Are you looking to generate more leads for your company but aren’t sure where to start? Are you unsure what marketing activities will encourage your audience to reach out?
When we refer to lead generation, we mean the part in the buyer’s journey when they fill in a contact form to pass over into your sales process, to talk to you directly.
This is necessary for growth, yet, getting your audience to engage can often be one of the biggest challenges.
In this article, we’ve focused on the activities that will likely get you the quickest wins in terms of generating leads and hopefully help you to decide where to prioritise your time and resources. After all, there is no right or wrong answer here, it really depends on your company and marketing objectives.
We’ll evaluate both the strengths and weaknesses of webinars, social media and emails for lead generation.
Is your website ready to convert?
Before we jump in, it’s important to ensure your website is optimised for conversion, so your audience can easily get in contact with you.
If this isn’t done, all your activities to bring customers to your site may be in vain as they metaphorically bump into a brick wall.
This includes addressing poor navigation, slow loading times and badly positioned calls to action (to name a few), as these can all get in the way of your audience converting into leads.
How to use webinars to collect leads?
Webinars are a great tool to grow a range of high-quality leads, with 73% of marketers saying that webinars are the best way to generate high-quality leads.
They have an average conversion rate between 20-40% which means they are one of the highest lead-generating marketing campaigns out there.
Engaging your audience
Interactivity is great for engaging your audience and therefore driving leads for your company. Webinar allow just that.
Most webinar conference platforms provide chat boxes, polls, reactions, and screen sharing to enhance the experience for viewers.
With 67% of webinar attendees wanting a live Q&A with the speakers, your audience is looking to have their questions answered.
Your audience is more likely to convert into leads if they feel that your business is interested in their challenges and provides answers to the problems they face.
Interested customers
A webinar typically attracts an audience nearing the final stage of the buyer’s journey. This group of attendees have probably already conducted research on your brand and is familiar with your devices/products.
This means that they’re at a crucial point at which they’re approaching deciding to commit by getting in touch with your company. Seeing the breadth of your company’s knowledge and experience through a webinar could be what’s needed to nudge them in the right direction.
Thought leadership
Statistically, 81% of consumers said that they need to trust a brand before they’ll buy from them, so winning the trust of your audience needs to be a priority.
Webinars are a fantastic way to build trust because they’re allow companies to build a reputation as a though leader, who leads the conversation within an industry. By doing this, companies become an authoritative source of knowledge to whom audiences turn to and rely on when they have a problem.
You can do this by showing that your company has knowledge and experience in your field, demonstrating that you’re well connected, answering their questions, and showing that you know what matters to them.
Drawbacks of webinars
Webinars aren’t the perfect solution for all companies.
Before committing to hosting one, you need to consider the downsides and therefore whether or not they’re the right marketing activity for you.
Limited audience
While webinars are a good tool, the number of conversions you receive are limited by how many people sign-up and attend. Unlike other channels, webinars do not continue to work in the background, earning you more leads as you sleep – there is a maximum number of leads that you can earn within a certain timeframe.
On top of that, platforms like Zoom can limit the number of attendees you’re allowed on webinars. So, if you’re limited to only having 100 attendees, this will limit the number of leads available to you.
Of course, you can use a webinar recording to create more content on your website and social media channels, but as a one-off event, webinars bring limited leads.
Time-consuming
Another downside is that webinars can be time-consuming. They can take months of planning and preparation, which includes finding speakers, creating promotional materials, and running the actual session.
Clearly, this is a lot more effort than creating a social media post and you will likely have to host several webinars before they start to gain traction.
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Social media
Social media can be a powerful tool to generate leads. If you aren’t sure how social media fits into your marketing strategy, check out our article on whether or not social media is effective in medical device.
In this section, we’re going to talk about the good and the bad when it comes to converting from social media.
Audience reach
One of the positives of social media is how many people your posts can reach. Reaching the right audience as many times as possible is crucial for marketing success, as your audience need to see a brand between 7-15 times before they convert into a lead. This has been estimated to be as high as 25 times in today’s digital world.
