When it comes to conversion, a company's goals can be basically boiled down to 2: the sale of a product, which usually takes place in the context of a website ecommerce or a landing page and the acquisition of potential customer contacts, known as the Lead GenerationThis is typical of companies that want to acquire contacts (email or other) from companies that sell services or that want for some reason to acquire contacts of potential customers.
The case history of which I speak in this article concerns precisely the second case: a customer who operates in the field of organic cosmetics, without parabens, SLES or other chemical devilry.
The client in question, apart from the website, did not have any kind of online presence or promotion. The starting point, at his request, was a Lead Generation strategy that allowed the client company to acquire hundreds of contacts (name, surname and email) of potential B2C and B2B customers in just 30 days.
Well, it so happens that the client company in question is taking part in a well-known trade fair: what better time to try and attract potential customers to your stand? The point is that people often don't find or don't want to stop by a booth at a trade show, so contacts will have to be acquired first. How? With a suitable bargaining chip.
Anyone who has ever followed a lead generation campaign aimed at acquiring email contacts knows that, if it is not a request for quote, a bargaining chip, a magnet (lead magnet): and what better magnet than a free ticket or a substantial discount on its purchase?
The Rule of Scales
A little parenthesis: when thinking about the "bargaining chip" it is necessary to respect what in my book Lead Generation I call it the "Rule of Scales": as a balance stands in equilibrium if the weight of the two parts is analogous, so our merchandise of exchange must be equal or heavier than what we require.
Let's try to understand the rule of the scales with a concrete example: if they asked you for your name, surname, tax code, address and mobile phone number in exchange for a simple company brochure, would you give them to them easily? Probably not.
The reason is clear: the weight of the request (too many sensitive data) is too much compared to what is offered (a simple company brochure, provided everywhere without any request).
But if, on the other hand, I were to grant you the ability to save 60% on a ticket to an event (that you want to go to) in exchange for your first name, last name, and email address (required for processing), you'd probably grant them without issue.
The difference between the two cases lies precisely in the different weight between what you offer and what you want. In order for a "bargaining chip" to work in a lead generation strategy, it is necessary that what we offer is heavier (i.e. valuable) than what we ask for.
After this parenthesis, let's look at the tools of the trade to support this strategy.
The toolbox
In our toolbox are:
- an appropriate marketing strategywhich takes into account the bargaining chip according to rule of the scales above and the target company;
- a landing page essential;
- a software of email marketing such as SendInBlue;
- of targeted traffic, achieved by tools such as Google Ads, Facebook Advertising or organic traffic SEO.
- a conversion tracking tool from Google Adds and Facebook Advertising, Google Analyticsa pinch of HeatMap with software CRO such as Yandex Metrica.
At this point we have the ingredients: let's see the recipe.
The recipe for 427 B2B contacts in 1 month
At this point we put it all together in 4 steps:
- we create a landing page essential, straight to the point, with a data collection form from SendInBlue. Essential that in the landing page are clearly indicated the exchange goods and that this follows the rule of the balance;
- we set a thank you page with conversion tracking codes from Google Ads and Facebook Advertising tracking pixels;
- we drive targeted traffic to the landing page: on Google Ads it will be sufficient (on search network) to choose the keywords ideally searched by our target, on Facebook Advertising we are going to select the target on the basis of age, location and, in this case, interests, so as to address those who have already clicked "like" on the Facebook page of the reference fair. Obviously we will choose the most appropriate tools: on Google Ads the research network and the Remarketing (so you can track users who have visited the page and abandoned it without converting);
- we set the monitoring codes.
At this point the strategy is complete. The leads obtained will be sorted in order to constitute a database for sending newsletters, for example in the case of strategies of Lead Nurturing.
B2B & B2C
As I mentioned at the beginning, the strategy has allowed us to acquire both B2B and B2C leads, thus enabling us to subsequently create on Mail Chimp some bays sspecifics of the list obtained, so as to diversify the communications sent to the 2 sectors. The point is: how to know who is VAT registered and who is a private user? Simple: by asking on the landing page.
This additional information can be obtained without adding additional fields (and thus optimizing the conversion rate of the form) but by replacing the "send" button with two "I'm private" "I work in the industry" buttons, in a mirror image of how Zalando with its newsletter subscription (note the lead magnet from 5 euros):
One last point about B2B and B2C: noting the time of lead acquisition you can make choices aimed at specifically intercepting one of the two sectors. Let's assume (as it happened) that B2B leads are obtained late in the evening (as you might guess), at which point we could set the Google Ads settings in order to show specific ads for B2B users in that time slot.
Conclusions
Simple, no? Also not. A lead generation strategy is affected by many variables (marketing strategy, product, company availability, target audience...) whose alchemy produces a more or less good result. In any case, the essential variables are always:
- a good strategy;
- knowledge of the target audience;
- a landing page;
- tools to drive targeted traffic to the landing page;
- tools to properly track conversions and ROAS (return on advertising investment).
Thinking of implementing a lead generation strategy? Contact me.
Want to learn how to create a prospect contact acquisition strategy? Discover the book Lead Generation and the Advanced Lead Generation video course.
