Lead generation is one of the most important aspects of growing a business. It is the process of attracting and converting prospects into potential customers (no it’s not the same thing), using various marketing channels and tactics.

Did you know that, according to Ruler Analytics, nurturing leads can increase sales by 50%? That’s why lead generation is one of the most important aspects of growing a business. 

What are lead generation campaigns? Why do you absolutely need one? And how do you actually go about creating one?

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the five essential steps to create and run a successful lead generation campaign. And to add the cherry on top of this guide-shaped cake, how to automate the whole lead generation process thanks to La Growth Machine!

Let’s dive in! 🙂

What is a lead generation campaign?

Lead generation campaigns, known as lead campaigns, are a type of marketing strategy used to attract potential customers and increase their interest in a business.

A Lead Generation Campaign Example

The goal of any lead generation campaign is threefold:

  • To identify prospects who are interested in your products and services
  • Capture their contact information, like an email address or phone number
  • Nurture the leads into loyal customers

In other words, lead generation campaigns are all about creating relationships with prospects and turning them into paying customers.

Why should you run a lead generation campaign?

Lead generation campaigns are essential for any business that wants to well… stay in business! Here’s why, they allow you to:

  • Reach more people who want what you offer. Lead generation campaigns help you find and connect with folks who don’t know about your brand or solutions yet.
  • Build a fan base by sharing cool content that helps, entertains, and wows your prospects. Lead generation campaigns help you show off your expertise and authority in your industry and make a bunch of loyal friends and supporters.
  • Sell more stuff by getting more leads who are eager to buy from you. Lead generation campaigns help you make your website, landing pages, and forms irresistible and catch leads at different points of their journey.
  • Keep in touch with your leads by sending them personalized and relevant messages that make them want to become customers. Lead generation campaigns help you automate your email marketing and follow-up efforts and give value to your leads.

As you can see, a lead generation campaign is essential if you want to stay competitive and grow your business.

But how do you create one? Let’s find out.  🤔​​​​​

5 Steps to create an effective lead generation campaign

Now that you understand the importance of lead campaigns and why they’re essential for business growth, let’s see how to set up one in 5 steps.

Note that these are steps for a B2B lead generation strategy, but similar principles apply to B2C campaigns as well, you just have to tweak the specifics.

Step 1: Set your objectives and research your audience

Before you start creating your campaign, you need to identify two key elements:

  • What you want to achieve with your campaign
  • Who are the people you’re targeting

Your goals will serve as a roadmap for creating the campaign and deciding on your strategies and lead generation tactics. The more specific you can get, the better.

And having specific goals is only the first step. Remember SMART goals? Well, you also need to make sure they are Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.

This means that instead of setting a vague goal such as “Increase website traffic”, you should aim for something more tangible and measurable like “Increase website traffic by 20% in 4 months”.

It’s not simple, but it’s necessary.

Furthermore, what’s going to help you in setting those goals is to know your audience inside out.

  • Who are they?
  • What do they care about?
  • Which pain points does your product or service solve?

In the B2B sector, especially when it comes to SaaS companies, really thinking your segmentation through is important. Don’t just settle for “people in the US”, and instead try to be as specific as possible so you can create more tailored content down the line.

Start by defining your personas, the imaginary people who represent your target customer.

With different personas, come different activities, personalities, and therefore, needs.

Example:

Two of our personas at La Growth Machine are:

  • The Growth Hacker
  • and The Salesperson

Both these people use La Growth Machine, but both use it in very different ways.

Combining them into one sequence and using identical copywriting for both would be a terrible idea.

To address them properly, we need to have two distinct campaigns and thus, two distinct copywriting styles.

We dive much deeper into this topic in our full guide on laser-focus segmentation and how it affects your copywriting, so make sure to check it out!

For now, let’s move on to the next step.

Step 2: Create and promote your content and offer(s)

Now we did mention content a little bit at the end of Step 1 in the form of your copywriting. However, content is much more than just copywriting.

It is basically all material that you use to educate, entertain, and engage your prospects, such as blog posts, webinars, or even LinkedIn posts.

Offer is the incentive that you use to persuade your prospects to share their contact information with you, such as a free trial, a consultation, or a discount.

Think of the content as the bait and the offer as the hook.

Both should be aligned with your goals and audience, as well as the stage of the buyer’s journey that your prospects are in.

For the sake of simplicity, say the buyer’s journey consists of three stages:

  • Awareness (TOFU): This stage consists of the prospect looking for information and education about their problem or need. Your content should provide them with valuable insights and tips that help them understand their situation better. Your offer should be something that helps them learn more or solve their problem, such as a guide, a checklist, or a quiz.
  • Consideration (MOFU): In this stage, your prospects are looking for options and alternatives to solve their problem or meet their need. Your content should provide them with comparisons and evaluations of different solutions that match their criteria. Your offer should be something that helps them compare or try your solution, such as a versus page (like our own LGM vs. Waalaxy page), a demo, or a free trial.
  • Decision (BOFU): Lastly, here your prospects are looking for validation and confirmation to choose the best solution for them. Your content should provide them with testimonials and reviews from satisfied customers that showcase your value proposition and differentiation. Your offer should be something that helps them make the final decision or purchase, such as a consultation, a coupon, or a guarantee.

You can utilize different tools and platforms to generate and advertise your content and products:

  • Your own website or blog
  • Social media platforms: LinkedIn & Twitter
  • Email marketing software: Mailchimp or Sendinblue
  • Dedicated landing pages
  • Webinar platforms: Zoom, Livestorm, or even LinkedIn live
  • etc…

The idea is to create and distribute content that attracts your audience’s attention and interest, and an offer that captures their contact information and converts them into leads.

