Every business needs fresh leads. It’s the same as saying “the sun is bright” or “water is wet.”

We can all agree on these simple truths.

But while we all enjoy a sunny day, it’s hard to appreciate how certain businesses generate their leads.

Especially if your inbox just got FLOODED with “questions” and “inquiries” from people “looking to help you achieve X”… for the nth time this month!

A spammy cold mailing is NOT lead generation.

That’s not to say that email is not a good lead generation technique — quite the opposite.

What matters is how you use it to generate leads. It’s the same with Facebook, paid ads, or any other tool out there. 

Each of those tools could be a pillar of your lead generation strategy. But to make your lead generation truly effective, strategies and tools are just the beginning. They’re the foundation.

To get the most out of your lead generation, you need to keep tinkering. You need to keep adding and testing new techniques — little hacks that might not do much on their own., but as you start adding more of them… that’s when the snowball effect comes into play. You know, the getting 1% better each day ideology.

In this guide, you’ll learn all the little improvements you can add to your lead generation arsenal to acquire more leads. 

Because of how they affect your lead generation, they’re separated into 6 different categories. 

And it all starts with showing potential leads they can trust you. 

Social Proof

On its own, social proof is not a technique that’ll generate leads. You can’t just get a testimonial from your past client and expect it to bring you new leads.

However, social proof helps your potential lead answer the ultimate question they ask before they share their data with you:

Why should they choose you? Why trust you and not the others?

Social proof is what helps them build that trust in you. This makes it a critical element of all your online lead generation creatives – landing pages, emails, ads, and even opt-ins. 

1. Share data & statistics

“By using Encharge, Samdock reduced the cost and time spent on acquiring a new customer by 77%.”

See what we did there?

We used data to show how Encharge can benefit your business. We gave you a solid reason why you should give Encharge a try. That’s if you want to save time and money on client acquisition. 

Sounds like a good deal, right? (hint: it is.).

But, speaking of the data, people love numbers. And, most importantly, they trust them. Data and statistics are excellent tools to emphasize the argument you’re trying to make.

They’re great at showing your audience why they should opt in or pick a given product or service. And they do so much faster than a whole paragraph of dry text could. 

Not to mention that they help build trust in your service almost instantly. After all, if 300,000 other websites are already using your service… you must be doing at least something right: 

Sometimes, just telling others that people like them are already on your email list can skyrocket your email opt-in rate: 

That’s because numbers increase their confidence in your words. Your audience members feel they can trust you and act accordingly. 

Of course, these can’t be any numbers. Ideally, you want the data that you share to:

• Leverage social proof. For example, present the number of subscribers on your opt-in. 
• Show one of your client’s results achieved with your tool or services. That way, you can take advantage of data AND your client’s success at the same time.

• Help understand the scope of improvement (see Asana’s example in the next section). 
• Be meaningful for your target audience. If you target different personas, see if you can share relevant statistics. 

If you don’t have any client data yet, you might use industry statistics. 

For example, find data showing the average results of people using a product or service just like yours. It won’t be as strong as leveraging direct success, but it’s better than nothing! 

2. Add testimonials

Client testimonials are “the ultimate” social proof. They prove that whatever you offer solves a problem your audience has. And what’s critical here is that your audience trusts them.

Most people — up to 88% — trust online recommendations. And why wouldn’t they? 

After all, most testimonials come from people who are just like them. If they’re a potential customer, they want to solve the same problem as your existing clients did. 

It’s the reason testimonials work so well. Their use on sales pages can lead to a massive boost in sales. 

Make sure to combine them with data that can further emphasize the benefit. “20% more efficient” helps paint a picture of time savings which is better than just “more efficient”: 

Considering all that, it’s no surprise they’re so common on creatives at all stages of the sales funnel. 

What’s important is you don’t have to wait until you’re trying to sell something to use them. You can add testimonials even to creatives targeting people at the top of the funnel. 

And you don’t have to limit yourself to reviews of your core products or services either. 

For example, if you’re giving away a free course… why not add a testimonial from someone who’s already participated in it? 

The same can be applied to any lead magnet that you’re giving away, be it an eBook or a newsletter. Even one testimonial next to the opt-in can skyrocket the conversion rate:

But what makes some testimonials more effective than others? In the case of a newsletter, you want the testimonial to come from someone who is:

• A long-term reader.
• An industry expert/authority. Someone that your audience would trust.
• Facing the same problems and pre-sale objections as the potential subscriber does. Someone they can identify with. 

