Generating good leads is important for businesses to be successful, especially for contractors like restoration and remodeling professionals.  Businesses that rely on leads must put forth a consistent effort to generate quality leads or they could lose out on good potential business to their competitors.  There are many different strategies businesses can use to generate leads from flyers and cold calling to email newsletters and effective digital marketing strategies.  Each business must determine which lead generation tactics work best for them so they can continue to generate quality leads and grow their business.

However, to generate good leads, businesses must have an understanding of lead generation strategies, statistics, and trends.  In this guide, we cover important statistics and trends as well as how to start and measure a lead generation campaign and nurture your leads.  If your restoration business could use some outside help to bring in better quality leads, RestorationMaster provides lead generation services.

Getting Started with Lead Generation

The biggest barriers to lead generation are the lack of a lead generation plan or an insufficient lead generation strategy:

• 80% of marketers believe their lead generation strategies are not effective enough: Many businesses have a difficult time creating and implementing an effective lead generation strategy. For lead generation to be effective, businesses must know their target audience so they can create content that appeals to them on platforms where their audience can be found.
• 57% of marketers cite engaging targeted prospects as the biggest challenge to lead generation: Identifying and appealing to your target audience is a good start but getting them engaged enough to become a lead can be difficult. Businesses must learn the pains and needs of their target audience to engage them in a more meaningful way.
• 55% of marketers cite converting leads as a major challenge: Not every lead turns into a sale. You have a better chance of converting leads by targeting the right potential customers and closing the sale with effective sales strategies.  Acting quickly on a lead helps as it has been shown that following up on a lead within five minutes of them taking the desired action makes them nine times more likely to convert.
• 34% of salespeople cite prospecting and lead qualification as the biggest challenge: Creating a solid lead generation strategy with a strong understanding of your target audience will make it easier for your sales team to prospect and qualify leads.
• 56% of leads aren’t ready to buy yet: Leads may come in at different stages of the buyer’s journey and many of them are not ready to buy yet when they become leads. It is important to have an established sales funnel and track leads through the funnel so the sales team can approach them at the right time to make a sale.

As these statistics show, running a successful lead generation campaign is not always easy and many marketers across industries encounter these barriers.  Before getting started with a lead generation strategy, you must first identify your target audience and create a general persona that includes demographics like age, sex, education levels, socioeconomic status, etc.  You can determine the characteristics of your target audience by looking at demographic metrics of website visitors and followers on social media as well as observing similarities and characteristics among your current customers.

Once you have a good understanding of your target audience, you can begin building and implementing lead generation strategies.

Lead Generation Strategies and Metrics

Businesses can employ several different strategies within their lead generation campaign to help generate more quality leads.  The trick to good lead generation is to effectively appeal to your target audience and build a level of trust so that they feel comfortable coming to your business with their needs.

The following are lead generation strategies that have been shown to be effective at engaging a target audience:

• Content marketing: Lead generation is largely driven by content marketing, including service and product pages, blogs, email newsletters, and social media posts. Content marketing strategies are used by 86% of B2C businesses and can generate three times as many leads as traditional marketing strategies.  All content created should appeal to the unique interests, wants, and needs of your target audience.  Creating quality, optimized content for your website, posting regular blogs, and making engaging posts on social media should all be included within your content marketing strategy.
• Social media marketing: Social media marketing gives your business the opportunity to engage directly with your target audience with posts, comments, and direct messages. This is a great place to learn more about your target audience so you can post content that appeals to them.  You also don’t have to spend a lot of time on social media marketing as 66% of marketers say they can generate good leads while only spending six hours per week on social media.
• Interactive content: 53% of marketers cite interactive content as a successful strategy for generating leads. Interactive content such as games and quizzes engage your audience and give them an interactive experience with your business which makes them more likely to become customers.
• Email marketing: Email marketing is one of the most effective lead generation strategies as it generates 50% more sales than other lead generation methods. You can create an email sign-up list on your website and send promotional materials and other engaging content straight to your email list.
• Sales funnel: As mentioned above, most potential customers are not ready to make a purchase when they first become leads. It is important to recognize where leads are in the sales funnel so you can target them more effectively.  Those who have just discovered your business may need more information before they are ready to buy, and the direct sales pitches should be saved for those who are ready to make a purchase.  Targeting leads based on where they are in the sales funnel results in 73% higher conversion rates.

Once the leads start coming in, it is important to measure the leads and conversions so you can monitor and adjust your lead generation efforts.  Businesses should determine what actions they want their target audience to take to be considered a lead, as this may vary between businesses.

