A lead generation funnel is a systematic process for creating a lead generation campaign. It is the process in which you funnel your potential visitors through various stages to alter the tactics to induce their purchase decision. The first stage of the lead funnel is creating awareness by posts, videos, and other content. The second stage is interaction through email, personalized SMS, and others. The third step is creating a customer relationship through demos, trial extensions, quotes, offers, and others. 

According to BrightTALK, 54% of businesses spend more than 50% of their budget on lead generation. Isn’t it imperative to take measures to make sure that it is optimized? So, how can your business create a lead generation campaign using the funnel concept? Here are the tips from top  marketing experts.

Image source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/lead-gen-strategy-results/

Do Not Skip The Top Of The Funnel

The first stage might look too vague since each company would have several touchpoints like brand sites, social media platforms, blogs, traditional media, and more. It might look expensive to create general awareness, and businesses would directly start with targeted campaigns, the second stage. 

However, the first awareness stage helps you to narrow down your potential niche customers. It is also easier to understand customers’ expectations about the product/service in your genre. Moreover, using a general lead generation campaign for awareness is cost-effective rather than pushing people to your landing page without creating any interest in your product.

Content Matters

While generating a lead generation campaign, the content is crucial. Your content should offer information about the product/service and, at the same time, aid your customers in their purchase decision making. Your content should be market-specific and personalized. For instance, your content for B2B business and B2C business clients should be different.

The content is vital during the first two stages of the funnel. It generates trust and excitement, which is essential to push your client to the end of the funnel – deal closure. According to top lead generation business agents, a brand needs to map its customer’s requirements and characteristics to create market-specific content. 

It is not about more and more words on your page. It is about the value that each sentence creates and how you outwit your competitors in offering buyer-specific SEO-optimized content. 

According to Demand Metrics, content marketing strategies will help a brand generate three times as many leads as traditional marketing, with less than 50% of the cost.

Choose Lead Generation Tools

There are several tools in the market for lead data extraction, email follow-up, automated personalized email marketing, process automation tools, AI-powered chatbots, customer survey tools, and others. Beyond these, there are end-to-end sophisticated lead generation platforms with all these tools integrated into it.

It might sound easier to manage a lead generation campaign with the manual generation of content, email marketing, and personal communication. However, even a start-up has to cover thousands of potential customers to get a handful of follow-ups. Moreover, errors and inefficiency are prevalent when you choose manual labor in such repetitive, labor-intensive tasks. 80% of businesses believe that marketing automation tools can generate a 451% increase in lead generation, according to a study by The Annuitas Group.

Do Not Chase Every Lead

The lifetime value of a customer is indeed too high to ignore a lead. However, not every customer in your lead funnel is the same. You need to set criteria to qualify the leads. For instance, a potential customer who is unwilling to sign up for a quote or who does not respond to the sales call is best left as unattained leads. It does not make sense to add more resources and money to pull in such leads. Each business has a different threshold and criteria to quantify the leads. What is yours? 

Mindless Experimenting Will Backfire

The best way to improve your lead funnel is by creating changes. However, do not blindly change your campaign in a mix-and-match trial version to see which one is effective. You ought to find your key success indicators and metrics. Analyze those metrics over time and understand your customer suggestions. Based on these reports, make an informed change to your campaign. The stagnant and obsolete campaign is equally ineffective. 

Monitor Quality

You can launch a lead generation campaign quickly within a few clicks. However, just because it brings in leads, it does not mean that there is no need to track the performance. It is important to understand the sources from where the leads come from and the sources that are not effective. Volume is not the only metric to understand.

Start by downloading the best tool for your business and analyze your niche customers. The right tactics at each stage of the funnel are different for each business. Thus, start brainstorming your lead tactics at each stage.