Step by Step: How to Get Qualified Leads in 2024

“How to Get Leads?”

We’re sure this question crosses the mind of every manager who needs to deliver sales results.

Beyond simply getting new contacts, a good strategy attracts qualified leads and boosts business results.

Do you want to find where your potential customers are, approach them the right way, and allocate time, team, and investment resources appropriately?

Then check out the tips we’ve gathered in this article.

What is a Lead in Marketing?

In marketing and sales, a lead is a potential customer who has provided your company with contact information or personal data.

Whenever a visitor to your blog, website, landing page, or other communication channels fills out a form, reaches out to your support team with a question, or registers and provides personal data such as name, email, phone number, or others, they stop being a visitor and become a lead—a potential customer.

Read also: Is Your Marketing Funnel “Congested”? Discover the Most Common Problems

What are Qualified Leads?

Not every contact generated is genuinely interested in your solution.

Often, even with nurturing efforts throughout the buyer’s journey, a lead may never become relevant for your sales team, for various reasons.

Some people may not be looking for the product your company offers.

Others may just be curious.

Still, others may have interest but lack the purchasing power needed.

When a lead isn’t yet ready to buy, they need to go through nurturing and qualifying processes to eventually become a qualified lead, someone closer to the buying stage.

Check out: Receiving Unqualified Leads? 6 Tips to Optimize Your Lead Qualification

The 5 Pillars of Lead Generation

Lead generation happens through several strategies and actions that work together to achieve the best results. 

Some of these strategies are the pillars we’ll discuss here:

Email Marketing

If you already have a contact base, you can use it to qualify leads from that list.

Email marketing is a personal channel provided by the consumer and can often be less intrusive.

According to research by MarketingSherpa, 72% of Americans prefer email over other channels to receive company information and promotions.

By analyzing each consumer’s profile and habits, you can offer content and products tailored to their real interests and needs.

SEO

By creating pages and content optimized for organic search (the search done on platforms like Google), your chances of attracting qualified visitors to your pages are much higher.

This includes pages on your website, blog, and landing pages, which should have conversion hooks aligned with the stage of the funnel the visitor is in.

Paid Media

You can also generate leads through paid media.

As campaign targeting can be very specific to the audience you want to reach, investing in media is quite effective for generating qualified traffic.

Some platforms, such as Facebook Ads, even allow lead generation without users leaving the social network.

Explore sponsored link campaigns, display networks, and ads on social media, directing those links to your website, pages, or lead-generation materials you’ve developed, thus creating complete online media campaigns for lead generation.

Learn more: 8 Reasons to Start Investing in Online Ads

Social Media

Another way to get qualified leads is to explore social media to achieve this goal.

Besides social media advertising, you can also create posts in various formats that drive traffic from people who already follow those channels and have some level of contact with your brand.

Content Bait

Content Marketing is the foundation of Inbound Marketing.

It supports your SEO strategy, increases visitor volume to your site and pages, showcases the type of content you can offer, and is also a tool to create materials that will serve as bait and an exchange for obtaining valuable lead data.

7 Inconvenient Truths About Lead Generation

What is the Best Way to Capture Leads?

There’s no single way to capture leads because each market segment and company has a specific target audience, with distinct access, visitation, and traffic characteristics.

The advice here is first to consider your market niche, understand how your customer behaves, and align lead capture with your other marketing strategies, always keeping in mind the frequency of your actions.

How to Get Free Lead Lists?

It’s not worth obtaining free lead lists, and here’s why:

1. You won’t receive qualified leads, as they likely have never even heard of your business;
2. Your contact could end up marked as spam because the user didn’t willingly provide their information;
3. Many contact details may not exist, as these lists often contain random or fake email addresses;
4. Reliable companies don’t use this kind of strategy, so always be cautious;
5. Your sales process becomes poorly structured, as the sales team won’t receive real, interested contacts.

Therefore, avoid free lead lists.

How Much Does It Cost to Generate Leads?

There’s no fixed cost for generating leads, as it depends on your strategy.

Remember that your cost per lead (CPL) takes into account the channel (paid or organic), the type of media, and the interested audience.

However, a fascinating study by Wordstream with LocaliQ shows that the average CPL across industries is $8, with the legal segment having the highest at $14.50.

To understand your CPL, remember to consolidate all your marketing and sales data to understand your Return on Investment (ROI).

Learn more: 50 Digital Marketing Statistics for 2023

How to Generate Leads with Instagram?

The best way to generate leads with Instagram is through Facebook Ads, Meta’s advertising platform that includes Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

With this paid channel, you can promote your brand, enhance campaigns, and achieve results in a shorter time.

Wondering how to do it?

Well, the platform allows customizable campaigns, testing, result measurement, and high investment control.

How to Get Qualified Leads in 2024 — 15 Creative Ideas

Do you want to increase your visitor volume and turn them into qualified leads?

Follow these 15 tips we’ve selected on how to get qualified leads and improve your sales funnel results.

1. Build a Contact Base on LinkedIn

We mentioned how social media is one of the pillars of lead generation.

And one option that many companies often overlook is LinkedIn—which can actually be a gold mine!

LinkedIn is a fantastic source of qualified leads, especially if your company operates in the B2B sector.

You can generate a base of leads through direct contact with people in your target profile, as well as exploring paid tools offered by the platform, such as Sponsored Content, Dynamic Ads, Text Ads, and Sponsored InMail.

🔎 Read also: How to Generate B2B Leads? The Most Up-to-Date Strategies

2. Invest in Paid Media and Remarketing

Paid media helps distribute your content and pages and offers the possibility of working with highly specific segmentation.

