How I Generate Leads for my Business

In the previous lesson, we talked about lead generation funnels and why they are important to filter out the high quality leads from the low-quality ones.

Filtering high-quality leads is important because when you are doing high-end B2C sales or low-end B2B sales you will have more leads and a good mix of low quality leads in it.

When you are generating leads via digital marketing a good mix of untargeted and uninterested leads will come into your system.

When you are prospecting for B2B leads and reaching out to businesses, you are generating very high-quality leads.

For example, Clever.com is software for schools for delivering education online. Their minimum pricing starts at $5000 per year. Most of their customers are enterprise customers.

In such cases, they will just reach out to their target customers via a sales force and start converting the leads.

If you are towards the middle of the pricing spectrum you might not have that luxury. That's why we need lead generation funnels.

Before we dive deep into lead generation funnels and how they work, in today's lesson I want to give you an example of my lead generation funnel.

To create a lead generation funnel, you need a lead magnet. The lead magnet is the first part of the entire funnel. Without a lead magnet, you will not be able to generate a lot of leads through inbound marketing.

My lead magnet is my free digital marketing course with 25 videos. For people who want to learn digital marketing, I give away this course for free. But to sign up, people need to give me their name and email ID.

Once they give me their name and email ID, they become my lead. I created this lead magnet a few years back. Once my lead magnet was ready, I went ahead and started driving traffic to it.

First, I used search traffic to get the leads. I used to get more than 5000 visitors a month via the search engines to my blog.

I converted the visitors into leads using this lead magnet. Then I started driving traffic to the lead magnet using Facebook Ads. And then I started using Google Ads to drive the traffic. (Hire Digital Marketing Company to Generate Leads for you)

Once they enter their name and email ID, their course will start. I deliver one lesson every day for 25 days. Until 25 days I do not sell anything. The videos are designed to provide value and build trust with the audience.

Trust building is an important part of sales. Without trust, sales cannot happen. In an offline sales model, trust is usually built via personal relationships.

If a salesman is good at his craft, he would build trust with his prospects and he would close the deals. But when you are generating 100s or 1000s of leads, you cannot have individual conversations with each person who is in your funnel. That's why marketing automation helps in lead generation funnels.

An automated sequence of emails builds trust with your audience on automation. You don't need to lift a finger. Setup the email sequence, get the leads and the trust-building happens automatically. But as we all know, without sales the funnel is not going to sustain itself.

"Sales" is the power source of the funnel. Sales give us transactions and transactions will give us profits.

When we make profits, we can reinvest the money back into the creation of lead magnets, back into traffic driving mechanisms like SEO, SEM, and Display Ads, and back into CRM and Marketing Automation tools that help us build trust with the audience.

So how do we sell in B2C when there is a funnel?

As we have discussed in the previous lesson, we need to pick out the high quality leads from the low-quality ones to engage them in a sales process.

That's where the concept of lead scoring comes in.

I score the leads based on their behavior. For example, let's take 2 leads. 1 lead is highly interested and there is a high chance she will buy. One lead is not so interested and has a very low chance of buying.

The highly interesting lead will open all my emails and read through all the lessons. The less interested lead will hardly open any emails. If I give 1 point for every email open and 3 points for every click inside the email then I can find out who are the highly interested leads and who is not so warmed up to my offer. (Learn Digital Marketing to Generate Leads for your Business)

I would end up calling the highly interested leads and engage them in a sales process.

"Sales" is a separate topic in itself and deserves a series of lessons on its own but you get the idea.

Lead Generation for B2B and Enterprise

In previous post, we talked about why it is not required to generate leads for B2C when the products are simple and low priced.

Consumers need not go through a long decision-making process to buy such products and most of the products are purchased on impulse.

There are cases where you will need to generate leads for B2C products, but we will look into it in future lessons.

Today let's discuss Lead Generation for B2B and Enterprise products.

Is lead generation required for it?

Absolutely yes.

Without generating leads for a B2B product or service it is very difficult to sell it.

The products are high priced and also complex in nature.

For example, if I have to sell my digital marketing services to a company, I have to generate leads.

The number of people who can be my potential customers is very low and I cannot do mass marketing or advertising for my services.

Do you think I would end up getting customers for my digital marketing agency if I put a billboard in a busy junction? It might help in brand awareness, but people are not just going to see an ad and buy a complex service with a 6-months contract.

