A steady flow of leads is a fundamental component to keeping a business afloat in the competitive corporate environment. As marketers, we spend a crazy amount of time and resources planning campaigns and creating suitable content. For most of us, the ultimate end goal is to generate new leads that will eventually turn into paying customers.

But coming up with creative and effective ways to attract visitors and converting them into qualified leads is easier said than done.

So how about some inspiration?

The best way to turn strangers into customers and promoters of a business is to implement an array of inbound marketing techniques in a consistent manner. With Inbound Marketing, visitors find the necessary information regarding the company through channels like blogs, search engines, and social media. By creating specifically designed content, Inbound Marketing attracts qualified prospects, and builds trust and credibility in a business. This is also an extremely cost effective method to generate traffic that can be converted into qualified leads over time.

First things first, you need to focus on getting the right traffic, customers who will significantly contribute to the growth of the business. You want the people who are most likely to become prospective leads and, ultimately, happy customers.

Here are a few actionable and creative techniques to spur up your lead generation process:

1. Website Design and Layout

Your business’ website acts as a customer service representative. It is one of the first interactions that prospective customers will have with your business. The design of the website is one of the main factors that potential customers are looking for while purchasing products or availing a service.

They will value your business based on the quality of the site. A professionally designed website, tends to attract more customers than a poorly designed one.

The layout of your website needs to be simple yet attractive. The amount of traffic to your website has a direct relationship with its revenue. More traffic translates to more visibility and profitability.

Apart from attracting more visitors, the most important thing to focus on is keeping them engaged right from the start. Successfully engaging prospects through solid web content is crucial for capturing contact information and converting them into leads. It ensures that visitors don’t simply bounce from the website without a second thought about the product or services.

Using live chat for the website can help engage with its visitors by increasing their experience exponentially. Live chat is also an extremely cost effective method to increase sales drastically, turn visitors into potential customers and ultimately gain a loyal customer base.

If people aren’t interacting with the website, that means the site isn’t providing any value or benefit. Having a strong online presence means having a strong website.

2. Content is king

It’s said that “Content is king,” but in reality, “Quality content is king.“

Creating and sharing targeted content that answers the questions of prospects and addresses relevant issues, helps increase a companys’ lead prospects drastically.

Quality content will automatically attract more links. So, what makes quality content? Here are some tips.

• Be original

• Add images and videos to keep the audience engaged

• Keep it simple; write short and pointed content.

• Proper fonts and text formatting matters

• Create content that is written to a targeted audience.

• Make it easily accessible across social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+

3. Solving problems and sharing ideas over blogs

Did you know that 23% of total internet usage time is devoted to social networks or blogs? Which means that’s where a major chunk of users obtain information and knowledge. Blogging has the potential to drive a significant amount of leads into your sales funnel.

If content gets you leads, blogging gets you found on various search engines. For a business, blogging does more than let followers know about recent company news and events. An attractive, educational, carefully curated blog acts as a lure to visitors. Not only that, the more valuable pages you publish, the higher search engines like Google rank your website.

Above all, a blog helps a business connect with its prospects in a less rigid manner. It allows you to stretch beyond the landing pages of your website, and expand your content beyond product features, business speech, and boring FAQs.

4. Search engine optimization (SEO)

When we’re using a search engine, we are looking for information to solve a problem. Potential clients want to learn how to overcome the challenges they face. When you compare first-page results with lower-ranked pages, there is usually an extreme difference in quality. People generally tend to prefer the results in the first page for that reason., High-ranking placement in the results of search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) ensures easy accessibility and a steady flow of visitors. You need to make sure that your content appears prominently on the web.

By carefully curating key words and optimizing content in the five areas below, you can effectively communicate the intended message to the search engine.

• Page title

• URL

• Headers

• Image tags

• Body copy

5. Organizing Webinars

Who wouldn’t want to learn something new at no cost, and from the comfort of their desk? Webinars are an extremely effective learning tool. If someone signs up for your webinar, they already have a level of respect for you or your company. This is something you can leverage over time to convert them, as they have an inherent interest in what you do.

No one wants to sit through a webinar that’s like a boring lecture. You want to capture the attention of your audience? Then keep it as interesting, interactive, and innovative as possible. The lead-generating webinar is typically offered free of charge. Because it requires registration, you can collect basic information on a session’s attendees.

There are two crucial elements to be addressed, in order to organize a successful webinar:

• Topic: Choose a topic that is relevant to your buying persona. While quality webinar content is extremely vital, its success depends entirely on its topic. A killer webinar topic is what earns you greater exposure, more registrations, and sky-high attendance.

• Speaker: You put a lot of time, energy and money into creating a webinar, and a webinar speaker that falls flat can bring the whole event down. Selecting the right speaker for your webinar is a paramount factor. The speaker should know how to present the content in an engaging way, and how to captivate the audience.

6. Marketing through social media.

Social media has become a legitimate lead generation channel because of it‘s advanced targeting opportunities for age groups, geography, areas of interest, and more. Companies need to understand that the number of likes, shares, comments, and followers may not guarantee a transition into sales, but if prospects are nurtured correctly, they will.