Ideally, the testimonial shouldn’t just mention the problem. Make sure it mentions the benefits your lead got from signing up too.

Social proof is just one type of online lead generation techniques that can get you more leads.

In the next category, we dive entirely into hacks that apply to your (probably) most effective lead generation channel. 

Email Marketing

Email marketing can be an extremely effective lead generation strategy when executed right. That’s why even a small change to your email funnel can yield great results. And what if you made not 1 but 3 or 5 those “little” changes? 

Here are the top “email marketing” hacks to boost your lead gen results. 

3. Add a CTA to your email signature

Even if a particular email is not promoting anything, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t add a subtle CTA to it. 

First, you never know when someone will take action. Some people might do so just because they see a CTA. Or they might come back to your email after some time and see the signature. 

Plus, people often forward emails to their coworkers. A CTA in that email can introduce those people to your offer. And, let’s not forget that adding it costs you absolutely nothing! So, what makes a good signature?

• Make the CTA in it short and clear. Avoid generic CTAs like “click here”. A simple PS. with a clear CTA beats a boring sales pitch any day:

• Use buttons or graphic elements to help it stand out.
• Don’t make it too salesy. Treat it as an invitation to act.
• Try to qualify the prospect right in the signature. For example, add questions or statements explaining who your offer is for and the benefit. Here’s how a fellow copywriter qualifies his prospects right in his email signature:

Pro tip: In Encharge, you can save signatures using reusable blocks that you can easily insert in your emails, saving you a ton of time.

4. Leverage thank-you pages

Whenever someone signs up for your list, it’s a good idea to thank them for taking action and leaving their email address.

But why not use the opportunity to ask them for one quick favor? 

Since every person that opts in sees the thank-you page, you can use it to ask them to share your opt-in with others.

Don’t force it, and don’t share it. They’ve already done a lot for you. That’s free reach for your brand and, possibly, free leads!

And don’t limit yourself to thank-you pages. You can also ask people to share your lead magnets or newsletters. 

5. Diversify your lead magnets

Lead magnets are what you exchange for your audience’s data (and permission to contact them). But what if your target audience consists of different personas?

In this case, consider creating separate lead magnets for each persona. For example, you can add different lead magnets to different product pages or blog categories. Or you can create a resource center where your site visitors can find them. 

A great example of the latter is Sage Intacct, a financial management SaaS. When you visit their site, you can sort the resources (many serving as lead magnets) by several different categories: 

These categories include various products or industries, automatically “segmenting” the visitors:  

This ensures your audience sees the most relevant content. It also increases the chance that they’ll turn into leads.

To get the most out of this strategy, always make sure that you segment your leads based on the lead magnets they choose. 

One other lead magnet trick you can use for SaaS is to offer both a free trial and a demo or a training session. 

Even if most people prefer to be left alone, some will appreciate the opportunity to get trained. This is exactly what Semrush offers when you sign up for their free trial:

The only drawback is that it’s a time-consuming offer as you need someone to train every lead. But, it’s also a very enticing lead magnet for those who want to learn the ropes of using your tool fast. 

Plus, one-on-one training skyrockets the user’s chance to become a long-term customer. 

6. Spread the VALUE over several days

Fake data and throwaway emails are a huge problem in lead generation. 

Sadly, people are flooded with different lead magnet options (and follow-up email sequences). As a result, many hesitate to share their actual data.

By using a “throwaway” email address, they can snap the lead magnet without giving anything in return. To prevent this from happening, consider “splitting” the lead magnet.

Rather than creating an eBook — create an online course that you can send over a few days or weeks. 

Or, even better, share it on a platform where it’s beneficial to use one’s real data. Of course, you also want to make the course so good they’ll actually want to come back to it.

If you own a robust tool, you might even consider creating an entire educational platform — an academy. The goal? Help your audience grow their skills and get the most out of your tool. 

That way, they have a reason to keep coming back. And, as they improve their skills on your platform, there’s a chance they’ll become more than just leads or even customers. 

By becoming skilled in your tool, they might become loyal brand ambassadors. A great example of such a platform is the Hitchhikers portal by Yext.   

