Why is lead generation important?
Every business needs leads! They need to generate leads in order to generate revenue. If you don’t have something that is regularly generating leads for you and your business, it can lead to a rollercoaster income, high stress, and simply not having the impact on the world that you want to.
What are the marketing strategies or techniques to generate leads?
There are a variety of strategies to generate leads. The key strategies are speaking, writing blog posts, joint venture partnerships, networking and outreach, and social media marketing. All of these tie into your email platform and Lead Machine.
An important thing to keep in mind with all of them is that you want it to be organic to who you are and authentically express you. I invite you to think about what feels best for you and always start with that one. You can always add more strategies at any time.
For example, speaking is a fantastic strategy for generating leads. It’s something people should try if they feel drawn to it. But not everyone is a great speaker or enjoys it. Yet, if it’s something you really dislike and it will be a struggle, you’re not going to show up as your best self. In cases like this, it’s best to invest in a different strategy to avoid an inevitable disconnect between yourself and the audience.
What are email marketing campaigns and how are they used?
Email marketing campaigns are a series of emails that are designed to take the subscriber or the reader on a certain journey or path and get them to take some sort of action at the end of the campaign.
Email marketing campaigns are used in a variety of ways. They’re used to familiarize your subscribers with you and with what you offer, promote your services, and espouse why they should want to become your client.
Email marketing campaigns also used for sales. They're used to generate revenue in the sense of getting the readers to buy a digital product, sign up for a course, or take some other sort of action that will generate revenue. They can be used to generate registrations to an event, be it for your page.
Anytime you have a specific action that you want your subscribers to take, you can use an email campaign in order to make that happen. Effective email marketing campaigns can include many parts including powerful subject lines, transactional emails, drip campaigns, email automations, and campaign monitoring.
How do you generate leads through email marketing?
Email marketing is the best way for a small business to capture the leads generated through marketing channels (networking, speaking, social media, advertising/marketing, joint ventures, etc). These lead generation mechanisms funnel into an email marketing system that allows you to build an email marketing list and nurture leads until they become clients.
Email marketing is the glue that holds together all of the activities you’re doing. It’s the central component. When you speak, you want to offer an incentive that gets people into your email marketing system so you can continue to nurture that relationship towards them becoming a client. The same is true for networking, joint ventures, social media, online marketing. It is all held together by your email marketing structure.
How do you balance lead quantity with lead quality?
Like most things, lead generation is about quality over quantity. You don’t need a high quantity of leads if you have high quality leads. This is particularly true for service-based professionals like coaches, speakers, authors, and any entrepreneur delivering a service.
It’s best to invest your time in generating quality leads that match your client avatar than try to reach everyone everywhere.
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is the structure that leads people to making a purchase. If you think about a funnel that funnels liquid, a sales funnel is just a fancy way of looking at how many leads are coming in and what process you take them through virtually or in person in order to have the outcome on the other side (usually becoming a client).
Why is a sales funnel important?
A sales funnel is important for two reasons.
First, a sales funnel allows you to track your metrics and determine the success of your sales methods. It helps you to understand your own business, where you need to adjust your efforts, and where you are succeeding in your marketing and conversion efforts.
Second, a sales funnel helps prospects understand there is a process that you're leading them through and to let them get used to being guided by you. It’s important that a prospect understands and feels that process. The second and more important reason is to understand your metrics. And what I mean by that is, if you know at every stage of the funnel, if you know your numbers and you know what your conversion rates are, then it allows you to understand how many people you need to put into the funnel in order to get the number of clients that you want on the other side of the funnel.
When should I consider using marketing or email automation?
I always recommend using email automation. When you're just starting out, one of the best initial uses of email automation is employing a lead magnet on your landing page. People sign up for free content by supplying their email address. A series of emails are then automatically triggered that relate to the lead magnet, help them get to know, like and trust you, and learn about your products and services.
What is a trigger email and when would I use one?
A trigger email is an email that gets triggered by something happening. In other words, when you sign up for, to receive some piece of content, then an email is triggered to automatically send as a result of that action.
Most often they're used to confirm a registration into any event, course or any type of registration. They're also used to deliver content. When someone signs up for a lead magnet, trigger emails are used to confirm that someone requested the content and directs them to the page with download instructions, so they can access the content. I personally recommend using them any time someone takes any action that would cause them to be on your email list.
How can I use a landing page for email marketing lead generation?
Landing pages are a fantastic start to lead generation and email marketing. This is a fancy description for a webpage where you have an opt-in box. An opt-in is a form that collects the names and the addresses of potential email subscribers. That form connects to your email platform, allowing you to capture email leads and lead nurture. It also has some very simple verbiage (and perhaps an image or a video that describes the content that the person is signing up for) and makes it enticing in the best possible way. I recommend them as a first step and a place to direct lead generation sources, so they can learn more about you and sign up to get free content from you.