In today’s digital world, the way we market is dynamically transforming. One such transformation is the way that we invest in business growth. Digital lead investing is an investment strategy that can increase your leads online. In other words, it gets more people interested in your business through your online presence. And it’s a sustainable way to grow your business (and revenue) in less time.
A survey done by CSO Insights showed that around 68% of B2B companies struggle with lead generation. That’s why in this article, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about digital lead investing. Keep reading to learn how digital lead investing can benefit your business, and how to implement a strategy of your own. Let’s dive in!
What Is Digital Lead Investing?
As the marketing landscape continuously changes, so too must brands who hope to outperform their competition. So, what is digital lead investing? Digital lead investing, or digital marketing lead generation, is an investment strategy that generates online leads through digital channels such as social media, PPC ads, and SEO. It allows businesses to reach potential customers and eventually convert them.
Unlike traditional lead generation (think direct mail or cold calling), digital lead generation is entirely online and requires content creation of valuable content for digital channels. This practice effectively targets larger audiences, increases customer engagement, and builds customer relationships. Digital lead investing is especially great for small businesses as a cost-effective way to reach a large number of potential customers.
Inbound Vs. Outbound Digital Marketing Leads
When we talk about digital lead generation, there are two types of leads you can get: inbound and outbound.
Inbound Digital Leads
Inbound digital leads are people who found your business through a marketing offer that matched what they were searching for online. Inbound lead generation can be automated, making it more cost-effective than outbound. Examples of inbound digital marketing include SEO and content marketing.
Outbound Digital Leads
Outbound digital leads are leads who are found directly. You seek them out when they aren’t actively searching for a service or product online. For example, outbound leads include people who found your business through a YouTube ad or podcast commercial. Since outbound lead generation involves reaching out to potential customers (like through cold calling or email), it’s more difficult to automate than inbound lead generation.
What Are the Benefits of Digital Lead Investing?
Generally speaking, the more leads you can get, the more business you will have. That’s why digital lead investing is one of the best strategies you can implement to increase your revenue. There are many benefits of digital lead investing, including:
Global Reach
While traditional lead generation is typically restricted to a geographical region (like a billboard), digital lead generation gives your business far more visibility. You can reach people around the globe within minutes, producing more leads than ever before.
Cost-Effective
Digital marketing lead generation is cost-effective in every way you can possibly imagine. First off, you only need to pay for the leads that you generate, unlike other advertising methods that charge you for airtime or media space. Secondly, you can directly target potential customers in your demographic of choice who are most interested in your service or product. Third, digital lead investing is extremely efficient. That’s because you can automate the entire process to automatically target potential leads. Meaning, the less time you spend on manually generating leads, the more time you get to spend on operating your business.
Real-Time Tracking
Digital lead investing gives you real-time tracking of key metrics like leads generated, cost-per-lead, and conversion rate. This allows you to get the most bang for your buck as you can refine your strategy as you go. And the longer amount of time you invest in digital lead generation, the more data you will have to accurately measure results.
If you’re not tracking and measuring your results, you’re missing out on a wealth of data that could help you improve your investment strategy. There are a few key metrics you should always be tracking:
- The number of leads generated
- The cost-per-lead
- The conversion rate of your leads
- The number of sales made through leads
- The average order value
- Your return on investment (ROI)
Automation
When you use digital channels for lead generation, you can automate the entire process. Time is money, so the more you have, the more you can maximize your profit by focusing on the areas of your business that matter most.
Customer Insights
Digital channels allow you to effortlessly glean customer insights. Everything you want to know about your customers is available to you at the click of a button when you use digital lead generation.
High ROI
The most important benefit of digital lead investing is of course the return on investment (ROI) that you get. The more leads you generate, the more opportunities you have to increase your revenue. More importantly, digital lead investing generates high-quality leads that you can nurture into paying customers.
Marketing automation tools can help you set up leads scoring and drip campaigns that send your targeted leads content based on their previous interactions with your business. These advanced targeting methods help you identify the very best leads to focus your attention on, giving you a higher ROI.
