What is leads generation?

Lead generation is the process of collecting contact information from potential customers and obtaining permission to contact them with offers and updates from your company.

Because email marketing is a very effective way to create a relationship with the consumer and promote online sales, companies and professionals put a lot of effort into getting email addresses.

– How to use MailChimp

But one mistake many people still make is trying to make that capture only with a contact form on the main page of your site when there are many other strategies to convert visitors into leads.

Lead Generation Techniques

As we have mentioned, email marketing is the best way to optimize your online sales.

For this reason, lead capture usually involves collecting the potential customer’s email address.

Now, would you pass your email on to someone for nothing? Probably not. That is why your company should always offer something valuable in return.

This “something of value” is known as a lead magnet.

Your lead magnet can be a free e-book, a course, a checklist, or other resource that your target audience is looking for.

Once the user has given you their email address, you can continue to develop your relationship by sending other content of interest to them until they make a purchase and become a customer.

It has been proven that this strategy focused on delivering something of value works over and over again, which is why it is the basis of most lead generation ideas.

Check out ten ways to capture leads and understand how lead magnets can be implemented on your site and other online channels.

1. Blog

You may have heard that the best strategy of Inbound Marketing is to produce content regularly for your blog.

– How to use Inbound Marketing

Postingwell-elaborated texts with focus on SEO rules helps your website gain relevancy and achieve better search engine positioning.

In addition, by providing informative and educational content, with topics related to your business and therefore of interest to your target audience, you create authority and gain the trust of your subscribers, an important step in converting them into buyers.

The biggest advantage of having a blog is that itallows you to convert unique visitors to recurring users, especially if they subscribe to your newsletter.

Another way to use blogs for capturing leads is through Guest Post, which is nothing more than inviting another expert to write a text for your blog.  And this works for both sides, you can write an article for his site as well.

The great advantage of this strategy is to get more exposure for your business and at the same time make link building, another SEO technique.

Remember that your primary goal is to add value to the site to which you are contributing. 

– SEO and Copywriting Techniques for Online Sales

2. Videos

Not everyone learns by reading. Some find it easier to understand information through visual and audible features. By creating a promotional video, you can quickly instruct your visitors about your product or service.

Videos also allow you to take advantage of third-party platforms like YouTube (the second largest search engine in the world) and Facebook, which is ready to give extra reach to your video in your news feed.

– How to record videos at home

To turn a video into a lead magnet, use a hosting platform that captures email addresses.

Do not forget to also send to those who are already your subscriber, making them advance in the sales funnel.  

3. Webinar

How about making a real-time presentation to customers anywhere in the world? With a Webinar, you can.

The webinar is an online seminar that facilitates communication between company and consumer and has a great acceptance by the audience.

This feature provides an effective way to share a tutorial, presentation, or interview with a specialist – valuable content that is worth exchanging for an email address.

Once they learn about your business through an online seminar, potential customers may be more prepared and willing to buy.

So after completing your presentation and go to the Q&A time with your viewers, be sure to leave the slide that shows the link to your sales page on the screen.

– 5 tips for selling courses with Webinar

Some people will decide to buy your product during this chat, so make sure they know exactly where to go and what to do.

4. Newsletter

Unlike email marketing, a newsletter focus is to share information with the user, news related to the company segment.

– Step by step to create a Newsletter

Another effective Inbound Marketing strategy, the newsletter does not try to sell, but rather instruct the reader.

To further optimize this lead generation technique, you can provide the option of sharing content to attract new subscribers.

This can be done through a call-to-action or a simple phrase, such as: “Do you want your friends to know about these changes in the law? If yes, click here”.

Or even a text and a button, like: “Click the button below to share this information”.

5. SlideShare

SlideShare is the most popular presentation sharing site that currently exists.

Through the platform, content you publish can be viewed and shared by anyone, which in addition to increasing your visibility, helps to generate traffic to your site.

Because presentations generate great shareable content, a well-designed SlideShare has the potential to become viral.

Also, if a presentation is widely accessed, it gains prominence on the home page, which dramatically increases the visibility of the professional or company that produced the content.

To assist in capturing leads, SlideShare also has premium tools that allow you to enter email forms within your presentation.

Tip: You can include the “Send”, “Recommend”, “Tweet”, and “Pin it” buttons which help a lot to viralize the content.

6. Quiz

A good quiz is irresistible. When asking attractive and thought-provoking questions, people can not avoid but click until they reach their results.

That’s why a quiz is also an effective leads magnet since, in addition to interacting with your site, participants must enter an email address to see the result.

Questionnaires are not only fun, they can also be educational for you and your potential customers as they help both parties know if your company is the right choice.

