Published on May 25th, 2015 | by Diogo Costa

3 Tips to Increase Sales With Lead Generation

On articles, presentations and general conversations about Digital Marketing, much is said about leads and how they are important to the strategy of a business. But not everyone can properly define what a lead is and, more importantly, how to boost their generation and transform those strategies into improved sales and general results.

But what is a lead, really? Leads are contacts obtained by the company, from companies and/or people who are likely to be interested in your products/services and become customers somewhere in the near future. Unlike prospects, that already have a great likelihood of becoming customers, leads are only contacts that, after the proper contact and qualification, may turn out to be prospects – or not.

When someone fills out a registration on your website, hands you a business card or have their data collected from a sales point, for example, that person becomes a lead. Leads should be evaluated and qualified, in order to set up as a potential prospect to be addressed. Therefore, it can be said that leads constitute opportunities, which may turn into future clients, and that is exactly why leads are so important for companies. With this in mind, here are three lead generation tips for retailers to boost their sales and gain new prospects for their businesses.

Go for content marketing

Producing useful and interesting material for your audience can be a great way of getting quality leads. By attracting this audience through social media or search engines, you will have on your site or blog people that are really interested in those things, which makes them qualified leads.

The public brought by this content can then register to receive your newsletter to be notified of more content, or sign up for a specific action, for example. Therefore, it is important for these forms to be strategically located in order to facilitate the process and, most importantly, have something to offer in return – good articles, news, videos and even e-books, so that the public has reason to assign their contacts to your company. There are great sources online for you to improve your skills in order to produce great content.

Get fans and followers on social networks

People accompanying the updates of your company on social networks can become leads through strategies such as Squeeze Pages (screens that capture the user’s contacts before he can access the page), campaigns that drive users to create accounts on your site, and others .

Also, lead users to enroll in your virtual store, with the so-called Social Login: that button that allows users to create an account without having to fill all their personal information, which is automatically extracted from their accounts in social networks. This is an almost obligatory tool for e-commerce, nowadays.

Get new registrations with e-mail marketing

Do you have a mailing list only with the names and emails of contacts? Offer something in return of the complete user registration through e-mail marketing campaigns. You can offer an e-book, discounts at your store, discount codes and other benefits and, in exchange, you get more qualified contacts that are much more likely to become consolidated customers.

Do you have any other lead generation tips? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: business, content, lead generation, marketing, online, sales