Lead generation trends: What's working in today's market

In this episode of The New School of Marketing Podcast, I dive into current trends  and long used favourites in the world of lead generation.

From the power of personalised content and interactive tools to the strong-hold of video marketing and the precision of Meta advertising.

Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just starting out in business, this episode will help you with your lead generation and marketing efforts.

I would also like to invite you to register for my upcoming LIVE masterclass where I show you my 4-ad-stack method to sell more of your online courses with meta ads. You can register here.

And the resource mentioned in this episode is the Invisible Ad Funnel, which you can start yourself for just $25. 

Connect with me

Website: www.newschoolofmarketing.com
Facebook: @newschoolofmarketing
Facebook group: @newschoolofmarketing
Instagram: @bianca_mckenzie

Learn from me:

🟣 FREE MASTERCLASS: Sell more of your online course with Meta Ads
https://www.biancamckenzie.com/masterclass

🔵 AIMFUL ADS ACADEMY: Tools, resources & 1:1 support to attract more ideal clients and make more sales with proven, easy to follow Facebook & Instagram ad strategies for any budget. https://www.biancamckenzie.com/aimful-ads/

🟢 FACEBOOK ADS PREP SCHOOL: Find out what you need to know and do before spending money on ads. https://www.biancamckenzie.com/prep-school/

🟡 INVISIBLE AD FUNNEL PLAYBOOK: A practical step-by-step guide to making a big impact with a tiny budget. https://www.biancamckenzie.com/playbook

🟠 FUNNEL FUNDAMENTALS: Building effective sales funnels that drive conversions and grow your business. ...

