7 Lead Generation Process Steps to Improve Sales in 2023

Generating high-quality leads is critical to business growth. However, many marketers struggle to craft a lead generation process that consistently attracts high-quality leads. The generated leads should subsequently be simplified via a lead management process in order to improve company performance. In fact, 61% of marketers say lead generation is their biggest challenge.

Whether you’re just starting or looking to generate more leads, this blog is for you. In this blog, we will explore how to plan the best lead generation process for your business. From identifying your target audience to creating compelling offers, we’ll provide practical tips and strategies to help you attract sales-qualified leads.

But before we dive into strategies, we’ll discuss lead generation meaning, its importance, and the different types of lead generation. Let’s dive in.

What Is Lead Generation?

Lead generation refers to identifying and capturing the details of potential customers for your business. The ultimate goal of it is to convert them into paying customers and generate revenue. The process typically involves collecting their personal information, such as name, email address, phone number, and other relevant details. This information is then used to nurture and move them down the sales funnel to convert them into paying customers.

Businesses generate leads through email marketing, as well as a range of other strategies, such as cold calling, social media marketing, content marketing, PPC ads, and more. The right approach for lead generation for your business depends on your industry, target audience, and budget.

What Are the Types of Lead Generation?

Generating leads can take many forms, such as

• Online lead generation
• Outbound lead generation
• Event lead generation
• Referral lead generation
• Content marketing lead generation
• Social media lead generation
• Paid Third-Party Lead Generation
• PR Lead Generation

Let’s look at these types of lead generation processes in detail.

1. Online Lead Generation

   B2B marketing, these days, demonstrates the utmost importance of internet marketing in the lead generation process steps. It leverages the internet as the medium to generate leads. While the online lead generation process continues to evolve, here are the top techniques that can be beneficial for you:

   • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
   • Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)
   • Social Media Channels
   • Email Marketing
   • Content Marketing
   • Website Optimization
   • Paid Advertising
   • Marketing Automation
   • Display Advertising

   It is one of the effective ways to generate leads. It is highly targeted to different demographics. Based on the behavior of your leads, i.e., platforms where they spend most of their time, you can choose where you want to display your ads. Such ads play a pivotal role in the sales funnel.

2. Outbound Lead Generation

   Outbound lead generation process involves contacting potential customers through email, phone, or direct mail. The goal is to engage them and encourage them to take a specific action, such as signing up for a free trial or requesting more information. If you have a physical presence, direct mail will bring the results. However, email or phone calls are good lead generation strategies for an online business.

3. Event Lead Generation

   To generate leads from an event, you attend or host industry events, conferences, or trade shows to meet potential customers face-to-face. This allows you to engage with prospects, showcase products or services, and collect contact information.

4. Referral Lead Generation

   It involves tapping into the network of your existing customers to generate leads. You encourage satisfied customers to recommend your business to their friends and families by rewarding them (with incentives). This is excellent because people will likely trust recommendations from someone they know.

5. Content Marketing Lead Generation

   In this process of lead generation, businesses create and distribute valuable content across channels to attract prospects. It could involve blogs, whitepapers, webinars, videos, and gated content addressing customers’ problems. The primary goal of content marketing is to showcase authority and build rapport with prospects.

6. Social Media Lead Generation

   Social media platforms have become an integral part of our lives. It is also one of the best channels to generate qualified leads. In fact, 66% of marketers generate leads from social media after spending only six hours per week on social marketing.

   It typically involves creating targeted content to appeal to your target audiences, such as posts, ads, or videos. By analyzing user data and metrics, you can identify the types of content that are most effective at generating leads and optimize your strategy accordingly.

7. Paid Third-Party Lead Generation

   You pay a third-party service provider to generate leads in this lead generation strategy. It also involves investing in lead generation tools to identify potential customers. They provide details like name, email, phone number, and other relevant details. However, ensuring that the third-party service provider you choose has a good reputation and adheres to ethical practices is crucial.

8. PR Lead Generation

   A good campaign typically involves running PRs to leverage media coverage to reach potential customers. The idea is to boost brand awareness and credibility through public relations tactics and use this increased visibility to generate new leads. However, measuring the ROI of PR lead generation can be challenging as they take time to materialize.

What Is the Importance of the Lead Generation Process?

