3 Lead Gen Tactics You Must. Try. Now.
If your responsibilities include fun things like building a large list of email subscribers and generating a ton of leads for your sales team, then this blog post is for you.
By now, you’ve probably experimented with or are in the process of testing out the following proven lead generation tactics:
- Pop-ups and form CTAs to collect blog subscribers
- Gated eBooks, white papers and other forms of premium content
- Live events such as webinars and or in-person meetups
All of this stuff actually works, and it works pretty well for most businesses. But what if you want to really expand your reach to new audiences and 10x your current subscriber list in a very short period of time?
Well, here are a few ideas that will help you generate a ton of free (and almost free) leads to grow your database.
Run a giveaway
It’s always much easier to make friends when you’re giving stuff away for free.
Some gifts are almost considered universal currencies, like Starbucks and Amazon gift cards. Most people won’t lift a finger if they each receive a $5 gift card, but when you throw a single $100 Starbucks card into the arena, it’s a whole different story. You can actually generate leads for less than a dollar!
You can also give away branded merchandise... if it looks cool enough!
For some reason, everyone was obsessed with our Uberflip headbands, so we’ve used them as a reward for multiple lead generation campaigns, as well as for list enrichment purposes. Branded merchandise is much more expensive than a single gift card, but it’s the gift that keeps on giving. If your swag looks great, people will wear it often and expose others to your company through it.
But here’s the catch: Giveaways must be managed carefully to ensure that they will not attract freeloaders who scour the Internet all day to find bargains. You must restrict the giveaway to your target audience by adding proper disqualifiers and rules to your contest.
Launch an industry survey
Another way to collect a massive amount of email addresses is to run an industry survey.
Surveys and studies take a lot of time to prepare and analyze, but they can generate the most results. In addition to generating leads, they will add value for you and your audience by helping you better understand the space you’re in.
Industry surveys will also keep on giving in the form of inbound links, mentions and social shares once the report is out on your site. Some good examples of marketing industry surveys are the Online Marketing Industry Survey by Moz and the State of Inbound by HubSpot.
The best way to acquire emails through an online survey is to offer respondents the opportunity to receive the results before everyone else, or in a more detailed fashion. Use tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to collect survey responses and emails.
Bonus: You can also increase submissions by giving something away for filling out the survey. Just make sure it will not skew the results.
Leverage partners
Things might move a bit slower when more people are involved, but the impact is always much bigger overall. If you find yourself always promoting your webinars to the same audience over and over again, maybe it’s time for you to leverage a partner to boost registrations and share the benefits.
To generate net new leads in your database, you should regularly work with new partners that can access similar but yet untapped audiences. If Twitter is a channel where you generally promote your offers, use a free tool like Followerwonk to compare your Twitter followers with a potential partner and see if they can help you cast a wider net.
When using co-marketing for an offer, it’s important to make it clear to your visitors that both parties are collecting their data when submitting a form. This will ensure that you will not lose their trust when one of your partners reaches out to them.
Track the results of each partner and measure the success of a co-marketing campaign like it was a paid campaign. If a partner can consistently deliver new leads to your doorstep, repeat the experience and grow the relationship.
Conclusion
The truth is you can get very creative with lead generation. What are some of the best campaigns you’ve ever seen? What are the most effective tactics you’ve used?
Let me know in the comments!