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All You Need to Know About Lead Generation in 2022

According to a study by Click Dimensions, in 2016 61% of marketers in the B2B sector claimed that lead generation was their top priority. Today, the lead generation craze has made it such that prospect acquisition methods have dramatically changed.

 

At LaGrowthMachine, lead generation is our specialty thanks to our software that enables you to boost your prospecting or enrich your leads’ data. Our solution has helped more than 500 companies with over 4000 multi-channel campaigns.

 

What is lead generation? Why is it so popular with marketers these days? How can you implement it for your business?

 

In this guide, we will teach you everything about lead generation!

Table of contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Chapter 1

The lead generation basics

In this section, we will focus on the basic principles of lead generation, which are essential for understanding and mastering its most complex concepts.

Before we explain how to become a lead generation master, let’s discuss an alarming fact. Many companies think that all they need to do is shoot a cold email to a database in order to convert. Unfortunately, you probably already know this is not true.

Your prospects are tired of these aggressive sales techniques and need to feel heard. Your messaging, your offer, and your approach must make sense. These are the elements that will define your identity and value proposition and allow you to stand out amongst your competitors.

LaGrowthMachine has drawn on thousands of case studies and years of experience in growth hacking and marketing to help you conduct effective lead generation.

Our tool is based on a multi-channel approach, which we know is much more effective in terms of conversion.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 Chapter 2 Chapter 2

What is lead generation?

In this second section, we will define exactly what lead generation is and how it is a central notion in any company’s challenges.

Lead generation is defined as all outbound or inbound marketing techniques used to create contacts with prospects who have shown interest in your services offered. The goal is to transform them — no matter their acquisition channel — into hot leads and then into customers.

This is a complex process that allows every company that applies it to increase the number of its sales leads and boost its conversion rates.

In lead gen, sales and marketers — two very distinct bodies in the company’s organization — are closely linked to each other. This allows for better cross-functionality from acquisition to conversion, including the follow-up on your CRM.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Chapter 3 Chapter 3

Why do you need lead generation?

In this third part, we will take a closer look at the different advantages that lead generation can bring to your business, especially for B2B.

That’s the question we all ask!

First, lead generation is particularly effective in increasing your acquisition of qualified leads and getting them into the sales pipeline. The aim is always the same: to do business intelligently.

Lead generation will allow you to:

  • Convert leads more efficiently: by using the right acquisition channel
  • Improve the quality of leads: by getting the right lead at the right place and time
  • Generate more revenue: by generating more qualified leads and improving your conversion rate
  • Reduce your acquisition costs: by improving your audience targeting

But that’s not all!

When lead generation is properly managed — through software for example — it will also allow you to gain visibility and time.

This is precisely the added value of LaGrowthMachine: by automating time-consuming tasks related to prospecting, we save your salespeople an enormous amount of time – and therefore money – for 3.5x more B2B leads generated on average.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 Chapter 4 Chapter 4

The lead generation process

In this fourth chapter, we will try to analyze the lead generation process and explain in detail how it works, both inbound and outbound.

Nobody wants to be interrupted by an unknown phone number that calls just to sell you services you don’t need.

If you want to grab your target audience’s attention, you must understand their needs, ways of thinking, and interests.

Only then will you be able to offer them relevant content that will improve your brand image while gradually guiding them towards a predefined sales path.

The benefit of lead generation lies in your ability to refine the knowledge you have of your prospects. This is why it’s so important to determine before starting the approach phase.

There are two solutions: inbound marketing and outbound marketing.

Inbound encourages you to obtain leads naturally by offering them content likely to capture their attention. Outbound (also called outreach) consists of directly soliciting them on the appropriate channel.

1. The inbound process

Inbound lead generation is THE preferred technique for marketers. it’s found that 90% of companies that use it consider their marketing strategy to be effective (2023).

The basic methodology consists of attracting visitors to a piece of content (blog post, infographics, video, podcasts, white paper, etc.) with a conversion objective (via a form, a CTA, or dedicated landing pages). Many of these pillars are based on a successful content strategy.

Basic Lead Generation Methodology (HubSpot)

With inbound marketing, your objective will be purely to create quality content on the platform of your choice. You’ll likely choose from putting your content on a website, a social network, a content platform, or in an email.

It is an educated gamble you’re making for the long term since your entire strategy is based on the decisions of your potential future customers. Among these strategies, we will talk about SEO, video marketing, content marketing, and other such levers.

Deemed less intrusive than outbound, inbound marketing strategies are generally more qualitative (better conversion rate, less waste) and less costly in the long run.

