Lead Generation Strategies In Marketing
The History of Marketing
Marketing dates back to ancient China and India when merchants communicated details about their goods for trading. Salespeople started with trying to present goods in a certain way for trading. During the Industrial Revolution, when purchasing goods began to be easier for consumers than trying to make products themselves, marketing approaches changed rapidly as innovations in both science and technology blossomed.
As mass-production influenced how products were made, industries had to develop avenues to get the word out to consumers about the details of the commodities available; by doing, so companies hoped to steer customers towards their business instead of their competitors.
In the 1940s, the competition was intense and marketing strategies needed to become more effective as an essential part of every business. Developing a brand and then marketing it to be a name brand would contribute to its long-term success or failure.
By 1960 the market for many industries was laden with the competition. Drawing in customers so they would buy a particular companies products was essential if a business was going to survive and, more importantly, become a leader in their industry.
Marketing Becomes a Profession
Marketing became a profession in itself to persuade consumers that the goods and services provided by one company were better than those of another company. Marketing management became an essential part of a business’s success. Presidents of companies involved the marketing team in strategic planning meetings in crafty ways to communicate information about products or services to consumers.
Slogans, labels, and brand jingles were all used to help consumers remember what a company had to offer. For example, Oscar Mayer’s “I Wish I Was an Oscar Mayer Weiner.” There is no denying that everyone knows this one and the company and product or service it refers to.
Branding - Improved Loyalty Built on Reputation
In the 1990s, the marketing industry became focused on branding as a process of giving meaning and worth to a business’s products or services. This is accomplished through creating a brand and image in the consumers’ minds so that when that customer wants a specific product, they are loyal to the company branding that product. Companies have to follow through and ensure their products are high quality and deliver what they promise. Branding became focused on awareness and reputation.
Marketing and the Web
There is no denying the evolution of the web, the development of websites, and the ability for consumers to search and discover information about companies and their products via the net contributed to branding and loyalty within consumer groups. In the 1990s, companies had text-based websites that provided essential information about their products.
Marketing is Complex and Now Focuses on Lead Generation Strategies
Over the past 20-25 years, companies have expanded how they use the web and search engines to market. Marketing is now more than sharing information and trying to illustrate unique qualities. Marketing strategies are complex and need to engage each potential customer in a meaningful way not to lose that customer—customers want to be connected and feel a part of the business they frequent. Knowing how to use the various tools, apps, platforms, and approaches available today will make a huge difference in bringing customers in and converting them to loyal customers.
“The History Of Marketing: From Trade to Tech” is an excellent article about how marketing has changed and will continue to evolve.
In today’s business environment, lead generation strategies are essential for businesses to grow and build profits. Lead generation and improving lead quality means having a plan that includes a way to attract interested prospects (leads) and convert them into paying customers by getting them to take action through lead magnets; by doing so, the business owner knows an involved target customer is potentially a long term customer.
Target Audiences
To increase leads, a company needs first to understand its target audience and who they reach. The audience is those prospects interested in a company’s particular products or services. If a business is selling winter clothing, but the audience they are targeting lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where it is mainly warm year-round, the product and target audience doesn’t align.
However, suppose that same company defines its audience as those living in cold climates and who need to stay warm. In that case, the potential buyers will be increasingly interested in the company’s brand and product.
Attracting customers that are the right customers saves both time and money.
Some leads are not qualified leads. In other words, lead qualification involves the prospect’s fit and how much engagement they took by their action towards getting involved with a business’ product.
Action completed by the right customer can take different forms. Did they give contact details showing they want some involvement with the product? Maybe they clicked on the get a free demo button and filled out a form indicating they wanted to be a part of the business’ contact database.
Once given an opportunity to engage, a target audience will take action and become a qualified lead, or they will avoid activity and not follow through.
Successful Lead Generation Strategies
Effective marketers may use lead magnets to get potential customers to become new leads. This works well when generating leads. Lead magnets are incentive-based, like sending out an email marketing campaign with a one-time discount for becoming a first-time purchaser or by getting the potential customer to fill out a form with their contact information to be a part of a lead capture database that can be drawn on at a later time when soliciting business for a particular product or service.
As part of the lead capture process, sales team members can gather relevant contact information from new visitors. With a well-thought-out lead capture system, a company now has the necessary information to target these prospects with incentives, information, and nurturing to build a long-term customer.
Based on the information gathered through the lead capture process, the business owner and sales team can work together to determine what steps need to be taken to convert these potential customers into long-term customers.
By working the information gathered through lead capture, lead segmentation can help segment leads based on a lead’s interests, needs, jobs, and hobbies, which the marketing team can then use to generate niche lists. Niche lists are helpful because they attract potential customers that are qualified prospects that the sales teams can convert to paying customers.
A Few Lead Generation Tools
Chatbot Conversations
As an excellent tool for building conversation and rapport with prospects, chatbots are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They are an automatic extension of your marketing team and sales team—chatbots help nurture potential leads by providing information and setting up future meetings.
