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How to Generate Leads & Keep Them: 10 Best Strategies & Templates to Use

Mahnoor Sheikh
Written by Mahnoor Sheikh
Published at Jul 13, 2023
How to Generate Leads & Keep Them: 10 Best Strategies & Templates to Use

Despite spending billions on marketing efforts, 61% of businesses admit that generating leads and traffic is their biggest challenge.

Even more alarming, studies show 79% of leads never convert into sales!

Not being able to attract and hold onto leads is a real setback for your business. Think of all the customers you've missed and the revenue you've lost.

In this article, we'll show you how to pull in leads and keep them interested. We’ve also sprinkled in handy templates and best practices to get you started on the right foot.

Before we begin, here’s a short selection of 8 customizable lead magnet form templates you can easily edit and publish with Visme. View more templates below:

 

Table of Contents

Quick Read

  • Lead generation is the process of attracting potential customers to your business. It's about sparking interest in what you offer and encouraging people to get in touch or provide their contact information.
  • Lead generation can benefit your business by helping you increase brand awareness, attract the right prospects, save time and resources, and measure progress.
  • The typical lead generation process involves identifying and attracting leads, capturing their information with contact forms, qualifying and nurturing them, measuring success and then using that data to optimize future lead generation campaigns.
  • Some strategies to generate leads include sharing valuable content, creating lead magnets, optimizing lead forms, leveraging SEO and social media marketing, offering AI support, hosting webinars and demos, creating interactive content and landing pages, and improving website UX.
  • Maintain and retain your leads by sending them regular email campaigns, creating the right type of content that aligns with their funnel stage, and implementing a CRM system to track your lead journey and make data-driven decisions.
  • Visme is your perfect lead generation partner. Our all-in-one platform can help you create engaging visual and interactive content, design attractive lead magnets, capture leads with interactive, no-code form builder, leverage analytics and more.

 

What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is the process of attracting potential customers to your business. It's about sparking interest in what you offer and encouraging people to get in touch or provide their contact information.

For example, you might publish a blog post or an ad linking to a contact form. A target customer who reads your content might fill this form out and leave their email address with you.

Adding a bit of cleverness to the mix and knowing how to find a prospect email can make a difference, giving you a direct route to strike up a chat.

Now you’ve got a lead—someone who’s interested in what you’re selling. Your job is to reel them in, turning that interest into a purchase. It's the first step in making a stranger a customer.

 

The Importance of Generating Leads

When it comes to running a successful business, lead generation is a big deal.

Without a pool of leads, your business lacks the very people you need to convert into customers. And without customers, your business can't generate revenue.

That's why not having leads directly threatens your ability to make sales and reach business goals.

Here are three main benefits of lead generation:

  • Increase brand awareness: Lead generation campaigns expose your business to new audiences, making more people aware of your brand and what you offer.
  • Attract the right customers: A well-targeted lead generation strategy helps draw in the people who are most likely to convert, ensuring your efforts are focused on high-potential prospects.
  • Save time and money: By focusing on qualified leads, you streamline your sales process and reduce unnecessary expenditure on unlikely prospects.
  • Provide measurable results: Lead generation strategies deliver tangible metrics, such as lead conversion rate and cost per lead. This helps you evaluate success and optimize future campaigns.

 

The Lead Generation Process

Made with Visme Infographic Maker

 Before you can get those leads pouring in, you need to understand how the system works.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the typical steps involved in the lead generation process.

Identify and Attract Prospects

The first step is to scope out your ideal audience through market research. Pinpoint potential leads by diving into their demographics, interests and habits. Then, craft messaging and content to attract them to your business.

For example, you could publish an insightful blog post, share posts and run ads on social media or share a free ebook. The goal is to spark interest, drive prospects to a landing page and convert casual browsers into potential leads.

Capture Lead Information

You've got potential leads on the hook; now it’s time to reel them in. This step is all about capturing information and turning visitors into leads. For example, you could add a clear call-to-action on your landing page that nudges visitors to sign up for a newsletter or download a guide.

Lead forms template - lead nurturing
Create beautiful lead forms that drive conversions in minutes!Sign up. It’s free

Other tactics to capture leads include running limited-time offers to create a sense of urgency, using gamified or incentivized pop-up forms, and creating compelling landing page copy that highlights the benefits of getting in touch or subscribing.

Qualify and Nurture Leads

​​Not all leads are created equal. Some are ready to buy; others need a little coaxing. Here's where your sales team steps in to separate hot leads from the lukewarm ones.

