Lead conversion in the 21st century is a moving target. Prospects are always moving, from desktop to mobile and from email to the latest chat platform. Each one has different goals, and all want to do business with companies that meet their unique needs.
Finding the Leads That Convert
To generate high-potential leads in 2024, you need to create value on the individual level. There are plenty of tools out there that can help, but which will get you the most value for your money?
1. GoToWebinar (Interactive Online Events)
Gone are the days when a business could stand out by merely producing content – now your content itself has to stand out if you want to convert. Even better is when you create interactive content yourself.
The Trend
Enter webinars. These interactive online seminars are dynamic, customizable, and highly effective. For almost half of all webinar host companies, up to 40 percent of their event registrants become qualified leads. In another report by GoToWebinar, 73 percent of sales and marketing leaders said that webinars are the most effective way to generate quality leads.
The Solution
Created by LogMeIn, GoToWebinar helps you make the most out of this marketing trend. Its features include:
Step-by-step webinar planning and marketing
Engaging interactive features
Analysis of submission data
Also, because 47 percent of views occur more than a week after the webinar goes live, GoToWebinar allows you to record your webinar and use it to generate leads after the event.
2. Involve.me (Interactive Lead Generation)
For your content to drive conversions, you need to customize your content in every area of your site. To do this, you need to know what your visitors want and how they prefer to interact.
The Trends
Interactive page-level marketing. By gathering enough data to target at the page level, you can engage each site visitors in the way that they prefer. You can customize almost anything from free downloads to CTAs, depending on what your information analytics tell you that your audience wants.
Data also lets you engage in account-based marketing, or ABM, a process that starts with identifying your most promising targets and then pursuing their particular needs. More than 90 percent of marketers in the B2B space acknowledge that this process is either “important” or “critical.” Additionally, 91 percent of marketers who use ABM report larger deal sizes since adopting the strategy.
The Solution
involve.me gives you the information that you need to engage in both ABM and page-level marketing. It provides many embeddable interactive content types that help users associate your site with meaningful and relevant experiences. Those experiences create a sense of connection and inspire audiences to share your content.
So far, companies like Universal, Nestle, and TEDx have used involve.me to create personality tests, user surveys, promotional entry forms, and much more. The system is easy to use, with features like:
Drag and drop survey building
A dedicated team of support professionals
Templates to suit almost any aesthetic
Easy integration with your existing website or other tools
involve.me feature connections to numerous popular platforms, including MailChimp, Sendlane, Zapier, and Webhooks. With no extra effort on your part, it can seamlessly transport lead information into your CRM system.
It lets you get started for free so that you can see the benefits firsthand.
3. Buzzsumo (Voice-based Search Analysis)
Creating content means knowing what questions your users ask, as well as how they ask them.
The Trend
Voice-based searches via Siri, Amazon Echo, and other smart speakers keep on gaining popularity around the globe. 1/3 of US consumers own already a smart speaker. In fact, 71% consumers prefer to search by voice over typing. To keep ranking highly, businesses will need to know how searchers phrase their spoken questions.
The Solution
BuzzSumo offers a question analyzer as part of their Content Discovery Tool that shows you exactly how your target market is searching the web.
It's easy to use – you enter a topic or brand name, and it shows you related questions that users have asked. Its user interface is designed with the marketer in mind, giving you useful information as you need it. It offers:
Searches by keyword, forum, or subreddit
The most popular questions presented first
Questions grouped by audience segment
As an added benefit, BuzzSumo also provides content research, development, and curation. If it suits your business model, you can get those services from the same source.
4. Intercom (Chatbots and Virtual Assitants)
The personalization trend has completely changed the way brands make the first contact. Less open to cold-calling and emails, these days prospects expect to do the reaching out themselves.
The Trend
Chatbots immediately personalize the customer experience from the beginning of the relationship. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, they generate customized responses to prospect questions. It's a strategy that has helped brands increase their lead totals by up to 600%. Chatbot technology keeps on inmproving and the natural language processing capabilities are tremendously better than it used to be back in 2019.
The Solution
Intercom is a highly rated company that lets you take advantage of chatbots without restructuring the technology that you already have. Its bots integrate smoothly into different areas of your website and are customizable based on user activity. By reacting to your users' behavior, Intercom keeps every interaction relevant.
Other benefits include:
Matching qualified leads with sales team representatives
Convenient up-selling for existing customers
24/7 lead qualification
Customer success stories from Intercom include Tradeshift, which increased its monthly sales opportunities by 32 percent, and Influx, which achieved a 27 percent increase in leads generated per month.
5. Quora (Web Q&A)
You know that to drive traffic and boost conversions, you need to address your prospects' needs. What better way to do that than to answer the questions that they're asking?
The Trend
When you respond to a customer's question, you do two things:
instantly position yourself an authority, and
create value before the customer even visits your site.
As of January 2019, 91 percent of retail brands had two or more social media channels. Social media already popular with B2B companies, 92 percent of which use social media for marketing.
So how do you stand out from that massive pack?
The Solution
Again, it's all about targeting. If you want to answer specific consumer questions, you need to be on Quora. Even if you assume Quora is already a dead horse... it's 400 milion monthly active users may get you to rethink that.
Quora is an established Q&A website. Most of these visitors are between the ages of 18 and 34 and have at least a post-graduate level of education.
In addition to the influential nature of its user base, Quora offers many benefits to marketing teams.
Popular posts still drive traffic after months or even years.
The more views your answers get, the better you will rank.
Prominent publications, such as Forbes and Business Insider, look to Quora for quotes and experts.
To make Quora work for you, schedule a time to check the site and look for relevant questions. Prioritize questions that are ranked highly on the site's feed.
The Takeaway
In 2023, lead generation tools should help you connect with your customers. You need to create an experience that they enjoy, and that shows them that you value their thoughts, opinions, and experiences. Interactivity is not just nice to have; it's essential. Make your audience have fun while interacting with your brand and you are one step closer to win their heart. If they like you, they'll buy from you. As simple as that - emotions lead to actions.
So how can you better interact with your customers? Start creating interactive content with involve.me.
