For successful business development, it is necessary to engage in customer acquisition. In marketing, the term "lead" is used to denote a potential customer who is interested in a product or service, but has not yet made a purchase. This term is now used not only in the digital field, but also in offline sales.

The marketing strategy uses lead generation as one of the sales stages. These are actions aimed at getting people interested and getting their contacts. In the future, marketers work with these people, conduct activities and carry out sales. The goal of lead generation is to get traffic for your site, to interest potential buyers, to push them to take the targeted action. All this piques people's interest, they are actively exploring the site and your product. The contacts left give marketers the opportunity to further contact potential customers and make sales.

Lead generation tools

The selection of tools for lead generation depends on the business area and goals. The most common options are:

• callback order form;
• subscription to the newsletter;
• free materials;
• lead forms on social networks.

Usually, a lead magnet is used to get contacts of potential buyers. This is a bonus, a gift, a discount or useful information that can be obtained by entering an email address, phone number or by choosing a messenger for feedback. In this case, the company gets contacts, and the lead gets a bonus.

Features of working with lead forms

Now one of the most effective methods of lead generation is the use of lead forms in social networks. They help marketers, even if the company does not have its own website, as they work with targeted advertising.

Lead forms work as follows. Social media users see the ad and click the button to read it in full or receive a bonus. Next, a form opens in front of the person, partially filled with data from his profile. The user adds the missing information, and the company receives the lead's contacts, with which it can work in the future.

Typically, marketers use lead forms on these social media platforms:

• Instagram;
• Facebook;
• Vkontakte.

All data from lead forms are loaded into a special file. You need to periodically check this information and import it for further work. You can save your time by customizing the integration of this tool with your maintenance software. Thus, all your lead data will be stored in one place, and you will not lose information and start building relationships with potential customers as part of your marketing strategy.

Take advantage of the software Gincore, which integrates perfectly with all social networks. The program will help you in all marketing tasks. It will also help you conduct advertising, save lead data, and then use it for further communication. Gincore has all types of maintenance and control over the work of subordinates. This is the best solution for your business in any area.

Sources of leads

Many marketers work on finding sources of leads:

• advertising on social networks;
• contextual advertising;
• SEO-optimization for search engines;
• content on the website and in social networks.

The choice of sources for lead generation depends on the characteristics of your audience. You must study your target audience, draw up a portrait of the client, understand where your potential customers spend their time, in which social networks and at what time of day they are most active.

After you get the lead data, you need to work with the sales funnel to convert the lead into a customer. Work well at each stage to get a high conversion.

Advertising costs to generate leads

You launch an ad, people are interested in it, and some of them perform a targeted action, becoming your leads. To make this happen, you create an advertising budget. To plan it, you need to understand how much funds to allocate and how many leads you can attract with such a budget. In this case, you need to calculate the cost of attracting a lead in advance.

The following advertising payment models are used to distribute the budget:

• CPA - payment only for targeted user actions;
• CPM - the cost of showing an advertisement, usually considered the cost per 1000 views of an ad banner;
• CPC - pay per click when a user clicked on an ad.

The CPA model represents the most realistic cost per lead. However, lead generation is carried out for several advertising campaigns. Experts recommend showing different types of ads, not only aimed at increasing conversion. You need to advertise the company correctly, build the trust of the audience step by step, and then advertise to get leads.

Analyzing the cost per lead, reduce it to all advertising costs and marketing activities. It is important to consider the cost of promoting goods/services not only in terms of advertising costs to increase conversion, but also take into account all the actions that led to a lead.

Sales costs

In addition to the cost of attracting a lead, calculate the cost of sale - CPS. Of all the leads, only a fraction of the people whose contacts you received will become your customers, which is important to take into account when planning your advertising budget. To calculate the CPS, the following indicators are taken into account:

• advertising costs;
• lead processing expenses;
• resources spent on making sales.

In order not to manually calculate the costs and effectiveness of advertising, use the analytical systems Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrica, as well as the "Statistics" module of the program Gincore. This will allow you to understand how much money you are spending on generating leads that turn into customers and shop at your company. In the future, using analytics, you will determine the effectiveness of advertising and will be able to adjust your marketing strategy.

Start attracting leads right now, do ads and build a sales funnel to get as many customers as possible and sell your product. Not only advertising tools will help you with this, but analytics programs and the CRM system Gincore. While your competitors are just studying the market, take action now and successfully promote your business.

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