Your business can’t grow if you don’t know how to generate more leads.
That’s the simple truth.
You build authority so that when more people become aware of your business, they are far more likely to become leads that you can sell to.
So, in essence, lead generation is a naturally occurring bi-product of high authority and great awareness building.
But what makes someone go from “random person” to “lead”?
Funnels
It is clear that most people don’t fully understand funnels because there are too many people who believe specific software is required to create a funnel before it will be effective.
This is not the case.
A funnel is simply a system developed to take someone from not knowing anything about your business, to someone who is a new client.
A lead generation funnel is a system that takes an unknown person through to being a new lead.
You don’t need any software for this – a piece of paper and a pen will do just fine.
The idea is that your target market is at the top, and has a large number of people, and you’re going to experience drop-off at each new stage of the process until finally, you end up with a new lead.
In real terms, this might mean the following:
1 million in your target market
15,000 people per month see your awareness campaign
100 people per month show interest in your offer
30 new leads per month
The idea is that you need to understand what your numbers actually are and then make improvements to each part of the funnel.
For example, if you know that your existing campaign costs you $500/month and delivers 30 leads, you could spend $1000/month and get around 60 leads.
Or how do you increase the amount of interest in your offer from 0.6% (100 / 15k) to 3%?
Because, using the numbers above, going from 0.6% interest to 3% interest would mean 135 leads per month with no extra investment in ads or awareness measures.
A solid lead funnel is key to everything you do to generate more leads.
How do you create and run a solid lead gen funnel?
1. System Development
You need to take the time to think about who your target market is and what they want from you.
Give them something for free, in exchange for their show of interest.
A sign of interest could be filling out a form, completing a survey, giving you their details.
It’s anything where they are happy to give you an indication that they are interested – in some way – in your business.
A sale is not the goal here.
2. User Experience
A good funnel will have a great user experience.
It will be easy for people to find you online, to interact with you, and to find the information they’re looking for.
It will be easy for them to understand your offer and what you can do for them, and it will be easy for them to give you that expression of interest you are looking for.
3. Automation
A strong funnel will be automated.
This is not just to make your life easier, but because it makes the user experience easier.
For example, let’s say that you have a roofing company and you decide to set up a healthy roof checklist/quiz as part of your funnel.
The individual completes the quiz to help determine the condition of their existing roof and in exchange, they give you their contact details.
The worst thing you could do would be to make any part of this process manual.
Imagine…
The person has to contact you to receive the quiz, and you can only send it when you’re available.
it wouldn’t work.
Or if you were going to give them something after they gave you their contact details, would they really be happy to wait several hours for you to personally email them with the information? not really.
Making everything as automated as possible is absolutely key to the success of your lead gen funnel