Last updated on August 2nd, 2023
This guide will help you grasp what inbound lead generation is all about. You’ll learn the finest strategies, newest ideas, and tools to help you get 3x more inbound leads efficiently!
Lead generation is a giant part of what growing a business is all about.
After all, your sales cycle really begins with a lead — so having a way of consistently generating them is key.
When you’re able to drive leads in an inbound fashion, you reap certain benefits that make growing your revenue a lot easier.
Before we tackle the benefits of inbound lead generation, let’s first understand what it’s all about.
- What is Inbound Lead Generation?
- What are the Advantages of Inbound Lead Generation?
- Inbound Vs. Outbound Lead Generation: A Comparison
- 4 Golden Inbound Lead Generation Strategies
- What is the Best Inbound Strategy?
- Always Remembering the Call-To-Action
- Analyzing Your Inbound Lead Generation for Better Results
- Inbound Lead Generation Analysis
- Your Marketing Machine: How to Get Inbound Leads Consistently
- How to Manage Your Leads Effectively
- The Next Step
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What is Inbound Lead Generation?
Inbound lead generation is when you strategically attract prospects to your business, brand or funnel rather than reaching out to them.
The end-goal?
To position yourself in a way where you have to do less “selling.”
This is the opposite of outbound lead generation, where a brand or business will go to the customer.
Examples of inbound lead generation can include videos, blog posts, PR articles, opt-in ads, text message marketing, and much more.
Overall, inbound marketing strategies are 10x more effective for lead conversion compared to outbound strategies!
Seems like a fantastic tool in your repertoire…
So let’s get into more perks of Inbound marketing.
What are the Advantages of Inbound Lead Generation?
Warmer Traffic Leading To Higher Conversion Rates
There are two main types of traffic: warm and cold. (There’s hot traffic too, but we’ll stick to these two for simplicity.)
Cold traffic is when prospects don’t know you, your brand, or your product/service.
Cold traffic is typically associated with outbound lead generation — which makes a ton of sense!
On the other hand:
Warm traffic is when prospects show or have shown an interest in you, your brand, or your service or product.
Producing inbound marketing content, be it a helpful video, email newsletter, or a podcast, will “warm-up” your audience to your brand.
Some of those that are “warmed-up” will buy from you.
Based on Berkeley research, the more we see or hear something, the more we start to like it.
Aka: The Mere-exposure effect.
Inbound marketing is all about building a relationship with your audience. With more interested buyers, there are more opportunities for conversions, leading to more revenue and then back to more content.
Making a powerful feedback loop.
You Gain More Trust and Credibility
Whether your lead is cold or warm, gaining trust or credibility is a MUST.
Think about it:
You wouldn’t choose a chiropractor just because you like his personality. You would factor in how good his facility is, his credentials, and what past patients have to say about him.
Your audience is thinking the same way when they come across your brand.
With inbound lead generation, your inbound strategy can act as a vehicle to bring you trust and credibility.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say a marketing consultant named Michelle uses her podcast to help medical spa owners grow their business.
She owns her successful medical spa, and on her podcast, she gives free and helpful advice to her listeners to implement.
This podcast of her’s does three things:
- Gives her listeners free valuable advice they can benefit from
- Positions her as a credible source
- Being a credible source brings inbound leads because there is trust.
From there, some of her listeners will want to work with her to grow their spas.
With this working, all Michelle has to do is increase her reach, i.e., get more podcast listeners.
Michelle has just created a powerful inbound lead machine based on credibility and trust!
Can Be Less Expensive
Doyen Digital mentions that outbound marketing costs a whopping 61% more per lead than inbound marketing.
It’s later stated that outbound campaigns usually have additional expenses tied to them…
Which can really burn a hole in your marketing budget if there’s no ROI.
It’s no wonder that some companies leveraging inbound strategies see higher profit margins and more conversion rates.
So much so that if they adopt an outbound strategy, like disruptive advertising, they have the cash flow to test out their campaigns and eventually see high returns.
These companies have the luxury of using both methods (inbound & outbound) simultaneously.
A Longer-Term Upside
Inbound lead generation gives brands long-term and sustained organic leads.
How?
Let me explain:
Think about a YouTube content creator making videos about photography and offering his course in the description box.