As a lead generation tool, Chatbots can be designed to represent the personality of the sales team, which will help attract prospects because they can get answers to their question immediately. People don’t like to wait for the answers they want, and Chatbots are a quick and easy way to engage qualified leads.
Pop-ups that include Chatbots are helpful for leads and existing customers because they provide support. They can point leads to resources, products, current sale pages and guide leads into sales pipelines to create strong relationships with qualified customers. Hence, they invest in a business’s product. Chatbots can work with qualified leads as presale leads by having the customer fill out a form and engage. As part of sales tactics to convert sales leads, sales reps can follow through and close deals.
Blog Posts, Press Releases, Newsletters
Find a way to keep prospects connected to a brand and/or business. People want to be connected and feel like they are a part of the businesses they use. Writing press releases and blogs nurture prospects.
Press Releases are articles about a newsworthy company. Maybe a business decides to launch a new brand or line of product, and press Releases keep potential consumers informed as part of a comprehensive marketing plan.
Blog posts can be informative and entertaining. They talk about the product or service a company wants to promote, or they might talk about the success stories of a particular brand. Blog posts have valuable content that leads want to read.
Blogs are an inbound marketing effort that engages with an audience by connecting them with helpful content. Blogs speak to a qualified lead in a way a banner ad or other ad can’t.
Newsletters can be fun to attract more leads by talking about a company and its brand. They need to be action-packed and have a must-read message.
Exclusive Content
Exclusive content will help generate leads. When a business includes free tools as part of its brand, potential leads become high-quality leads who evolve into engaged customers because they want the “freebie.”
Attracting quality leads is easy when a company has a future customer searching for a particular item on its website. They guide the customer to fill out a lead capture form to get a free resource. A free resource includes topics about a company’s brand, an e-book, a guide, a worksheet, or something similar with relevant content.
By the lead filling out the form with their information, they get a resource in return, and then the sales team can then focus on turning these customers into engaged customers.
Create an Event
Lead generation strategies are not just limited to online activities. Businesses can host an event either online or in person. Creating a webinar, a conference, or a meet-up to get people involved will draw relevant customers into the business. Gathering contact information through event registration on all prospects can build a business’s lead capture efforts. Events are an excellent way to meet customers and answer questions face to face within the target market.
Offers, Coupons, Discounts
Converting prospects is the key to practical lead generation efforts. Offering a special offer, coupon, or a discount to high-quality leads is a great lead magnet tactic. Because the prospects are interested in a business’s products and services, offering a coupon or discount as a lead magnet encourages the lead to take action and get involved with the company. An involved lead is a qualified lead who will easily convert to a long-term customer.
Offers, coupons, and discounts campaigns can be accomplished through text messages, email marketing efforts, and call to action buttons located on landing pages. Using engagement tools like offers and coupons will improve lead quality because having leads take action to get something will engage prospects and build brand loyalty.
Optimize Your Website
Website visitors have to find things easily on a business website if they stick around. Designing call to action buttons that drive site visitors toward a coupon or discount code will more than likely be remembered by your leads.
A homepage with a call to action button drives prospects to your product or service.
Creating landing pages for a blog post that has lead magnets at the end will increase actions taken by qualified prospects.
Use lead generation pop-ups that offer free tools, resources, and relevant content, so there is a consistent flow of new leads into the business. By filling out a form with information, these new leads obtained through website visitors who found some action they wanted to take will become a part of a contact database that sales reps can use to nurture these relationships. Through digital marketing and practical marketing campaign tools, leads become long-term customers.
Create an events page so that leads can get involved then optimize these pages for SEO.
Social Media Marketing
Paying for social ads is a lead generation strategy. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest all have powerful targeting options that show paid ads to a target customer group that will most likely be interested in a particular brand or product. Social media marketing will target prospects at a micro or macro level. Posting ads, summary blogs, and sales contribute to social media marketing and potentially bring in opportunities.
Target Keywords
Prospective customers will search websites as website visitors. To attract interested prospects and drive them towards landing pages and lead magnets, a website containing both long tail and short tail keywords will bring more qualified visitors. Target keywords should include brand names and product names website visitors are trying to find.
Businesses that use the target keywords on landing pages, individual blog post pages, and social media have the best results.
Search engine optimization brings leads to a business because it improves the visibility and exposure to web pages, landing pages, and articles that leads need to find if they will get involved. The more visible a dedicated landing page is, the more interest and traffic it will generate from potential leads.
Dedicated Landing Page
One of the most effective lead generation strategies is to have landing pages built to convert website visitors into leads and paying customers. A call to action bottom directing the website visitor to a dedicated landing page will give the visitor a specific offer or discount. By doing so, visitors can be converted into qualified leads and eventual customers.
Email Marketing
As part of the process to start generating leads, emails can send out jokes stories, leveraging success stories and exciting facts to target customer groups can create personal touchpoints that will get prospects to get involved. An involved lead is a qualified lead and an eventual long-term customer. Having a consistent flow of high-end quality leads will feed a business’s success, improving through email marketing.
