Smart Practices for Successful Lead Generation

As a building materials manufacturer, it is critical for you to build, nurture, and maintain a lead generation program designed to attract interest from prospects, introduce your brand and your products to them, and ultimately convert them from passive observer to active customer. That journey between those two points in the lead funnel typically does not follow a straight line and is fraught with obstacles.

In today’s digital world, the more potential clients you drive to your website, the higher the chance of capturing a lead for your business. Cultivate those leads by assessing their needs and gaining their trust, and you end up with qualified leads that are primed to interact with your brand and buy from you.

The key: Reaching the right people with the right message at the right time.

Gather an Audience

According to Moz, 75% of people do not click past the first page of search results on Google. This means placing your brand high in the rankings becomes an imperative.

Effective search engine optimization (SEO) drives higher search engine results for your brand so that it shows up near the top when people search for your products and services online, thereby increasing the chances that a prospect will visit your website. SEO requires constant cultivation. For instance, smart SEO practices include segmenting your audiences and subdividing them based on their actions. Then, you need to specify keywords and phrases associated with your industry or product and ensure those terms appear on your website prominently. This can generate a higher standing in search results based on relevancy to a potential client’s search terms.

Search engine marketing (SEM) introduces a paid component to your digital marketing efforts. By identifying and purchasing the right search terms, Google will serve up your ad to prospects that are searching for products and services you provide. This places you in the consideration set with people already primed to potentially buy from you.

Content is King

When searching for opinions or advice on a specific subject, we typically rely on someone we consider to be an expert. As a building materials manufacturer, establishing yourself as an industry expert plays a fundamental role in growing your customer base. It enables you to build trust with your audience.

To earn your position as a thought leader, you must put in the work. This means developing and maintaining a content marketing program that enables subject matter experts within your organization to share their insight and perspective on key subjects or trends that relate to your business and the industry at large. You need to share a steady diet of content – from blog posts and authored articles to white papers and CEUs – that demonstrates your position as a thought leader. Merchandising such content – via email, on your website, and on social media – provides another avenue for leads to interact with your building materials brand.

Get Automated

Have you introduced marketing automation into your marketing matrix? A well-maintained marketing automation program empowers your organization to capture leads, cultivate them, and ultimately drive them from prospect to customer.

Using one of the many robust platforms available in today’s marketplace, your organization can automate your digital outreach to your database of prospects. Fueled by content that puts your brand and products front and center, your marketing automation program delivers timely, relevant, impactful messages to your prospects and then scores those prospects based on how they interact with that content and your brand. This illuminates who is most likely to purchase from you and serves as critical intelligence for your sales team.

Stick the Landing

A landing page is another important tool in the toolbox for lead generation. Brands that create a customized landing page can deliver highly targeted messages to their prospects, driving them to the page for initial interaction and qualification.

Smartly designed landing pages provide certain pertinent information about the brand and products but are focused on getting people to state their intentions (sign up for something, provide contact information). Highly interested visitors may choose to add themselves to your database, in effect raising their hands for additional interaction and engagement. They can also then proceed to the full website.

Such a step – driving prospects to a landing page – can fill your pipeline with marketing-qualified leads earlier in their journey to discovering more about your brand.

Promise and Deliver

You have a website. People are clicking on your website. Now what? A webpage visitor’s next action is a crucial step in optimizing your lead generation.

Strong calls to action on your brand’s website should lead to the immediate gratification that people seek. Create a sense of curiosity and urgency, and then make sure the payoff is there for your visitor. Ensure that you deliver what you promise – whether it is more information on a product, or a way to interact with someone in your organization.

Ask yourself: Would I click on it? Am I curious to know more? And when my website visitor clicks on the call to action, are they getting what they seek?

If not, go back to the drawing board.

BLD Marketing can help you create a digital marketing ecosystem for your building materials brand that is primed to search for and secure qualified leads.