Then, it’s time to nurture these qualified leads to conversion. For this, you can use strategies like sending personalized emails, hosting webinars and implementing great customer support. The aim is to deepen your relationship with leads and keep your brand fresh in their minds.

Track and Measure Success

This is the stage where numbers do the talking. With a close eye on key metrics, you'll understand whether your lead gen strategy is working or needs a tune-up.

Here are some metrics to track:

  • Visitor-to-lead conversion rate
  • Lead-to-sale conversion rate
  • Drop-off points
  • Number of downloads or subscribes
  • Views and engagement on online lead magnets
  • Cost-per-lead (CPL)

This data will provide insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your lead generation process and guide your future decisions.

Optimize Future Lead Gen Campaigns

Finally, use the insights you got from measuring success to generate more leads in the future. For example, you could tweak your overall strategy, create more relevant messaging, refine your targeting or use the best type of offer based on test results.

Note: These steps may vary depending on your business type and audience.

 

10 Proven Strategies to Generate Leads (+ Templates)

You know why generating leads is important and what the lead generation process looks like. But how exactly do you get your paws on those leads?

Here are some tried-and-true strategies to help you land quality leads for your business:

1. Share valuable content consistently

Posting high-quality, insightful content helps you build authority in your niche. This makes your audience more likely to buy from you as they trust your knowledge and expertise.
Of course, this isn’t a one-off job. You need to be consistent. Over time, you will become a reliable source of information in your industry—and that’s when the magic happens.

Wondering what type of content to share? Here are some ideas:

  • Blog posts
  • Videos
  • Newsletters
  • Case studies
  • Ebooks and guides
  • Research reports
  • Infographics

You can create all of these and more using Visme. No downloads. No complex software to learn. No design or coding skills needed. It all works in your browser.

Plus, we have thousands of templates tailor-made for various industries, roles and content types. Peek inside our template library if you don’t believe us.

GIF showing how to choose a template and start editing it in Visme

2. Create attractive lead magnets

Everyone loves free stuff. That’s why lead magnets work so well.

Lead magnets are valuable resources—e.g., a snazzy ebook, an easy-to-follow checklist or a handy workbook—that you offer potential customers in exchange for their contact information, like their email addresses.

There are dozens of lead magnet ideas you can use to attract leads. The key is to create a relevant and useful resource that helps your audience solve a real problem.

Use Visme to create engaging lead magnets your audience won’t be able to resist. You can make interactive ebooks, visual research reports with charts and graphs, checklists, printable worksheets and workbooks, and much more. View our lead magnet templates here.

Lead Magnet Templates

Create valuable lead magnets online quickly and easily by getting started with one of Visme’s premade templates. Impress your audience with attractive lead magnets. Find a free lead magnet template that you can easily customize for your own use.

Create your lead magnet View more templates

Better yet, you can share your lead magnets as downloadable files or simply embed them online—tucked behind a subscriber-only portal or web page. This is an excellent idea if you want to share interactive resources with leads, e.g. a flipbook with links, animations and videos.

3. Optimize your lead forms

An effective lead generation form is simple and easy to fill out. A quick and seamless sign-up process encourages more people to subscribe.
Keep the form fields to a minimum and limit them to only the most necessary information—like names, emails and maybe roles or industries (for B2B leads).

Create beautiful lead forms that drive conversions in minutes!Sign up. It’s free

Also, optimize your form’s design so it looks great across all devices, including mobile, tablet and desktop.

Pro Tip: Not a coder? No problem. Use Visme’s no-code online form builder to design engaging, responsive lead gen forms for your website in minutes. Watch those leads pour in with interactive forms that are hard to ignore. Visme forms
Create captivating lead forms that boost conversion rates in minutes!Sign up. It’s free

Don’t forget to reassure your visitors about their privacy and the security of their data. Add checkboxes to get their consent for receiving marketing messages from your brand. This keeps you out of legal trouble and also builds your list with only engaged contacts.

4. Incorporate SEO best practices

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps your website rank in relevant search results. For you, this means more exposure to potential leads.

Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all SEO strategy that guarantees high ranking.

You need to consistently apply up-to-date SEO best practices and publish high-quality content to convince Google your website is reliable, full of value and promises great user experience (UX.)