Retargeting
Retargeting is a marketing tactic that the business owner through the sales team uses to reconnect with prospects that didn’t convert to engaged customers during the first contact. Retargeting allows businesses to reengage with future customers who may need more nurturing and information on the company and the brand a few times before they convert into long-term customers. The lead generation process has to have a plan for retargeting to catch leads, so they don’t fall through the crack if they didn’t engage during the first contact.
Lead Generation Strategies Are Easier With an Automated CRM Platform
Pawn Leads is an automated marketing platform designed for the pawn industry.
Are you a pawnshop that needs to consider lead generation strategies to improve your bottom line?
An automated CRM platform is necessary to convert leads into long-term customers. Lead generation costs less and is more efficient with an automated marketing system that streamlines repetitive manual tasks. Pawnshop owners and managers are busy people with limited time to consistently follow up on all prospects. With automated CRM platforms, routine tasks are completed regularly, and leads feel connected with your pawnshop.
There are different automated platforms available, with a few free versions.
Pawn Leads is unique as an automated CRM platform because a pawnshop owner designed it for pawnshop owners.
Understanding the unique challenges pawnshop owners face when they are fine-tuning their lead generation efforts, the Pawn Leads lead generation tools are user-friendly and designed to meet the needs of pawnshop business owners.
From Optimizing Webpages to Writing Blogs
Pawn Leads has the experts and tools necessary for attracting prospects through optimizing web pages, building landing pages, creating lead magnets that work, building funnel pages and campaigns, tracking all inbound leads and conversations, writing automatic text campaigns, managing social media platforms, and advertisement like Facebook and Google ads. Pawn Leads understands how to use content marketing through press releases and blog posts to encourage quality leads to convert to paying clients.
Access to Lead Magnets and Templates
As a Pawn Leads client, you will have access to the same lead magnets we encourage you to produce for your quality leads. Pawn Leads has a chatbot to answer your initial questions and set up a follow-up call. By filling out a contact form, you have access to free guides, free learning tools, and resources necessary to help you understand how the automated marketing platform can make things more effective and efficient as you embark on a new lead generation campaign strategy.
Free Trial
By signing up for a free trial, you can practice using the automated system and talk with a Pawn Leads expert so you understand how the service can improve your ability to convert quality leads into long-term customers. Lead generation strategies must be a part of all businesses today, including pawnshops. The templates available through an automated platform are designed with pawnshops in mind and have responses unique for pawnshops.
Analytics and Monthly Reviews
Lead generation strategies include analytics, seeing if lead magnets are working, and conversion rates. Once a month, meetings with your Pawn Lead expert will help you understand how to use your Facebook page to leverage it to bring in leads, how your webpage is performing, and how google ads are generating sales through sales qualified leads.
Pawnshop products and services are unique, and Pawn Leads, and we break down the sales lead gen process to help guide you as an owner so you understand the tips and tricks so you can use the platform to your advantage and generate leads efficiently and effectively.
It Works!
With Pawn Leads in place, you will have content marketing in place; your pawn shop can begin using lead magnets and lead capture to start nurturing quality leads so they can visit effective landing pages designed to optimize lead generation rates and create an overall better-performing inbound marketing strategy. With help from Pawn Leads experts to understand lead scoring is a methodology used to rank prospects against a scale representing the perceived value each lead represents to your pawnshop, which will help you determine which leads and tools to prioritize for successful conversions.
Success Stories
Parker Pawn and Jewelry discovered their Press Release written by Pawn Leads was picked up and distributed in their local newspaper BizFayetteville leading to an increase in prospects coming into their stores and becoming quality leads.
R&J Jewelry and Loan increased their website visitors because of press releases and blogs. Posting blog posts to your website raises business leads through site visitors engaging and discovering your pawnshop is where they want to do business.
Idaho Pawn and Gold posted a blog post about Rolex and luxury watches. A new watch came into the store because of the blog and was sold for a considerable profit.
Building your pawnshops online community through “noise” that gets visitors to engage directly with your business and understand your product brand is an essential marketing approach for lead generation strategies and will improve lead quality, making it easier to convert leads to paying clients.
Content marketing catches prospects’ interest and helps to get them started in a sales funnel that will offer your sales teams an opportunity to appraise and buy or loan on luxury items. Without the “noise” created by lead generation strategies, you are competing with other businesses in your area that provide similar services. Idaho Pawn and Gold buys and sells gold and silver. They have automatic text messaging, email marketing, press releases, and blogs set up by Pawn Leads. They have customers fill out contact details when they visit their store and website. They offer free guides and explain how to “opt-in” to niche lists as part of their lead capture, and it works! They market to quality leads on their niche lists and attract potential customers through word of mouth and “noise.” They use lead generation strategies to draw in curious people and then get them to engage by taking action. They recently posted a blog about luxury handbags, which resulted in five or more bags regularly coming into the store.
Pawn Leads automated CRM platform as a lead generation tool WORKS!