Sales lead generation process is the lifeblood of any business. However, apart from helping generate qualified sales leads, the process offers a range of benefits, like improving customer relationships and providing deeper insights into sales strategies. 

1. Increased Sales

   Lead generation for sales helps businesses find potential customers and develop an interest in their products or services. More leads mean more potential customers, leading to higher revenue and profitability. However, it is critical to optimize the lead generation process to build a sales-qualified lead list.

2. Targeted Marketing

   By generating leads, businesses can focus on a specific audience most likely to be interested in their products or services. This targeted approach saves marketers time and enables them to use resources better by prioritizing the most promising leads.

3. Critical Insights Into Customers

   Generating leads provides businesses valuable data insights into their target audience. This information can help enhance products or services and optimize B2B marketing strategies. With the help of data analytics, businesses can track their leads and adjust their campaigns in real-time to improve their conversion rates.

Lead Generation Flowchart

The lead generation process flowchart is a visual representation that businesses follow, from finding customers to converting them. Divided into four parts, it is a framework that helps companies to understand and optimize their digital marketing strategies to ramp up their lead-gen efforts.

Here’s a breakdown of the lead generation process flow.

1. Attract

   The first step in lead generation for sales involves creating awareness and interest in your products. This can be done using content marketing, search engine optimization, paid ads, and social media marketing. The goal is to create useful and relevant content that addresses your target audience’s pain points, eventually driving them to your landing page.

2. Convert

   Once prospects are on your website, it’s time to capture and convert their information. You can catch their details using a chatbot or popups. You’ll also need to leverage lead scoring software and nurturing to get the most out of your efforts. Lead scoring refers to assigning a score to each lead based on interest and engagement levels. This helps you prioritize prospects that are more likely to convert.

   Nurturing leads involves providing valuable and relevant information to move them down the sales funnel. This includes email marketing, targeted ads, and personalized content. The key is to provide a clear call-to-action (CTA) that guides them to the next step in the process.

3. Close

   The next step in the lead generation process flowchart is to close the deal. The best way to do that is by providing a seamless buying experience that makes it easy for them to become paying customers. You can give them the support they need to make a purchase decision. You can also offer special deals (discounts), free trials, or other incentives to make the deal interesting for them.

4. Delight

   The last step in the lead generation process flowchart is to delight your customers. This is where businesses turn their customers into brand advocates. By providing exceptional customer service, support, and value, companies can create a positive experience that encourages customers to return for more and refer others to your business.

Lead Generation Process – 7 Steps for Boosting Sales

Now that we’ve understood the sales lead flowchart, it’s time to look at the seven primary stages. The lead generation process can be divided into seven stages. Each stage is equally important and must be implemented strategically. Let’s understand them in detail.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

Lead generation for sales begins with identifying who you are trying to attract. Though it seems an obvious question, all the ways to generate leads depend on its answer. The better you understand your customers, the better you can serve them. Eventually, this helps in driving more leads in the long run.

Audience research is a challenging and time-consuming process. But, determining the following can help you ease the search:

• Fetch the demographic data, i.e., who is visiting your website
• Ask your Customer Support and Sales teams who are buying your products
• Check out what your competitors are up to

Once you determine your target audience, try to gauge their troubles. You can run a survey, create a poll, or even talk to your customer support team to know this. Nevertheless, your audience’s choices and problems might change over time. But, audience research must be an ongoing exercise, not a ‘once done-and-sorted’ thing.

2. Create a Compelling Offer

The second stage of the B2B lead generation process is to create compelling offers to encourage them to give their information. It could be a free product trial, a discount or coupon code, a white paper or e-book, a webinar, or early access to an event. However, ensure that the offer is relevant to your target audience.

You can also add a sense of urgency or scarcity to make your offer even more compelling. For example, you could offer a limited-time discount or only make your offer available to the first 100 sign-ups.

3. Build a Landing Page

Effective lead generation for sales requires you to build a captivating landing page. It should provide information about your offer and encourage visitors to take action, such as filling out a form or purchasing. However, following the best practices is critical to generating high-quality inbound leads.

• Keep the design clean and simple, with a clear hierarchy of information and a single, prominent CTA.
• Use attention-grabbing headlines and compelling visuals to capture visitors’ attention and communicate the value of your offer.
• Use bullet points or short paragraphs to highlight your offer’s key benefits and make it easy to scan the page.
• Use social proof, such as customer testimonials or trust badges, to showcase credibility and build trust with visitors.
• Keep the form as short as possible, asking only for the information you need to follow up with leads. Also, ensure the form is easy to fill out and prominently displayed on the page.
• Use thank-you pages to confirm the form has been submitted successfully and provide additional information or the next steps.