Transcript

Hey, welcome to the new School of Marketing podcast. I'm so grateful to you for tuning in. And before we dive in, I would love to pay respect and acknowledgements to the Palawa people of Lutruwita who are the traditional owners of the land on which my business operates. And I pay my respect to their elders, past and present. Okay, today I want to dive into lead generation and some trends in lead generation and what's working right now and all of those things. So as markets evolve, so do strategies and so does, you know, attracting and converting leads. So I want to look at that. I want to dive into what's working in today's market. And I also want to talk about how you can use trends to boost your lead generation efforts. So let's dive in. So when I first started my business, lead generation was all about cold calls or about emails. But things have changed a lot and in some ways not at all. It's really interesting. Some things still really work well and they've been around for a long time. So let's look at some effective lead generation trends that are new, but also talk about some tried and trusted ways. The first one I want to talk about is content marketing, and that's nothing new, right? Content marketing has been around. It's literally, it's a cornerstone of lead generation. Things have changed a little bit in what content marketing really is, but it still is about creating high quality, valuable content that attracts and engages your potential leads. Now the focus really is on quality and relevance, not so much on quantity. So it's not about pumping out content for content's sake, which used to be a little bit like that back in the day when blogging was really sort of like new and upcoming. It was all about how much can you put out there? It still had to be relevant and still had to be quality of some sort. But, you know, it was all about putting more out there, putting more out there, using certain keywords so that Google could find you. But now there is so much information available, it needs to be very high quality. The other thing with content marketing is that personalization is key. People kind of expect tailored experiences now so you can use your data and you can use your analytics to create personalized content that really resonates with your target audience. You can learn so much about your audience and use that in your content. For example, and we've been using this for a while, is personalized emails and not just where you just put their name and make like, you know. And that's the extent of the personalization. There's a lot more that you can do with that as well. Another one is dynamic website content. Your consumers, like, you can learn so much about them that you can create very specific content for specific people and lead them like on a bit of a journey. And then the other one is, you know, ads targeting we, well, I talk about this quite a bit. You can get in front of the right people at the right time through targeting your ads to the right people. And really meta is getting better and better at this as well, learning through AI, learning about who our customers are and actually showing it to the right people. So let's look at this a little bit more in terms of content. You need to create valuable content. So you need to focus on creating content that really addresses your audience's pain points and their interest. And I know a lot of us keep trying to reinvent the wheel because we feel like we, we need more content, more content. But in a way, you kind of need the same content but in a different way, or said in a different way, one in a different format. But also your message needs to be the same over and over. So how many different ways can you get your message across? Can you talk about what you talk about? And then how can you use personalization? So you can utilize tools like mailalyte, convertkit, activecampaign, and there's a whole lot more to personalize your marketing efforts. How can you, in a way, build automated sequences, use automation, use AI in a way, and I will get to this later to really personalize that journey for your customer. And another one is to segment your audiences. So segment your email lists so that you can create targeted campaigns for different audience segments. For example, if you offer a service and you offer a course, those are two. Most of the time they're two different audiences. Some people want the done for you, some people want to diY, but the way you talk to them would be very different. Their pain points would be very different. So you need to create, in a way, sequences and automations for each one of those people. You need to speak to them with your content, and the content is all different. And then personalize that for each one of those audiences. The next one I want to talk about is interactive content. So when I talk about interactive content, I'm talking about quizzes, polls, calculators, because it engages people. And with that comes the value factor. So they get something out of it. Everyone loves a good quiz, knowing more about themselves or whatever your quiz would be about. And I using interactive content where people are actually engaging and doing something it can capture leads more effectively than when you use static content. When someone's reading something, it's like they've read it. Okay, cool. That's it. But when they are rolling up their sleeves and actually doing something, gives a different experience. So to give you some examples of interactive content, I've already said quizzes. So you can create quizzes that offer personalized recommendations based on their answers or like they get to know more about themselves and how to solve a specific problem. I always like those kind of quizzes. You can do polls and surveys. And it's interesting because people often want to have a say in something. So if it is aligned with your business, you can create a poll or a survey that, you know, you ask people a few questions and I don't know, maybe they can win something when they answer something. Or literally, a lot of people literally will just love to give their opinions. So you don't have to always give them something in return. Or even if you do a poll or a survey, they get like a free download at the end or something like that. That's another option. Another one. Calculators. So you can create calculators that help people, I don't know, estimate costs or estimate savings or other kind of relevant metrics. I often use a calculator or a self audit tool where people can go in and audit their own ads and calculate that, you know, if they get x number of leads, how many sales can they make? How much money can they make? It's really useful, those kind of things. So interactive content doesn't only engage your audience, but it also provides data for you that you can use to then personalize your marketing efforts. So it's a two way street there. It gives your audience something useful, but it gives you something useful back as well. Another one of what's working well in today's market is video marketing. And look, it's been around for a few years now, but it continues to dominate. Video marketing is at the top there. Videos can be, don't know, not always, but they can be really engaging and they can convey information quick, quickly and effectively. So rather than having to read like something really long, some people actually prefer video format or audio format. So when you have a number of different content forms, you are catering to the people that learn in different ways. Not everyone learns from reading, not everyone learns from video, but video is very engaging. So when you're thinking about video, you might want to consider creating like short videos, like explainer video, short videos that explain your product or your service. You might want to consider webinars, either live webinars or recorded webinars that give your audience valuable insights and in return you get their details, which then makes them a lead. So you want to make that, we call that gated. So you want to get people to sign up and then they can watch it or attend it. Another one, and I know a lot of us don't do this because it can feel a little bit uncomfortable. But customer testimonials, videos