8 Lead Generation Marketing Trends to Use in 2022
B2B and B2C companies rely on lead generation. They need leads that are converted into sales through their sales funnel. However, there are various lead generation platforms, tools, and trends currently available on the market.
Lead generation is ever-evolving and constantly changing. New tools are always available, and the trends are updating continuously. For 61% of marketers, lead generation is the biggest challenge. Around 53% of marketers spend half of their budget on lead generation.
When it comes to lead generation marketing, there is so much information out there. When you do a Google search and write "lead generation", over 531 million results return. With that amount of blogs, articles, and videos, you're bound to feel lost.
Well, you don't have to worry. We have got you covered. To learn more about lead generation marketing trends, we've compiled this guide for you. With this guide, you can understand this marketing practice a little better and use it effectively.
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What is Lead Generation Marketing?
Lead generation is a practice through which you attract potential clients to your products or services. You're improving your future sales, and this is an essential part of the sales process in most firms.
A lead is anyone who expresses interest in your company's products or services, but they haven't purchased anything yet. This makes them potential customers and not actual customers yet. You can assume they will be doing business with you soon with effective sales marketing.
Future of Lead Generation Marketing
Marketers have now gained access to a variety of new lead generation marketing technologies, platforms, and tools. This has greatly helped streamline the entire process and made it much more effective.
With new tools, markets and sales professionals can now personalize advertising allowing it to reach potential clients. With this level of precision, the quality and quantity of the leads generated will also increase.
Furthermore, if any company desires leads, its main focus will be on the kind of incentives it will be providing. Businesses will be seeking "lead insight" for a longer term. They will have to utilize different incentives, trackable behaviors, and various promotions instead of just gathering emails of prospective customers.
Currently, more than half of the sales representatives spend their time on a lead that doesn't convert into a sale. Around 50% of prospective customers are not a good fit for what a particular company is selling or offering.
However, with AI and customized approaches, organizations will grasp each candidate's uniqueness and improve their conversion leads. Marketers expect their lead conversion rates to improve tenfold.
The future of lead generation marketing is now based on social selling and personalization. People don't bother paying attention to advertising, emails, and brand pop-ups. To reach the right clientele, organizations would have to focus on finding leads through personalized marketing.
Personalization will be the key because mobile marketing, influencer marketing, and word-of-mouth marketing are here to stay. Referrals will also help organizations as 92% of consumers will purchase a product or service if a friend or family has recommended it.
Importance of Current Lead Generation Marketing Trends
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the world went into a remote and digital mode of operation. Following that sudden change in everyone's life, lead generation was also dramatically altered. Organizations can update their lead marketing strategies when they are aware of the current trends.
In recent years, there has been a quick transition to digital methods of engagement when it comes to enhancing buyer awareness. This has enabled marketers and decision-makers in a company to explore various approaches without contacting salespeople.
B2B consumers prefer digital self-services now over traditional services. They find digital services way more comfortable because they find ease in remote buying. All new lead generation marketing trends are a result of this change.
Top 8 Lead Generation Marketing Trends
Customers now want to be approached with as much information as possible about a particular product or service. More emphasis is now being placed on finding ways to incentivize and innovate the process of generating leads.
Once you're done gathering, approaching, verifying, and converting the leads, the process of marketing communication begins. Let's take a look at the top lead generation trends that can help marketers boost their conversion rates in 2022.
Conversational Marketing
Chatbots are now the new normal. They're a form of AI and have been set up on a company's website or platform to interact with customers. This is conversational marketing. According to predictions, around 70-90% of the healthcare and banking sector will now be using chatbots.
This trend continues to rise because chatbots are used to answer people's questions and guide them in real-time. This also generates leads quickly because the chatbot collects data including addresses, contact numbers, names, feedback, and style preferences of all prospective customers.
The lead response time is five or less than five minutes. However, most companies fail to meet this time frame when following up with their leads. This makes the use of chatbots much more effective.
Additionally, chatbots also require minimal coding and help guide customers easily because everything has been tailored according to the customer's preferences. Chatbots are free and can be easily set up, especially if a business has a Facebook page.
With such a trend, the aim is to maximize potential lead generation while simultaneously automating the process in a thoughtful way. Often, website chatbots spam visitors, leading to lost interest. Your chatbots need to be helpful instead of annoying.
