In this post, you’ll learn 15 actionable and timeless lead generation strategies that are simple enough for anyone to implement TODAY.
Update: If you really want to generate leads as a B2B business in today’s business climate, you need to focus on personalization. Too much of what worked in the past has been commoditized, and personalization is one of the few strategies that hasn’t yet been widely deployed.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- THE ONE-CLICK LEAD CAPTURE
- USING THE OPF-TECHNIQUE TO GENERATE 22% MORE LEADS
- USING YOUTUBE OR VIMEO AS “ENGAGEMENT MAGNETS”
- TURNING “OUT OF STOCK” INTO AN OPPORTUNITY
- USE THE “GODFATHER STRATEGY” TO BUILD YOUR EMAIL LIST
- USING FOMO TO INCREASE YOUR CONVERSION RATE
- HACKING SCROLL-DEPTH TO GET UP TO 80% MORE CLICKS ON YOUR CTA’S
- USE EXIT-INTENT POPUPS ON KEY PAGES
- USING PRE-FILL TO MAKE FORMS EASIER TO COMPLETE
- USING 404 PAGES TO GENERATE LEADS
- USING CHALLENGES TO ENGAGE AND CONVERT
- HOST OR VISIT PHYSICAL SEMINARS
- ASKING QUESTIONS TO GET A 50% CONVERSION RATE
- USING CONTENT UPGRADE TO CONVERT 38.9% OF VISITORS
- LEVERAGING THE POWER OF COMMUNITY WITH THIS POPULAR APP
1 The One-Click Lead Capture
Email marketing is about to get dethroned because there’s a new sheriff in town…
Say hello to Facebook Messenger marketing.
Facebook Messenger has over 2 billion active users, and it has the potential to change the way you look at digital marketing forever.
E-mail has been the king of marketing channels since the early days of the internet, and the reason is largely due to the ability to personalize the content inside of the emails.
In other words, E-mail has always been at the foundation of all lead generation strategies.
But here’s the kicker:
If you want to use someone’s name, company name or website URL in your email, you first have to actively collect that information from your prospect.
In other words, you can only use data you’ve actively collected from your subscribers.
And here’s the worst part:
Email open rates are declining every day.
This is not the case when it comes to Facebook Messenger…
First of all, Facebook already knows everything about your audience (because they most likely have a Facebook account).
If you want someone to sign up for your messenger list all you have to do is place a button on your website that says “Send to Messenger” or “Continue as [Name]”.
If you want your conversion rates to stay high, it’s important to reduce friction. And clicking a button is about as frictionless as it gets.
Getting started with Messenger marketing is super easy. This article from MobileMonkey explains how to do it in 3 easy steps.
Facebook Messenger has higher open rates than almost any other channel:
With reports of open rates well above 80%, you can expect your message to be seen by almost everyone you send it to.
Pro tip:
You need a Facebook page to be able to send messages to your prospects. BUT…
…instead of using your company’s page, create a page for yourself, in your own name and with your own profile picture.
That way it looks like you are sending out the message personally, instead of the messages from a company.
2 Using the “OPF-Technique” to Generate 22% More Leads
Imagine if you could double your reach or conversion rate just by adding 3 words to any thank-you page, order confirmation page, or thank-you text?
You don’t even need a marketing budget for this to work, or any connections.
It just works right out of the box.
You just need to tap into the power of “OPF” – Other People’s Friends.
Here are the three words I’m talking about:
“Invite a friend”
Add these 3 words to any popup, landing page, or thank you page and you will instantly see a lift in conversions.
We tried it on triggerbee.com recently when inviting prospects to one of our physical events.
The result?
Over 135 entries in just 2 days.
41% Invited a friend (or colleague).
22% of those invited by their friends, signed up for the seminar.
And it’s all thanks to a regular HTML link.
It’s super simple to add, and you can literally just copy-paste a small HTML-snippet to your website.
Just copy this code and paste it on any page:
<a style="font-weight: 600; text-decoration: none;" href="mailto:?subject=?body=?utm_campaign=”invite-a-friend">Invite a friend</a>
Pro tip: Use E-mailer Link Maker if you want to have a pre-filled subject line and some content.
If the person who is inviting a friend doesn’t have to write a message, the chances of them actually sending their invite increases dramatically.
3 Using YouTube or Vimeo as “Engagement Magnets”
Video is one of the most engaging types of content on the internet.
The numbers speak for themselves…
Including video on landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to 80% (Unbounce)
Visitors spend up to 2.6x more time on pages with video than without (Wistia).
I think you’ll agree with me on this:
Video is awesome!
But, having a video on your website just because you want to have a video won’t do you any good…
You have to use it strategically if you want to use it as one of your lead generation strategies!
Normally when you finish watching a video, YouTube just shows you a bunch of other related videos.
Not good.