7. Offer people a physical copy of the lead magnet

Another neat trick to differentiate your lead magnet is to go beyond digital lead magnets. A great example of this is offering people a physical book. 

A physical lead magnet is not something people see every day. But, it offers a few great benefits:

• If you charge people for shipping, it helps you segment people who’re ready to spend money.
• It helps you stand out, and can give you free publicity (and traffic).
• It prevents people from sharing fake data
• Because they have to pay to get it, there’s a bigger chance they’ll actually use it. And that they’ll associate the benefits they get from it with your brand. 
• It’s physical, so whenever people see it, they’ll think about your brand. 

Of course, the opt-in rate will be much lower because people need to share more data with you to get it (and pay shipping costs). 

Because of that, you might want to offer it after people have already opted-in for something digital. On the other hand, the leads that you get will be of high quality (and pre-qualified as buyers!). A worthy example of a highly-successful physical lead magnet is Clickfunnel’s Dotcom Secrets. Interestingly, Brunson’s book turned into a bestseller on its own:

8. Create scarcity

A valuable lead magnet gives people a reason to leave their personal details. But how do you increase the chance that they’ll act the very moment they see your opt-in form?

Scarcity comes to the rescue.

It makes your prospect feel they’ll miss out if they don’t act now. A popular example of scarcity in lead generation are time-limited giveaways or discounts.

You can also take advantage of seasonal events. A lead magnet available only during a particular time of the year can be exactly what your audience needs to finally act — for instance, a limited free workshop.

Whenever you’re using scarcity, make sure that it’s genuine. Because it evokes strong emotions, you don’t want your prospects to feel tricked. 

Sure, you want them to act now — but you also want to give them a good reason to do that. After all, your goal is to build a long-term relationship with them.

9. Automate!

These techniques can significantly boost the number of email leads coming your way. 

The problem is, the more techniques you incorporate, the harder it is to manage them all. 

Remember that good processes are those that you execute. But the best ones are those that you automate. 

Thankfully, there’s plenty you can automate in your email marketing alone:

• Use marketing automation tools like Encharge to segment your incoming leads automatically.
• Create workflows that’ll score your leads, tag them, and add them to different segments.
• Set up automated email campaigns that get sent when your audience members take specific action or reach a certain lead score. 

• Write down the list of tools you’re using for your marketing and see which of them integrate with Encharge.
• Connect Encharge with other marketing solutions using tools like Integrately, Zapier, or Webhooks. That way you can automatically move data between all the tools you’re using. 

Today, automation can cover almost every step of your lead generation. You can use it to warm up your leads or strengthen your relationship with them. You can even convert them into buyers without clicking a single button (once you set everything up). 

The more manual work you take out of the equation, the more time you can dedicate to other points listed in this article. 

Don’t forget that automation doesn’t just stop at email marketing. 

Push notifications, text messages, and chatbots are all great tools to add to your toolbox. You could even take advantage of AI and machine learning to up your personalization game and get even better customer insights. 

Leverage your audience

The next set of online lead generation techniques that work focuses on your audience. The goal is to understand who they are and engage them to build a relationship. Nobody knows what they really want better than your audience members themselves.

10. Establish a presence in online communities

People love to network and exchange ideas. It’s one of the things that makes the Internet such a powerful medium. 

If there’s a topic to discuss — you can be sure there’s already a community around it out there.

In the past, the usual places for people to discuss were online forums and IRC channels. Then came social media — especially Facebook with its Facebook groups. By now, many entrepreneurs are aware of how lucrative Facebook can be. 

However, Facebook is far not the only place to find your audience. 

Other great places to look for your audience include Quora, Reddit, Slack, and even… Discord!

Reddit is a huge online community where people can discuss different topics on boards called subreddits. For example, if you own a PPC management software, Reddit/r/PPC might be a good place to get started. 

There’s a subreddit for literally everything. To make your hunt for the right ones easier, try searching for the right keywords over at Redditlist.com 

A word of warning: most Reddit users are extremely aware of online marketing tactics. Trying to promote your software or service blatantly won’t fly. If you want Reddit leads – you’ve got to establish a presence and be of genuine service to the community. 

Similar rules apply to Slack. The main difference is that you interact with your audience using real-time chat. Some Slack communities have thousands of users and tens of topic-based channels to join:  

If you like the idea of chatting with your audience, Discord is another great place to leverage. 