Demographic Targeting
As mentioned above, digital lead generation is all about targeting the right leads for your business. Digital channels offer specific campaigns to reach potential customers in the demographic that you desire. That’s why digital lead investing produces a high conversion rate. So, what are those digital channels?
Digital Lead Channels to Invest In
If you want to know how to generate leads in digital marketing, you need to know what channels to hit. Getting people to engage with your business online requires more than just one channel. There are four digital lead channels that you should consider investing in:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website and content for valuable keywords on Google and other search engines. It’s a major key in digital marketing that will set you apart from your competition. When you invest in SEO, you set up an automated process of getting organic traffic to your website that drives sales. A good SEO agency can help you create high-quality content that ranks high for the right keywords, whether locally or nationally. It’s the best digital marketing lead generation strategy to drive traffic to your website.
Key Benefits
Nowadays, customers are always searching for specific products, services, and information online. If you want to reach these potential customers, investing in SEO will put your business front and centre. According to Forbes, 93% of all online experiences start with a search engine like Google. That’s why SEO is a crucial part of digital lead generation. It directs relevant traffic to your website using specific keywords that rank you above your competitors.
Social Media
Surely you know by now that social media is king in building a loyal customer base. Organic and paid social media ads are a great way to promote your business in front of the people who are most likely to purchase your products or services.
The top three platforms to implement your lead generation strategy are Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. The visibility on these platforms is ultra-high with Facebook having nearly 3 billion monthly active users, over 1.2 billion monthly active users on Instagram, and 310 million monthly active users on LinkedIn. That’s 4.5 billion potential customers you can reach through these three platforms alone.
Social media isn’t only a great way to generate leads but to also increase customer engagement and interaction.
Key Benefits
Social media can have a huge impact on your leads and sales. According to Sprout Social, 68% of consumers purchased directly from social media and 98% of consumers planned to make at least one purchase through social shopping in 2022. The numbers don’t lie. Whether organic or paid, social media ads greatly influence purchasing decisions.
Using social media for lead generation can help you engage with your target audience in a meaningful way. The more you can personalize your ads, the more likely you are to resonate with your customers. This is especially important since 49% of consumers purchase after seeing a targeted ad.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
If you’re looking for leads that convert, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising may be the solution for you. Just like social media ads, PPC ads come in different shapes and sizes. They can include text, images, videos, or a combination of all three. They can appear on search engines like Google, social media platforms, and websites. PPC ads on Google are seamlessly integrated into the search results, driving more users to your page than ordinary ads. This makes PPC ads especially effective at attracting the right leads since those users were already actively looking for a similar product or service. And the more relevant your lead is, the more likely they are to convert.
Key Benefits
PPC advertising is one of the most effective ways to convert your leads. According to Wayfair SEO, research shows that PPC ad clickers are 50% more likely to purchase than organic visitors. And the great thing about pay-per-click advertising is that you only have to pay for the leads that you get… hence the name.
Content Marketing
Content marketing includes both social media and SEO, but it’s also used as a broader term. More specifically, content marketing includes platform-specific content like blog articles. Content marketing can boost your digital lead generation with higher web traffic, depending on the content value you provide.
Key Benefits
This lead generation strategy is optimal for attracting the right customers to your page through tailored content. According to Demand Metric, content marketing generates three times more leads than traditional marketing and costs 62% less. It’s also more likely to convert as users gain free value from your content.
How to Build a Successful Digital Lead Investing Strategy
The best digital marketing lead generation strategy is the one that works for you. While a lead digital agency can help you develop and implement an investment strategy, it’s also possible to build your own from scratch. Here are 5 proven steps for building an effective digital lead investing strategy:
Define Your Goals
The first step to any successful strategy is defining what you hope to achieve. Digital lead generation can help you achieve many business goals, but how you design it is dependent on your personal objectives. Whether you’re hoping to get customers to book an appointment, subscribe to your service, or purchase a product, your objectives will affect where and how you drive traffic to your website.
Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, and achievable. Define what you want to accomplish in using digital lead investing. Having a clear understanding of your goals can help you to determine the following steps.
