Why is Lead Generation Important to Business?

Whether you’re a B2B company, or whether you sell your products or services to B2C markets, lead generation is of utmost importance to almost any business.

Why? Because without leads, a company will not have the opportunity to convert prospects into customers.

It’s true that lead generation can be time consuming and difficult, but it doesn’t need to be. There are many ways to generate leads, and there are plenty of tools that can be used to speed up the process.

Bottom line: If you want your business to grow, it’s essential that you have a good strategy for lead generation.

Why is Lead Generation Important?

It is critical for a business to generate leads in order to succeed. Most firms will lack the sales and consumer base necessary to develop without leads. Customers are fickle, so companies can’t count on their instincts. They must use strategies in order to attract the types of consumers they wish to have.

Without such a strategy, a company will be unsure as to what kind of people it should be targeting – and without this identity, most companies will have trouble generating leads.

Typical businesses need a constant influx of potential clients to maintain their success.

A New Business Needs Lead Generation

A new business should focus heavily on lead generation and brand building.

Without the revenue from these conversions, it will be difficult to keep the doors open in any competitive market – no matter how good your products or services may be.

The truth is that there are many ways of generating leads but not all methods work equally well for different companies with varying goals and targets.

For example (again), if you have a product aimed at people over 50 years old then running an ad campaign targeting 18-25 year olds would most likely generate very few responses.

Tip: Use keywords in your content. There are different ways of generating leads and not every method is best for all companies. Keywords will help your blog posts rank higher on search engines like Google, which means more people might read it!

How Lead Generation Helps With Cash Flow

Cash flow is critical to your company’s success. Lead creation, when done correctly, is a tried and true method to establish a consistent cash flow in your firm and prove a steady ROI.

Turning website traffic into paying customers is critical to the success of your business.

That said, there’s no point to generating leads if they’re not taking care of your company’s cash flow. It needs to be effective.

Lead generation helps with cash flow by ensuring that you’re always converting clicks and visitors to actual sales and completed transactions.

Different Ways Businesses Can Generate Leads

Here’s a quick breakdown of the different platforms and methods that can be used to start generating leads for your business:

• Content Marketing
• Paid Advertising (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads)
• SMS & What’s App Marketing
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Email Marketing
• Webinars / Webcasts
• Competitions and Giveaways (Go Viral)
• Referral Schemes
• Affiliate Schemes
• Direct Mail

Tip: The more qualified leads your business can generate, the better. This means the more sources you can generate leads from, the better.

You need quality as well as quantity. This will avoid wasting time on unqualified prospects.

What Type of Businesses Need Lead Generation?

Any company that requires customers in order to survive will need lead generation.

Businesses which are completely reliant on customer revenue for their survival – like retailers, restaurants or service providers – are highly dependent on leads if they want to keep the doors open and stay afloat.

There’s never one answer to what works best for each business, but some options include social media marketing (such as Facebook advertising), email marketing, search engine optimisation (or SEO) campaigns focused on keyword optimisation.

Lead Generation Doesn’t Always Mean Selling

Lead Generation doesn’t have to mean selling straight away – there are many different elements that make up the Lead Gen process.

This includes ‘lead nurturing’ which involves following up with someone after they’ve been contacted once, or ‘lead qualification’ which is the process of determining whether someone is a good fit for your business.

Visitors Are Good, Conversions Are Better

There are many ways in which you can generate more leads but it’s important not just to focus on getting visitors.

You must focus your efforts on converting your web or app visitors into customers that make purchases.

Quick Ways to Start Generating Leads For Your Business

Some examples on how to get started with generating leads for your business include:

• Targeting certain keywords with your content marketing, such as a blog and articles
• Lead nurturing materials; Lead Magnets, E-books, etc.
• Selecting a few different social media platforms where your target audience hang out most often and posting ads so that they’re exposed to your offers/products/services and then cross promoting across all channels.
• Building an email list; this can be done through Lead Magnets and capturing visitors’ contact information (usually by providing something of value to them such as a webinar or free report).
• Focusing your marketing budget on paid advertising like Facebook ads, Google Ads and Instagram advertising.
• Using podcasting in order to establish yourself as an expert and generate leads through your interviews.

These are just a few ideas for generating more leads – again, there’s no one right answer but some might work better than others depending on your unique business and what type of customers you’re looking to attract.

Creating an Omni-Channel Approach

Omni-channel marketing is all about understanding the customer journey and being as present as often as possible across multiple platforms.

This means that you should be making sure the following channels are being utilised to generate leads:

• Web (e.g. through SEO and paid ads)
• Mobile Apps (through Google Ads, Apple App Store etc.)
• Social Media (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram)
• Physical Marketing
• Digital Marketing

When you have an omni-channel marketing strategy in place, people are less inclined to feel like they’re being bombarded by your output and they’re actually more likely to engage with your content when it’s varied across different platforms.

Read our article about 5 ways to improve omni-channel customer experience here.

Is Lead Generation Expensive?

There’s a mixed view in the world, with most people thinking lead generation as a whole is expensive. At Lead Genera, we would argue the opposite. It’s not expensive when you know what you’re doing. The key is making the most out of your budget.

When you’re just starting out, it’s important that you plan your marketing budget carefully. That means deciding what platforms are the best fit for your business and then choosing them carefully.

We typically recommend breaking down your budget by working out how much you spend per customer acquisition.

The total amount of money you spent on marketing, divided by the number of customers you acquired will give you an idea of what you’ve been spending to acquire customers to date, and a good inclination of what you may need to spend in future.

Although, this is not set in stone so there are no hard and fast rules about what works best.

As you grow and start generating more leads, your costs will naturally decrease because you’ll become more efficient at converting your leads into customers.

For example, if you spent £10 on a Facebook ad to get 10 visitors but only one of those visitors converted into a lead and one of those leads turned into a customer – you’d have spent £10 per customer acquisition (CPA).

Then over time as you improve your targeting and create better ads, the amount you spend will decrease. You might find that you can now generate the same results but for only £4 CPA.

For most businesses, spending money on lead generation is a smart business move because it’s an investment well spent.

The good news is there are also different ways to generate leads without putting out a huge ad budget. There are some lead generation methods that can be as little as £0.30 per subscriber/lead depending on how you’re generating them and the type of business model you have.

Tip: It’s important to find out which channels work best for your business when pursuing Lead Generation – while it may seem expensive at first, if these channels yield higher quality leads then they will still save time in the long run!

Conclusion: Why is Lead Generation Important to Business?

Lead generation is important for business growth. Without lead generation, your company will have a hard time attracting new customers and sales opportunities.

The process of getting in touch with people who might be interested in what you offer starts the moment someone visits your website or hears about your product or through word-of-mouth marketing.

If you want to see an increase in revenue, start by contacting us at Lead Genera today so we can help get started on creating effective digital strategies that generate more qualified leads for businesses like yours!