The social media space is massive, with an estimated 5.07 billion people expected to use it in 2025. This means there’s a huge potential audience for businesses looking to reach and engage with customers online.
With conversion rates typically ranging from 0.44% to 18% depending on the platform, there’s a great opportunity to generate leads and grow your business.
Targeted advertising
Paid advertisements can be used on social media to drive conversion rates. Social media paid ads are sponsored posts that appear on your feed and are designed to promote a product or service that you might be interested in.
The benefit of paid ads is that you can target specific groups you know are interested in your brand and product, for a higher chance of a conversion.
The conversion rate for paid social media posts can vary depending on various factors such as industry, ad content, targeting, and budget, but, since you’ll be advertising directly to your audience, you might be likely to see more conversions than less targeted channels.
Engagement
Focusing on your social media engagement is an excellent way to generate leads. Not only does social media engagement boost your visibility and heighten your brand presence, but it also helps establish relationships with your followers.
Being consistent in your online presence by posting valuable content, responding to comments and direct messages can draw users to you and establish your authenticity as a brand. This type of authenticity is easy to convert into leads and sales as people will trust you more as a brand.
Additionally, engaged customers are more likely to recommend your brand to others, often resulting in new leads and customers.
Drawbacks of social media
While social media has many positive qualities to help you generate new leads, there are a few drawbacks that you should consider before launching your campaign.
Over saturation
Social media is massive, and with a huge range of platforms and ever-evolving trends, it can feel hard to make a dent in the market.
You must keep in mind that you aren’t the only social media account trying to generate leads for their business, your competitors might also have accounts generating similar content.
This means it can take a while before you start to see any results from social media as you build up your brand over time. You need to post high-quality content consistently before you get to reap the rewards.
Ad fatigue
Social media users are bombarded with advertisements every day, which can lead to ad fatigue and a decreased response to ads. In a way, they can become resistant to any kind of sponsored advertisement, dismissing it along with all the others that they see.
So, although you can precisely target, it doesn’t mean people will take notice, you can end up wasting money on ads that are just glossed over.
Email marketing
What’s great about email marketing is that you go directly into the inboxes of your audience, which is great for staying front and centre in their mind.
This section of the article will look at the strengths and weaknesses of email marketing when it comes to generating new leads.
Targeting audience
One of the strengths of email marketing is its ability to segment audiences.
Segmenting your email list into different demographics allows you to ensure that your audience is only seeing offers, events and information best suited to them. When the content your audience is seeing is tailored to them specifically, they may be more inclined to convert.
Email reporting
Whether you’re using MailChimp or Campaign Monitor, reporting is an important part of email marketing. These platforms usually offer in-depth breakdowns of how well your email performed with a particular emphasis on conversion.
This is important because the data from your previous email campaigns can help you adjust your future campaigns, to maximise conversion. For instance, you can see exactly what links people are clicking on the most, so you can figure out the ideal placement of your most important calls to action.
Email also allows you to A/B test, allowing you to experiment to see what changes increase your conversion rate.
Drawbacks of email marketing
As with every marketing channel, email has its drawbacks that should be considered.
Email lists
Your audience is limited by the number of subscribers you have on your email list. While you can grow your email list in many ways, you still can only send your marketing to people who have agreed to be contacted by you.
Building organic, GDPR-compliant email lists can take a long time. You can purchase email lists, but it’s possible that the people on these aren’t as likely to convert because they haven’t shown the same level of engagement that organically collected subscribers have.
This means that email might not be the best choice for companies looking to quickly get leads unless they have a pre-existing email list, or the purchased email list is extensive.
Deliverability
Sometimes, your email marketing messages might not reach your intended audience due to spam filters. These are like guards that protect people’s email inboxes from unwanted or harmful messages.
Emails can be marked as spam by your computer if they’re sent too frequently or are not validated by your email server. Our email optimisation article addresses the steps you can take to avoid this.
Prioritising your time
At the end of the day, you’re in the best position to decide which strategy is right for your company, as many factors will affect this decision. These may include your marketing objectives, time capacity and available budget.
Staying authentic with a consistent message in all your marketing campaigns will continue to add value to your company’s brand and reputation regardless of channel.