When you are selling high-end services and products for B2B and Enterprise, lead generation is also easy.

You might be thinking that isn't lead generation difficult in such cases?

No.

Lead generation is easy - but the sales and conversion process is difficult.

To sell well, you need a brand, a personal brand, and a good offer combined with a strong sales pitch.

Let's look at an example from my own experience.

I sold a digital marketing funnel building service to a big publication. The publication was Your Story. I had a feeling that if they did digital marketing well, they would be able to scale up their revenues fast.

I wanted to get in touch with their CEO and I was able to do it. It took a lot of patience and persistence, but when I got in touch with her, I requested a meeting and I got it.

In the meeting, we pitched our services and we closed the deal along with some advanced sales and negotiation tactics.

Here, the lead generation was not difficult. We knew their contact details. But I was able to get a response from them because I had a personal brand for myself as a Digital Marketer and they have heard about me. I also did a very strong sales pitch and used my negotiation skills to close the sale.

Let's take another example of a company with products and services for high-end clients. Wipro serving HDFC Bank. If Wipro has to sell their software development services to HDFC, they will not be generating leads online nor will they advertise their services. They will get in contact with the right decision-makers.

Getting a response from the decision-makers and closing the deal is not easy, but the lead generation is not difficult. You just know who your target customers are and you get in touch with them. Your target customers will be very low in number.

So what I am trying to tell you here is that lead generation is NOT required via digital marketing if you are selling very simple B2C products , or very high-end B2B and Enterprise products.

Lead Generation is required when you are selling high priced complex B2C products or low priced B2B products. We will discuss this in the next lesson

If you have any questions about this lesson, let me know.

Do we need lead generation for B2C

If your business doesn't need lead generation, then there is no point in trying to learn how to generate leads, right?

So when does a business not need lead generation?

A business doesn't need lead generation when it is selling low priced consumer goods that are simple in nature.

When consumers need not go through a tough decision-making process to buy something, and when they do not need a lot of time to decide, generating leads is pointless.

Here are some examples of low priced consumer goods:

• Candy
• Soap
• Pen
• Cookies
• Body spray

These FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) products are simple, low priced, and attract a lot of repeat buyers.

Companies that sell FMCG products do not need lead generation.

Imagine how difficult it would be if you had to generate leads for someone who is interested in a bar of soap, have a salesperson call them and convince them to buy the soap and close the deal.
It is not practical because the amount of profit that you make from the sale of the soap is not enough to pay for the sales person's time and you would end up making losses with the sales process.

It is also not required because the decision-making process for buying soap is simple. Only when a product or service is complex and has a lot of questions to be answered about it, a salesperson needs to be involved.

Many FMCG products are simple products and decision making is usually impulsive. In such cases, brands will engage in marketing activities to raise brand awareness about the brand and get a strong market positioning within the market that they are operating in.

For example, Gillette is a good brand for men's razor blades and they have a strong market position as the leader when it comes to razor blades. They do not generate any leads for the sales of their products. They just advertise and build brand awareness.

What would you do if you had salespeople that do not take a salary or a commission from you? Would you employ them to sell your low priced, simple B2C products? Probably yes. But in the real world, you cannot hire people at no cost. But you can close yourself digitally and use marketing automation to sell without any human effort.

Can you think of all the products and services that do not require lead generation?

Is Entrepreneurs fail or a great ideas fail ?.

It doesn’t matter how unique or exceptional or smart your idea is, but it isn’t enough because an idea doesn’t guarantee results, but how well you execute it does.

Because whether you succeed or fail depends more on how you are giving life to the idea and the idea itself.

A great idea can bite the dust when poorly executed, while a not-so-good idea can succeed when implemented correctly.

Because execution is everything and success usually comes after numerous starts, adjustments, pivots, collective efforts, and commitment to cross the finish line.

And that’s where many entrepreneurs fail even when they start with a fantastic, groundbreaking idea.

It’s hard to accept because we all believe we are good at executing our ideas.

Unfortunately, we aren’t.

It might sound bitter, but you need to accept if you are serious about succeeding an entrepreneur.

I’ve seen so many of entrepreneurs, both successful and otherwise, and I’ve seen it always comes down to executing the idea.

But execution is a broad term, and it means a lot. It will make sense if we can drill a bit deep down, right?

We are going to discuss the five areas where entrepreneurs go wrong with execution and eventually fail.