This YouTuber will naturally get organic sales for his course as more people interested in photography watch his videos.
And if you know a thing or two about the YouTube algorithm, it pushes popular videos to more people that are likely to enjoy them.
This YouTuber creates a long-term inbound system with consistent uploads, bringing him leads even when he doesn’t upload for a while.
As you can see, inbound approaches work well long term.
Inbound Vs. Outbound Lead Generation: A Comparison
We just spoke about four incredible benefits of inbound lead generation, but now…
How does inbound lead generation fare when directly compared to outbound?
Let’s make an objective comparison of the two to understand what would work best for you.
Earlier, we mentioned that outbound marketing is the opposite of inbound, where you’re bringing your product or service to your prospects.
It’s almost like waving a giant sign in front of prospects.
Examples of outbound marketing would be cold calling, social media outreach, door-to-door selling, and cold email.
A benefit of outbound lead generation is that it usually brings more immediate results (good or bad) than inbound since the aim is to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible!
Now, there’s a degree of “playing the numbers game” in both inbound and outbound but outbound lead generation allows for more strategic targeting.
How?
Well, businesses (effective ones, that is) that cold call typically have a specific type of customer they’re contacting, leading to more “to the point” conversations.
Let’s look at inbound lead generation. Even if your content “speaks” to a specific audience, just about anyone can still find your content. (Especially on the internet!)
But inbound marketers don’t get discouraged because inbound lead generation has an overall longer shelf life. (As we stated earlier.)
Once you gain a particular reputation in an industry, you’ll have leads coming to you faster than you can say “wow!” along with less effort!
Grant Cardone is an excellent example.
His popular personal brand attracts people that want to invest in his real estate company Cardone Capital.
Sure, he’s a mogul, but it’s still noteworthy marketing that you can apply yourself!
4 Golden Inbound Lead Generation Strategies
Let’s get into four great inbound strategies.
These four should give you ideas, but it doesn’t mean you have to do them all.
Especially if you don’t have the time, team, or money for every single one.
Choose one or a couple that best fits your niche, product or service, etc.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is the first thing that may pop to mind when you think about inbound lead generation.
Companies that offer buyer persona-driven content see a 45% percent increase in the volume of qualified leads.
Businesses and influencers/micro-influencers everywhere are leveraging videos, blog posts, podcasts, eBooks, and webinars for their content marketing.
Audience size is also a big contributor to how successful your content marketing is. However, It’s not the end of the world if your audience size is small.
Consistently posting content will bring your audience up gradually.
Again, more long-term, but the benefits make it highly worth it.
Media That Paints You in a Good Light
Strong online media or good branding, is a staple in inbound lead generation.
Examples of this include photos, social media, and digital PR articles & campaigns.
If you’re an influencer, this form of content marketing can hold a lot of weight in that it brings trust to your brand.
It’s vital for you to also have CTAs (which we’ll talk about more later) in your media for people to take action on what you’re selling.
Opt-In Digital Advertising
I know what you’re thinking:
“Isn’t Digital advertising technically outbound lead generation?”
The answer?
Sometimes!
If you’re setting up an ad for an eCommerce product on Facebook, for instance, then yes, that would be considered outbound or “disruptive marketing.”
But if your ad has an opt-in page to generate leads and inbound calls, then that is an inbound lead generation machine.
Big contrast.
Opt-in advertising is one of the inbound methods that require a capital investment.
Nonetheless, it’s still a splendid way of getting more traffic, and on top of that…
If done right, leads come in faster than other inbound methods like podcasts and eBooks.
Email Marketing
It may seem ancient, almost dinosaur-like, but email is still alive!
Email marketing has been one of the primary ways of generating inbound leads for many years now!
Not surprisingly, every $1 spent on email marketing gives you an average return of $42!
Using your list of email subscribers, send out periodic emails with helpful information and CTAs for your list to follow through on.
The bigger your list?
The better!
But, there’s still a caveat:
Make sure that your list is made up mostly of your target audience.
(You can even segment micro-audiences within your list, but that’s a different article)
If your email list is gigantic, but 85% of subscribers aren’t interested in your product or service, it could negatively affect your whole campaign!
You may deal with unsubscribers, low open rates, and poor deliverability.
