For us, words like landing pages, inbound lead generation, sales funnel and calls to action are common vernacular because it’s what we do. But we understand that these words can sound like a foreign language to others who are not fully immersed in the marketing world. So we are spelling it out for you: what is inbound lead generation?
The Modern Sales Tactic
In previous posts, we’ve broken down the sales funnel, the automated lead nurturing process and various other inbound lead generation tactics but the easiest way to describe the inbound lead generation process is this: identifying and fulfilling a need.
Cold calling, tradeshows and networking events (while still useful and worthwhile), have been competing with inbound lead generation in recent years. All sales tactics, whether traditional or modern, all have the same goal: to get customers. Inbound lead generation is simply the more automated and digital way to do this.
There are a lot of technical aspects of inbound lead generation that we could explore, a whole detailed process that we follow to determine the target buyer persona, attract that buyer persona and then convert them into a lead. However, the bottom line is that inbound lead generation is about educating your buyer persona about your company and then offering them something they want. Sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it? That is the definition of the sales process. Inbound lead generation just takes it to a more digital place.
What’s Involved in Inbound Lead Generation?
Image Credit: HubSpot
The first step to inbound lead generation is to attract visitors through emailing, blogging and social media. This is the “education” step of sales. Then, the rest of the process is actually very simple. You direct these visitors to a landing page with a form. If they are interested in the offer or download you are presenting, they fill out the form. When they fill out the form, they receive the offer and they have just become a lead from inbound marketing.
What’s the Price Tag on Inbound Lead Generation?
This is the part you all have been waiting for…how much does it cost? The detailed and methodical process of inbound lead generation can supplement or even replace outbound marketing initiatives such as direct mail, cold calling, paid search and tradeshows. All of these tactics can have very high price stickers. A 2012 State of Inbound Marketing Report found that inbound leads cost an average of 61% less than outbound leads. In addition, this same report found that most respondents said that inbound tactics such as blogs, social media and SEO had a below average cost per lead while outbound tactics such as direct mail, telemarketing, PPC and tradeshows had an above average cost per lead.
Bottom Line
Inbound lead generation is an effective, low cost and automated way to streamline your sales efforts and increase customers. All you’re really doing is identifying an unfulfilled need and then helping to fulfill that need using social media, emails, blogging, offers, landing pages and forms (most likely in that order too).
