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What is Lead Quality?
Generating leads is among the main goals brands must achieve in digital marketing. “Leads” refers to people interested in a brand’s product or service that have interacted with the business via their website, a phone call or an email – but have not yet made a transaction. They’re considered “potential buyers”, so companies nurture them to turn them into paying customers.
Leads can’t help a brand grow if they remain indifferent toward its products and services. Hence, a company has to pique their interest before converting them into potential customers. This process is called “lead generation.”
Ways Businesses Generate Leads
They said sales is a game of pure luck. One study even claimed that nearly 60% of sales resulted from maximizing provoked luck. However, in reality, turning visitors into paying customers is more of a skill, especially with the help of proven lead-generation strategies.
Here’s a quick overview of the various ways and platforms for generating leads:
- Direct Mail
- SMS & Messenger Marketing (e.g., via What’s App or Facebook)
- Email Marketing
- Referral Schemes
- Affiliate Schemes
- Paid Advertising (e.g., TikTok Ads, Facebook Ads, or Google Ads)
- Competitions and Giveaways (Go Viral)
- Content Marketing
- Webinars / Webcasts
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Here’s a pro tip: generate several leads from different sources. The more leads, the higher the conversation rate. However, ensure quality alongside quantity to avoid wasting time on unqualified prospects. Nowadays, the most common way to do this is through SEO (i.e., the process of increasing a brand’s visibility in search engines), usually with the help of SEO agencies.
While their ways differ, most SEO companies don’t only focus on boosting a brand’s search engine results page (SERP) rankings. Take Distl’s SEO Services as an example. This company aims to offer all-in strategies for their clients. They offer brand, social, content, and digital strategies altogether with SEO services. Many SEO agencies these days ensure their clients’ overall business success, something other lead generation strategies can unlikely offer.
SEO Leads Have a Higher Conversion Rate: Here’s Why
Another reason why SEO is better than other lead-generation methods is because it maximizes website conversions. Take ecommerce websites, for example. Their average conversion rate is 2.5-3%, but this can still go higher because a brand can target its buyers at the “bottom of the funnel” (i.e., the conversion of potential leads into paying customers of a company’s product or service).
Note that Google is still king these days. Consumers often use Google as a go-to search engine to look up products and services before deciding which items to buy. With this, companies can leverage SEO to target consumers who already have decided what product or service they want. What they just need is the right company to sell it to them.
Let’s look at what conversion-ready visitors do to a local brand. Statistics show that 46% of searches on Google are local searches. 71% of local searches lead to in-store visits in a day, and 78% can result in offline conversions. Considering these figures, it’s easy to see why 88% of brands with appropriate SEO programs intend to keep their investments throughout 2023.
SEO can also help a brand establish trust with potential customers in a way that’s unrelated to direct advertising. The idea is that the higher rankings, the better the brand quality and trustworthiness. This is because most consumers often think a brand must be reputable if it is worth the top spot on Google.
This could be one of the reasons why organic traffic (e.g., Google, Yahoo, or Bing searches) has higher conversion rates than paid traffic (e.g., Google Ads or Facebook Ads) for certain big-ticket and high-stakes items. For example, in most professional services businesses, organic traffic has a 12.3% conversion rate, while paid search only has 7%.
Is Lead Generation Really Important to Business?
It’s critical for a company to generate leads for its business to grow. With today’s limited attention spans and infinite distractions, most customers are very fickle. Hence, without the help of leads, companies are unlikely to develop their necessary sales and consumer base.
One of the primary purposes of lead generation is to convert clicks or visitors to completed transactions and actual sales. When done correctly, this helps a company to have consistent cash flow and steady return on investment (ROI).
However, lead generation isn’t always about selling. It isn’t a linear process. It also involves “lead nurturing” (i.e., following up on a lead after they’ve been contacted once) and “lead qualification” (i.e., determining whether a lead is a good fit for the business).
Lead generation is particularly important to startups. Without the profits from these conversions, newly established businesses will have difficulty staying in any competitive market, regardless of how good their products or services may be.
Final Thoughts
SEO is among the best lead-generation strategies nowadays. It doesn’t only help a brand attract more organic traffic but also increases its conversation rate. Since consumers that create organic traffic already have pre-existing interests, they’re likely to have increased purchase intent and are already conversion-ready. Overall, it’s recommended for improving client base, sales and revenue, and business growth.
