There are currently two approaches to lead generation through digital channels, Inbound and Outbound. In this article, we will only cover Inbound Marketing and show how it is possible to generate new leads and create a sales machine.

Why is generating leads important?

With the impact of digital transformation and the explosion of information on the internet, making sales is changing because the way that consumers buy is also evolving.

If a while ago the seller had to generate prospecting lists to start his sales job and demanded a lot of effort for little result, today with the advances in digital platforms and content distribution, it became easier to bring the opportunity for a first contact going to get it.

Leads with a purchase profile for your product or service are important, as they symbolize the engine fuel called sales. Nowadays, a salesperson is multitasking and spends much of his time solving bureaucratic challenges, chasing contracts, connecting the technical area with the customer, and often facing bottlenecks to deliver.

What are the biggest challenges when it comes to generating leads?

We have listed below the three biggest challenges for generating new leads. Situations can usually occur when the Marketing area is created to seek new opportunities for the sales team.

1. Define who the target audience is: It is necessary to keep in mind who will consume your content and where this audience is virtual, your favorite media. What are the biggest challenges they face, main pains, routines, what they enjoy, who they follow? Therefore, we recommend you put yourself in his place to have a similar feeling when finding content that will help him make a good decision. It,s called empathy.
2. Having the content: For a long time here at the Sales Funnel, we were postponing content production because we wanted everything to be “perfect.” The feat is better than the perfect one! Its content cannot be masked. It needs to reflect on its daily life and skills. The content intends to educate your audience, and therefore, somehow facilitate that they find a solution for what they seek. We can see what types of content can be generate to attract new leads. As well as  form the list that salespeople will work on.
3. Keeping your leads nurtured with new content: This is undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges, as it depends on consistent execution in the production of increasingly rich content. Keeping your audience or lead nourished with up-to-date information will depend on a good effort on your part as a salesperson or marketing.

Common baits and how to generate leads on autopilot

 Digital bait is content that can take different forms, where its goal is to make the visitor to your website be attracted to leave their primary contacts and have access to a richer material.

1. eBook: Content in a digital book format, usually in PDF format. They are extremely effective in converting new leads. One example is our latest release, the Canvas Funnel Sales Sales eBook.
2. Webinar: These are video pills that usually take place to live on Youtube, GoToMeeting, WebinarJam, etc. This content format aims to address a specific topic and explore the challenges of this subject in a more flexible format, such as a chat. Check out our Webinars.
3. Spreadsheets: Excel spreadsheets can present proper management, sales, tracking, or checklist tools. Its benefit is that it is a type of content that is very simple to produce and easy for users to consume.
4. Systemic tools/simulators: The tools available for free are more complex to be executed, as many of them depend on a level of knowledge applied to programming languages. However, they are of great value in attracting leads who are likely to purchase your service or product. 
5. Trial: A trial is a free and limited version (Resources or Time) of software, just like the Sales Funnel that you can test for seven days. Your goal is to bring the hottest lead to the sales team. They are called “hand raised” because, at this moment, the user is experimenting to understand whether it makes sense or not to buy.

Some tools needed to generate new leads

Landing Pages

Landing pages have the characteristics of being a single-page website that aims to convert visitors into leads. They have CTAs (Call to Action) that stimulate the visitor to click and insert their data in forms.

Publishing software

They can used to edit eBook content. They provide more advanced features for merging images and text into more visually rich and elaborate layouts.

We use Adobe InDesign in the Sales Funnel or, for something faster, Apple Keynote. The software itself is subject to good artistic direction by the designer. You can also use apps like Prezi, Traktor, or Canva if you don’t have that much experience to execute a good design. These applications already have some templates as a suggestion to facilitate and streamline the construction of your material.

What to do with the new lead generated?

We have reached the crucial point. There is no use in a huge effort to generate new leads and not convert them into customers. Therefore, there must be a great synergy between the areas of Marketing and Sales, as both must show results. The marketing to produce the content, convert the visitor into a lead, and nourish it. The sales team to insert this lead into a CRM focused on the commercial process ( Sales Funnel ), approach it, schedule a visit or presentation, generate a proposal and close the sale.

The need to use a CRM to do this management is evident since it is with this tool that will measure all the indicators to manage the results between both areas and to know if it is going or not in the right direction.

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