On the other hand:
When your target audience has opted into your list due to interest…
Your email marketing will drive inbound traffic substantially, bringing you a juicy ROI.
VipeCloud’s Sales & Marketing Suite has the perfect email tool for you to send your list email campaigns with ease.
And these campaigns could be the biggest moneymaker for your business.
What is the Best Inbound Lead Generation Strategy?
This question often gets asked a lot by savvy marketers and business owners.
The truth is:
It depends on your needs.
What I mean by this is that you have to take into consideration things like:
- Your budget
- Your niche
- Your audience
- How much time your inbound strategy takes to really work and optimize
- If you have team members to help you out
These are all considerable factors.
For example, it wouldn’t make sense to expect an influx of inbound leads from your email list if you’ve just begun and have 120 subscribers.
In this scenario, you should focus on building your list by connecting with your audience.
Eventually, there will be more opt-ins for your future offers as your subscribers grow.
Pro Tip: You can look at your industry to see how leads are typically generated to get more ideas!
To wrap this section up, here are some questions to help determine the best inbound strategy for you:
- How quickly do I want leads?
- Where does my audience hang around?
- What does my audience resonate with?
- What kind of content am I best at making?
- What task can I delegate that will give me better results?
Always Remembering the Call-To-Action
As simple as this one thing is:
It’s missed in tons of inbound lead generating-intended content.
A jaw-dropping amount…
It’s the Call-to-Action — make sure 90%+ of your content has a call to action.
Where should it be?
CTAs can be at the end of videos, a reminder ending a podcast, a link at the bottom of emails, etc. (You can sprinkle one in the beginning or middle sometimes too.)
There’s a reason why CTAs are so necessary, so we’ll cover that next.
Why Are CTAs Important?
You need a CTA because your prospects may not know what to take action on, or your prospects will forget to take action altogether.
So CTAs help take care of that and also lessen “analysis paralysis.”
Analysis paralysis is when someone can’t decide on something, so they procrastinate…
Even if that product or service can really help them!
For some people, a CTA is all they need to remind them to opt-in or buy. CTAs also make your messaging clear and offer an opportunity for people in your market to gain value.
And this is a unique value only you can provide!
Think about it:
If your services are outstanding — you’re doing everyone a disservice by not adding a CTA to your inbound content.
Remember that your CTA doesn’t have to be the exact same format every single time.
CreateDebate, an online debate forum, was actually able to increase their clicks by 45% simply by making their CTAs look like buttons.
If you’re doing email marketing, personalized CTAs convert 42% more traffic into inbound leads than general CTAs.
Another thing to note is making sure your CTA is in harmony with your content! Meaning your content acts as an introduction to solving the problem, and your CTA product or service goes more in-depth.
For example:
Karen writes blog articles all about her favorite recipes and how to make them. Her excellent SEO ranking allows her to get tons of website visits every month…
Karen can add a CTA at the end of her articles about her Cookbook that details 100+ recipes for her audience.
In this example, the CTA makes sense and is something the audience will like.
Analyzing Your Inbound Lead Generation for Better Results
Inbound lead generation isn’t about just choosing a method and hoping it sticks like glue.
You have to analyze your results and tweak any approaches as needed.
It’s vital to know your numbers:
- How many leads do you want this month?
- How many leads do you get per content, per ad, per day etc.?
- How much does it cost you to get a client, and what is their lifetime value (CLV)?
Just these three questions alone can take your inbound lead generation system to a whole new level.
Also, give your strategy time as well…
All too often, business owners and marketers won’t give a strategy enough time for it to work its magic.
Try a strategy for 45-60 days, analyze your results and improve on it.
After that amount of time and trying many approaches, you can switch your strategy.
Also:
This doesn’t mean you have to do one strategy at a time.
In fact, most businesses doing inbound marketing use multiple strategies!
More About Inbound Lead Generation Analysis
Analysis is crucial for any sales or marketing tactics.
Here are three inbound lead generation tips to keep track of your inbound campaigns.
Always Forecast
Forecasting is all about projecting what your numbers will look like in the future!
Relating it to inbound lead generation: You would analyze how many inbound leads you’ll get in the future, based on today and the past.
Forecasting doesn’t have just to be one timeframe.
You can forecast a week, a month, six months, and even more. It’s great to forecast in multiple timeframes.