As of now, it’s still a much less popular source of leads compared to other communities. So while its communities might be smaller to those on Slack or Reddit, there’s also less competition. 

This makes your presence in one of Discord communities a great investment for the future. And, like with Reddit, you can search for relevant communities using a tool like Disboard:

11. Ask your audience what they want

Establishing a presence in an online community is just the first step. The key is to use that presence to learn as much about your audience as possible. Sample ideas include:

• Ask your audience about their needs and problems. What do they need help with?
• Discuss their decision-making process. What are the roadblocks they’re facing? 
• What’s the #1 thing that they’re missing out on in their business processes (which could be improved by your offer).

Often, it’s possible to get the answers to those questions just by listening or reading old discussions. However, you can also reach out to your audience directly. A great way to gather audience insights is to use tools like SurveyMonkey. 

Of course, if you see someone openly looking for a solution – don’t hesitate to offer them one.

And whenever you get new insights from these online conversations, leverage them. Use them to create even better lead magnets or improve your trial offer or your product as a whole. 

Extra tip: Use personal brand to grow presence in online communities

The Internet and social media allow people to interact “directly” with their favorite brands. However, many people want to feel they’re still interacting with fellow human beings. So, as an agency owner or a startup founder, don’t hesitate to be the face of your company. 

People want to interact with you. They want to talk to you. And they want to hear from you – as long as what you say can help them. 

Besides, showing the “real you” is the key to establishing trust. And trust is what helps build authority in communities like Reddit, Discord, or Quora. 

That’s because even if you’re recommending a service if you do it as a person, you’re a lot more believable. You come off as someone trying to help rather than sell.

Another benefit of personal branding is that people like to follow those who project success. 

When you have a strong personal brand, you can leverage it to go beyond generating leads in communities created by others – and create one of your own. 

In fact, some SaaS businesses achieve early success thanks to having a community before they were even launched. However, this requires you to have other great reasons for people to follow you (for example, sharing PLENTY of value and helping them solve their problems). 

12. Create a contest — but make it worth the effort. 

The next online lead generation hack is all about good old online contests. And the reason is simple — they can still attract leads like crazy!

A good online contest helps generate brand awareness, attract new followers, or even grow an entire community. 

However, a poorly executed one can annoy your audience and make them disengage. So, what’s the difference?

The key to success is to avoid the “like and tweet to win” contests. We’ve all seen them, we’ve all participated in them at one point, and we all hate them.

First, most social media networks reduce organic reach anyway. So they’re not as effective at building reach as they used to be.

But, even more importantly, most people forget about such a contest the moment they share the post. As a result, these usually attract very little engagement. Plus, most people know that the only reason someone’s sharing the post is to win something.

Instead, try to create an engaging contest. Ideally, it should be a multi-step process over an extended period of time.

That way, people will keep engaging with your brand over weeks or even months. 

Of course, if you want your audience to put in the effort over an extended period — make the rewards worth it.

Lastly, try to avoid sweepstakes. Give clear instructions of what you expect from the winner – and let your most engaged followers do the work. 

13. Engage with your competitors’ unhappy clients

Do you know what’s one of the easiest types of people to convince to use your product or service?

Unsatisfied customers of one of your competitors:

• They already know what they want.
• They know what they need to be done better. 
• They understand the benefits.
• They need a working solution RIGHT NOW. 

Of course, the catch is that they have to be unhappy with the existing solution. Otherwise, why’d they switch to your offer? 

In some industries, 89% of people look for new suppliers after just one bad experience. Plus, it’s estimated that 92% of customers left one business for another after a negative experience. 

And since the Internet allows customers to interact with the brands they’re using… It also means you can interact with those customers, right?  

So, how do you find those customers?

• Follow the social media accounts of your closest competitors. When you see dissatisfied customers, don’t hesitate to interact with them. Show them how your offer can solve their problem – but do it in a non-salesy, casual way.
• Use monitoring tools to analyze brand mentions of your competition. Find the negative ones and see if you can turn them into lead-generating opportunities. 
• Use platforms like G2 or Capterra to monitor reviews and discussions about your competitors. Then, check out the discussions and sift through the reviews to find the negative ones. 

