What is Lead Generation?

Let’s Focus on the Top of the Funnel.

The top of the funnel. It’s frequently overlooked by marketers. But, if you want to drive leads, you must start at the top of the funnel.  The top of the funnel is the place where people go from zero awareness of your brand to recognizing it with familiarity.

In the old days, the top of the funnel was filled by expensive, shot-in-the-dark advertising campaigns like buying billboards or lead lists. Today’s marketing funnel looks very different. A billboard cannot give you user feedback or behavioral data, but a website and pay per click campaign certainly can. Blog posts tracked with tools like Google Analytics provide immediate feedback from your customers. Lead lists are almost outdated as soon as you buy them, but an email list can be cleaned up automatically, meaning you are always up to date.

So, how do marketers drive visibility in today’s digital landscape? That’s where lead generation comes in.

Lead Generation: How Marketers Get in Front of New Audiences

Lead generation. It’s a new term to the marketing world. Some think of it as advertising, others as sales, and still others as SEO. It’s the process by which a marketing team uses campaigns to drive people to their website, where people are encouraged to “convert.” A conversion can be a phone call, or a filled-out landing page, or a signup for a free trial.

There are many ways generate leads through top of the funnel marketing. You can use social media platforms to drive traffic to a landing page on your site. You can make an editorial calendar based off historical content marketing performance.  There are many ways to reach untapped audiences.

Ask yourself:

• Do you know your cost per lead?
• Does your VP Marketer know Google Analytics?
• Do you know your homepage’s conversion rate?
• Did you make your bed this morning?

If you answered no to any of these (be honest), resign immediately and take the next six weeks to reflect on your choices. Just kidding. But you need to get a handle on your marketing data so you can stop burning through your marketing dollars without a positive ROI. Every day you spend unable to answer these questions, you are wasting more time, more money, and more happiness. For whatever reason, your brand isn’t aligned with your customer. That’s ok, we can fix it. But you can’t waste any more time guessing at where your marketing budget is going.

Ready to get serious about growth? Apply for a free SEO audit with us and start putting hard data to your marketing efforts.