How To Generate Leads: Step-by-Step Guide

hey guys this is Bill Rice again with Bill Rice strategy and today I want to take you through step by step on how to generate leads I think too often in the digital channel um we kind of assume that folks are consumers or even in the B2B context we assume that folks are paying a little bit more attention um that you think and we might not necessarily understand or know the patterns that will make it really easy for that visitor on your website to convert so I want to to take you through that step by

step I also want to talk about prioritizing and stacking um those actual lead generation tactics because you kind of have to have some foundational elements and you can start really simply and then from there you can kind of Stack some things on um as those priorities sort of build and will create a much more robust lead generation program so let's start at the very basic so first and foremost you have to have some form of landing page this is something to actually capture that visitor now we haven't really talked about how do you get the

visitor there first but you do have to start with the landing page first because without that um you potentially can get a lot of attention start to build some audience and not actually have some place for them to go so I like to start with this landing page landing page again in its simplest form can be a variety of different solutions there's things like card that allow you to just do a real quick email capture uh I'm a big fan of gumroad because I can actually you know know deliver something of value there and it

gives me all the infrastructure to to build out a nice landing page uh put some sort of you know PDF or some sort of proxy um for an MVP of my product on there and be able to to efficiently and effectively deliver that so gumroad is a big favorite of mine ultimately you'll probably move on to something like WordPress and have a full-on website but let's focus first on the landing page so what do you need on the landing page well one you need a a clear and concise header of some form um that should

be again not over complicated be very clear as to what the value proposition is what am I going to give you or what problem am I going to solve or what solution am I going to give you a good good solid header nice and clear don't get flowery don't don't overdo the copywriting just tell them what you're going to give them and then underneath that is a little bit of copy that just gives them a little extra dose of what is the benefit of doing the next thing that you're going to ask them to do

and then of course you're going to ask them to do something that's probably going to be filling out a form um which I you can kind of see I'm I'm laying out the page here mentally because I use the same pattern because it's really effective um and that is simply if you're looking at the web page on the left- hand side put that header that positioning statement or that benefit statement um ask them to do something and then over to the to the right of that page um as again you're looking at it on your

screen have some form of of form to be filled out right to capture that information it can be as simple as the email address I'm actually a big fan of what I call a a survey style or a multi-part form where you're actually asking them a series of questions and you're moving through multiple pages and then ultimately ask them for their contact information um and on that submission you get a lead um and then hopefully you're delivering something or at least responding to them in quick order the reason I like those survey style forms um

is just simply because uh and we've done lots of test and I have the data to support this about 80% of the leads that I generate through my agencies um are actually filled out this is even in a B2B context which always surprises me is actually filled out on a mobile phone um so what does that mean on a mobile phone you got small screens it's hard to kind of type into those web forms um I also also hate the um the ask that is a web form that has name and email in this description

box you got to kind of think what am I going to write in there or what should I write in there and instead the survey just ask them the questions and gives them multiple choice um as to what you want to know when you receive that lead or the information you want to exchange for whatever that value proposition is and that's kind of a a really clean and effective uh transaction and again gives you a lot of information the other way I explain it is given the choice between an essay um test versus a multiple

choice test when you're in school which did you always prefer right the multiple choice probably um and essentially the web form is the essay if you're asking to to think up what to put in the Box um and in my multipart uh survey style form I'm actually asking them the questions and giving them choices so they don't really think about it they can just pile through that form pull through rate um is so much better okay so that's the first thing a landing page now we're going to build on that um the next thing that

we would hopefully build on um but before I guess I get there it's important to reinforce I can start my campaign right there right I can create some content on LinkedIn or Twitter or some platform that already has my ICP in there and then I can simply push them to that link landing page boom I'm in business I'm starting to run lead generation campaigns but let's go continue to build out on that kind of the next thing you want to do is you want to probably incorporate that landing page um or links um to that

landing page from a website um and so again building the website doesn't have to be overly complex doesn't have to cost a lot of money I suggest starting uh that build on WordPress uh for a couple of reasons one WordPress is a great platform fairly simple to use you could do it yourself uh but if you can't there are literally thousands of people that can help you design and develop uh an incredible WordPress U platform and do it really well there's a bunch of templates that are built um for it so it's a great place

to start um and it will serve you long term as well so you don't have to blow up that website you just get somebody to iterate on it it also has great bones um as far as supporting SEO um and even um PPC so Google ads usually likes it when you're driving traffic to it so I would always suggest WordPress there are some other things uh web flows is a really popular one especially in lead generation because again um it allows you to be pretty efficient getting things up I'm not sure um although a lot

of people would debate me on this I'm not sure that it will serve you as well um in some of the SEO strategies and those sorts of things and even though it's kind of build is being very simplistic um I personally have found it a little bit complex and has a bit of a learning curve to it so it's it's not simply sort of uh copy and paste so but there's a couple different options but let's not get wrapped around the technology as much as what should be in that website and again I'm a big

