Organic lead generation is a marketer’s long game. For those willing to invest time in the right tactics, high winning percentages are virtually guaranteed.
If you’re ready to start playing, let’s dive in.
Organic Lead Generation: The Basics
Organic lead generation is the process of attracting and converting members of your target audience. Through content marketing, organic lead generation aims to drive people who are searching online for relevant products, services or keywords to your company’s website.
This organic reach is important because it generates leads who already have an interest in the benefits your business can offer them.
Ultimately, the goal of lead generation is to increase sales and grow your business. Organic tactics will push you to understand your target audience and create content tailored to them so your lead generation efforts are more likely to boost conversions.
15 Top Tactics to Drive Organic Lead Generation
Naturally, there are several ways to approach lead generation. For best results, implement a combination of these tactics and prioritize the ones that are most fitting for your brand and targeted audience.
1. Create Relevant Content For Your Buyer Personas
It goes without saying that organic lead generation requires following the marketer’s top commandment: Know thy audience. Use your buyer personas to create content that’s more likely to attract qualified leads.
And while you’ll want to optimize your content for high search rankings, it’s important to create content for humans first. The people are the ones you’re trying to convert, so make sure you’re matching their search intent with helpful and relevant content.
Canned, cheesy or boring content won’t attract, much less convert leads. Instead, create targeted content that answers questions from your area of expertise and positions your brand as a trustworthy resource.
2. Stay Consistent
Maintaining consistent posting schedules across platforms will ensure your brand stays fresh and relevant in the eyes of potential customers. Plus, more content means more ways for prospects to find your brand. Once they find you, new content gives them a reason to come back.
3. Breathe New Life Into Existing Content
You don’t always have to create something new to dazzle your potential customers. Take a look at your existing content and identify blogs, landing pages or other content that you can refresh or repurpose to boost relevance and extend the shelf life for more ROI.
Your content refresh could be anything from re-optimizing the content for better search results to updating outdated information about your products or services. When it comes to repurposing content, consider various formats and platforms that you could use to share the information in different ways.
4. Optimize Your Website
Search engine optimization is all about increasing organic traffic to your website, making it the perfect complement to your lead generation efforts. Essentially, SEO will generate leads by increasing the chances that your website shows up at the top of a potential customer’s search results.
Get more bang for your buck by targeting relevant keywords and common search phrases in your website content.
If you’re new to SEO, start by using a tool like Moz Keyword Explorer to conduct organic keyword research. Once you identify some keyword groups you want to target, you can start working them into your blogs and landing pages.
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5. Make Your Brand a Video Star
Many people (69%) prefer to learn about a new product or service by watching a short clip, while even more (88%) have made a purchase after watching a brand’s video.
With that in mind, it’s beneficial to invest in video content to introduce potential leads to your company. You might also consider product demos, educational videos, testimonials and other types of videos that are relevant at various stages along a user’s journey of getting to know your brand.
Videos are also gold mines for social media, so remember to edit a few short clips to share across channels.
You can even put high-value videos behind a gated form that requires users to provide an email address to watch them. They’ll get the content they want while you’ll have the contact information you need to follow up with them.
6. Bring In the Designers
While video content is a top performer, it also takes a significant toll on your time and resources. The good news is that you can mix in other types of visuals to dazzle your audience.
Articles with infographics, for example, drive 8x more clicks than those without. And like video, you can repurpose infographics by sharing elements of them on social media or in email newsletters.
7. Create Interactions
Interactive content encourages users to take an action — even if that action is as small as a tap on their screen to answer a poll on Instagram. Consider surveys, quizzes, calculators, animations or other forms of interactive content to create a customized experience for your users.
As long as the information is compelling and the pay-off is worth it for users, interactive content will be a great tool for generating leads. Bonus: You can use the audience insights you gather for personalized follow-up, AKA lead nurturing. (More on this later.)
8. Check Your Page Speed
What’s the fastest way to lose a lead? Send them to a page that takes too long to load. If your site speed isn’t up to par, users won’t hesitate to close out the page and head to your competitor’s website instead.
Let this be your reminder to check in on your site speed and fix any issues that could hinder your user journey. Google PageSpeed Insights is a free tool that can help you assess your website and identify areas for improvement.
9. Prioritize Easy Website Navigation
Organic lead generation puts the power in users’ hands to explore your website and form an impression of your brand based on what they learn. If your website is hard to navigate, that could be the deciding factor that sends users elsewhere.
Lesson learned: Clear, intuitive and easy-to-navigate websites will attract and convert!
10. Social Media Is Your Friend
Your social media posts will help drive traffic to your website, so be sure to promote blogs, videos and other pieces of content across channels. This will increase the chances of new users coming across your content and engaging with your brand.
You can also utilize social media to implement influencer marketing strategies. By building relationships with relevant social influencers, you can explore opportunities for them to promote your brand to their audience.
11. Provide Premium Content and Resources
When done well, your content will build trust with potential customers so they feel confident making a buying decision. You can boost this trustworthiness by providing premium content like eBooks, white papers, comprehensive guides and educational videos that cover topics within your brand’s expertise.
As you build your content library, utilize backlinks to subtly guide users throughout your website. You might even consider creating a resources hub on your website that’s filled with valuable content for your audience to explore and share with others in their network.
12. Be a Thought Leader
Thought leadership content is another tool to build your brand’s credibility and provide value to potential customers. Some ways to show off your expertise include articles and white papers, podcast interviews and original research.
Your internal team members and executive leaders can also be thought leaders that represent your brand. LinkedIn is a great place for people in your company to build a following and direct people to your company.
13. Frequent Their Inbox
Email lead generation is a tried-and-true way to reach potential customers. Once you collect emails through sign-up forms or gated content, send out messages that tell users more about your products or services.