The most common metrics that are used to measure the effectiveness of a lead generation campaign include the following:

• Leads: Leads refer to all people who have expressed interest in your products or services and may include contact form submissions, phone calls, clicks on an ad, landing page visits from ads and emails, and more.
• Click through rates (CTR): This is the measure of how often users end up on your landing pages by clicking on ads, emails newsletters, social media posts, and links in blogs. A higher CTR usually leads to more leads and conversions.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): It is important to consider the cost your business pays per lead or acquisition. As a frame of reference, the average cost per lead using inbound marketing techniques is $135.  Inbound marketing techniques also cost 61% less per acquisition than outbound lead generation.  If your CPA is higher than the $135 average, you should consider how you can make your lead generation campaign more cost-effective.
• Conversion rate: This is the rate at which your leads are converted into sales. If you are getting a high number of leads but not getting a high enough conversion rate, you should analyze your sales strategies and determine if your lead generation campaign is reaching the right people.
• Lead source: You should always measure where your leads are coming from, including website traffic, social media, and email newsletters. This can help you easily determine which facets of your lead generation strategy are most effective and which need work.
• Cost per conversion (CPC): This is the average cost to your business for each lead that converts into a sale. You should measure the cost to your business for each lead in comparison to the revenue made from the sale to determine if you have a positive CPC.  If the CPC outweighs the revenue from the sale, you should identify where you can cut costs.
• Return on investment (ROI): This refers to the overall revenue your lead generation campaign brings in compared to the total cost to your business. Most businesses use direct sales as the main metric to measure ROI.

While tracking all of these metrics is beneficial for optimizing your lead generation campaign, you should prioritize the metrics that are most inline with your marketing goals.  You can measure many of these metrics using Google Analytics as well as analytics tools within social media platforms.  Email marketing tools generally also include analytics to measure opens and clicks.

Nurturing Leads

As we have previously discussed, more than half of all leads are not ready to make a purchase when they become leads.  It is important to nurture these leads until they have reached the point where they are ready to make a purchase.  The following statistics show why nurturing leads is an important part of the lead generation process:

• 63% of leads take at least 3 months to convert: This is why creating a sales funnel and tracking your leads through the funnel is so important. You will have to nurture and track many of your leads for several months before approaching them to convert.
• 79% of generated leads never convert: This is a high percentage of leads that never convert and the main reason why they don’t is because of the lack of lead nurturing. If you ignore the lead nurturing process, most of your leads will never convert.
• Nurtured leads are 47% more valuable than non-nurtured leads: Effective lead nurturing helps the potential customer become more familiar with your business which makes their purchase much more valuable than non-nurtured leads when they are ready to convert.
• Personalized CTAs are 202% more effective than generic CTAs: As you nurture leads, you will get to know more about them, including some personal information and what they are looking for. This information allows you to create personalized calls to action (CTAs) to entice them to convert.  Personalized CTAs have been shown to be just over 200% more effective than basic CTAs.

Lead nurturing is important for boosting conversion rates, but it can be difficult to effectively nurture leads over a period of several months.  It helps to analyze lead intelligence data, which is any data or personal information you collect from leads, to learn more about your lead so you can nurture them more effectively.  Lead intelligence data includes contact information, website interaction data, interests data, demographic information, and their social media profiles.

There are several strategies you can use to nurture leads until they are ready to convert.  One important thing to note is that while content marketing is highly effective for getting leads, it is not as effective for nurturing leads as 59% of marketers call this the most challenging nurturing strategy.  The most effective nurturing strategy is email, followed by scheduled calls and contact though social media.  Email is an effective nurturing strategy because you can reach out to leads directly with personalized messages and CTAs.  Sending a weekly email to follow up is the most common strategy.

Lead Generation Services from RestorationMaster

Focusing on creating a comprehensive, yet effective lead generation strategy is crucial for businesses that rely on generating quality leads such as restoration and remodeling contractors.  Statistics show that the biggest barrier to lead generation is simply getting started.  Once you get a good understanding of your target audience, you can build a lead generation campaign that consists of content marketing across multiple platforms including social media and email.  Remember, the better you relate and appeal to your target audience, the more quality leads you will generate.  Measuring your main lead generation metrics will help you further improve and refine your strategy.

Statistics also show that once you get new leads, they are not usually ready to buy.  It is important to focus on nurturing your leads as failure to do this will result in most of your leads never converting into sales.  Developing a good lead nurturing strategy that includes tracking your leads through the sales funnel, gathering information about them, and following up will help improve conversion rates.

Many businesses that implement lead generation strategies of their own could benefit from the help of a professional to supplement their leads.  At RestorationMaster, we provide cost-effective lead generation services to get quality leads for businesses in the disaster restoration and cleaning industry.  We generate leads through effective content marketing on our highly optimized website RestorationMasterFinder.com.  Businesses that join well take over the website pages built for their main service areas and start getting calls directly to their business.  The leads go straight to you, and they are exclusive which means that you will not compete with anyone for the same leads.

We can generate quality water damage leads and mold remediation leads to help restoration contractors grow their business.  Call us at (888) 846-1992 to learn more.