I had the opportunity to co-host a webinar about lead capture strategies with the brilliant Tim Paige, Conversion Educator at LeadPages. LeadPages, a thriving software company located in Minneapolis, is experiencing remarkable growth. Founded in 2012, they’ve achieved millions in revenue with a customer base exceeding tens of thousands. During our webinar, Tim and I shared insights on lead generation and demand generation strategies that have propelled our companies’ growth at a rate faster than most. My own company, nexus-security, has surpassed a decade in business and maintains its rapid growth, generating millions of dollars in yearly revenue. So how do we accomplish this? Let’s delve into how these two successful startups generate leads, drawing on LeadPages’ analysis of over 4 million monthly opt-ins and nexus-security’s success in increasing revenue and clientele tenfold through PPC strategies!
Defining Lead Generation
Before we explore the strategies for business growth, let’s ensure a shared understanding of the terminology. A lead is simply an individual who has expressed interest in your business. Anyone providing their contact information—whether to participate in a webinar, download a guide, subscribe to a newsletter, etc.—can be considered a lead. By engaging with your business website and granting permission for contact (usually via email, sometimes phone), they enter your sales funnel.
Therefore, lead generation, often shortened to “lead gen,” is the practice of populating your sales funnel with individuals interested in your business. Any action prompting someone to grant contact permissions or enabling remarketing to them qualifies as a lead generation tactic. For instance, imagine you’re a digital marketer for a company specializing in building backyard decks. A lead generation strategy could involve creating a free, downloadable PDF guide on deck maintenance. Since interested readers must provide their contact information to access the guide, this content acts as a lead generation tool. It’s a method of providing value while simultaneously filling your funnel with leads. Clear? Excellent. Now, let’s shift our focus from contracting companies to startups and examine seven lead generation strategies to populate your funnel with potential customers.
7 Lead Generation Strategies for Startups
Disclaimer: It’s unnecessary, and potentially detrimental, to implement all seven strategies. Why? Because every startup is unique. While these strategies have been successful for our companies, they might not be the perfect fit for yours. It’s possible that only one or two of these strategies will resonate with your business. And that’s perfectly fine. Carefully evaluate each strategy in the context of your revenue, resources, marketing objectives, and competitive landscape. While we believe in the effectiveness of these lead generation strategies, there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for growth.
1. Diversify and Enhance Your Opt-in Opportunities
Webinars, free reports, live demos… don’t limit yourself to just a couple of opt-in options. Transform every blog post into an opt-in opportunity. Offer valuable resources such as recipes, downloadable PDFs of your blog posts, worksheets, and comprehensive guides.
Instead of relegating your opt-in box to the sidebar, consider implementing a pop-up. Encourage users to make a decision – do they want this or not? It’s easier to decline when the option is passively sitting in the sidebar, easily ignored.
Testing has shown that this approach can increase conversions by 32%. While you can’t force a “yes,” you don’t have to make it effortless for people to say “no.”
2. Embrace Testing, but Test Effectively
While seeking expert advice is valuable, assuming that what worked for someone else will automatically work for you can be misleading. This doesn’t mean disregarding good advice, but rather emphasizing the importance of thorough and proper testing. Incorporate split testing even in areas where you might not deem it necessary. Sometimes, the results within your audience can be unexpected, highlighting the critical role of testing. For example, you might assume that using “my” or “your” wouldn’t significantly impact results.
However, the test revealed a 24% decrease in conversions for the treatment! Point of view can significantly influence outcomes. In another test, changing “your” to “my” resulted in a remarkable 90% increase in conversions:
Other elements to test include immediacy, concreteness, images, and more. Experiment with your headline, button copy, and background image. The outcomes might surprise you, leading to more effective and data-driven optimizations.
3. Design Landing Pages for Clarity and Action
Take inspiration from Tim’s highest-converting landing page:
What contributes to its effectiveness? Tim explains that it minimizes the information processing required from the user, unlike lengthy videos or text-heavy pages. It outperforms free reports because many individuals experience information overload and are hesitant to download more content to consume. Video lead magnets have faced some challenges recently, partly due to the overwhelming number of launches and time constraints. This landing page excelled in this context. Moreover, people are genuinely interested in discovering tools used by others, and this page satisfies that curiosity. This approach is adaptable for various businesses – dentists, plumbers, architects, you name it. This type of lead generation landing page can be created quickly and is definitely worth exploring.