• Facebook is extremely valuable when it comes to marketing to people by interest. It helps you target people based on their behavior and purchasing pattern, and it lets you choose and customize your advertising content from a list of possible interests: people who love 80s rock music, travelling, watching sitcoms, etc.

• Twitter allows you to target people based on their networks or your own. It helps you create a follower base, so that you can target people who are similar to it. Similarly, Twitter’s Lead generation cards are a two click solution to lead generation. They are displayed as tweets, but when someone clicks on the image, the card expands to reveal an offer or sign-up form, auto-filled with the user’s name, email address, and Twitter handle.

• LinkedIn is extremely useful for employee– and company-specific targeting. When you publish your ad, you can specify the kind of viewers you want, based on the industry they work in, their position and seniority, place of work, and more. You can share content with people who fit the criteria of a prospect for your business.

• Google+ also helps bring people with common interests together. Find communities of people with common interests to tap into. These communities offer opportunities to become an influencer and reach out to potential prospects.

7. Monitoring media activities

Media monitoring is a useful tool in identifying potential customers. It helps you to keep track of the social conversations that matter the most by monitoring the discussions about your product and area of expertise. Listen for your customers’ questions, comments, likes, and dislikes, and reach out to them with content tailored to their interests and challenges.

17.9% of B2B companies and 24.8% of B2C marketers say that social media lead generation is even more effective than PPC or SEO. Furthermore, a whopping 55% of marketers say they’ve closed successful deals originating from a social media lead!

Adding value to conversations on social media by posting professional expertise is a great way to generate qualified leads. Valuable posts will be shared most, ultimately leading to more site clicks. The gain from social media monitoring can be measured easily, since you are already a part of the conversations, and you have the expert information available at the click of a button. In a broader perspective, use of social media monitoring for lead generation spurs close leads and marketing integration.

8. Creating a product video

70% of us are visual learners. So why not explain your content in such a way that it speaks to the majority?

Product video is an extremely strong tool. It helps build trust with your target audience by introducing them to the people behind the product or brand, and it gives them a glimpse of the magic that happens behind the door. The impact is strongest when the video is used in the landing page. Product demo videos increase the conversion rate by up to 30%.

Incorporating eye-catching videos in a website is an easy way to deliver content that is informational, entertaining, and educational. Video content should be used wherever it makes sense.

9. Industry specific landing pages

To an online marketer, contact information is the most valuable resource there is. In the end, if you dont know how to reach out to your visitors with content tailored to their interests, all your previous efforts go to waste.

Re–direct your website visitors to a carefully curated and optimized landing page where they can submit the necessary information in order to gain further access.

This is perhaps the first thing your future customers will see, therefore it’s important to keep it appealing and engaging right from the start till the finish. Make it friendly and easy to fill out.

You can also customize your type form, perhaps including your brand colours and hand-picked visuals. I mean, come on. No one wants to fill out a lengthy, boring form right? With a dapper first impression, you’re likely to get more leads.

10. Pump up those CTAs!

Think about all those times you’ve signed up for things in your life. Did you ever download Spotify, Netflix, or Evernote? Think about it, if you hadn’t been attracted by the design or copy of the CTA, you would probably be using a lot fewer applications and websites than you do now. Each of these sign-ups is the result of an effective CTA.

CTAs are a small but a highly impactful tool for optimizing inbound marketing and lead generation. They transport the visitor from one piece of content to the next for mutual benefit: They are better informed and marketers have a better opportunity for conversion. It’s important to guide your visitors through the buying journey using strategic CTAs.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind to create an effective CTA:

• Be crystal clear about what you’re offering

Clarity is the key. Be specific about what your offer is. If you’re giving away a free guide, say “ Download our FREE guide to X,” where X clearly conveys the benefit of receiving the offer. This is much more effective than “Download now” or “Get a free guide.”

• Use images rather than text to stand out

Images and content in the form of eye popping visuals stand out more on a webpage than text does. They are hard to ignore, and they capture the attention of the audience easily.

• Using colours that contrast with your site’s colour schemes

Your designer might lose his mind over this. But if your CTA blends too much with your site’s colour scheme, it won‘t stand out. You want as many eyes to land on the CTA as possible, so it’s better to use contrasting colours.

• Appropriate to your purpose

Finally, the method that works best for you is the one that is most appropriate to your aim and your audience. Ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish, and design your offer around that vision. For example, if you’re sending out an introductory offer to new prospects, your primary goal may be to just get them to make that first order so they can get familiar with your product and you can get their contact information. In that case, a low-priced introductory offer might meet your purposes the best.

Having looked into the major aspects of lead generation, we are able to conclude that the inbound way is all about providing remarkable quality content to your users, whether they be visitors, leads, or existing customers. It has proven to be the methodology for the digital era, trumping old outbound marketing methods of buying ads or purchasing email lists.

Simple, right?

I hope these 10 tips have given you a better understanding of how following the right combination of inbound marketing techniques can help grow your business significantly. You are already on the right path towards a brighter future. This will help you escalate your lead quality, decrease sales cycle times and increase lead flow. So what are you waiting for? Get started now!