How to obtain leads using different methods of lead generation
This article analyzes the basic ways of lead generation that allow your company to get IT leads. First, let’s look at the main lead generation channels, and then we’ll take a closer look at each of them:
1. Website
2. Social networks
- Quora
- Medium
- SlideShare
3. Email Marketing
4. Platforms for freelancing and exchange of leads:
- Upwork/Freelancer/Guru
- Aciety/Youteam/FreeUp and hundreds of others
5. Offline methods:
- Calls
- Meetings
- Meetups
- Exhibitions
6. Partnerships and subcontracting
1 The website
The website may be a major source of leads for your company in case it has:
- modern design
- high-quality UI/UX optimization
- good loading speed (from 90+ on mobile by Google Page Speed)
- a chat and landing pages for each segment of expected traffic
- convenient feedback forms
- SEO optimization
In addition, I would like to dwell on the issue of the presence of traffic on the website. In fact, the creation of even the best site will not give you new leads since there simply will be no visitors (your potential customers).
You can ensure the availability of traffic to your website using high-quality SEO optimization, namely: creating a blog with a lot of articles that answer the questions of your potential customers, having increased referential mass, optimizing speed, and do many other “magic tricks” described in our article on SEO content creation.
2 Social networks
Social networks at this stage of lead generation development are one of the main sources of leads. Let’s analyze each.
- LinkedIn has about 700 million registered users. The main purpose of this social network is to build business contacts.
LinkedIn is probably the only place in the world where you can present your company or services to thousands of people without a twinge of conscience because, in fact, this was the goal of the network.
The two main types of lead generation with content and cold outreach are described in our article How to Use LinkedIn to Find Customers in the West. - XING is a must for companies that have chosen the DACH region as their focus for IT lead generation or any country that is part of it (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). In these countries, the division between LinkedIn and XING’s business users is approximately 10/90 in favor of the last.
- Twitter is very popular in the US, and we encourage you to adopt a Twitter Lead Generation Card and work with the content and hashtags as a whole.
- We recommend using Facebook to generate leads either with other channels if you sell complex services (for example, custom software development) or separately if your services are aimed at the mass market (for example, your IT company specializes in creating landing pages on WordPress).
- Quora is a site created for questions and answers. By giving detailed answers to users’ questions relevant to your company’s services, you are guaranteed to get the leads to a given channel.
- Medium is a lead generation channel that will demand a minimum of your efforts but works pretty effectively. It is an online media designed for the publication of content that is highly ranked on Google. Accordingly, by simply duplicating an article from your blog posts to this website, you are almost guaranteed to come out in the top of Google search. If the user will read your content and find it useful, they will be happy to go to your company’s website from the Medium blog.
- SlideShare is a tightly integrated service with LinkedIn. It allows you to post presentations of any content in the online directory of this site. By providing a relevant description of your presentation, making it engaging, and revealing topics that are interesting to potential leads, you will receive relevant traffic to your site and, accordingly, potential leads.
3 Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the most complex techniques for lead generation because it is one of the oldest, and therefore – overused and spammed tools. However, you will definitely get a reply rate of more than the “standard” 3% with the relevantly collected emails with the help of such tools as snov.io or hunter.io, and communication with a nifty tool like Lemlist that allows you to customize from the visual content of the email to the name of the lead or company, etc.
4 The freelance platforms
We described the freelance platforms in detail in our article. Additionally, we recommend using media for “passive” lead generation. In such platforms, you will need to pay some effort at the registration stage, but you will simply receive relevant leads to your mailbox or telegram bot in the future. Examples of platforms that we can recommend to improve the lead generation process in your company:
- Aciety – an Estonian platform that, in addition to standard services on searching customers for you, offers to sell your products under the “white label,” or as part of other products (for example, the launching of a video chat, developed by your company, on the learning platform of another company).
- YouTeam/FreeUp – platforms that position themselves as pre-vetted, that is, “pre-selecting participants.” It is true: to register there, you need to prove that your company can provide a decent level of service platform to customers (technical level of development, level of English, the size of the company, registration form, etc.).
5 Offline methods
Offline methods are working now and will work for a long time. Trust us: even if you have a video call, your chance to set the deal with this lead is much higher if you have a recommendation compared to the “cold” contact.
We consider road shows and exhibitions in the West to be the most effective methods of offline lead generation. With good ICP preparation, you will be able to “bring” 2-3 new clients from each such trip. But keep in mind that you will still be using the lead generation tools described above to prepare your meetings.
