How to Get More Inbound Leads: Tips for Lead Generation

Lead generation is an essential part of any business for its sales process. You need to select the right approach to capture your target audience's attention. The lead generation process is an essential marketing strategy to grow the business revenue. Generating leads involves attracting potential customers and converting them into paying customers. There are different methods of generating prospective customers, so it's important to know how to develop an effective strategy. Two major approaches to generating potential prospects for your business are inbound and outbound. Below, we break down inbound & outbound leads similarities and differences.

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Inbound marketing is the pillar of marketing strategy. When it comes to B2B marketing, outbound lead generation is less effective. An inbound lead generation strategy is the best way to grow and succeed long-term. The mix of Inbound and Outbound sales prospecting methods still plays an important role in your marketing strategy. Inbound prospects have already shown interest in your products or services, and it should be a relatively simple process to convert them into customers rather than cold leads. This article will deeply dive into everything about inbound lead generation.

What Is An Inbound Lead?

It is the prospects who initiate contact with your business. These potential customers contact your business to learn more about your products or service offerings. These prospects are the individuals or companies who find your website, engage on your social media channels, read your published blog content, and more. 

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An inbound lead is someone who has responded to a social media post, email, content, etc., that you have created in your marketing strategy. For example, a response could be:

• Participating in the survey
• Contacting the sales team 
• Downloading an eBook 
• Registering for webinar 

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There are three types of inbound prospects. 

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Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)- These B2B prospects engage with your piece of content on the website or the social media channel, but they are not yet decided and ready to engage with the sales team to make sales.  In other words, these qualified prospects are contacts who've engaged with your marketing team's efforts but still need a lot of convincing. An example is a contact who fills out a form on a website for an offer.

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Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)-This type of sales-qualified lead is a contact that has taken specific actions to indicate their interest in a purchase. They are willing to interact with the sales lead and make a purchase. For example, someone who fills out a form to ask a question about our product.

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Product Qualified Lead (PQL)- A product-qualified lead is a customer who uses your free trial product and shows interest in becoming a paying customer. For example, if the potential customer engages with your product's trial version or asks about features to upgrade their plan.

What Is Meant By Inbound Lead Generation?

Inbound lead sourcing is a methodology for attracting potential customers to your business. This process aims to push them into action, resulting in a sale. This prospect generation technique involves content creation, social media ads, campaigns, etc., to attract website visitors and convert them into paying customers. You can then use digital marketing metrics to see website visits, page views, and traffic sources and understand how prospects find your website and engage with this content.

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Inbound lead generation is growing more popular among the B2B business. Inbound prospect lists for the business can be generated by improving the brand visibility on search engines, offering valuable content in exchange for prospect information and social media platforms, etc. Through the inbound warm lead's contact information and other valuable data, the sales reps can build communication with the prospect and make custom sales pitches to convert them.  Here are some effective sales tips and tricks to close more deals.  

What Is An Outbound Lead?

These are the b2b prospects a sales team approaches through outbound marketing channels such as cold email and telephone calls. These customers have shown interest in your company's product but have not yet made a purchase. These b2b prospects enter into our inbound process, where they progress through different funnel stages of the outbound sales funnel.

What Is Outbound Lead Generation?

Outbound lead generation tactics send messages or connect to targeted prospects or groups regardless of whether they have expressed an interest in product or service offerings. Different outbound lead generation types include direct mail, advertisement, cold calling, and mass cold email campaigns. 

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Inbound vs. Outbound Leads: What Are The Differences & Similarities?

Many businesses today utilize both inbound and outbound lead generation strategies to acquire new customers and convert them. Each prospecting type has unique benefits, and many factors go in while choosing which leads to qualify. Those include your business model, budget, and the type of leads you're looking for (inbound or outbound). Check these inbound Vs. outbound similarities and differences before deciding which prospective customer to prioritize. 

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Here are some of the similarities between inbound and outbound prospects. 
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Purpose

There are two ways to generate clients for business inbound  & outbound. But the purpose of the lead generation process is to attract potential customers and convert your inbound & outbound prospective customers into loyal customers for your business.

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Return on investment (ROI)

Predicting the ROI for either inbound or outbound marketing and sales is challenging. Both leads may require time and money to attract and manage. However, both prospective customers have an opportunity for significant ROI.

Understanding of Target markets

Your business needs to understand the target audience when generating inbound and outbound prospects. Understanding your audience's specific needs is essential when identifying inbound and outbound leads. Knowing your clients will help you tailor your content, lead generation campaigns, and ads based on their needs. 

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Here are the primary differences between inbound and outbound prospect generation.

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Control over your leads 

Inbound Leads provide you with less control over your outbound. It is because these leads contact your company first. Your business can't decline unless there's a specific reason, such as if they are not a right fit for your product or service.

Speed of Execution

The inbound prospect acquisition requires time, and the lead generation of inbound prospects relies on search marketing, social media traffic to the website, word of mouth, and referral programs. To attract potential prospects and build relationships by sharing value and unique content through an effective marketing campaign. 

By displaying user-generated content on a social wall, you can generate social proof that can help to build trust and credibility for your brand.

Inbound prospects require a lot of time, but it's worth investing in the quality prospects who have shown interest in products or services and are likely to convert. Whereas outbound techniques  are mostly faster than inbound techniques.

