Sometimes it feels like customers are scarce, budgets are slim, and every sale is precious. A streamlined and effective process for generating leads is crucial to preventing any potential customers from slipping through the cracks, starting with the tools you use to manage the process.
Budgets keep shrinking, expectations continue to rise, and somehow, your competitors still seem like they're gobbling up leads and converting customers left and right. To keep doing more with less, it's time to take a hard look at your customer acquisition and lead generation process—starting with the tools you use.
Great lead generation tools, when working together, can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
In this blog, we look at:
Let’s dive in.
Lead generation is the process of turning strangers into prospects who are genuinely interested in your product or service. It’s about creating a steady pipeline of potential buyers, ready to be nurtured into loyal customers.
Think of lead gen as your lifeline. It keeps your business afloat by feeding you a continuous flow of opportunities.
The result of a successful lead is always the same: a sale or a new client. But each of them might start differently.
These are the four types of leads:
And while there are multiple types of leads, there are even more ways to collect those leads:
Inbound marketing is the process of attracting prospective customers to your storefront or landing page. When you answer their most common (and most pressing) questions, they see you as a trusted source — which eventually encourages them to buy from you.
Common inbound marketing methods include content marketing, search engine optimization, and social media.
Outbound marketing involves directly reaching out to people who might be a good fit for your product or service. You can do this through email campaigns, cold calling, and direct mail.
Lead magnets provide something of value in exchange for a lead’s contact information. Ebooks, webinars, and free trials are classic examples. These offers entice prospects to share their details, giving you a foot in the door to nurture and convert them.
Hosting events and webinars is an effective way to connect with potential leads. Whether it’s through networking events, product demos, or virtual webinars, you’re engaging with prospects in real time. This direct interaction helps build trust and moves leads closer to making a purchase.
There isn't a one-size-fits-all approach for your lead generation tech stack. Ultimately it comes down to how you choose to communicate with your audience, the different types of data most important to your lead qualification and nurture process, and the other types of tools your organization uses. From email marketing to social media management, lead generation tools take many forms.
Effective lead generation is a balance between four key variables—goals, audiences, nurturing, and measurement systems. Here are the questions you need to ask to evaluate each one:
You don’t need to answer each of these questions in detail, but you do need a holistic understanding of all four pillars—which is where integrations come in.
It’s almost impossible to build an effective lead generation strategy on one set of stand-alone tools.
In a recent survey, we found that lead gen tools and channels were largely disjointed. We asked, “What do you perceive as the main barriers to successful collaboration between departments in customer acquisition?” 13% of marketers said siloed organizational structures were to blame. 25% said there was a lack of clear communication between channels.
At a time when lead generation needs to be doubly efficient while using fewer resources, siloed data can cost you. You need to operate from a single unified source of truth—envisioning the customer journey as a single funnel—to make sure every team views and operates from a unified customer journey.
An added benefit of a single funnel approach is that you no longer need to manually strategize and analyze individual campaigns. Instead, you can view them in one dashboard and see which ones generate the highest revenue.
Double Denim Marketing was using static forms on its landing pages to generate leads but was falling short of internal targets. They knew they could generate more qualified leads if landing pages offered interactive calculators. But Double Denim didn’t have the resources to hire developers to build interactive forms. Plus, they wanted their forms to integrate with their tech stack—Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Zapier.
Rob Brooks, founder of Double Denim, used Typeform to create forms that started capturing high-quality leads mere weeks after implementation. And because these leads lived inside the CRM, Double Denim’s entire team could work on them.
The results of their new integrated lead generation approach?
Double Denim showed these results to their customers, who adopted Typeform themselves after reviewing the data and generated over $3.7 million in revenue and 2,200 qualified leads through Typeform campaigns.
Tempting as it may be to plug-and-play a series of tools for lead generation, prioritize holistic systems instead. When you have an understanding of how your customers behave and why they buy, you can pick and choose the right tools for your goals.
Then, integrate your tech stack for the lowest-lift, highest-reward lead generation engine.
Check out Typeform for Growth to start building your lead generation system.
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