A great thing about those sites is that they encourage reviewers to share the pain points. This makes it easier for you to respond and show how your tool can solve them:

Whenever you interact with your competitor’s unhappy client, you don’t want to be seen as aggressive or pushy. Never attack the other brand. 

And, – this is critical – when interacting with unhappy customers, don’t try to sell. 

Rather, focus on trying to help them. Make your comment about THEM. 

Depending on the medium (and the comment), you can even use a playful tone when making comparisons. Give them a hint of how your tool can solve it, but leave it at that. 

Networking and Cross-promotion

Knowing who your leads are is critical to effective lead gen campaigns. But no matter how much work you put into growing your presence, you can’t reach everyone on your own. 

However, if you work with others, you can reach people who might have otherwise never heard about you. Here’s how to do that.

14. Build partnerships with other brands

Co branded-content is an excellent way to tap into another brand’s audience at a low cost. All you need is the time it takes to create that content. 

Ideally, the brand that you work with offers a complementary product or service. A great example of a highly successful co-branded effort is a webinar organized by Ahrefs (SEO Tool) and Buffer (Social Media Tool). 

Their webinar was a huge success because:

• It helped their audience solve a problem.
• Both brands have a hugely overlapping audience and offer a complimentary (marketing) service. If someone’s doing SEO, it’s likely their business needs a social media management tool.

On top of the above, the keys to successful cooperation are:

• Ensure that the people in your partner’s audience are interested in your product and would benefit from it.
• Make the content highly relevant for both audiences (as seen in the Buffer’s and Ahrefs example). 
• Ask your partner to promote the content in their channels, helping you generate leads for your brand.
• Pick a content piece that’s easy to produce for both brands. Webinars, live streams, and discussion panels usually work much better than eBooks or reports. The key here is they allow both brands to interact with the audience.

Of course, you don’t need a huge company to work with you to make it a success. If you’re at the beginning of your lead generation journey, you can’t expect a brand like Ahrefs to work with you. 

But, if you can find a brand that’s at the same growth stage as yours and is targeting the right audience – that’s more than enough to get the ball rolling. 

15. Reach out to micro-influencers

Just a few years ago, working with people who could promote products and services to their audiences was reserved for big brands. The main obstacles? Very high cost and little supply. 

Today, influencer marketing is a huge industry, predicted to reach 16.4 billion in 2022. What changed?

Thanks to social media, there are now 1000s of people who have micro-audiences of their own. And its easier than ever for brands to reach out to them and offer them a deal. 

Of course, popular celebrities are still reserved for brands with deep pockets. However, you don’t have to go after popular celebrities to succeed. Data shows that celebrity influencers see worse engagement than other influencer groups.

To make your influencer lead generation successful, you want to:

• Find someone who’s targeting the same audience as you do.
• Go beyond Instagram and look into Tiktok, Snapchat, YouTube, or even Twitter. 
• Use external tools to find the right match and save time. Platforms like Post for Rent give you tools to do due diligence and find the right match in just a few clicks. 
• Get someone who’s an expert in your industry – or a related one. So if you own an accounting SaaS, consider finding someone targeting entrepreneurs.

• See if you can create co-branded content similar to that you’d create with another company. After all, every influencer is a brand of its own.  
• Leverage the expertise of micro-influencers. If you find enough of them, invite them to a virtual summit aimed at helping your audience. 

A great example of the last tip was the 2021 WPMRR virtual summit. It was organized by WP Buffs — a WordPress website management agency. Its goal was to help people increase their online businesses’ monthly recurring revenue. Summit’s audience is exactly the people who could be interested in WP Buffs services.

16. Establish relationships with decision-makers

These are the people who often decide which software or service gets introduced at their company. 

A good relationship with decision-makers can also give you access to lower-level employees. All these people are likely to promote your brand in their network. 

Especially once they start achieving desired results.

However, don’t do what 99% of other brands do when trying to get their attention. Don’t go for a sale right away.

Instead, you want to aim for a relationship:

• Treat them as experts and ask them for their opinions about the industry.
• Invite them to collaborate on your content (and feature them in it) to help them grow their own authority.
• Point them at solutions to their business problems. Ideally, they should be related to your product or service. 
• Offer them a free trial of your product.

By doing the above, you take things a little bit slower. But, you give decision-makers time to get to know you. You also give them value in exchange for their time and their “yes”. 

And that value is critical to turning their company into customers. 

