What Does Lead Generation Mean & Why Is It Important?

Have you ever received a cold call? Have you had to listen to an unwanted sales pitch over the phone or through email? That is a form of lead generation. That cold caller wants to generate interest in what they’re selling. Businesses need to generate leads somehow or they would barely make any sales. There are other ways to generate leads, however. Have you ever filled out a survey on a website, for example? If so, the business that receives that survey will identify you as a possible lead as you’ve shown an interest in them.

In fact, any business you show an interest in will identify you as a lead. They will focus more on trying to sell to you rather than someone who doesn’t have any interest in their products or services whatsoever. So, what does lead generation mean for a business and why is it so important?

Targeting People With An Actual Interest In Your Products

So, you want your business to make more sales. How do you make more sales? You acquire more customers. How do you acquire more customers? You generate leads.

This is where inbound marketing can really help a business. You want to generate leads. To do this, you must target people who might have an interest in your products or services. To do this, you must allow the potential customers to come to you. Once they show an interest in your business in some way, you can then start to target them as a lead.

How Can You Get Customers Coming To You?

What does your business do? What problems do your products or services solve? Essentially, you must have answers to a potential customer’s questions. This is done by creating content that can help them. For example, a pet shop can create a piece of content providing tips on how to best look after a cat. Someone somewhere will be looking for this sort of information and may stumble upon your content. They will be initiating a relationship between themselves and your business rather than your business trying to initiate one with them. This allows you to build more reliable leads.

There are many ways for you to increase the number of leads you generate including:

• Optimising your On-page and Off-page SEO

• Blogging consistently

• Being active on social media

• Creating high-quality content such as infographics

All of this can be used to get potential customers to follow a CTA or get them to a landing page. This can lead them to download content and filling out forms on your website, which shows they have an interest in your business and can be identified as a lead, rather than just a visitor. You can then focus more time on marketing and selling to them.

Why Go Through All the Effort?

Sure, this might look like a lot of effort to go through to generate some leads. However, if you want to generate a good amount of leads that will lead to more sales, this is the best strategy for you. It is crucial to your business to allow you to get valuable information about your potential customers such as their names and contact details, which can be used to nurture the lead.

You will have the knowledge that a lead that has come to you will have some interest in your business. You put yourself in a much better position than you would if you were to take a shot in the dark.

Are You Satisfied With Your Lead Generation?

As already mentioned, lead generation is crucial if you want to make more sales. If you are unsatisfied with the number of leads you’re generating, it may be time to try inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is a more customer-friendly way of generating leads, allowing customers to come to you rather than disturbing them.

The JDR Group specialise in inbound marketing and have years of experience in helping businesses with the lead generation. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you.