Instead, you can use Triggerbee to create a widget that pops up right after the visitor finished watching the video.
Like this:
That way you can capture their information while they’re already engaged.
Pretty smart right?
Pro tip: Offer your visitors a powerful lead magnet related to the content in the video, or ask them to participate in a contest.
One of our customers ran a contest this way, and they had click-through rates of over 72.6%!
Very impressive.
4 Turning “Out of Stock” Into an Opportunity
When products are out of stock, you’re losing customers.
But lucky for you, there is a way to turn that into an opportunity.
Instead of just displaying a red text, like most online retailers do…
Add a form below your “OUT OF STOCK”-text with the message:
“Enter your email to get a notification when this product is back in stock”.
Pro tip: If you know when your item is back in stock, add a timer that counts down to the expected date of arrival for your product.
5 Use the Godfather-Strategy to Build Your Email List
What sounds more appealing to you:
“Sign up for the newsletter”
Or…
“Join our tribe of 2500+ world-class marketers and salespeople”
I think you’ll agree with me that the second sentence sounds way more appealing.
It’s basically the same offer, but with some added social proof.
Old pitches like “Sign up for our newsletter” just don’t work anymore because the truth is that nobody reads newsletters anymore…
They want content personalized to them. Lazer focused, point-solving, specific content that meets their interests and needs.
We manually analyzed over 50 000 conversions from our users to find out what type of message converts best.
Here are the results:
Turns out, using an offer instead of “Sign up for our newsletter”, increases your conversion rate by almost 80x!
Pretty amazing.
As the legendary Gary Halbert once said:
“You should think more about how to “sweeten” your offer than any other aspect of writing copy.”
And that certainly proves to be true even to this day.
Pro tip: If you already have an email sequence going out, you could rewrite it slightly and turn it into a 3-day, 5-day, or 10-day course!
6 Using FOMO to increase your conversion rate
Applying scarcity, or FOMO, is one of the few tactics that almost instantly can improve your lead generation efforts.
Here’s a real-life example:
Jessica Parker and Melissa Burkley conducted a study where they showed women a photograph of their potential dream man.
Half of the women were told the guy was single and the other half were told he was in a relationship.
The results might surprise you…
59% said they would be interested in pursuing a single guy when they thought he was single.
But, that number jumped to 90% when they thought the guy was taken!
We want what we can’t have, and it’s just the way we’re wired.
But, you should think twice before just throwing up a countdown for every offer you have.
Your visitors are not stupid. They will spot false offers pretty quickly, and those who don’t will just feel deceived if they find out your offer continues to run after they have purchased.
Here are a few situations where you can use it:
- When you actually have a limited offer
- When there are only a few seats left for your webinar
- When a product is running out of stock
7. Hacking Scroll-Depth to Get up to 80% More Clicks on Your CTA’s
Only about 20% of your visitors reach the bottom of your website.
It’s not your fault though — it’s like this for almost every website.
This means if you have a call to action anywhere near the bottom of your page, 80% of your visitors will never see it!
But, to solve it you need to dive into the world of data-driven marketing:
Get yourself a tool that shows you how far down people are scrolling on your website. We use Hotjar for this.
Let at least 500 – 1000 people visit your website, and then…
…check out your shiny new scroll map.
Here’s an example of how we could use the scroll-hack on our own website:
58% of visitors don’t scroll the full page.
Not good.
So what we can do here is two things:
- Move the testimonials at the top, to the bottom of the page.
- Add a scroll-popup at 5% – 10% above the 58% mark to hopefully get a few leads.
After we’ve modified the page, we can create a new heat map and see if anything has changed.
If not, we might have to restructure the whole landing page to improve the user experience.
8 Use Exit-Intent Popups on Key Pages
People either love em’ or hate em’.
And whether you like it or not, popups work.
Especially Exit-intent popups.
But first, some words of caution:
Exit intent popups are your BACKUP to your web pages.
If your exit intent popup has a higher conversion rate than your website, you probably should think about redesigning your website first.
But if you use it as a hail mary on your most important pages, they can work pretty well.
That way you don’t need to ask for all the information at once.
9 Using Pre-fill to Make Forms Easier to Complete
Over 70% of your visitors expect you to recognize them when they return to your website.
And if you have several forms on your website, there’s no bigger turn-off than letting your visitors fill out the same information…
…again…
…and again…
…and again.
One of the best ways of saying “Welcome back” is by pre-filling forms for visitors that are already identified.
Pre-fill means that you automatically add information like email address, name, phone number or company name in your forms.
So, instead of showing empty forms every time…
The prospect can just review their information already there, and hit submit.
Pretty smart.
If you want to know more about pre-filling forms and why it’s a smarter way of generating leads, you can read The Definitive Guide to Progressive Profiling.
10 Using 404 Pages to Generate Leads
When someone clicks on the link to your website in Google, they expect to land on a specific page or post.