Responses can even help your sales team by providing valuable leads qualification information without having to inquire the customer directly.

There are many free applications on the internet to create quizzes, and most come with the function of incorporating them into websites and social networks.

– 10 free softwares to create online quizzes

7. Influencers

The best way to get free and long-range promotion is to offer your product/service free of charge to influencers who are related with your area.

Of course delivering your product for free may cost you a few $$, but think of it as an advertising cost.

Find bloggers and influencers, get in touch with them and offer them a free license.

In the case of Coursify.me, for example, we already invite Reinaldo Silotto, technology and programming expert and owner of the TekZoom channel, to talk about the platform.

Coursify.me has granted a license to use all platform features and in return the Youtuber has talked about its use and advantages to its audience.

Using this lead generation strategy you leverage the influencer’s audience and still gain a positive and “weighing” review on your product/service.

You can use cold email software to reach out to these influencers in your niche and see if they’d be interested in a partnership.

8. Affiliate Program

Want the marketing power of a sales team without actually hiring salespeople? Then you need an affiliate program.

Affiliate programs are an easy way to recruit partners to help publicize and increase sales of your business.

– 5 Affiliate Marketing Strategies

Affiliate programs are premised on offering a percentage of the sale value to people interested in promoting your product. With this strategy you can start gaining promoters for your brand around the world.

9. Exit-Intent Popups

Did you know that more than 70% of the visitors who leave your site will never return? This means that more than 90% of your marketing spend will be wasted.

For one last attempt to reverse this situation, there are Exit Intent Pop-up, pop-up plugins that monitor the user’s intention to exit.

These apps track visitor behavior and display a pop-up window to capture leads as it sketches the intention to leave the site.

To do this, the software analyzes points such as time spent on the page and the movement of the cursor.

When you add an exit intent pop-up, you’ll try one last card, making some offer for the user to stay on the site, or come back for a next visit.

You may, for example, offer some lead magnet content, a discount coupon, or other proposal in exchange for an email or for future use.

Scheduling this type of pop-up takes less than two minutes and can help you recover a lot of money on lost sales.

TIP: To really grab visitor’s attention, add animations to your pop-ups.

10. Landing Page

An effective landing page is one in which you have a clear call to action. There is a purpose, a reason the visitor is on this page, and he knows what it is.

Review your landing page. How many different links are there? If possible, reduce them. The simpler and more intuitive the navigation the better.

Review your page, determine how many CTAs you have, and eliminate the lowest priority CTAs. Although you may have some different CTAs on a page, you need to know which one works best.

The only way to find out is by doing tests. Sometimes the slightest change can yield startling results.

For example, while most people encourage red buttons, your site may be better converted with a green button. The color that best converts is the one that stands out.

Another test to do is about the positioning of buttons. It is perfectly right to have a call to action at the bottom of the page, but sometimes readers may not get there.

Follow the basic principle of ABT (Always Be Testing), and you will continue to see improvements.

– How to create a sales page

Capturing leads for online courses

All of these strategies can and should be used to capture leads for your online course.

Lead magnets serve as a bridge between attracting and converting them into customers. These techniques create the opportunity for you to introduce yourself to your prospects and discover the kind of information and offers that encourage them to buy.

There are still countless Digital Marketing features that you can use to advertise your business such as social networking, Youtube videos, eBooks and more.

– Digital marketing to promote online courses

With a little organization and a focused strategy, in a short time you will be attracting potential leads and getting your first students.

Complete platform for hosting online courses, Coursify.me is optimized for SEO and has full integration with social networks.

Serving businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for anyone who wants to create, sell and advertise courses on the internet.

Visit our website, test the platform and see how easy it is to profit by doing what you like.

The post How to generate leads for your online course appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

Unlike traditional marketing, Inbound Marketing is focused on creating a customer relationship.

Its premise is to deliver content and attract the audience to the product, rather than offering it directly to the consumer.

What is Inbound Marketing?

The term was coined in 2005 when HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan and his partners realized that the disruptive traditional form of marketing was no longer worth it.

The new “idea” caught on quickly after that and this led to a long cycle of constantly evolving marketing strategy optimization, including search engine optimization, content marketing, etc.

– Advantages of Content Marketing for Your Business

In short, Inbound Marketing is a Digital Marketing strategy that attracts qualified leads to your site. 

Instead of advertising products, the focus is on getting potential customers’ attention by using tools like search engine optimization and social media.

It’s a process that attracts, engages, and delights your audience by helping them build trust in your brand to make them paying customers.

As technology evolves, Inbound Marketing teaches companies how to find more buyers effectively.