A small drawback, however, is that they take longer to develop. They require you:

  • To focus on your persona. For this, you need to imagine a fictional profile of your ideal target. This will identify who you want to address, the needs they have (related to your solution), and the channels they use. These are the ones you will have to leverage to be on their radar.
  • To build an adapted customer journey. This is the logical evolution of the persona design. Create a solid conversion funnel. Take your customer from hook to conversion through the acquisition channel(s) you deem necessary.
  • To define a dedicated content strategy. For each step of your user’s journey, position your content to build a relationship, create a discussion, answer a request for information, etc.
  • To qualify contacts to make a sale at the right time. A prospect who is too cold is a lost prospect. It is essential to determine the moment when your lead will be mature enough to make a purchase. Be sure to set up a lead nurture strategy with lead scoring. It will tell you when it’s time to transform them into a customer.

2. The outbound process

Unlike inbound, it is up to you to solicit the prospect by sending them a message. It’s an approach that has the advantage of being direct and fast to boost the performance of your sales.

There is no lead nurturing strategy to implement here. You place your trust in the value of your services and the ability of your solution to drive immediate interest. It also carries the risk of losing credibility if that is not the case.

Though sometimes called old-school, this technique is still widely used by growth marketers and other sales-oriented roles, often within large companies.

This approach represents all the online and offline cold reach techniques used to approach audiences that may not necessarily be receptive to your offers. These include activities like:

Nevertheless, when the outbound marketing strategy is implemented well, the results are quite impressive. This is another big advantage of this technique compared to inbound. It is much easier to analyze the direct results of the actions carried out and consequently to calculate its ROI or Return On Advertising Spend.

Différences entre l'inbound et l'outbound marketing
Differences between inbound and outbound marketing

Outreach is LaGrowthMachine’s specialty, even if we have revisited it a bit in our own way. Instead of doing the work manually, we propose to import thousands of cold prospects that correspond exactly to your target, and then go and approach them one by one in an ultra-personalized and natural way.

Here are some of our results:

stats

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Chapter 5 Chapter 5

What are the main lead generation channels?

In this fifth part, we take stock of the main channels that could be used in your lead generation strategy, specifying in each case the extent to which they should be used.

Whether inbound or outbound, lead generation draws its strength from the incredible diversity of channels to activate your target market. Whether B2B or B2C, it will generate traffic in your sales pipeline.

Note that you can also use different approach techniques for each channel. For example, by changing the wording or the graphics to test and analyze before iterating. This is what we call A/B testing.

Without realizing it, you have probably already tried testing in:

  • Social by establishing a strategy dedicated to social networks
  • Display / SEA by paying for advertisements or videos on third-party sites
  • SEO by writing blog articles (clearly what we are doing)
  • Emailing by sending email campaigns for prospecting, reminders, or newsletters

Not to mention prospecting on LinkedIn which is specifically useful to the B2B sector and has been on the rise for years!

In addition, a few software publishers offer a new approach that aims to combine different channels to improve the performance of lead generation. This is called a multi-channel strategy.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 Chapter 6 Chapter 6

Lead generation and marketing automation

In this sixth part, we will distinguish between two complementary concepts: lead generation and marketing automation, which allows to go further in this acquisition process.

So far, we have seen the advantages and the different ways of generating leads.

If you’ve understood everything so far, you’ll be even more interested in what follows!

Automation is now the most effective technique for lead generation. It’s increasingly being used by startups and other modern players for their time savings and sales performance.

We differentiate between marketing automation and sales automation. But let’s not forget that in lead generation, the barrier between the two is getting thinner. Here are some of the main features of good automation:

  • Creation of automated mailing scenarios (via Mailchimp, Sendinblue, etc.) such as newsletters for example.
  • Setting up automated multi-channel prospecting through pre-established sequencing (cold email, follow-up, etc).
  • Programming of posts via social networks (via platforms like Buffer or Hootsuite).

Widely used by both B2B and B2C professionals, these functionalities can now be used on platforms like LinkedIn or Sales Navigator. They can also be the object of a more technical and advanced process, often desired by startups.

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Chapter 7

Chapter 7 Chapter 7 Chapter 7

LaGrowthMachine: A lead generation software

In this seventh and final part, we would like to tell you all about LaGrowthMachine, our sales automation tool that will take your lead generation to another level.

To be able to convert while sleeping is the dream of every person working in sales and marketing. It was also the dream of our teams. They dug deep to develop a user-friendly, fully automated lead generation and lead sourcing tool.

With LaGrowthMachine, you can boost the scalability of your multi-channel lead generation campaigns by implementing automation that perfectly mimics human behavior.

By relying on our know-how, you can:

  • Increase your conversion rate by an average of 18% on autopilot mode.
  • Use our proven templates or you can build your own campaigns.
  • Address your prospects and customers on Twitter, LinkedIn, or by email via automated data enrichment scenarios.
  • Import your databases, create your prospecting funnels, and leave the machine running.
  • Interact with our experts for real and immediately actionable advice on a wide range of topics. From the segmentation of your database to your copywriting strategy.

Just like that, you saved 40% of your time while making sure you built the most efficient lead generation funnel possible.

Now that you have a clearer picture of lead generation, it’s time to take action. Build an effective content strategy!

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  1. Thank you so much for this article! This was exactly what I needed.