17. Crowd-source your content

When it comes to blogging, most people focus on guest posting. And while it’s a super viable way to get leads (we’ll get to it), it often makes you dependent on the other party.

That’s why I’d like to encourage you to turn the tables. What should you do?

It’s simple. Ask people to contribute to your blog – and then count on them sharing it with their audience. 

Now, merely asking random people to write for you for free won’t work.

However, what if you treated them as experts (that they are) and asked them to contribute to a piece that you’re creating?

While it may not always result in backlinks, it can still bring plenty of traffic to your blog. This content generation technique can be used to generate thousands of leads. 

A great example of this idea in action is data tracking tool Databox. The company used this in its content strategy to get over 3500 blog contributors in two years. How did they do that?

They focused on creating in-depth content roundups. Each of their articles is quite comprehensive and has between 25 to 200 contributors. 

Just imagine getting extra traffic from all those contributors reaching out to their audiences! Interestingly, some of their contributors ended up becoming their clients.

18. Network with other bloggers

Guest posting is one of the core SEO “tools” for getting backlinks. But, it can offer a lot more than an SEO boost. 

A good guest post can bring in a lot of traffic, which you can then forward to one of your opt-in pages. That’s how Buffer, one of the leading social media tools got their first 100,000 users. And they did all that with 150 guest posts spaced over 9 months.

Interestingly, their strategy focused more on getting leads rather than the traffic itself. Still, it resulted in a decent SEO boost, too:

Here are four things to keep in mind when planning your guest blogging lead generation:

A) Look for partners, not blogs. 

Think about what you can bring to the table and find websites with which you can create a win-win situation. 

Sure, you could just pay for guest posts. 

But if a blog wants to sell a guest post to you… they probably sell it to others too. This often reduces the quality and the number of leads you can get from them. 

B) Leverage industry experts

While the natural thinking is to try and publish as many posts on other blogs as possible, it’s worth inviting other bloggers to your site too. 

This builds on the idea of inviting people to contribute to your content – as discussed in technique #18. However, here you want to go beyond mere contributions.

Instead, aim for interviews, Q/As, or discussion panels. You want to give them a lot more space than just a short contribution. That way, you get content that’s worthy of them linking back to. 

C) Climb the ladder 

It’s unlikely for a big established blog to partner up with you right away. After all, they’re looking for a “win” for themselves too.

That’s why, when you’re starting your guest posting, aim for smaller blogs. Guest post as much as you can to get more traffic and backlinks. 

The more of those you have, the more eager established blogs will be to work with you. 

Naturally, that doesn’t mean big players don’t offer o any guest blogging opportunities. If your content can pass their rigorous quality checks – you should go for it right away!

D) Create each piece with the goal of getting leads

If you want your guest posts to bring you leads – you’ve got to optimize your content for them. 

Add CTAs, soft-sell your lead magnets, and give people solid reasons to click through to your website or landing pages.

Optimization is key to maximizing the number of leads you can get out of your traffic. And it applies to all creatives in your lead generation campaigns. 

It’s also what we’ll dive into in the last group of our “online lead generation techniques”. 

Conversion

Most lead generation techniques listed so far are focused on helping you get more traffic. 

The idea is you then convert that traffic into leads. 

But getting more people to your content is not the only way to increase the number of leads that you’re getting. Sometimes, a small change to one of your content pieces or creatives can skyrocket the number of leads you’re getting. 

19. Limit the number of choices on your landing pages

What’s the best landing page for your lead generation?

The one that can get you the most leads out of the traffic that you’re getting. Obviously, it’s impossible to convert every single person. 

But, there are little landing page hacks that give you a nice CR boost:

• Each landing page should have a single CTA and a single goal. If you have different lead magnets or audiences — create a separate lead magnet for each of them. 
• Remove the top menu to eliminate distractions. That way, visitors won’t get the temptation to click-through to other parts of your website. 
• Delete all other external links, except for the necessary ones (such as a privacy policy page). 
• Ask only for the data that’s a must-have at this stage. Don’t ask for a phone number if you don’t need it. The more fields you have, the lower the conversion rate. By cutting their number, a webinar platform Livestrom increased their free trial conversion rate by 50%.

20. Make the landing pages more interactive

This technique is all about encouraging people to engage with a page before you ask them for any data. A great example of such high-converting interactive pages is an online quiz. Why do quizzes work so well?