with your customers that are happy or sharing their experiences, they are so invaluable. But I know a lot of us feel uncomfortable asking for that. But if you have a few customers that would be happy to share their experience, or maybe you can help them with how they can do that, it would be invaluable. And then videos that can be shared on so many places, you can either have a YouTube channel, if you wanted to start a YouTube channel, you can share them on social media, you can share them on your website, you can embed them in like your emails, share them wherever you can, because video is so invaluable. And another one you can do is video ads. So if you have some of your video content, create like turn them into ads so that more people get to see it. And I'll share a link in the show notes to an amazing strategy. It's like an invisible ad funnel where you spend like literally $2 a day to help your content be seen by more people. So that you are building up that recognition, you are building up awareness, you are building up authority and trust. The more people see your work and the more they are familiar with you, the more they start to trust you. So I'll share that link as well. Now, another thing that's working in today's market, and this one keeps on changing a lot, social media and influencer marketing. So social media is still a really powerful lead generation tool, but the approach of it has changed and evolved. It's not a dump and run. You have to really think about your strategy, how you're going to do it. The algorithm keeps changing, so it can be quite tricky. But here's the thing, being authentic is super important. People love authenticity and creating content that they want to engage in. So authenticity and engagement, they are more important than ever. They've been important for a long time, but things keep evolving, keep changing. And Facebook and Instagram both love engagement. Like, that's how, in a way, they get your content in front of more people. So the more engaging content you create, the better the algorithm rewards you. This is why I'm also sharing the invisible ad funnel with you, which you can, you know, get access to. I'll pop it in the show notes, because your content will be seen by more people, which gives it the opportunity to have more engagement, rather than you sitting there waiting, fingers crossed, waiting for the algorithm to pick it up. So what are some things that you can do? One of them is live streaming, so you can engage your audience, like in real time through live streams. Now, this takes a little bit of practice. It also takes a little bit of planning and a little bit of strategy behind it. If you randomly go live, you might get some people show up. But if you have a strategy where every week or every so many days you go live and you let your people know beforehand and you let them know what the topic is going to be, that way you start building up a lot more views as well as you get more engagement. The other one is stories and reels. They keep on changing, they keep on evolving in a way. So use stories, Instagram stories and Facebook stories and reels on both platforms where you can share short and engaging content. And I know sometimes it takes a while to create a this type of content, although it doesn't have to be. You can use what we call b roll footage, which could be you taking a short snippet of you working at your desk or a short snippet of some landscape. Like it's just little videos where you then put a message over the top. Not everything has to be you speaking to the camera. There's a lot of different types of content, and you can share that to reels and you can share that to stories. And I know sometimes we feel uncomfortable, but still social selling, so building a relationship and trust through social selling. So showing up and providing content. Yes, we need to do that, but we also need to remember that we are in business and that we are selling something. So not all of your content should be focused on providing value. You also need to make sure that you ask for the sale. Sometimes I see people provide a lot of content, a lot of free value, but I don't actually know what they're selling. So don't forget to tell people what you're selling, what your offer is, what you do, because people might forget if they only see that sort of like free kind of content where you provide value, value, value. Also tell them how they can work with you. And another one that works really well for e commerce, but it also can work for service based businesses. And course based businesses is influencer marketing or collaborations is what I would call them, more in the course creation and service based businesses. So you can partner with other people who already have a following, and they can help you reach new audiences and they can help you generate leads. So for ecommerce, for e commerce, it would be partnering with influencers who can then share your products and share your content and promote it in a way. But for service based businesses and for course creators or membership owners, you can partner up with someone else who shares the same audience but doesn't offer the same solution or service, if that makes sense. So a good example of this would be like summits or bundles, like getting into those kind of collaborations. All right, let's move on to what's working. And, you know, how things have changed a little bit is AI and automation. So artificial intelligence, AI, it's really transforming lead generation. Like, there's just so much to learn, and I have only just dipped my toe into the water. I don't know all of the tools, but I know that there is so much opportunity. AI can literally analyze so much data so quickly and identify potential leads, and they predict their behavior. There's so much to learn about it. I think start small, learn step by step, see how it could potentially help you in your business. But at the same time, if it seems overwhelming, which to me it sometimes is, then take a step back and just slow down, because it's here to stay, you will learn more about it eventually, step by step. We don't have to be part of all the brand new things right now. I always think it's good to focus on one thing at a time and then take the next step. The other one I want to mention is automation. And this is where I'm actually doing quite a lot of work with local clients because there are so many ways to streamline your efforts and to make things easier for yourself, as well as using automations to nurture your leads in a more effective way. So, yes, I talk about lead generation, but the sales come from nurturing those leads and actually really making them see that what you're offering is what they need and building that trust. So you can do a lot of nurturing, you can do a lot of automation. Like, there's so many ways to automate. So I am a big fan of email automation, having automated sequences because they help nurture people towards a sale, but they also, they're so effective in like educating people and there's so many ways to use nurture sequences. It's not always towards a sale. Sometimes it is an onboarding or for example, I'm part of the local chamber of commerce and I'm actually doing some work with them because I actually am part of a couple of chamber of commerces here in Tasmania. And it's really interesting because some you get a really good onboarding experience and some you pay the bill and you don't hear anything. So there would be an opportunity, for example, to nurture someone who comes on board by sending them an automated sequence of emails, first saying, thanks for joining, welcome. Here's what you can expect. And then over, you know, a series of days or weeks, send information that is going to be helpful. You know, when are events most likely going to be happening? Who are the other members that you could potentially collaborate with or find out more about? There's just so many ways to use email automation and email sequences. And then obviously there's the nurture or the sales sequences where you, like, educate someone towards a sale. Or there's the abandoned cart sequences in ecommerce where you've put something in your cart, you've forgotten about it, and then you get