4. Drive Traffic to the Landing Page

Driving traffic to a landing page is critical to maximizing your lead generation efforts. It gives the sales team much-needed details to convert customers. Here are some ways to do it.

• Use paid advertising: Paid advertising can help drive targeted traffic to your landing page. Popular platforms include Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Twitter Ads.
• Utilize social media: Share your landing page on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Utilize relevant hashtags to reach a larger audience.
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Optimize your landing page for search engines to improve your page’s visibility in search results. Use relevant keywords in your title, meta description, and page content.
• Content marketing: Craft compelling content, including blogs, eBooks, and whitepapers that link to your landing page.
• Email marketing: Send targeted email campaigns to your subscribers promoting your landing page. Personalize your emails and segment your subscribers based on their interests.
• Referral traffic: Encourage your existing customers and leads to refer others to your landing page.

5. Capture Lead Information

Once you have driven traffic to your landing page, it’s time to capture their information so the sales team can move them down the sales funnel. Here are some best practices and strategies for lead generation for sales.

• Use a lead capture form: Include a lead capture form on your landing page to collect information such as name, email address, phone number, and any other relevant information you need to follow up with leads.
• Keep the form simple: Don’t overwhelm your leads with too many fields. Only keep what’s necessary to follow up with them.
• Offer something in return: Offer a free resource, such as an eBook, whitepaper, or webinar, in exchange for a lead’s contact information. This will encourage them to fill out the form.
• Use a clear and compelling call-to-action (CTA): Use a CTA that clearly communicates the value of filling out the form, such as “Get Your Free eBook Now.”
• Personalize the experience: Use dynamic content to personalize the form or landing page based on the lead’s location, industry, or interests.
• Ensure GDPR and CCPA compliance: If you collect personal information from European Union or California leads, ensure that your lead capture form is GDPR and CCPA-compliant.

6. Nurture Leads

It is critical to nurture leads to convert them into paying customers. It is important to remember that even if a lead is not ready to convert instantly, you must keep a good relationship with them.

Having said that, here are some best practices to follow when nurturing leads.

• Segment your leads: Divide them into groups based on their interests, behaviors, and demographics. This will let you personalize your messaging and provide relevant content to each group.
• Email marketing: Use a targeted email campaign to deliver relevant messages to your leads. Provide educational resources, case studies, and other relevant content to help them make a purchase decision.
• Utilize marketing automation: Use marketing automation software to trigger targeted and personalized messages to your leads based on their actions.
• Personalize the experience: Use dynamic content to personalize your messaging and content based on each lead’s behavior, interests, and preferences.
• Use retargeting ads: Run retargeting ads to increase your visibility and encourage your leads to return as they browse the internet.
• Measure and analyze: Measure and analyze the effectiveness of your lead nurturing campaigns and optimize your messaging and content accordingly.

7. Qualify Leads

Lead qualification refers to identifying leads ready to move to the next stage. Here’s how you can do that.

• Define your ideal customer profile: Create a buyer persona that defines how your ideal customer looks like. It should have everything, including their company size, budget, pain points, and industry. This will help you determine which leads fit your business well.
• Use lead scoring: Assign points to each lead based on their behavior, interests, and demographics. Leads with a higher score are more likely to be sales-ready and can be passed on to the sales team.
• Use BANT criteria: Use the BANT criteria (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) to determine if a lead is sales-ready. Leads that meet all four criteria are more likely to be ready to purchase.
• Align sales and marketing: Ensure your sales and marketing teams are aligned and working together to move leads down the sales funnel.

Conclusion

Generating high-quality leads is critical for businesses to earn money. By following the steps mentioned in the blog, like identifying the target audience, creating a compelling offer, building a robust landing page, and capturing and nurturing lead information, you can find the right sales opportunities for your business. Ready to take your lead generation process to the next level?

Rohit is a seasoned writer with expertise in digital marketing, customer experience, and the SaaS niche. His specialization lies in writing easy-to-understand, jargon-free content that sticks readers to the screen. When he is not writing, he is either reading blogs by industry experts, playing with his dog, or binge-watching the latest web series.