This way, you reach your audience based on each profile and purchase stage.

Remarketing, on the other hand, is a paid media strategy used to direct your online ads to people who have already interacted with your brand, whether through your website, landing pages, or social media.

To generate better-qualified leads, you can create more targeted remarketing campaigns, based on visitor behavior and segmented ads aligned with their demonstrated interests.

3. Ask Your Current Clients for Referrals

If you already have a base of current clients, make use of it!

They have their own contacts and networks, so they’ll know who in their circle might also be a potential consumer of your solution.

You can do this through direct contact or by using referral reward systems.

4. Write for Blogs in Your Niche

By creating blog content, your brand increases visibility and establishes itself as a knowledge leader in the market and on consumer needs.

Learn more with our complete article on the topic.

5. Participate in Forums and Respond to User Comments

Another way to position yourself as an expert and attract leads from unexpected channels is through interaction.

Actively participate in forums within your industry and encourage your team to do the same, always bringing the company’s name as a spokesperson.

Additionally, on social media and blogs, stay open to dialogue, read and respond to comments, welcome feedback, and make improvements when suggested.

6. Promote Your Success Stories

Testimonial marketing holds a lot of weight today; consumers like hearing other consumers’ opinions.

It’s very common for people to research and trust other users’ reviews before making a purchase or hiring a service.

So, to enhance your results, allow space for reviews and comments from those who have already engaged with your brand.

And if you can show the results achieved with your product or service, even better! Create materials that showcase these results, with testimonials and data, to attract leads who are more interested in the solutions you offer.

You can see some examples of how we do this at Leadster here.

7. Offer a Free Tool

Another type of content that can generate interest and meet potential clients’ needs are tools that help with day-to-day problems.

Spreadsheets, calculators, templates, or even trials of the tool you sell are examples worth exploring.

🔎 Read more: Lead Generator: The 19 Best Lead Generation Tools for Your Website

8. Partner with Other Brands and Companies

Co-marketing is a way to partner with companies that have the same audience as yours.

Teaming up with other brands can help increase visits to your website and, consequently, leads generated.

To explore this, tap into your network of relationships with suppliers, partners, and even companies in other fields that sell to a similar customer profile.

Various formats can be used, such as videos, e-books, guides, and tools. And both brands’ distribution channels (social media, ads, emails) are activated to bring in more visitors and leads.

9. Host Virtual Events

Virtual events are another type of content that can be part of a strategy to attract qualified leads.

Especially in recent years, virtual events have become even more popular, with brands also exploring this format.

Invest in live streams, video broadcasts or recorded videos, real-time discussion forums, or even complete courses to engage your audience.

With low production costs, easy distribution and promotion, and more personal and dynamic content, virtual events are an excellent way to spark audience interest and generate leads.

30 Data Points and Statistics on Lead Generation You Need to Know

10. Interview an Expert in Your Field

If you need to cover a topic and lack in-depth knowledge or want to add weight to the content by bringing in a reputable professional, prepare content by interviewing an expert.

Online events can be used for this, as well as recorded videos, articles, e-books, social media posts, and blog articles.

11. Sponsor Alternative Content Formats

Another way to promote content related to your brand and gain recognition is to sponsor different content formats.

Media such as podcasts, newsletters, and events are highly popular, and your brand can leverage them to attract consumers and generate interested leads.

Again, your brand can either create these contents or empower other spokespersons.

12. Create a Content and SEO Strategy for Ranking

This strategy aims to provide good positioning in searches conducted on platforms like Google, driving what’s called organic traffic to the site.

So, considering the SEO strategy and rules is essential if you want your content to attract visitors through this source—otherwise, your content may not even appear in the top search results.

SEO encompasses a set of techniques applied to the structure and content of published pages.

So, research the topic, align this strategy with your content production, and invest in the best SEO tools available.

Increase Your Lead Conversion in 3 Steps Proven on 1,600 Sites

13. Create an Interactive Quiz

A more dynamic option, quizzes are often a fun way to drive engagement.

This testing format generates curiosity and can be a way to capture valuable information that a lead might hesitate to provide in a static form.

14. Connect Through Communities

Communities have become a much-discussed topic in recent marketing events.

This strategy connects your business with other partners in the field, creating networking opportunities and increased visibility within the market segment.

This fosters connections between companies and employees, reaching a wider audience and boosting brand recognition.

🔎 Read more: 18 Examples of Platforms to Capture Clients Online – And Their Benefits

15. Replace Forms with a Chatbot

First, attract visitors with relevant content and then offer more in-depth or exclusive content in exchange for visitor data.

Static forms, becoming less attractive, are not the only option for capturing leads.

Conversational Marketing is the alternative and encompasses actions and tools related to conversational contexts.

This can be explored with technologies such as chatbots and virtual assistants.

With automated yet personalized service, you can work more dynamically than with static forms, capture lead data, and begin qualifying that contact right from the start.

Do you like this lead generation alternative but want to understand why you’re losing leads with forms?  

In addition to accessing our article, we invite you to try the Leadster Chatbot for free for 14 days. With it, besides generating 3 times more leads, you’ll have:

• Personalized, proactive engagement with site visitors;
• 24/7 lead qualification;
• Lead segmentation by campaign, page, or profile;
• Real-time updated dashboard;
• A/B testing;
• Lead location, essential for prospecting.

You can count on us! Fell free to check out our AI powered solution too clicking on the banner below.