fan of keeping things fairly simple um and thinking about where traffic and where visitors are going to interact with that website and then making sure that each of those most typical um intersections or or points of interface are fully optimized to capture lead so here are the kind of the four sort of use cases that you should optimize on your website the homepage um I'm going to start here even though personally I don't really think about starting there but everybody else does your homepage actually especially in the early days um will get little to no

use honestly um things that you're kind of ranking for if you're doing content um particularly if you're doing PPC you're not going to drive traffic to the homepage right the homepage is really only going to satisfy those people that are doing a little extra research on you or validating if you're going through a vendor management process they'll probably land on the homepage um and then quite honestly your own internal processes I I find some of the biggest users of the homepage are of the people in the organization trying to find something that they could use

in a sales or marketing context or whatever so um so I think again homepage you should definitely think through how you lay that out I still want that um lead generation structure that I mentioned to be at the very top of that page because most of the people that get there especially if they search for your brand and they've landed there um there's probably about SE I think there's even some studies that support this about 70% of those people have already made a decision to interact with you um and so you should put that uh

opportunity to interact and make an inquiry right at the top so that structure um who you are what you do kind of the benefit of interacting with you um asking them to do something something which is to fill out the survey form um so that you can set up a discovery session that's probably what you want right at the top and then the rest of that page is you move down that landing page um which homepage is essentially a landing page all you're trying to do now is um reinforce credibility or build their confidence so

that they can actually make the inquiry so there's a couple things that you can do after that um a lot of times I like to kind of Showcase in a little more depth my product this could be a demo this could be the process that you're going going to go through if if you're providing a service um there can be some examples um as you move down some trust indicators maybe there's some logos um maybe some other things in the industries that you serve that kind of reinforce your credibility and expertise um and then another

thing which kind of goes sort of hand inand with that is um listing out or creating some sort of grid of the content that's on your website the blog post this will help for SEO but it'll also give people a little bit of I'm a big fan and and talk about this in a lot of videos creating rabbit trails and rabbit holes um this will allow them to to binge in that so think about sort of your little Netflix grid um so that they can binge on your content and really start to buy into your

approach and as they read through that it's going to help your sales process because again if they've kind of moved through that and then they inquire they're going to have bought into your approach your your positioning on you know again whatever your product or service is so that's going be um really effective and then of course footer in that footer don't neglect it um there should be some great contact information I'm a big fan of putting faces on Brands right so that means um we need a good address we need a good phone number um

ideally we were linking off to an about page that tells our story um we're linking off to maybe some leadership or um some some bios and and showing that there are faces B that organization I think sometimes when we think digital um we create these sort of faceless Brands and I think that really erodes trust and credibility and makes it harder for that to convert but if you show hey there's a story there's a Founder there's some people that work there um they kind of look um and act like me or um probably have some

Affinity maybe in Reading their bios and that sort of thing will help kind of conversion in there so that's the homepage um landing pages not much extra to go over there landing pages are kind of structed constructed in the same way the only difference um for landing pages is I usually have kind of two things in mind with landing pages um most of these will be used for PPC um but those kind of two categories um that I that I line them up against is One landing pages for each of the products or services that

I sell so it's very specific it's important in the digital context to to be as narrow and niched as possible even when we're talking about traffic so have a specific landing page for every product or service that you deliver and if you're delivering Services Maybe sort of productized version of those services and then I also like to do landing pages that have more of a scenario context so if there are certain use cases or scenarios um whereby people interact with you um sometimes in the B2B context maybe we'll we'll um slice out uh and create

landing pages by Services uh service sectors that I support or by industries that I support or different roles or scenarios so again um some more scenario based use case landing pages I think are really important and then again how you structure those um are all very um very much the same right capture at the top um and then reinforce credibility and Trust As you move down that landing page um the third category that I want to optimize for is content so um if I'm doing any sort of SEO strategy um which I advocate you doing

that as early as you possibly can uh even if you're writing the content yourself start to write content um hopefully you know get an SEO tool take a look at the the different search demand and and potentially the difficulty um and we're you know actually write on topics that people are actually searching for there is some demand for short of that if you don't have those tools you probably know what those are and so to write content that um is again more sort of problem and solution oriented um seems to be the best the other

thing that's a really good category of content is to right um comparisons I've had all kinds of success U by comparing myself or the product or service that I'm selling uh to competitors and um those comparisons often are done in searches and they indicate them being very low in the funnel they're getting ready to transition uh into buying that's why they're comparing um and a lot of brands are afraid to mention their competitors but I found it very effective uh to be honest and transparent in that comparison and to mention yourself alongside of those competitors

those tend to rank really well and that's great content and then of course we're making sure that we have called to actions in there or little um sections or blocks inside of our content that again reminds them what we do how we can help them and then gets them off to that survey style form so that I can get a lead or a demo uh scheduled and then the fourth and this kind of works together with a lot of these others is a lot of times uh people um need to actually have material that they