First, it’s easier to grab people’s attention with a quiz than with an opt-in form. This means you can get way more people to start a quiz than you can get to opt-in. Naturally, your goal is to maximize the latter. 

This is where the second benefit of online quizzes comes in. Because every question is a micro-commitment, people are a lot more likely to opt-in once you ask them to. 

Depending on the data source, quizzes can achieve even up to 30% – 40% conversion rate. Which is more than 5 times the average landing page conversion rate.

Of course, plenty of factors will impact your results. These include everything from your industry and offer to your traffic. Still, considering their effectiveness, you should A/B test them on one of your landing pages.

 Here’s are a few tips to help you get started:

• Choose questions that will both entertain and qualify the prospect. You can try to “soft sell” them on the idea of opting in – but that’s it. A quiz should make them think about why they want to opt-in – not push them to do that. 
• Remember that your audience is busy and gets distracted easily. Ideally, follow the three minutes rule, which is the maximum amount of time your visitors should have to spend on the quiz. 
• Use images, gifs, and videos to emphasize the point of the questions you’re asking. And pick those that’ll make the quiz an enjoyable experience! 

And, what to make the quiz about? Ideally, it should revolve around your audience’s needs or potential problems. 

Here’s an example quiz used by Henry Schein One — a company offering practice management software:

And a sample question:

As you can see, the quiz focuses on their clients’ potential needs and problems. Plus, it helps them pre-qualify their prospects, automatically segmenting their future leads.

21. Use words to get more leads

The next “hack” that you can use to boost your lead generation is all about the words that you use on your creatives. Of course, there are many different copywriting techniques. Here, I’ll list some key examples that could have the biggest impact on your lead generation:

A clear benefit right in the headline:

Many marketers make the mistake of writing a headline that’s all about them. They say how great their tool is, focusing on all its features and why they’re “the best tool out there”. 

But that’s not what your potential lead wants to hear. 

They want you to tell them WHY they should choose you. 

What’s in it for THEM? 

For example, Pluralsight, an educational platform, doesn’t talk about how many courses they offer. Instead, they focus on what their potential users want – get the skills to build better careers. 

Just like Pluralsight, BigCommerce doesn’t talk about its great features. And as one of the leading eCommerce platforms, they boast plenty of those. 

Instead, they tell the reader the #1 thing their audience cares about – increased sales. And if you look below the headline, all the bullet points focus on the benefits – not the features.

Strengthen your claim with social proof

Here’s one more example with a benefit-driven headline — this time, it’s a signup form. The rule to focus on the prospective lead and not yourself applies to all creatives. 

That doesn’t mean you can’t strengthen the claim with a little bit of social proof. In the case of ClickUp, that “little bit” comes in the form of customer logos from some of the world’s leading tech companies.

Remind them just how close they’re to getting started

People will quit at the last moment before signing up for many reasons. One of them is the perceived “difficulty” of getting started with a tool. 

That’s why it’s important to keep reminding them how close they’re to doing so (and how easy it actually is). 

In the below example, the No credit card required and “no software to install” remind the user of how simple it is to get started. This gives people an often-needed push and helps them pull the trigger. They know the form is the last thing stopping them from enjoying Salesforce’s great benefits.

Tell the user exactly what to do (focusing on the benefits)

Visitors are more likely to follow a CTA if it comes with step-by-step instructions. Ideally, you want to show them a clear route from the landing page they’re on, to the benefits that you’re promising. 

In the below example, Wallarm, a platform for secure API development, does exactly that: 

By doing this, they can paint the picture in the user’s head of how close they are to using the tool. And, thus, of solving their problem.

Other lead generation techniques

22. Align your branding across all channels

Aligning your branding across different channels is critical to positioning your brand as an authority. 

However, unlike most other techniques, its benefit is more in the “long-term” category. Why?

Consistent branding is not something that your audience sees right away. But, it helps them recognize your brand the next time they come across your creatives. 

Remember that many people won’t opt-in the first time they come across your landing page or website. Many might not even realize they need your software now. 

Consistency helps establish trust and helps your audience remember you. Statistics show that people need to see a given brand 5 to 7 times to remember it. 

Seeing your creatives multiple times doesn’t just help your prospects remember your brand.  It also helps them associate your brand with your claim and benefits. Soon, they start viewing it as a go-to brand for a particular problem.