But what happens if that page doesn’t exist?
Most 404-pages just tell you what you already know – that the page no longer exists.
And research shows that over 73% of your users leave your website when they reach a 404-page.
Lost visitors = lost customers.
Not very useful advice.
What you can do instead is giving away an E-book or a report.
That way you’ll turn something bad – a broken page – into an opportunity to generate a lead.
Unbounce, a leading landing page provider, lets people choose between two options on their 404-page.
11 Using Challenges to Engage and Convert
Let’s take a look towards the fitness industry to apply one of their most effective lead generation strategies in B2B and B2C companies…
The 30-day challenge.
Challenges can be applied to almost any industry, and any product or service.
For example:
Not only does this create a community around your actual product or service, but it’s also a lead generation strategy that engages your subscribers/prospects.
When you’re searching for new lead generation strategies, always find out what the smallest players in the biggest niches are doing.
The reason is that big corporations rarely engage customers and prospects like small companies do.
12. Host or visit physical seminars
One of the best lead generation strategies is to host physical events.
Whether you’re attending or arranging meetups, seminars, or educational classes – meeting with your prospects face-to-face is one of the best things you can do.
Besides, most people would love to get out of their office every once in a while.
At Triggerbee we try to arrange one or two physical events every year, and we never have any problem getting around 150 – 200 signups each time.
In 2016, we held a seminar together with Pipedrive with over 250 attendees and it was very appreciated.
Not only did we get a chance to speak directly to both customers and prospects, but we also get a chance to keep communicating with most of the attendees after the seminar.
13 Asking Questions to Get a 50% Conversion Rate
Except for Facebook Messenger, quizzes are the latest fad in lead generation strategies.
And the best part is that it’s not a mainstream strategy – yet.
Neil Patel and Eric Siu discussed quizzes in episode 135 of their podcast, and said: “we just don’t talk about it much because we don’t want everybody copying us”.
I don’t know about you, but when the guy that runs one of the world’s biggest marketing blogs shy’s away from talking about a specific marketing strategy they use…
…it’s probably working pretty well.
Quizzes can also help you collect some intent data, which is crucial for your salespeople.
14. Using Content Upgrades to Convert 38.9% of Visitors
The popup we use to build our email list converts at an impressive 8.8%.
But, we’ve been playing around with a new tactic called the Content Upgrade.
So far, the results are great!
Last February we wrote a blog post about GDPR for businesses, and instead of using a popup to capture emails…
…we created a content upgrade in the form of a checklist that our visitors could download.
The results?
Almost 40% of the visitors downloaded the GDPR Checklist!
Instead of using an annoying popup that interrupts the reading, the checklist is just there – available to anyone who wants to download it.
One of the biggest marketing trends in 2018 and 2019 is definitely the focus on creating better experiences…
…and with almost every website on the web using popups, content upgrades can be a good way to stand out from the crowd.
15. Leveraging the Power of Community With This Popular App
Communities are HUGE moneymakers and one of the best lead generation strategies.
You’ve probably heard about the “1000 true fans-theory”.
Kevin Kelly, co-founder of online magazine Wired, came up with this theory during his 25 years as the executive editor.
If you haven’t heard of it, here’s an explanation:
A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author—in other words, anyone producing works of art—needs to acquire only 1,000 true fans to make a living.
Unless you’re Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, it’s hard creating true fans unless you’ve built a community.
But it doesn’t come for free.
It takes both dedication and effort.
One way is to hire a web development agency, build a custom community website and try making them replace Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter in favor of your website.
Or…
You could start a Slack channel which already has everything done for you.
Using Slack as a lead generation strategy is still relatively overlooked, so by starting one now you are definitely getting in early.
There are for example over 4 million groups on LinkedIn, but only 200 active groups on Slack.
Another reason for creating your own Slack group is that it’s a real-time chat platform, and users tend to check Slack more often than other social networks.
There’s also way LESS competition for attention compared to Facebook or LinkedIn, and it’s completely free.
Visit this link to create your own channel and start building a thriving community!
But wait!
How do you get people to join your newly founded community?
Here’s a quick strategy to get you started:
1 Create a new page on your website. This will be used as a landing page where your audience can sign up to join.
2 Write some copy about why people should join your channel and add one of two options…
- A button that opens an overlay
- A form right on the page
3 Promote your slack group through ads, social networks, on your website, and in your email footer.
The key here is to receive a notification when someone signs up so you can invite them to your Slack channel, and if you have them request an invitation it feels more exclusive.
Summary
These lead generation strategies are simple enough for anyone to use.
But keep this in mind:
Stuff that works like crazy for one business might fall completely on its face in another business.
The key is finding a strategy that works for you, and in most cases, the foundation of effective lead generation is some form of content.
It all comes down to knowing your audience and how they interact with your business.