emails about it. So there's a lot of automated email sequences available, but another one is chatbots. And this is becoming more of a trend now where if you see a post on social media and people say, comment this and this word, and you comment that word, and then a chatbot starts and I off you go. So nurturing chatbots. That's a really good one. I do like chatbots for a lot of reasons anyway. For example, if you send me a message on my Facebook page, you will get an automated message that says, email me, please. I know some people go, oh, really? I am a busy person. I have two little humans to look after and a lot of animals if I had to, every day, go check my emails, go check my chats in all these various different places. I tried that for a while and it was driving me bonkers. I like to keep a trail and in my inbox I can do that because Google just like groups those kind of conversations together. So even if you just send one message, hey, thanks for commenting, or hey, thanks for contacting me, best way to contact me is through email. Then at least someone doesn't feel rejected when you don't ever get back to them. So yeah, chatbots, super awesome way to nurture, but just, you know, making your life easier as well, so it can free up your time and then you can do more strategic things. So I am all for automation. I don't know if I've used this example, but I have been working, I was working with a local business and they were emailing, they were getting email addresses and they were emailing every single person individually from an Excel spreadsheet they would copy paste. So I worked with them because there's a much easier way put all these email addresses in a database, like Mailerlite, convertkit, whatever you prefer to work with, and then if you segment them. So for example, this business sells meat boxes, and there's lamb and there's beef. So if you have them segmented for people that like both or only like lamb or only like beef, you can literally say, hey, I've got beef boxes available, and you can send it only to the people who want beef, or the, you know, or they want both. But people who only want lamb don't get the emails. So makes your life so much easier. You only have to send one email because the platform does itself. So that is another way is using artificial intelligence. So AI and automation. And like I said, you can use chatbots, you can use automated workflows, personalized sequences. There's so many ways that, yeah, you can dive really, really deep with this, but at a minimum, I, yeah, I'd suggest starting with email marketing and using automations and segmenting people, and you can email people out. So that is kind of like, once you've got the leads, how are you then going to work with them and how are you going to give them better experience? And then another thing I want to add is that you really do need to also think about data privacy and compliance. So there's way more concern about privacy now. And a lot of the platforms have taken measures and there's been changes over the years, but it is so important that you need to comply with regulations and there's things like GDPR and CCPA and look it up in your part of the world. But also, if you are attracting leads from other parts of the world, you need to be really aware of what the rules are in those countries and areas. So best practices would be to be transparent about how you collect and how you use data. Everyone needs to have a privacy policy on their website, especially if you're collecting leads and you're collecting lead data. You need to have a privacy policy on your website, but also use opt in forms that really clearly state, you know, what they are signing up for and get them to consent to sending more information. And like, there's a lot of things on GDPR for this as well. And then make sure that you have really robust data security measures that are in place to protect your leads information because you are dealing with people's personal details in a way, even though you might think, well, it's just a name and an email address in a lot of ways, or sometimes a phone number that is someone's personal details. So make sure that you have data security measures in place and working with something like Mailerlite, convertKit, Activecampaign or any of the other email marketing providers, they work on this and make sure that they are compliant. So using that is a lot more secure and legal than it is mass emailing people from your normal email address. So just to give you a quick recap, lead generation trends keep in a way, evolving. There's a lot that is still the same, but a lot that is changing as well. So I've spoken about content marketing and personalizing your content where you can, whether that is through email automation or whether that is through specific website content, dynamic website content. Another one I have talked about is interactive content. So using quizzes and polls and like really getting people to do something. I've spoken about video marketing still so, so important doing videos, social media, and that goes in a lot of ways. There's so many social media platforms out there. I would say pick one or two and focus on that, go heavy on that. You got to know where your audience is, so that's where you need to be, but not on all the platforms and influencer marketing or collaborations. So how can you get in front of people, other people's audiences that in a way share the same audience, but you're not stepping on each other's toes, you're actually helping each other by getting in front of more people and using AI, using automation, making your life easier. There's so much more to talk about that I should probably do an episode on AI and automation all like just by itself because there's so much to talk about that and then making sure that you are following the rules and really focus on data privacy and compliance. So there's so much more to talk about. Lead generation and what are you going to do after you get the lead and how you're going to nurture them towards a sale. And there's so much to talk about. And then one of my favorite ones, and I've only briefly touched on it, is using ads to get in front of new people to attract leads. But for this, you do need to have all of these things that I've talked about. So really focusing on quality content. So content marketing, focusing on engaging your audience. So creating either interactive content or like really engaging social content, video content, all of those pieces will help you attract leads. And then it's a matter of having traffic to those content pieces. And that's something that Facebook ads and Instagram ads can really help you with. So again, I'll pop that link in the show notes, the link for the invisible ad funnel because it's such an amazing strategy to just use like $2 a day or like a little bit more to get your content seen so that all of your lead generation pieces get more eyeballs in a way, more eyes on it, so that you are being seen and so that you can use those content pieces that you spend time on so that you can attract those leads. All right, well, your homework is looking at some of these trends, some of the ways that you can use content marketing, video marketing, social media, interactive content, all of that. How can you use that in your lead generation strategy? And if you have questions, please feel free to reach out. If you have something that you want to share that's really working, I would love to hear that too. I always love to hear what's working for people, what's not working for people, what they might want to try out and how to do it. Always. My DM's on Instagram are always open, so feel free to connect with me. I'll pop all the links in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the new School of Marketing podcast. I hope it was helpful and I can't wait to share more marketing tips with you next week. And if you're ready to take your business to the next level with Facebook and Instagram advertising, make sure that you visit newschoolofmarketing.com to download practical free resources. Plus subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. I can't wait to go on this journey with you. Until next time, take care and market your business every day.