Inbound Marketing Basics: Step 5 – Lead Generation

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What is lead generation and how to do it

Lead generation is a jargon term that actually has a simple meaning. Lead generation is when you have someone submit their name and phone number or email address and typically are asking for more information. The lead has been generated and now the person who gave their name and number is the “lead” or potential sale.

The hard part of this becomes ensuring that you know where exactly that lead came from. A traditional model of this is TV advertising and radio advertising. An advertiser who is wanting people to call in and buy a product, will use two different phone numbers. This helps the advertiser know how many people responded to the tv ad vs. The radio ad.

When it comes to the web, it gets a little more complicated.

On a basic level you can install Google Analytics to your website. You then tell Google what the first page a user should see and what the last page you want the user to see. For example if you want more people to sign up for your email newsletter, you tell Google what page the form is on and what page is the “thank you” page. Google is then able to tell you how many people visited your web page and how many people actually filled out your form and became a “lead.”

At the base level, best thing you can do is have a unique page and unique form for each product and service or for each niche your advertising to.

In the context of Inbound Marketing, Lead Generation is a way of showing that the other Inbound Marketing techniques you are using are working and creating potential sales. You have to have trackable benchmarks though. Leads are one of the best benchmarks along with how many people are visiting your website and social media engagement.

Now that we talked about tracking your leads in a basic way, here are a few ideas on how to get some new leads that you can practice tracking:

Offer a free service, product, or consultation with form capture
Do a $5 Facebook Advertisement & track leads in Facebook or send them to a page with a form
Do Google Ads for $1 a day and have it go to a form or unique product page with analytics tracking it
Do Bing Ads for $1 a day. Have it go to a form or unique product page with analytics tracking it
Build a unique page and give the URL out to a key partner. Rinse, lather, repeat for each key partner. This allows you to see if your partners or vendors are sending you good leads who are more likely to purchase.