4. Elevate Your Ad Copywriting
This remains a consistent message – the majority of ads fall short. They lack excitement, originality, and compelling factors that differentiate them from the competition. Let’s analyze these ads:
From a searcher’s perspective, price becomes the primary differentiator. This is what I refer to as an AdWords Jackpot for advertisers. When ads lack distinctiveness, a significant opportunity arises to stand out from the crowd with a compelling message. Crafting better ads can boost your click-through rate (CTR) above average, positively impacting your Quality Score. To delve deeper into writing impactful ads and their potential to lower cost-per-click, explore the insights in “Going Unicorn Hunting: The Secrets Behind Ads with 3x the Average CTR.”
Free guide5. Enhance Your Offers
Unless you’re among the top advertisers, there’s substantial room for conversion rate improvement. Notably, the top 10% of landing pages boast conversion rates 3 to 5 times higher than average. Their secret? One effective approach is to present more compelling offers. This goes beyond superficial optimizations like tweaking button colors, fonts, or spacing. Software companies typically offer free trials, while plastic surgeons offer free consultations. What unique, engaging, and genuinely valuable proposition can you offer your visitors? At nexus-security, this meant reevaluating our standard free software trial. Instead, we decided to offer a free Google Ads Grader.
The results were remarkable – our conversions skyrocketed! We had identified a non-committal and practical resource that resonated with our audience without requiring them to go through the steps of downloading, installing, and actively using our software. This has proven to be one of our most successful lead generation strategies to date. If your conversions are lingering at 2% or lower, consider making a bold move like significantly revamping your offer. Incremental optimizations will yield incremental results. The top 25% of advertisers enjoy an average conversion rate of 5.31%, while the top 10% achieve over 11% on average! The potential for growth is substantial.
6. Leverage the Power of Remarketing
Remarketing empowers you to tag website visitors and re-engage with them as they navigate the web, check their email, watch YouTube videos, conduct Google searches, and even browse Facebook.
It effectively converts abandoners into leads, a crucial benefit considering that 97% of individuals leave landing pages without converting. Remarketing amplifies the impact of your other startup marketing efforts – content marketing, social media marketing, etc. – by keeping your brand top-of-mind. Remarketing through the Google Display Network offers extensive reach, connecting you with 92% of internet users in the U.S. across countless websites, videos, and devices. We’ve observed that remarketing ads have a fatigue rate about half that of regular ads, so embrace a proactive approach. Utilize our Remarketing Cheat Sheet to get started.
7. Target Competitors’ Customers with Gmail Ads
Here’s another strategy for generating a significant number of leads, potentially at the expense of your competitors. Gmail Ads are powerful tools for reaching your target audience directly. For SaaS startups, your competitors’ customers represent a highly valuable audience. Gmail Ads allow you to tailor your AdWords campaigns to specifically target individuals who receive emails from your competitors, providing direct access to those already familiar with similar products. There are various methods to achieve this. One approach involves targeting keywords frequently used by your competitors. Subscribe to their email lists, identify recurring words and phrases, and incorporate them as target keywords. A more precise solution is to target your competitors’ domains directly. The example below showcases a Gmail Ad from DigitalOcean, a cloud infrastructure provider. As a recipient of emails from other cloud storage companies, I’m clearly part of DigitalOcean’s targeted audience based on domain placements.
When expanded, the ad looks like this:
This strategic use of Gmail Ads enables you to connect with the same audience you would through search engine marketing campaigns but at a fraction of the cost.
Sustainable Rapid Growth Requires Robust Lead Generation Strategies
Tim and I have experienced remarkable and accelerated success with our respective companies. To achieve similar growth, prioritize your lead generation strategies and implement tactics like the ones we’ve recommended to attract a substantial number of qualified prospects to your funnel.