Here are some SEO tips to help you get there faster:

  • Conduct keyword research: Keywords are phrases and words your audience types into search engines. Use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to identify keywords related to your industry or services. Remember to balance high-volume, competitive keywords with niche keywords that might have a lower search volume but are less competitive.
  • Understand search intent: What’s the user trying to achieve when they search for a particular keyword? Are they looking for information or specific site or are they looking to make a purchase? Tailor your content to match the search intent to improve its ranking.
  • Build quality links: Create a comprehensive internal link structure, leading visitors from one page on your site to another. Don’t forget to attract high-quality, relevant backlinks to signal your content's value and trustworthiness to search engines.
  • Improve your website: Optimize your site for search engines with a clean structure and enhance user experience with fast load times, mobile optimization and easy navigation. Also, regularly perform SEO audits to keep your website at peak performance.

5. Leverage social media marketing

Social media is a gold mine for lead generation. It's where your audience spends much of their time—making it the perfect place to engage with them!
Start by identifying the platforms where your audience is most active. Then, craft a regular posting schedule.

Pro Tip: Visme’s social media scheduler can be incredibly useful here. Design and schedule posts for multiple platforms and organize them in a nice calendar view for easy management. a GIF showing how social media scheduler works.

Mix promotional content with engaging, value-driven content to keep your audience interested. Remember to leverage a variety of formats like videos, reels, static posts, carousels and interactive stories to break the monotony and capitalize on trends.

Additionally, invest in your reach by running ads. Paid ads help you catch the eye of potential leads who may not have heard about your business yet. Boosting your organic posts also helps you squeeze more results out of them.

Finally, keep the conversation flowing by responding swiftly to comments and messages. Don’t forget to encourage user-generated content to build deeper connections with your audience.

6. Offer live support with AI chatbots

Want to convert curious visitors into leads? Offer round-the-clock, exceptional customer service with AI chatbots —they don’t sleep and reply instantly!

Automating live chat on your website helps you promptly answer questions, resolve issues and address any concerns potential leads may have.

This not only saves you time and resources but also helps generate more leads by educating visitors about your brand, products and solutions.

You can always redirect to a human customer rep if a unique query comes up and the chatbot is unable to solve it!

7. Offer webinars and product demos

Webinars and demos are a great way to showcase your industry knowledge and highlight your product’s key features and benefits. This helps build trust and interest among your audience, making it easier to convert them into leads.

For example, suppose you’re selling CRM software. You could host a webinar on how to handle customers. During the webinar, answer attendees' questions and illustrate how your product can solve common issues they face in customer service.

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download
Pro Tip: Use Visme to create engaging, visual webinars. Browse our library of webinar presentation templates or start from scratch and build a unique slideshow online using our robust presentation software.

After the webinar, send a follow-up email to all participants, offering a free trial and linking to the recorded webinar for future reference. This strategy will not only educate potential leads about your product but also establish your brand as an industry authority.

Best part? This isn't a one-off thing. Record your live webinars and share them on your website. Turn them into evergreen content that keeps generating leads long after the session has ended.

8. Experiment with interactive content

Interactive content (e.g. quizzes and surveys) encourages your audience to engage, making it more memorable and shareable.

This helps you reach a larger audience, including potential leads. Plus, interactive content makes people more interested in your brand. If done right, they’ll appreciate your creativity and likely sign up for more.

Pro Tip: Use Visme to create all kinds of interactive content easily. For example, you could design an interactive ebook with links, videos and digital page-turning, and share it as a lead magnet. Or, you could make an interactive quiz and embed it on your website. When users complete the quiz, ask for their email to send them their personalized results.

Interactive content can be a fun, non-intrusive way to collect lead information while providing value and entertainment.

 a GIF showing how the hover effect works

9. Create targeted landing pages

Your landing pages act as specialized “storefronts.” Why does this work? Because these pages speak directly to specific segments of your audience.

When a potential lead lands on a page that resonates with their unique needs, challenges or interests, they're more likely to engage with the content and take the desired action.

At Visme, we have created dozens of landing pages catering to different types of potential customers. Here are a few examples:

an collage of Visme's landing page

For example, if you’re reading a blog post about data visualization, the CTA might take you to a landing page about our graph maker, which is likely more in line with your needs.

Landing pages are also great for visibility. The more high-quality, targeted landing pages you create, the more niche keywords you can rank for in search engine results.

10. Improve website user experience

Your website is often the first point of contact with potential leads, and its design can make or break their experience. To make their journey as smooth as possible, ensure your website has intuitive navigation, quick load times and a responsive design.