Let’s start.

#1: They don’t know what it takes to succeed

Don’t get me wrong. Most entrepreneurs know they need to put a lot of effort to succeed, but they don’t know what it really takes to succeed. For example, to succeed as a business, you need to come up with the right idea, validate the idea, build an MVP, get your first customers, launch the product, get your 1,000 customers, and scale your business.

But how much effort is required for that is what you don’t know. For example, It might take a week to validate specific ideas and might take a month or two to validate some other ideas. You can validate some ideas with an online survey, and might need to meet a lot of people and ask the right questions, comb through the answers, and read between the lines to validate some ideas.

But, first, you need to define what success is and how you will measure it, and that’s where many entrepreneurs lose. They don’t know what to measure, how to measure, and how much effort is required to get there.

#2: They don’t know how to balance things

People who fail usually stay on the extreme ends. They either work hard or slack. They do too many things or nothing at all, and they feel motivated one day and lose hope the other day.

It doesn’t work.

Entrepreneurship is like running a marathon. It’s a long one, and you cannot start fast, lose steam in the middle, and fail to reach the finish line. You need to run fast enough and also preserve the energy to reach the finish line. You have to celebrate each milestone, no matter how small it is, and yet remain glued to the ultimate goal.

You have to get up after a fall, quickly assess what caused it, and move forward. That’s where people lose it. They either get excited when they win small or depressed when they fail.

#3: They follow what’s popular, instead of what they’re good at

This is a no-brainer.

After Facebook, hundreds of people wanted to build a social media platform even if they didn’t have the experience or expertise to build one. After Flipkart, so many people started an e-commerce business even if they didn’t have a clue as to what e-commerce is. And the list goes on. Even you might have seen a few of them.

Do you know what happened to all of them?

They all failed.

It’s like you decide to start a restaurant in your locality because the neighborhood restaurant is doing great. You can’t because before starting a restaurant, you should know a thing or two about running a restaurant and making it profitable. Otherwise, you’ll bite the dust. As an entrepreneur, contrary to the famous advice, you shouldn’t ask, “What do people want?”

Rather you should be asking, “What is it I know better than others that my market is missing and people would be interested in paying for it?” Because that will take you close to success than following a trend that you have absolutely no idea about. But many entrepreneurs miss that one while starting, and it leads them to failure.

#4: They don’t know what they don’t know

As much as you know what you are good at, you also need to know what you don’t know. It’s critical to your success, and failure to recognize your dark spots will lead you to crash for sure. For example, you could be a great developer, but if you aren’t exactly good at UX, you’ll end up building a product with poor UX. It could cost you everything. You could be great at selling, but if you terrible at time management and prioritizing deals, you’ll fail.

You should know what you don’t know so that you can find someone suitable to do those jobs for you while you focus on your strengths. It’s not just critical; it’s the thin line between your success and failure.

And there is another side to this.

People get too comfortable with things they know. They get to the stage where they believe they got it all figured out because they have plenty of experience.

Don’t do it.

Because the moment you start believing you have got it all figured out, you’ll stop listening and learning, and start making decisions based on assumptions. You’ll stagnate, and it’ll lead you to downfall. Be grounded and humble, and keep your mind always open to learning. It’ll help you grow.

#5: They don’t stay in their lane

Being an entrepreneur and founder gives you a lot of freedom—freedom to stay on course or go off-course. And that’s where things go wrong. People start doing things even if those are beyond their expertise simply because they can.

For example, if you have no idea about designing things, you should avoid suggesting color choices to your designer. If you don’t know much about advertising or marketing, you should avoid picking your marketing channels or suggesting them. But people cannot resist getting their hands dirty and have an opinion.

Because they are the founders, they feel entitled and start putting their suggestions and recommendations on things they don’t know much about. Where do people go off-course? The moment they try to do what isn’t their primary skill set, merely because they can. And that takes them to a downward spiral.

Those are the top five areas where entrepreneurs go wrong when it comes to executing their ideas and fail even when they have a fantastic idea. Remember, entrepreneurship comes with lots of responsibilities, and one of the most significant responsibilities that comes with it is how you are executing your idea, choosing what to do and how to do an.d in this your online presence is matter a more, so for this you can hire a good Digital Marketing Company to handle these stuffs.

You can choose not to make these mistakes.

You can choose to succeed or fail.  Choose wisely.