Voice Search Marketing
Nearly 91 million people in the US and almost 200 million people worldwide own smart speakers. Voice search has quickly become a top method of online searching. No wonder most businesses are now optimizing their content and websites for voice or speech searches.
People are more likely to pose their queries or searches in the form of a question. For example, on Google, you would search "best lead generation practices", but for smart speaker searches, you'd say, "Alexa, what are some of the best lead generation practices?".
To reach prospective customers and generate better leads, you have to tailor your content and make sure it seems conversational enough to be picked up by search engines. Long-tailed keywords are optimal for text searches, but for voice searches, you can review the most asked questions and incorporate them on your website's Q&A page or FAQs.
Video Marketing
Video marketing has been around for a couple of years now. With 86% of businesses employing video marketing tools and using video marketing to reach more customers, the trend is here to stay and won't be going out of style anytime soon.
Live streams, webinars, webcasts, demos, and short videos are pretty popular on most websites and social media platforms. Online videos make up more than 82% of the internet traffic.
Apps like YouTube and TikTok are excellent marketing apps because most consumers prefer watching a video over reading a text. Humans can engage with videos easily, and as a company, you're more likely to find prospective customers, impress them, and convert those leads through creative videos.
Influencer Marketing
In recent years, more businesses have offered paid partnerships with influencers. Regardless of the niche, most influencers have teamed up with one business or another. This helps businesses extend their target audience and reach more people.
In the US, influencer marketing budgets will surpass $4 billion this year. In 2023, this is expected to reach $5 billion. With these figures, you might understand how good of a lead generation tool influencer marketing is.
When businesses engage in influencer marketing, be it a blogger, YouTuber, TikToker, or social celebrity, their audience is filled with potential leads. You have to select the right influencers to partner with, keeping in mind your brand's values.
How you choose to reflect your product or service through the influencer will greatly impact your prospective customers' decisions. You need to go for an influencer people trust and an influencer who can vouch for your product or service.
This will help your partnership go a long way and generate quality leads for a long time. The influencer needs to know how they can actively promote and use your product or service. They must endorse it in a way that allows customers to the benefits. In the end, the influencer must attach the links to your website or landing pages for effective marketing.
Facebook and Instagram Ad Marketing
People are addicted to scrolling and spending most of their time on multiple social media platforms. This includes Facebook as well. Facebook has more than 2.9 billion active monthly users. Instagram has more than 1.3 billion active monthly users.
Facebook and Instagram ads have become an effective marketing strategy for most businesses. Companies can generate qualified leads through social media marketing, especially through mobile phones.
People who find an ad impressive enough can simply click on it and find all the useful information. It's an ideal marketing tool, and with the right targeting capabilities, page placements, and Call-to-Actions, your business can find leads in no time.
AI-Driven Tools
Most businesses have now successfully employed Artificial Intelligence for lead generation through their platforms. They use AI-driven platforms, which help them generate leads. AI-powered applications and software are also useful for finding leads.
Such software is more effective and way faster than any sales or marketing specialist. With the help of AI, huge amounts of data can be processed and structured in a way that helps businesses find information about their leads.
AI-Driven tools can help organizations obtain data in different formats, collect emails, draft messages, and then send those messages to all prospects. This saves up time, and marketing specialists or sales teams can devote this time to other tasks.
Interactive Content
This is one of the most important lead generation trends, and it will have a significant effect if implemented correctly by businesses. When businesses incorporate interactive features in their content, it can improve their click rate.
Customers respond positively to interactive content like polls, quizzes, surveys, interactive emails, interactive calculators, YouTube videos, and infographics to gauge their target audience's attention. It helps boost engagement and generate more leads.
Account-Based Marketing
While many people might think of account-based marketing as a thing of the past, many businesses are still dedicated to it. It is holding strong and is currently a lead generation trend that is all about dedicated resources to a particular group of accounts they want to target.
More than 92% of respondents of a survey stated they had an active ABM campaign in place. Through this marketing strategy, organizations can find the best leads for their businesses. They can customize and personalize their campaigns according to each account.
This trend is among the hot trends because ABM is effective and delivers results. It is also one way of personalization, and with concentrated marketing and sales resources, a much higher ROI leads to increased engagement.
Businesses can measure the resources needed and easily track everything when they focus on a few target accounts. It saves time and money as well. Strategic ABM involves focused relationship building. It helps in sales and marketing both.
Lead Generation Services
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