Getting more leads is one of the key stepping stones in business growth, boosting reach and allowing for more opportunities to present themselves as the brand’s network of influence grows.
But getting leads is not always easy, and getting successful conversions to end users out of those leads even less so.
Thankfully, strategies around lead generation and conversion are constantly evolving into more successful forms.
So, let us delve into the world of leads and end users, how they affect businesses and how we here at Bicom Systems are tackling the ever prevalent issue of successful lead generation.
What Is A Lead?
Before we get into the subject matter, we need to understand what the terms we are looking into are. Leads, for one, count as any form of interest or interaction an individual party displays in what a business is offering. They are a step away from a future customer, but not quite there yet.This is everyone who visits the business’ site or signs up for a newsletter, downloads their content or leaves a way for the business to get back to them in any way, be it through contact number, email address or otherwise.
What Is An End user?
It encompasses everyone who buys and uses a product or service offered by a business. “End user” can refer to an individual, a group, or another business altogether. It is their experience and input that businesses focus on and adapt their product around as their satisfaction leads to greater customer retention and potential tools for lead conversion strategy updates.
Generating Leads
With that out of the way, we move onward to lead generation. Leads, as mentioned prior, are useful tools that help expand a businesses reach, help get the word out about upcoming news relating to said business, potentially leading to further business growth.
However, not all leads are useful which is why lead quality is often prized over lead quantity and why conversion ratios are the main indicator rather than the number of leads generated.
Anyone can throw insurmountable amounts of money into marketing campaigns and get a large amount of leads, but if they are not going after their target audience and are instead casting a wide net, chances are that the costs will far outweigh their potential gains, which leads us to the first important aspect of a successful lead generation strategy, scope.
Scope
Before you start developing a lead generation strategy, doing market research is key as it will help you determine your target audience and allow you to establish a better frame of what groups of people to shape the strategy around.
Once you have that sorted, it is time to get started with said strategy.
Creating An Appealing Landing Page
Most leads that enter your website are likely not going to stick around for long if your landing page is not appealing to them.
A successful landing page is kept clean and simple with an intuitive design that will not leave leads confused but will instead intrigue them into exploring further.
SEO Friendliness And Site Crawlability
Aspects important to you, Google, and your potential leads.
If a site is SEO friendly, it often means that it contains quality content that users will want to read, created in a way that pleases search engine algorithms and ranks them based on information reliability.
The more SEO friendly your website is, the better its rank will be on browser searches which will naturally lead to greater visibility and, summarily, greater lead generation.
The same is true for site crawlability which determines how easy your site is to navigate.
If it is neatly interconnected and every part of it can be reached within a few clicks, it will be more appealing and will affect ranking authority, once again leading to more potential leads and less lead frustration due to site navigation issues.
Opt-in Opportunities
The core of lead generation is creating opportunities where potential leads can opt into a product or service. This takes the form of offers of free brochures, booklets, PDFs, product demos and the like, a sample that showcases what the product or service can do for them at its core and what awaits them should they choose to make the next step and become an end user, all for the low-low price of their contact info that can be used for future marketing opportunities and lead conversion strategies.
These need to be plain to see and, most often, in the lead’s face to be noticed.
Whether it is in the middle of a post on the website or a pop-up that shows when the lead’s mouse leaves the main screen, it does not matter, as long as it is made hard to ignore.
Sure, that can be considered obnoxious and aggressive, and it is, but otherwise it would be ignored.
Forcing the decision on the potential customer helps generate that lead and potential future conversion to an end user.
Advertising Through Relevant Channels
Your page is not the only method of lead generation as you also have the means of redirecting traffic your way through advertising.
This can be done in a number of ways, but the most common and most effective ones revolve through paid ad campaigns through Google or social media coverage, once again aimed at specific groups that your market research has determined so you do not bleed your budget dry for bad leads.
This is what is known as inorganic traffic as it comes through paid sources, but it is valuable all the same.
Another alternative which is deemed successful is advertising over various conventions and expos where your audience tends to frequent and that covers the area in which your business operates.
Deploying Multiple Strategies And Adapting
Lead generation strategies may be successful from the get-go, but they can always be refined. Some may even end up working at one point, but failing at another.
That is why testing multiple strategies at a time is the key to finding what works best for your business.
Small tweaks in CTA buttons, different fonts and colors to whole new opt-in opportunities and methods of addressing leads are all possible tweaks that may just make the difference.
They may appear small at first glance, but they can have a significant impact on conversion rates, to the point where businesses deem it worth the investment to constantly do this testing until a successful strategy can be zeroed in on.
Making The Leap From Lead To End user
Once you have your lead generation strategy nailed down, the next step is lead conversion.
While the lead generation strategy is already being optimized to convert as many leads as possible, more can always be done after the initial process:
• Following up on newly converted leads to retain them
• Further refining lead generation strategies by further focus on the best performing market areas
• Incorporating positive testimonials on your landing page as proof of product quality from outside sources
• …and more
It is hard to pin down exact effective lead conversion strategies into such a small space as things that work for one marketing campaign may not work for another.
It is all trial and error, and that is what pays off in the end.
How Bicom Systems Helps You Turn Leads Into End Users
Now, lead generation and later conversion to end users can be a very resource intensive process and finding ways to free some of them up either through automation, process modernization or other means so that they can be allocated elsewhere is always at the forefront of any business.
That is why we have been developing a more modern take on end user signups, the End User Signup Wizard.
It is envisioned as a module for the PBXware Service Provider edition, but will have the option to be seamlessly implemented into existing websites and will have an open API to allow for the creation of a custom end user signup wizard solution that caters more to your ideal specifications.
Its goal is to compound demo distribution together with lead generation and automate it while allowing our partners an easy way to integrate it into their sites, reducing development time on their end as we provide them with the tools necessary to either utilize our ready-made solution, or customize it to better fit their needs.
It retains the basic functionality of a standard signup form, requesting the name, email address, company name and country from the requested lead for better lead tracking and guides the lead through the process of account creation, finishing up on a referral process should the lead desire to invite others to try the product out.
Said referral process will automatically send out an email to everyone added to the referral list by the lead using the end user signup wizard.
The product that they receive at the end of the process is a free variant of the white label version of gloCOM, Communicator, providing the users with its core functionalities with some limitations like only being able to generate 20 extensions as a free user or time limitations on meetings, but none that would severely hamper the apps functionality.
The free plan will further prompt users to upgrade should they want to experience the full capabilities of the Bicom product suite if they were satisfied with their demonstration through the free version.
We have plans for further enhancements to the wizard, but we will wait for deployment until initial feedback is received, but the core goal is to make our lives and the lives of our partners’ easier by providing a ready-made, but customizable solution for user signups and lead generation and conversion.
Providing For Our Partners
Lead generation, conversion to end users, customer retention and so on, all of it plays a vital role in business success and growth, both for us, our partners, and every business out there.
That is why we were hard at work to find a way in which we could enable an easier approach to these processes for our partners, both present and future ones.
We offer a partner-centric approach which is why we do not plan to stop with the benefits here.
Our teams are always looking into ways to make working with us as frictionless as possible and we hope that that reflects through our actions as many of our existing partners can attest to.
Know that you are always safe in our hands, so feel free to contact us if you are curious. Our teams are eager to hear from you.