“Where are our leads?”
“We need more leads!”
“These leads aren’t qualified!”
“How do we get more leads?”
If you’re in sales or marketing, these phrases likely pepper your meetings and day-to-day conversations. In fact, you’re probably tired of these phrases (in that case, sorry!).
But the fact is, lead generation is a key part of a healthy business. And despite the name, unfortunately, leads aren’t generated out of the ether. To generate leads effectively, you need the right tools in your stack to capture, nurture, and convert your leads.
While lead gen technology isn’t a silver bullet for success, a finely-tuned lead generation stack can make all the difference in how your next conversation about leads goes. Let’s talk about a few types of lead generation software, what you should look for in your software research, and where to start if you’re looking to up your lead generation game.
Types of Lead Generation Software
There are many kinds of tools that marketers add to their lead generation stack. Here are just a few types you might need:
- Lead Capture Tools collect email addresses and other first-party data from your site visitors, usually with forms, pop-ups, landing pages, or live chat. Some capture tools also offer ways to capture leads with interactive content, such as marketing quizzes, which typically convert at a much higher rate than basic capture forms.
- Email Service Providers (ESPs) allow you to nurture new leads with behaviorally-triggered emails, targeted campaigns, and other communication.
- Sales Prospecting & Outreach Tools provide ways to build lists of prospects, enrich your prospect data, and automate your outreach efforts.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software manages current and future customers, allowing you to track leads at every step of the relationship. CRMs often include marketing automation as well, or you can use your CRM’s integrations to trigger communication through an ESP or other tool.
- Referral Program Management enables you to harness the power of your current customers to generate new leads through word-of-mouth.
Some lead generation solutions fall under several categories. For instance, your ESP might also offer simple lead capture forms, or your CRM might serve as a one-stop shop for all of the lead gen capabilities your business needs.
It’s also important to note that not every business will need each one of these tools, while some types of businesses may choose to use multiple tools in a particular category.
eCommerce brands might find referral programs beneficial, while SaaS companies might not see the same benefits. Instead, SaaS companies often rely more heavily on prospecting, so they may choose to use several sales prospecting tools to gather lists of contacts and reach out to them, rather than investing in a referral management platform.
What to Look for in Your Lead Generation Tool
With an endless list of tools for generating new leads, how do you narrow down your search?
Whether you’re building your lead generation stack for the first time or looking to upgrade to a new solution, you should make sure to look for solutions that are:
- Integrated with the rest of your lead generation technology. Lead generation tools enable you to automate many tasks, allowing you to save time while marketing more effectively. However, if you’re manually moving data all day to make your tools work, you won’t see the same benefits. Make sure your new tools offer seamless integrations with your existing technology. With a well-integrated stack, you can put your data to use for high-performing lead generation and nurture campaigns.
- Flexible enough to grow with your business. If you don’t choose a tool that can adapt to where your business might be in a year or two, you might find yourself repeating your search quickly. Look for tools that offer all of the capabilities you need, have capabilities that fit into your long-term strategy, and won’t hike up prices too much as your usage changes.
- Cost-effective. Your new lead generation software should fit in your budget, but it’s also important to consider that with the right capabilities, some tools can pay for themselves (and then some). For example, a robust email marketing platform or conversion rate optimization tool will cost more than their more basic counterparts, but the increased ROI may be worth it.
- Backed by excellent services and support. All the bells and whistles in the world won’t make a difference if you can’t use them! To get the most out of your investment, look for solutions with onboarding services, training sessions, ongoing support, and experts in your industry who can provide the guidance you need to succeed.
Where to Start: Lead Capture
No matter your industry, lead generation comes down to attracting prospects and nurturing them towards conversion. Whether you attract ads through content or coupons, paid ads or organic social, your site will play a large role in this process.
That’s why your lead generation stack should include a solid lead capture solution.
For many sites, lead capture starts and stops with a basic form tool. This will win you some leads, but to make the most of these leads, you need insights into who your leads are and how you can nurture them towards becoming lifelong customers.
Fortunately, today’s advanced form builders and landing page solutions offer conversion rate optimization and first-party data capture tools. That way, you get the data you need and the ability to act on that data too.
Here’s what to look for in your lead capture solution.
Drag-and-Drop Form Builder
To capture the attention of your site visitors, your pop-up forms must stand out. With a fully-featured drag-and-drop form editor, you can create to your heart’s content, allowing you to build eye-catching pop-ups, forms, banners, sliding boxes, full-screen lightboxes, and other onsite CTAs that capture more email addresses.
Make sure your form tool offers the customization options you need to create on-brand forms, such as the ability to upload your brand’s custom fonts. Even better, if your form tool provides built-in form templates, you’ll be able to launch new, mobile-friendly campaigns quickly without having to start from scratch each time.
Targeting and Display Conditions
Targeted offers lead to more conversions. That’s why most lead generation tools allow you to show pop-up forms on specific pages of your site.
But why stop there?
Form builders like Digioh allow you to deploy precision-targeted pop-ups based on referral source, URL parameters, geolocation, visitor behavior, device type, cookie or localStorage values, and more.
With these options, you can meet your visitors at the height of their interest with the perfect offer, maximizing your chances of capturing the lead.
The Power of Personalization
The right lead capture tool can help you capture first-party data for more personalized messaging, using tactics like quiz funnels to collect visitor preferences or multi-step forms that can help pre-qualify leads.
But some form builders also allow you to tailor your onsite messaging with personalized pop-ups or landing pages. Using dynamic content, you can show personalized pop-ups based on URL parameters, source, or even the current on-page content. For instance, if a shopper comes to an eCommerce site to view a particular product, you can show a personalized promotion offering a discount for items in that product category. This typically leads to 2-3x more conversions.
A/B and Multivariate Testing
A healthy lead generation strategy is one of constant improvement, and that includes improving your onsite form conversion rate. Testing the copy, creative, targeting, and timing of your pop-up forms can help you optimize for more conversions. Look for a lead capture solution allows you to perform A/B or multivariate testing to find the form configuration that works best for your website and audience.
Integrations with Your Email Marketing Platform
A visitor fills out a form on your site. You’ve captured a lead. Now what?
To nurture the leads you capture into paying customers, you need to market to them with targeted messaging, likely through email. But if you have to manually add new leads to your email solution, you miss out on the opportunity to engage new leads at the height of their interest: when they first sign up.
If your lead capture solution integrates with your email service provider, you don’t have to waste time uploading lists; new leads enter your lists in real-time. Make sure your form solution integrates with your email service provider, customer data platform, or any other marketing technology you use to engage your audience.
Start Generating More Leads Today
If you’re looking to upgrade to an advanced form & landing page solution, you’re in the right place. With a lead generation tool like Digioh, you can capture more leads and trigger personalized messaging that turns more of those leads into customers. To see how we can help you turn site visitors into customers, talk to us today!