And when they’re ready – they’re much more likely to choose you over your competitors. 

23. Use the latest marketing tools to get the correct data

Just because someone hasn’t shared their data like an email address yet, doesn’t mean they haven’t given you any data! If they visited one of your landing pages, there’s a chance for you to retarget them with your advertising. That’s if they didn’t opt-out of cookies. 

Retargeting is critical to cutting down your advertising costs and getting more leads. Certain tests show it as the most effective advertising strategy, especially in search. And the best is, retargeting is quite simple to get started with:

• List all advertising channels you could use to target your audience. Then, ensure you’re collecting pixel data for those channels on all your landing pages. You can use tools like Google Tag Manager to help you manage your pixels. 
• Create different ads for different landing pages to keep them relevant and boost CTR.
• If you have multiple client personas, split your remarketing campaigns. Try retargeting based on product pages or specific content categories they’re visiting. 
• Use segmentation to separate those who opt-in from those who don’t to cut costs.. 
• Take advantage of FOMO. Retarget people with time-limited deals or extra trial offers not available elsewhere. 

Pro tip: Automate Facebook retargeting with the Facebook Ads integration in Encharge.

24. Increase landing page conversion rates: 

Tracking is essential to effective A/B tests. Whenever you’re getting enough traffic to a landing page, you should A/B test it. 

In fact, you should never stop testing — there’s always something you could improve CR. To get even more data — go beyond standard A/B tests. With tools like Hotjar, you can see exactly what people are doing on your landing pages. 

All this gives you data critical to tweaking your lead gen campaigns and getting more leads. Remember that a minor tweak to a landing page can sometimes skyrocket your CR.

25. Get better audience insights

Google Analytics is not the only tool to give you insights into your audience. The market is filled with tools that allow you to take a deep dive into your audience. The more data you have about your audience already – the more you can get out of those third-party tools. 

Interestingly, some tools, such as Albacross, take the “who your audience is and where they are coming from quite literally. The tool allows you to see what companies your prospective leads are coming from. This, in turn, allows you to reach out to them and turn them into leads while they’re still interested.

26. Good old cold emails

The next “technique” – cold emails – may seem super obvious. Still, most people mistake cold mailing with spam and, as a result, do it all wrong.

Even though at Encharge, we don’t allow cold mailing, it might be a good thing to have in your lead generation toolbox. That’s as long as you know what you’re doing. To make your cold mailing successful, you want to:

• Use personalization. The key to grabbing people’s attention (and bypassing spam) is to tailor the email to each recipient. Effective cold mailing is not about quantity but quality.
• Put the relationship first. Don’t ask for a sale (or even an opt-in) in the first cold email. Find the decision-maker, build a relationship, and establish trust. Then, show them how you can help them before asking for something in return. 
• Keep your emails short but diversified. Every single person in your audience is busy – so give them a good reason to spend their time reading your email. 
• Give the reader a solid why. Why are you reaching out to them? What’s in it for them?
• Ensure that each of your emails has a clear goal. Whether it’s grabbing the recipient’s attention or pushing for a sale. 

And most importantly – never, ever spam people. If they ask you to stop mailing – simply move on and look elsewhere.

27. Tell people to take action…

Lastly, in whatever it is that you create, be it a landing page, an email, or a lead magnet, ensure that there’s always a clear call to action. 

Data keeps showing us that creatives with CTAs heavily outperform those without them. For example, in the case of Hubspot, a simple anchor link text CTA increased their CR by a whopping 121%.

Why?

The reason is simple. You can’t expect people to act if you don’t encourage them to! 

Sure, some of them will.

But most people need that little push. 

They don’t want to think about the next step – but they’re happy to act if you point them towards it. 

28. And take action yourself!

Reading this article won’t change a thing if you don’t take action yourself. 

So, which technique do you think you could start implementing now?

Remember that you don’t have to implement them all to succeed. But, if you want more leads — you need to start tweaking your lead generation process. 

And if you need help with that — we can give you a hand.

At Encharge, we aim to provide you with a top-notch marketing automation tool for lead generation and nurturing.  You get everything you need to create email sequences, segment your audience, or create automation workflows.

Book a free call, and let’s discuss how Encharge can help you reach your lead generation goals.