This is a better way to sell and serve your customers; After all, what is right for the customer is also good for business.

A good inbound marketing strategy involves creating content that appeals to your customers, helps them solve their problems, and tells them what they want to know.

Achieving this takes a great deal of work and dedication, but companies are increasingly adapting to this new form of marketing because they see dramatic changes in buyer behavior and need tools to address these trends.

Why do you need to learn more about Inbound Marketing?

Modern companies around the world invest in creating blogs, podcasts, eBooks, videos, and more, promoting these materials through social campaigns and via email.

– How to Use Your Blog as a Marketing Tool 

This is all part of the larger Inbound Marketing strategy, which works to ensure rapid and continuous business growth.

The successes and benefits of Inbound Marketing are already quite apparent and measurable. For example, did you know that companies using blogs have 13 times more positive ROI?

Inbound Marketing delivers quality to your audience, serves their interests, attracts them to your offerings and keeps them coming back for more.

Best of all, it’s not paid advertising. You own all of your content and host it on your website and social media pages, profiting from organic traffic.

On the other hand, paid ads like Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, stop appearing when you stop paying for them. Thus, the leads and traffic generated by them also stop.

– How to Generate Leads

Consider this: according to a 2016 survey, American adults spend 10 hours online every day on average — tied into their laptops, smartphones and tablets. So, of course, when they look for something, Google Assistant and Siri are just one command away to give them the answers they need.

The question is, do your ads appear in these search results?

Hardly. And if they appear, they engage little.

The click-through rate for all kind of banner ads is only 0.05%, which shows that 86% of Internet users have simply gone blind to banners. Not to mention that there are several ad blocking software, increasingly used by an audience that can not stand advertising anymore. 

But while young audiences are tired of the onslaught of ads and marketing messages, they are still willing to engage with quality brands.

They are more likely to become paying subscribers and consumers as long as you can make them realize that the cost will be worth it.

Ad-free premium services are slowly attracting this audience and the only way for your company to compete in this environment is with a viable inbound marketing strategy.

Simply put, it is the natural evolution of marketing that is modernized into the digital age.

How Inbound Marketing Works

Inbound Marketing revolves around a specific set of marketing tools and processes that let you attract, engage, and delight potential customers.

Its methodology matches the way today’s consumers make purchasing decisions, requiring you to:

• Analyze the facts: Nowadays, the Internet is the means by which people research, decide, and buy. And we’re not just talking about products, but complex B2B services as well.
• Focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO): It’s essential to continually generate and improve your content so that it performs better through keyword research and helps your site rank higher in search engines.

– How to Set Keywords for Your SEO Strategy

• Prioritize the user experience: Make it easy to navigate in your site. Offer clear communication and direct the user directly to what they are looking for. Consider that the attention span on the internet today is minimal and the longer your visitor takes to find what he wants, the worse for you as he will probably be looking for another option. 
• Create valuable content: Make sure your site content answers your audience questions: “What’s for me?”, “How can you help me?” and “Why are you the best option?” Explain and emphasize this often.
• Convert traffic into leads and nurture them: Perform a process that meets, responds, and guides your prospects along the buyer’s journey until they are ready to close a deal.

– Tips for Creating a Customer Journey Map

• Build trust and credibility: Over time, potential customers need to identify your business as an essential resource for information, and by providing content focused on their needs rather than yours, you will gain their trust.

All of these inbound marketing methodologies are most easily executed with the help of marketing automation software (such as HubSpot, for example) that is fully integrated with your website CMS and CRM.

An integrated marketing automation platform will help you convert, close and delight customers in an organized and results-focused manner. 

While much of the engagement and design process is automated, it can still be highly customized to customer needs through a holistic approach and custom workflows.

Common Inbound Marketing Strategies

The foundation of any successful Inbound Marketing strategy is relevant content. 

But even this can be broadly defined. Here are the most common types of content that correspond to this strategy:

• Blog Posts: Connect with prospects regularly by demonstrating your industry knowledge, experience, and authority.
• Case Studies: Share success stories from others who have trusted your product or service to meet their needs.
• Guides, eBooks: Provide detailed information on a topic related to your business to educate and maximize lead generation.

– How to Create an eBook

• Checklists: This kind of rich and informative material provides quick and actionable tips for potential customers, having high attraction potential.
• Infographics: Use visual representations for content that contains tips, summary information, and supporting statistics.
• Videos: One of the best marketing methods to capture potential customer attention is explanatory videos, customer testimonials, tutorials, and more.

– Record tutorial videos: tips for getting the best result

• Email Marketing: Build a relationship with your leads and get them moving into the sales funnel through periodic email communication focused on their needs.