Forecasting can be a game-changer when you use the right CRM.
Avoid Vanity Metrics
Vanity metrics are data that you think is important but, in reality, only makes you feel excited.
This doesn’t mean you can’t jump for joy when you get nice comments or appreciate your audience’s quality interactions.
It means that likes and comments don’t necessarily mean your strategy is optimal, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Make sure your primary metric is the inbound numbers that are brought in through your content and the quality of those leads overall.
Speaking of lead quality, that’s the next part of lead generation analysis.
Lead Quality
Not all leads are the same.
Even if you’re generating boatloads of monthly inbound leads, you’ll get some bad apples in there, and that’s normal.
However, if the majority of your leads are low-quality, you have to understand why.
You should analyze your content to see what’s causing such results.
What makes a lead bad quality anyway?
Leads are considered bad quality when the following happens:
- Absolutely no interest in what product or service you’re offering
- Slow decision making/indecisiveness
- Gives limited information
Poor lead quality can be a result of a couple of things:
- Flawed lead qualification process (To filter people out: i.e. “Who this is for”)
- A landing page with inadequate information
- Offers that are based on discounts and not your value proposition
By avoiding these three traps that businesses fall into, you’ll find your lead quality to be 10x better!
Your Marketing Machine: How To Consistently Get Inbound Leads
Earlier, we spoke about finding the right inbound lead generation strategy (or strategies) that works for you.
We mentioned how important it was to analyze your results and improve on them.
Now we have to discuss your inbound strategy as a whole and getting your leads to be consistent.
Because after all:
Who wants tons of inbound leads one month and barely any the next?
Making your marketing machine consistent is all about sticking to what’s working and double or even tripling down on it.
So, for example:
Say you’re sending two emails a week and getting three booked calls for each email.
You can try increasing the number of emails you send out to 3 and see the results, testing in this way will be helpful.
On top of that, growing your list will bring you even better results.
So in this scenario, you’re doubling down on what’s already working.
How To Manage Your Leads Effectively
Okay, so now your leads are superb to mildly superb, and you see consistency.
Getting the inbound leads is only the beginning.
Remember, you are bringing them into your sales cycle.
Which means there are a couple more steps to go until they’re closed.
Even if a lead is good, that doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy at that exact moment. The truth is, some leads will require multiple touchpoints.
This is why you need to have the ability to manage all your leads in one place in an efficient manner. Having all your marketing tools in this one place also adds efficiency.
A sales & marketing CRM is your best bet for managing your leads as best as possible.
Businesses lose thousands of dollars in a given year simply because they aren’t managing prospects effectively.
Forgotten follow-ups, missed calls, missed emails, lousy scheduling, you name it.
MarketingSherpa, a research Institute, found that an increased effort in lead scoring can increase conversion rates by 79%.
CRMs allow you to put systems in place to avoid these accidents, things like follow-up automation, sales pipelines, and task reminders.
Thankfully, VipeCloud’s Sales & Marketing Suite has made it easier more than ever to manage your leads efficiently.
Your prospects are all in one place, and their revenue value is shown for you to understand how big the deal is.
Not to mention there’s email, text messaging, and tons of other features to make your sales cycle more efficient.
You also get a bird’s-eye view of your dropoff rates and wins/losses, which helps you analyze your inbound lead generation strategy more closely.
Lastly, a CRM helps you make intelligent and sound decisions based on data and results.
We may not like to admit it, but most of the decisions we make as humans are emotional.
What’s the Next Step?
Inbound lead generation is a fantastic marketing strategy for the long-term.
Your leads typically convert higher, and your level of trust as a whole is a lot more compared to outbound.
Outbound still has its perks, and you can even get to a point where you’re using both.
For inbound lead generation itself, though, you can use tons of methods but stick to one or a couple that gives you the best results.
How do you know if it’s giving you good results?
Looking at the data! But to have your data organized soundly in one place requires a robust CRM like VipeCloud’s Sales & Marketing Suite.
This is the premier CRM that small to midsize businesses are leveraging to manage their inbound leads efficiently!
And add more digits to their revenue.
If you’d like to take your inbound lead generation process to its full potential, start your 15-day FREE VipeCloud trial today.
Got questions? You can book a free demo call to see it in action for yourself!
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