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Awareness

Inbound leads tend to have a higher awareness of your company because they are interested in you and contact you. However, outbound prospects are typically unfamiliar with your company, and many get you without much thought. Though some outbound prospects know your company, it's unlikely.
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Trust and Credibility

Building trust and credibility are important for sales. If you conduct inbound sourcing, you'll have to invest some effort in developing a relationship before making a sales pitch with prospective clients. With outbound sourcing, you'll need to invest time for the prospective client to trust you and develop credibility after you've contacted them over cold email campaigns or cold calls. 
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Acquisition Cost 

The cost of outbound campaigns is typically more in a shorter period, whereas inbound campaigns are typically cheaper over a longer period. The higher price comes from the contact methods and successful lead gen events, especially for specialized services like NetSuite bookkeeping services, which can be tested in shorter periods for less risk.

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Lead Quality

Inbound and outbound leads have the potential to be high-quality leads. However, inbound prospects are often of a higher quality than outbound because they're interested in your company, which means they don't need to be convinced as much.

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What Is the Inbound Marketing Methodology?

The inbound methodology is a technique to grow your organization by building long-lasting relationships with prospective customers. Inbound marketing methodology aims to reach its sales goals irrespective of the prospect's stage on their sales journey.

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You can apply the inbound marketing methodology in three ways:

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Attract: 

The first stage is to attract the right targeted audience to your business by sharing and engaging them with valuable content and establishing a relationship with them.

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Engage: 

Providing insights builds trust among the potential buyer and offers solutions to their current pain points will help the customer make a decision. Offering tailored solutions will make prospects more likely to purchase from your brand. 

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Delight: 

At this stage, the business empowers customers by providing the help and support they need to find success with their purchases.

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When customers find success, they share it. This will enable your business to attract new prospects to your company. Through inbound marketing methodology attracts new prospects and accelerates your company's growth.

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Top Tips For Inbound Lead Generation To Grow Your Business

Are you ready to fill your sales pipeline with a quality lead? Here are some of the top inbound lead generation tactics & strategies that you can leverage to build and engage your targeted audience.

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Content Marketing

Content marketing plays a major part in inbound sourcing. You build a solid impression of your business by providing valuable content that educates, informs, and delights potential prospects. This will attract a steady stream of quality visitors to your website.  

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Content marketing includes case studies, blogs, articles, guides, Infographics, videos, and more. Your videos must help your audience understand your products or services, and explainer videos can be particularly effective in achieving this. Your content will need to stand out to attract attention. Consider how you plan on generating engagement and whether your content will hold a unique position.

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The chilipiper research shows more than 27 conversion rates through content marketing. Once your business gets visitors to your content, then start focusing on converting them using pop-ups, lead capture forms, marketing automation software, etc. 

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Build Your Email List 

Using the right CTA, start collecting the valid email address of the website visitor and build your email list for nurturing campaigns. Help your visitors subscribe to your newsletter by including an opt-in form in the page's footer and requesting that they enter their email addresses in exchange for free and valuable content (Like webinars, guides, etc.) when creating a lead magnet.

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Email marketing automation saves you time and increases your ability to increase leads. Segment your audience and create custom email sequences with personalized email messages. This will move the potential customer to make a specific action. This process is made simple and effective using b2b lead generation tools like Smartwriter. You can easily validate the email address, create a personalized email copy, and automate your email outreach for the inbound prospecting process.

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Script Smart Script allows you to automate your email sequences with deep personalization, company-based personalization, Linkedin personalization, etc., and the sales team can focus on the priority tasks. The software creates automated flows for sales processes. Sign up today and start your prospecting campaign flow now. Lead Extractor Chrome extension that allows you to scrape determined contacts from LinkedIn without leaving the browser window.
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Remember, marketing through email is not just about promotions. You want to offer something valuable to your subscribers. They're inviting you into their inbox, so ensure you're worthy of their time. You want to reach the right prospective customer at the right time with the right message, converting those prospects into customers.

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Utilize Podcast

Podcasts are an integral part of people's daily lives. People listen to them while commuting, doing chores, and taking a walk. Podcasts are more popular, especially among young people. According to Music Oomph, almost a third of American adults between the ages of 25 and 34 are podcast listeners. In other words, nearly over 75% of Americans use podcasts. 

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So no matter what industry you're working with, there's always an opportunity for growth. The podcast is a great way to generate prospect lists for your business and build your brand or product awareness among your targeted audience. 

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Leverage Social Media Platforms 

Social media is an excellent place to build your inbound quilty prospects because there are nearly a billion monthly active users on social media channels. You can provide value to the targeted audience through social media posts, or through social media ads, you can generate quality prospects. You'll need to be aware of the platforms your target audience prefers. For example, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are excellent B2B marketing and lead generation platforms.

Employ Interactive Content 

Another great method of generating inbound prospects is interactive content such as videos, surveys, polls, and infographics. Nearly 81% of marketers believe that interactive contents are the proven prospecting techniques for sales to grab their potential customers' attention. It is a great way to engage your audience and make them feel like they're part of the process. You can ask questions, provide opportunities for input or feedback on social media channels, invite users into conversations with webinars on trending topics, etc. 

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Host value packed Webinars

In b2b marketing, educating your customers is essential for building a relationship with them. Webinars are integral to this as they’re both educational and interactive. Successful webinars will always be on topics people are passionate about and are willing to sign up for. To do this, you need effective strategies and topics.

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Closing Thoughts

An inbound lead generation is an approach to attracting customers to your business through content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media. The best way to generate potential buyers through inbound marketing is by providing valuable content that addresses the needs of your target audience. Once you’ve captured their attention, it’s important to make it easy for them to take the next step and become a customer. It’s important to have a strong inbound marketing strategy in place if you want to generate more potential customers for your business. These tips & techniques we’ve shared will help get you to get started on the right track.