– How to Create a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

• Social Media: One of the best ways to promote your content is through posts and campaigns on social media.

How to Use Inbound Marketing to Sell Online Courses

Some say that Inbound Marketing is divided into three pillars: SEO, Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy. However, as its focus is to create ways to attract customer interest, this definition is somewhat flawed, as its only limit is your creativity.

There are several ways to do Inbound Marketing and each of them fit into one of five stages of Inbound which are:

Attract traffic

First you need to attract people to your site. Invest in SEO strategies to position your page well in search engines. 

– SEO: Complete Guide For Your Website To Have More Online Visibility

The above list is a good way to start. We suggest you start by producing relevant , well-crafted blog content, because the more content, the more users and search engines find you.  

Convert visitors into leads

In this second stage you will need even more seductive content, after all, you will be asking the user to give you something valuable, such as an email. This requires offering something that is really in his best interest.

Those who work with online courses, for example, may offer exclusive access to a course module, mini course, ebook, or any other material that your target audience considers to be of high value.

– Step by Step to Creating an Online Mini Course

Convert leads to sales

This is the time to focus and get right to the target. The user has already given his contact to you which proves that he is really interested, so it is time to offer more and hold your attention. 

Invest in targeted email marketing with the right words and content. Offer a personalized service, show the user that you have information of interest.

Build customer loyalty

You’ve already sold your product, but your customer conversation doesn’t have to end. This is time to build a relationship. 

Create a follow up strategy and build customer loyalty. Offer him special plans, access to other online courses, support material, etc.

Turn your customers into promoters of your brand

Doing a good job in the previous step makes this a lot easier. Delighting your customers and turning them into true ambassadors for your brand means your work has gone well. 

To achieve this result offer your buyer more than one brand that produces content, but one with a purpose that he admires and is proud to be a part of.

Complete eLearning platform, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for those who want to create, sell and advertise courses on the internet.

Serving businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, the platform is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System (LMS).

– Whats is a Learning Management System

Coursify.me offers three plan options for you to decide which best suits your needs and the good news is that the Beginner Plan is free!

To learn more, visit our website, test the platform and understand why we are the best option for your online courses.

The post Inbound Marketing: How You Can Use It to Attract Customers appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.

Its premise is to deliver content and attract the public to the product, instead of focusing on promote it directly.

What says the largest research about Inbound Marketing

The Inbound Marketing is a direct result of the change in consumer habits caused by the internet.

Thanks to technology changes occur fast and how the consumer relates to brands and decide what to buy for sure is not the same as ten years ago.

This transformation in the behavior of the public impacts directly on how companies conduct the disclosure of your products and services, which gave rise to the Inbound Marketing.

To follow this trend, the HubSpot has developed the report State of Inbound. 

The research covers the key challenges for marketing and sales professionals today, as well as ideas on market trends and the channels that soon will affect the way we all do business.

State of Inbound 2017: highlights

According to the report, keeping the growth of contacts/leads and conversion is still the main concern of companies.

Check out what the biggest marketing difficulties cited by professionals:

• Generate traffic and leads: 66%
• Prove the ROI of marketing activities: 37%
• Identify the right technologies: 32%
• Ensuring sufficient budget: 29%
• Manage site: 28%

As for innovation and tools used, the marketing professionals interviewed are increasingly considering the visual content.

When questioned about which channels of content distribution would add over the next twelve months, these were the results:

• YouTube: 56%
• Facebook Video: 50%
• Instagram: 42%
• Messages Apps: 33%
• Snapchat: 18%
• Podcast: 15%

When it comes to sales, following the precepts of Inbound Marketing, the report points out  that salespeople must take note of customers who shop through social networks, live on their mobile device, and research products on their own.

Regarding what is more difficult to do in sales compared with two to three years ago, the responses were as follows:

• Closing the deal: 42%
• Receive response from prospects: 35%
• Identify good leads: 33%
• Involve multiple decision makers: 28%
• Avoid discounts: 23%

What has been observed is that consumer buying habits are quickly evolving, and it is necessary that professionals be aware of these changes to plan better marketing and sales strategies.

The big advantage of Inbound Marketing is that it allows the use of creativity to attract consumer attention.

Who creates online courses can develop content and use means to engage with your audience that cost little and have a good result.

SEO, Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy, are the three pillars of Inbound and make it clear that its focus is the delivery of content and creating a relationship with the customer.

To download and read the full report click the link: State of Inbound 2017 

Complete eLearning platform, the Coursify.me helps you create and promote your course on the internet.

Visit our website, test the platform and start your own business.

The post What you need to know about Inbound Marketing appeared first on Blog Coursify.me.