Depending on how much user data you have, take advantage of list segmentation to target your messaging and offers to different groups of people.
Automated email campaigns will make this an easy lead generation tactic — though there may also be circumstances when your sales team can complement this general communication with direct outreach.
14. Convince With Compelling Conversion Points
Remember that website traffic is not always equivalent to leads. Before users even think about making a purchase, it’s your job to present them with a reason to take the step from traffic to lead.
Think of these moments as steps along the way to the big conversion when they officially become a customer. These conversion points could be:
- Signing up for email.
- Downloading a resource.
- Engaging with live chat features.
- Clicking on a targeted pop-up.
- Watching a video.
You’ll want to back these conversion points up with data, so spend some time in Google Analytics to understand the user flows on your website. That way, you can implement compelling conversion points at the right time.
15. Host or Sponsor Events
Whether digital or in-person, events provide entertainment or educational value that will attract new leads. Consider hosting an event — or even sponsoring a charitable function — to reach new audiences.
Most people expect to provide an email or other contact information in order to register for an event, so you’ll be able to follow up with attendees to continue solidifying their awareness of your brand.
That said, asking for too many details may deter people from signing up so keep the RSVP process as simple as possible. You can always ask for more information during or after the event.
Nurturing a Lead: Tips to Remember
Lead generation is equivalent to finding all the edge pieces of the puzzle, whereas lead nurturing fills in all the other pieces to complete the puzzle. Together, they create your ideal picture of satisfied customers.
Lead nurturing involves intentional touchpoints with your target audience to gently nudge them along the buyer’s journey. Your goal is to keep your organic leads delighted with relevant information, easy access to support and a seamless user experience.
Essentially, once you have the leads, your next moves could make or break your chances of them converting into customers. No pressure.
Don’t sweat it — here are some of our top lead nurturing tactics to keep in your back pocket.
Segment Your Leads
Once you attract a healthy amount of leads, you’ll want to group them by certain factors so that you can continue reaching them with targeted content.
Your buyer personas will help you here as well. Consider segmenting your leads by interests, goals, industry or demographic characteristics outlined in your personas.
You may also want to group your prospects by a specific trigger event, such as signing up for your email list or downloading a resource.
Get Personal
Let your organic leads know you’re paying attention by following up with personalized content. This gives you a chance to flaunt your most relevant benefits and expertise while giving off the positive impression that your brand takes the time to meet your customers where they are.
Personalization can take many forms across various platforms. To name a few:
- Addressing organic leads by name.
- Suggesting resources based on previous views.
- Sending birthday or anniversary emails.
- Responding to messages and comments on social media.
- Offering exclusive deals or invites.
If you don’t have a lot of data to work with, consider using tools like interactive content or gated resources to collect more information about your leads.
Diversify Your Communication
The most successful digital marketing utilizes multi-channel strategies to reach customers where they are. As you might have already guessed, lead nurturing is no different.
Take advantage of a variety of content types such as social media, blog posts, white papers, infographics, videos and so on. This will give you multiple touch points to nurture your prospects into customers.
This combination of tools and tactics will provide more opportunities for users to engage with your brand. On any given day, your email could be ignored while a social post stops them in their leisurely evening scroll. The next day might be the opposite.
Make sure you’re covering your bases so you have more chances of catching user attention at the right time and in the right way.
Try Lead Scoring
Lead scoring assigns a value to prospects so that your sales and marketing teams can prioritize the most valuable leads and determine the best response. You should define your ranking system based on your typical buyer journey or specific attributes, such as demographic or company information, online behavior or email engagement.
With a scoring system in place, you’ll streamline your lead nurturing process and increase the rate of conversions.
Be Timely In Your Communication
Lead nurturers are not in the business of playing hard to get. Follow up with your leads in a timely manner so that you reach them before their attention is elsewhere — especially because elsewhere could very likely be your competition.
That said … there’s a fine line between keeping your brand top of mind and becoming obnoxious with your communications. If you bombard users with too much content, they might get the ick and run the other direction. Instead, focus on providing helpful content and giving them space when they need it.
Troubleshooting Common Lead Generation Challenges
As with anything new, you might run into common pain points when building your first organic lead generation campaign. The good news is that there are several ways to overcome the challenges — including outsourcing to an agency with the time and expertise to boost your lead generation efforts quickly.
Quality Over Quantity
Generating a lot of leads may seem like a win at first, but the celebrations will be over quickly if the majority of those people aren’t actually becoming customers. If you’re struggling in the qualified leads department, it’s time to lean on some of the segmenting and personalization tactics described above.
Inbound marketing tactics like blogs, webinars and email newsletters are also effective at attracting qualified leads. Inbound leads make the choice to engage with your company while outbound leads are generated from cold outreach.
Tender Love and Care
The all-important nurturing is a necessary step between lead generation and conversion. Without a lead nurturing strategy in place, you risk losing all of the potential customers you attracted. This also goes for turning first-time buyers into loyal repeat customers.
Make sure your content keeps the engagement levels high so that your leads and customers continually choose your brand.
Automation Tools in the Toolbox
Without the right tools, lead generation can feel like digging your way out of a black hole. High-performing CRM software is non-negotiable when it comes to keeping all of your contacts organized, and other tools like email and social media management platforms will help automate the content you’re creating to convert your leads.
Generating (and Converting) Leads For Days
Once you start targeting your organic lead generation efforts, keep track of what’s working and where you might be able to scrap a tactic in lieu of something different.
As with all things marketing, experimentation will help you find your secret sauce. Plus, lead generation is a fluid process that should adapt to your target audience and business goals.
Generate, nurture, convert and repeat!