Top 15 Creative Lead Generation Ideas for Your Business

Since the rise of the digital era, enterprises no longer depend on the age-old techniques of cold calling or face-to-face interactions. Almost 75% of currently active organisations are expected to completely forgo the traditional marketing model and jump on the digital marketing bandwagon by the end of 2021!

Despite this sudden change, the measure of a marketing campaign’s success is still defined by innovative and dynamic strategies, powered by a set of qualified leads. If you intend to turn prospective customers into leads, here are a few creative ideas that you can employ.

1. Create Useful Videos

Videos are considered as one of the most useful tools for attracting customers on a regular basis. Under its video section, Zaius offers detailed explanations about how marketers can centre their brand around the customer. Lead generation forms turn up on the sidebars, drawing customer attention without being very distracting.

2. Share Customer Reviews

If your customers leave good reviews on your site or on a third-party platform, your brand will automatically pop up whenever someone searches for your niche. As a result, your site will turn into a valid form of social proof that others can rely on. 

For instance, when you search for the ‘best antivirus software’ on Google, Norton shows up at the top. This is because the social capital created by its users enables it to rank higher while delivering unprecedented ROI. 

3. Create Interactive Quizzes

Interactive quizzes are a fun way of capturing consumer information by finding out more about their needs and requirements. At Educations.com, for example, users take the following quiz. Based on the results, the website suggests academic courses which match the users’ interests. In the process, the site is able to collect their information, thereby generating a credible lead.

4. Make Practical Checklists

Comprehensive checklists help you keep track of every single activity that needs to be done, much ahead of time. Neil Patel’s blog contains a variety of practical checklists on topics such as SEO, webinars, brand building and marketing analytics. To download these checklists, users simply submit their information, allowing the website to generate a qualified lead!

5. Offer Thought Leadership

Irrespective of your market niche, you can add value to your web content by having in-house or third-party experts go online and interact with your prospective customers. 

Groove, a leading customer conversion enterprise, frequently conducts face-time interactions with numerous industry experts, including its own CEO. These interviews are then shared with the public as a medium for delivering professional insights, thereby generating multiple leads.

6. Provide Free Trials

Free trials of premium products allow customers to gain access to your exclusive service club as well as give out their informational statistics. BuzzSumo gives its users a payment-free mode to test their content research tool. However, to avail this benefit, users must submit their basic information and sign up. This simple tweak increases the chances of users returning to their website as full-time customers.

7. Share Personal/Professional Experiences

By sharing your personal and professional experiences via your web platforms, you can gain the trust of your customers. GoFloaters, an on-demand workspace provider, talks about how the option of remote offices worked well for them. Reading their story of fortitude instils a sense of confidence in visitors, pushing them to come back, over and over again.  

8. Try Cross-Promotion

Most marketers tend to avoid using cross-promotion because they either don’t find the right brand to partner with or are afraid of bearing the brunt of overlapped audience interest. Nonetheless, these converging interests might actually work in your favour. 

When Live Chat partnered with The Chat Shop, they created a mutually beneficial e-book which carried detailed information about both their areas of expertise. This led to better customer engagement and greater lead generation.

9. List Down Important Resources

Every person who visits a specific website is generally there to look for something. You could work wonders if you realise this urgent need and list the requisite resources within your niche on a single page. In the following post, HubSpot doesn’t just promote the page’s own tools but also carries the names of some of its credible competitors. The audience is instantly attracted to this list and subscribes to the page. 

10. Provide Gated Content

Gated content, in simple words, is premium content that includes e-books, software tools, whitepapers, etc. Users can access this content for free if they agree to provide their name, address and contact information in return. Appboy, a cloud-based software company, offers gated content in the form of a mobile marketing e-book, which can only be accessed when customers fill out a comprehensive five-field form.  

11. Create Simplified Worksheets

Simplified worksheets ensure that no task is ever missed out on and can forge a mutually positive relationship with prospective customers. A small enterprise based out of Australia, Love Communications offers worksheets as a tool of consumer assistance. In return, an opt-in is initiated, resulting in effective lead generation. 

12. Compile Real-Life Examples

Offering concrete examples, especially if they relate to your niche, serve as a guiding force for users to gain a bit of both, knowledge and value. Kapost, a content operations platform, compiled ‘The Kapost 50’ – which carried a detailed list of all the top content marketing examples. This list revitalised their entire marketing strategy and inspired site visitors to log in and learn. 

13. Create E-Mail Courses

Although almost 78% of lead generation strategies use e-mail marketing, this doesn’t imply that you spam the inboxes of your potential customers. Instead, you can offer them a well-crafted e-mail based course, for free! Buffer provides a 25-day e-mail course to all its prospects in exchange for a simple opt-in. This enables its prospects to learn, grow and associate with the social media engagement platform for a long time. 

14. Send Direct Mails

Direct mailing has the kind of impact that is pretty hard for prospective customers to ignore. It focuses on a smaller customer segment and devises interactive packages for them. In order to attract the best PPC minds, Hero Conf organisers sent out video packages to all prospects. These videos, when watched till the end, offered a free ticket entry, thus immediately turning users into leads! 

15. Form Community Connections

Connecting to users via communities can give you a decisive edge over your competitors with respect to customer recognition, even in the presence of well-designed websites. For example, marketers can join an active community like Growth Hackers and discuss topics such as marketing channels and user acquisition. By participating in these conversations, you can spread the word about your efficiency and generate organic leads!    

In Closing

Finding the right lead generation strategy can increase your sales to profit ratio and enhance your overall brand value. So it’s no surprise that generating quality leads is the topmost priority of about 68% of B2B professionals.

However, lead generation goes beyond spending a ton of money on attracting customers. It entails knowing your audience well and being attentive to their specific needs. The brand that accomplishes these objectives while sticking to its core values always emerges as the biggest winner of any lead generation activity.

So, what are you waiting for? If you want to retain audience interest, try these creative ideas and jumpstart your lead generation campaign today!

References:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/lead-generation-ideashttps://unbounce.com/lead-generation/10-creative-lead-gen-examples-sourced-from-marketing-legends/https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/9-awesome-lead-generation-ideas-for-service-based-businesseshttps://www.duboseweb.com/blog/9-creative-lead-generation-ideas