Determine Your Budget
Next, you’ll need to determine your budget. Try to span your budget over a period of four to six months minimum. This will help you prioritize which channels you’ll invest in and what you’ll get out of it. Allocating money for specific channels is important in measuring your ROI. Testing channels can be a great way to secure high ROI, rather than putting all of your eggs in one basket, so be sure to set aside money for testing too.
Know Your Audience
As we mentioned, personalizing your ads is a great way to convert your leads into paying customers. And the more you know about your target audience, the more you can tailor your message. You’ll want to learn as much as you can about the demographics, geographics, and psychographics of your target audience.
Find High-Traffic Channels
More importantly, find out what platforms your audience interacts with frequently so you can get the most out of your digital lead investment. While Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram are the prime platforms for lead generation, you’ll have to keep in mind your audience’s preferences. For example, younger audiences are easier to reach on TikTok than on LinkedIn. It’s a matter of preference that you won’t be able to identify until you know your audience.
These will be the high-traffic channels that you’ll want to target. The good part is, the more leads that you acquire, the more data you will have to learn from.
Add Value to Channels
After you identify the high-traffic channels for your target audience, you can begin to post content that provides value. This is where content marketing comes in. It’s one of the best ways to build strong customer relationships.
Remember, the goal isn’t to sell but to inform your audience. Since digital channels are overflowing with content, it can be difficult to stand out. That’s why it’s important to provide value with useful content. Once you’ve created valuable content, ensure that you’re utilizing the power of SEO. Keyword research is quite literally the key to outranking your competition.
For example, if your target audience is retired golfers, you would add value to certain channels by answering questions like “What to Wear Golfing” or whatever keyword phrases are relevant to your business.
Additional Tips for Digital Lead Investing
Now that you know how and why to implement a digital lead investing strategy, we want to expand on some additional information that can help you get an edge over your competitors. There are some myths surrounding digital lead generation that we’d like to clear:
Don’t Rely on a Single Channel
You may have heard that relying on one channel is the best way to generate leads. This is definitely not true. While it may make sense to hone in on one channel, you’d only be limiting your pool of potential customers. The truth is, every channel has something unique to offer. We suggest experimenting with a few different channels and gathering more data on where your target audience goes the most.
Moreover, diversifying your investment is always a sound strategy. If one platform goes down or loses its user base, you would be losing the ROI of the content you previously spent time creating. Of course, don’t spread yourself too thin. Divide and conquer on a few channels, then test your results to see what works best. Only then should you concentrate your efforts.
Be Patient
Just like investing in a compound savings account, digital lead investing takes time to grow. The results are exponential, but it takes time to see a high return on investment. That’s because your brand (and audience) will take time to grow on any one channel. We suggest investing in a channel for 4 to 6 months before you wave the white flag.
100% Automate
One of the best reasons to invest in digital lead generation is the ability to automate. You can set up automated lead gen funnels to automate the entire process. This requires having strong call-to-actions at every step of the customer journey. The more data you collect from this process, the easier it will be to automate it, saving you both time and money.
Focus on Inbound Leads
As we covered in this article, inbound digital leads are found through marketing offers that match what they’re searching for online. Inbound leads can save you a whole lot of time not doing manual outreach to target customers. These channels will allow you to keep growing your organic traffic without so much as setting up an automated funnel. Plus, the more inbound leads you can get, the busier you’ll be closing deals. So it’s best to focus your efforts on getting inbound leads through automated funnels.
Final Words on Digital Lead Investing
Digital lead investing is growing in popularity as a sustainable strategy to drive traffic to your business in a cost-effective way. You can save time and money by automating your digital lead generation. And better yet, your investment will compound over time, earning you more customers with less effort. By adding value to various channels, you can also increase customer engagement and interaction. And the more you engage, the more you convert.
A successful digital lead gen strategy can help you grow your business tenfold. That’s what we’re here for. At HeyTony, we offer SEO, website conversion optimization, PPC, and social media ads to elevate every aspect of your business. Contact us today to level up your digital marketing!
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