Consider the placement of forms and CTAs—are they easy to find and use? Is your content easy to read? Does it provide clear value? Small improvements can have a big impact. Consider running user experience tests to identify any problem areas and fix them.

An optimized website is also great for SEO, which can double your chances of generating quality leads. Use Visme to create perfectly sized website graphics and headers that won’t slow down your website. All of our templates are designed using optimal dimensions.

SkillUp Online Courses Website Header
Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download

 

3 Ways to Maintain & Retain Your Leads

Wonderful—you've learned how to generate leads.

But is that enough? Not nearly.

You also need to keep your leads and help them become paying customers. Otherwise, these leads are hardly of any use to your company.

Let’s see how you can maintain and retain leads:

1. Create the right type of content

We’ve already discussed the importance of creating valuable content. But you also need to create the right type of content to retain those leads you worked so hard to get.

What does this mean? Let’s look at the typical sales funnel:

Awareness → Interest → Evaluation → Purchase → Loyalty

Lead generation starts at the awareness stage. But as leads progress through the funnel, your content should evolve to match their needs.

For example, blog posts, infographics and educational content are great for grabbing attention initially and making leads aware of your brand, the problem it solves and your offerings.

Create informative and beautiful infographics

  • Hundreds of premade infographic templates
  • Dozens of charts, graphs and data tools
  • Premade content blocks to make design easy

Sign up. It’s free.

Create informative and beautiful infographics

But when leads reach the interest stage, it’s time to engage them with product-focused content like guides, tutorials and demos. They’re already aware of your business; you need to get them to start thinking about becoming your customers.

Once they’re convinced and have shortlisted you as a potential buy, they’re in the consideration/evaluation stage. Here, you need to create content that pushes them towards purchase, such as case studies, reviews and testimonials.

For example, create a video testimonial using this Visme template and have your sales team share it in their bottom-of-the-funnel content and communications.

Customize this template and make it your own!Edit and Download

Or, design a beautiful case study and share it with prospects in the evaluation stage. Show them how your business has helped others like them achieve their goals.

2. Regularly send out email campaigns

There’s a reason 2 out of 3 marketers use email as part of their marketing strategy. Email marketing is still one of the most powerful tools for nurturing leads, distributing content and keeping prospects engaged with your brand.

Use emails to regularly send product updates, reminders, promotional offers and other relevant information to your leads. This helps you stay on top of their minds (and inboxes) and provides them with multiple opportunities to engage (e.g. make a purchase or read a post.)

Newsletter Templates

Create beautiful and professional newsletters online quickly and easily by getting started with one of Visme’s premade templates. Find a free newsletter template that you can easily customize for your own website or mobile app.

Create your wireframe View more templates

You can also send out a warm welcome email series to onboard new leads and introduce your brand. Explain what they can expect in your newsletters or help them learn how to use your product more effectively.

Just make sure you draw the line between email marketing and email spamming. Avoid burying your subscribers under promotional or irrelevant emails.

Also, use segmentation and targeting, get subscribers’ consent to receive your messages and make sure every email you send provides them with genuine value.

3. Implement a CRM system

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can be a game-changer for your lead retention strategy. It can help you manage your leads more effectively by:

  • Tracking conversations: Keep a record of all your interactions with your leads. This helps you understand their needs and preferences better.
  • Automating follow-ups: Set up automated emails or messages to follow up with leads and ensure none of them are left unattended.
  • Visualizing lead journey: Map out your lead’s journey to identify where they are in the sales funnel and what actions you need to take.
  • Personalization at scale: Send personalized messages to a large number of leads, making them feel valued and increasing the chances of conversion.

 

Take Your Lead Generation to the Next Level with Visme

And there you have it—a comprehensive guide to ramping up your lead generation game. With these actionable strategies at your disposal, you're ready to attract, capture and retain high-quality leads that are likely to turn into paying customers.

But why go it alone when you can supercharge your efforts with the right tools? Visme can be your secret weapon for creating engaging visual content, designing irresistible lead magnets and capturing leads with interactive, no-code forms.

It's time to level up your lead generation strategy. Sign up for Visme Forms, browse our lead magnet templates or learn more about lead generation and its various components.

Mahnoor Sheikh
Written by Mahnoor Sheikh

Mahnoor is a freelance writer and content strategist for B2B SaaS brands (and a toddler mom). She loves to talk about marketing, sales, branding and visual design. When she’s not working, she’s chilling at home (or the beach), cooking gourmet dinners for her family or traveling the world. She’s currently based in Antalya. Connect with her on LinkedIn or check out her website.

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