want to take away and consult with others right maybe there's a committee that that's part of the buying decision maybe there's a spouse at home that needs to to kind of Buy in in the B Toc context and so a lot of times people want to take away some content lead magnets are great for this right gives you a deep dive and and prepare some nice beautiful easy to understand content and then exchange for that um you can gate it or not gate it and tend to like to gate it because it gives me sort

of a test uh of again can I complete a transaction so if I'm a startup lead magnets are a great way to sort of MVP my product and see if I can get an exchange of value going right can I actually get somebody to give me something of value for what I'm doing and that again can kind of test ahead of actual revenue or an actual true product can I complete a transaction lead magnets are a great test of that okay so now we've got our Hub our foundation our lead generation platform um now we

got to get some traffic and move uh towards it so traffic-wise um there's really kind of three categories big categories in my mind um SEO and content which is again content you're going to create on your site ultimately Google's going to take a look at that uh put it in its index as it sees appropriate and then hopefully get you some page one rankings so that those people will search um for Relevant Search terms and then come to your site land on some of those articles this takes a long time to kind of work even

if you're really good at it um I advocate doing it as again as soon as you can but don't expect the lead generation results to happen terribly quickly now this can be totally different if one you got a little bit of SEO chops or you're working with an agency um or you're kind of in in a new and emerging uh field it's got a little bit of search demand in that you can have sort of outsized results from this so um regardless I would would recommend and like for you to start this as early as

possible because ultimately it will be your largest driver uh of lead generation traffic next thing and this is usually the first place that um new Founders and and startups should start and that is to find a social media or a platform uh that you're comfortable on this could be LinkedIn is a big one for B2B could be Twitter uh could be YouTube I think is a great one uh that's emerging um there's a variety of others find a platform that already has your audience and start producing content for that um and then the nice thing

about that is the traffic is already there you just have to produce the content and again think through use a little bit of strategy figure out what content Works kind of play to the algorithm get that content in front of them and then of course your CTA is to drive them back to your website that's kind of the first place um that you can really quickly get some essentially free traffic just takes a little bit of sweat and sort of figuring some things out um the last one um and again depending on what your capital

structure is this could be the first thing you start with or this could be the last uh because it does take some Capital um I this is the one category that I recommend you getting an expert um because in PPC on these app platforms you can literally light money on fire um and so uh if you're not an expert uh particularly if you're in a competitive um sort of marketplace so um not talking my book here um but regardless us or someone else I do um really encourage you to reach out to an agency or

somebody with some expertise some proven expertise um in the area um that you're actually going to run these ads because again um it's there's some complexity in there there's algorithms now involved um and again it it's going to take an expert even I having been in this business for 20 plus years um would not run personally um Google ads or Facebook ads um even with as much knowledge as I have and a pretty good familiarity with the tools themselves um I hire experts right because it's just becoming that complex um and the money um is

a significant risk particularly if you're a startup or or a founder and you're using your own Capital so um get an expert there um then the last phase and again this can kind of start at different tiers um but I usually start this after I've got the other infrastructure because um this category email marketing is actually going to have a tendency to give you the opportunity to drive people back to that lead generation platform so email marketing I think is something that's important um to start as soon as you're generating leads because all of those

leads should be going into your list um there are some other ways to generate some list lead magnets are a great way to again acquire um subscribers to that list that list over time will build and become a nice base of loyal icps um that are already vetted um because of the variety of ways that they actually come onto the list and then you can start to segment them and um I always call my email list the cash register because every time I send out an email uh guaranteed to make Revenue off of that again

assuming that I've done some things right I always Advocate starting with a newsletter something like substack super easy it's free uh substack has a lot of features in it that will help make that easier and you can kind of um and write that personal newsletter to your ICP that's kind of the best way to start it there's all kinds of strategies outside of that but I think that's a good place to start the other place um that you should be using email is all of those leads should be coming into a seal RM um again

there's a variety of these go high level super popular I personally use clothes in the context of B2B uh in the b2c there's all kinds of different ones HubSpot um is B2B and b2c uh Salesforce pretty popular although talking about lighting money on fire uh they can get really expensive in a surprising sort of way so uh Beware there but there's a lot of great uh CRM systems what you want to do with email there is you want to have some sequences built in so as those leads come in and they hit certain status is

you start some automation that allows you to kind of talk um intelligently um in in what seems like kind of a relevant natural way to that client uh and to those leads inside your database even while you're working on the actual people that are engaged with you and you can let that database sort of work in an automated fashion so hopefully that is um as step by step and concise as I possibly can be on generating leads um as a founder or startup or your business um that is really the format that will work and

has worked for me over and over again client after client um and it's pretty easy if you just kind of take it step by step um even you can do it without too much of external assistance so hopefully um you enjoyed this uh if you've been here up until this point uh like And subscribe and that way you'll get more of this content and it'll help the channel or little tiny Channel um grow and and be more influential in this lead generation space so hope to see you on the next one