is through educating your leads, adding as much value upfront to your product, and gaining the trust of your leads. Overall, this fragile process can take time depending on how your business approaches a lead. Based on this strategy, the final phase of the Lead Generation Process will be complete and effective for your business.

(Also Read: How to Generate B2B Leads with Content Marketing)