Step 3: Score and nurture your leads

After you have generated your leads, you need to score and nurture them to move them further along the buyer’s journey and prepare them for the sale. Scoring and nurturing are essential processes that help you qualify your leads and build relationships with them.

To score and nurture your leads, you need to:

  • Assign a score to each lead based on their profile and behavior, such as industry, role, location, or actions. This helps you rank your leads according to their level of interest and readiness to buy, and prioritize your follow-up efforts.
  • Segment your leads into different groups based on their score, such as hot, warm, or cold. This helps you tailor your messages and offers to each group’s needs, pain points, and interests.
  • Send personalized and relevant messages and offers to each group using tools and platforms, such as email marketing software, CRM software, or La Growth Machine. This helps you nurture your leads by providing them with value, education, and solutions that match their stage of the buyer’s journey.
  • Monitor and update your score and segments based on your leads’ responses and feedback. This helps you keep track of your leads’ progress and preferences, and adjust your messages and offers accordingly.

By scoring and nurturing your leads, you can increase your conversion rates and sales by delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. You can also build trust and loyalty with your leads by showing them that you understand their needs and can help them solve their problems.

Step 4: Convert your leads into customers

The ultimate goal of your lead generation campaign is to convert your leads into customers. This is the final stage of the buyer’s journey, where your leads make the decision to buy from you. To convert your B2B leads into customers, you need to:

  • Identify the decision-makers and influencers in each account. You can use a LinkedIn ABM strategy to target and engage these key contacts within specific accounts that match your ideal customer profile.
  • Establish a relationship and rapport with these people. The key here is to provide them with value and education about your product or service, rather than just focusing on selling them your offer.
La Growth Machine add a voice message
  • Engage in meaningful conversations and discovery/demo sessions. This is where you answer their questions, address their concerns, and demonstrate how you can help them solve their problem or meet their need better than any other alternative!
  • Overcome objections and handle concerns. It’s important to be prepared to answer any questions and objections that your leads may have, and explain why your product or service is the best solution for them.
  • Handle the sale and close the deal. Once you’ve answered your leads’ questions and established a relationship with them, you can move forward to the purchasing process. Make sure that your offer is clear and attractive, and that everything is in place for a smooth and successful transaction.

Step 5: Evaluate and improve your lead generation campaign

The last step of creating an effective lead generation campaign is to evaluate and improve it. This is an ongoing process that involves:

  • Collecting data and feedback from various sources: Use analytics tools, CRM software, surveys, or interviews. These are the sources that help you gather quantitative and qualitative information about your campaign and its outcomes.
  • Measure your results against your goals and KPIs: Such as the number of leads, conversion rate, cost per lead, or return on investment. These are the metrics that help you assess the success of your campaign and compare it to your expectations.
  • Identify strengths and weaknesses in your lead generation campaign: Based on data and feedback, identify:
    • What worked well?
    • What didn’t work well?
    • What can be improved?
    • Or what can be eliminated? These are the insights that help you understand what factors influenced your results and why.
  • Implement changes and improvements: Based on your findings from the previous steps, implement changes to your lead generation campaign. Test new content, offer, or message; optimize your website or landing page; or adjust your budget or strategy. These are some of the actions that can help you improve your campaign and increase your leads and conversions.

In B2B lead generation, the process isn’t over once you’ve collected your leads. You need to continuously evaluate and optimize your lead generation campaign in order to achieve the best results. This helps you ensure that your efforts are not wasted and that you’re getting the most out of your lead generation efforts.

Automate and scale your efforts with La Growth Machine

You’ve learned how to create and run a successful lead generation campaign in 5 easy steps. But what if you want to take it to the next level and reach more prospects, faster and easier? That’s where our tool comes in!

Now we’ve already mentioned La Growth Machine, our powerful and easy-to-use B2B lead generation software, so we’ll try not to repeat ourselves too much here. However, I’ll just remind you that La Growth Machine is a powerful tool that helps you automate and scale your campaigns across multiple channels: Email, LinkedIn, and Twitter!

With our tool, you can:

  • Create personalized and engaging messages for each channel and segment with dynamic variables and templates. You can even use our Magic (AI-generated) messages that utilize your product, benefits, personas, language, and tone to create the perfect outreach message for each lead.
  • Set up workflows and triggers to follow up with your leads automatically based on their behavior and profile and use the Unsub and Resub triggers and actions to manage your leads’ preferences
  • Track and measure your campaign performance and optimize your strategy with advanced analytics and A/B testing and lead qualification by tag to identify the most promising leads
  • Connect with your CRM and other tools to sync your data and streamline your process with Zapier and webhooks

I’ll let the video show you the rest! But trust me when I say that La Growth Machine is the ultimate lead generation tool:

Automate your LinkedIn outreach with La Growth Machine
Try for free

Final Thoughts

Lead generation is a crucial process for any business that wants to grow and thrive in today’s competitive market. By following these steps, you can:

  • Set your goals and research your audience
  • Create and promote your content and offer
  • Score and nurture your leads
  • Convert your leads into customers
  • Evaluate and improve your lead generation campaign

But you don’t have to do it all by yourself. LGM can be right there by your side, helping you automate and scale your campaigns for maximum ROI.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for La Growth Machine today and turn your lead generation campaigns into a success story!

Happy lead generating! 🙂