Lead generation is key to business success. Cold emailing, email marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, and advertising are some of the most popular ways of lead generation today.

However, most of us, knowingly or unknowingly, believe that there is a limit to the conversion rate we can get. We believe that no matter what we do, no matter how strong our marketing strategies are, we will never achieve a conversion rate of 50 or 60 percent - and so we are happy when we get a conversion rate of 4% percent because 4% is industry standard. Isn’t that a little too low considering the technology we have today, especially since we have AI and marketing robots? 

Yes, AI is still in its early stages when we consider its potential, but it is, of course, way better and efficient than the technologies we had earlier. The problem is that we haven’t upgraded our conversion rate expectations considering the AI algorithms we have today.

And no, we are not talking about installing an AI algorithm into your website and waiting for it to generate leads. We are talking about driving quality traffic to your website and using the latest AI algorithms to convert most website visitors into leads. Here’s how you can do it.

Blog regularly

Blogging is one of the most underrated lead generation strategies by startups. It might be due to the misconception that blogging is not worth the investment and time, but in fact, blogging is one of the most effective strategies to generate quality leads. When we say quality leads, we mean leads that have the maximum probability of turning into customers.

Why? You are blogging about the topics related to the products or services you offer. People coming to your website are interested in your blog posts for only one reason - they are looking for answers; they are looking for solutions to their problems. And when you help them find answers, people realize that you are authoritative and trustable in your niche. This gives you an excellent opportunity to pitch your products.

Think about the last time you made a Google search. Out of the results shown, if you see a website that you are familiar with or a website that had given you answers to the questions, you will most likely visit that website again. The same applies to every website.

But what if you don’t blog and the website only has the information regarding the products and services you offer? Website visitors will look for other websites since they are primarily looking for an answer and not a product or service. Yes, there are people looking specifically for products and services, but they are less likely to buy from a website they are not familiar with.

Publish e-books, white papers, and case studies

You’re probably tired of hearing ‘content is king,’ but the content is still the king on the internet, and it seems like it will be so forever. Just like blogs and articles, e-books, white papers, and case studies - anything that people find valuable will help you generate quality leads from your website. 

If you have a research report or survey data that will help people, you can ask your marketing team to polish and publish it as a white paper. The principle here is that people are ready to give their email address or contact information in return for something that they find useful. So you can ask for their email address and send the e-book directly to their email address, or let them download it after providing their email address.

When you publish white papers and e-books that help customers and prospects in general, it will attract backlinks from other websites, building a strong backlink profile and allowing you to rank better on search engines. More content leads to more website visitors and leads, more backlinks, and better search engine rankings.

Optimize your website for search engines

Search engine optimization is becoming increasingly competitive every day. But at the same time, it is also one of the best methods to drive organic, quality traffic to your website. Those blog posts, articles, and white papers you publish will return excellent results when you implement a good SEO strategy.

Search engines rank websites and articles based on over two hundred factors, but the most significant factors are website speed, backlinks, content quality, and keywords. Of course, the most crucial factor is the content quality. Besides publishing in-depth, valuable content, you can do keyword research to find out keywords with good search volume and low competition. Including them in the title and the content will let the search engines better understand your article.

In the case of website speed, it should load as fast as possible - preferably within a second. Compressing images and removing unnecessary codes and elements from your website will load it faster. 

As mentioned earlier, quality content will attract natural backlinks, but you can also approach other websites in your niche to link back to you. Now you have blog posts, case studies, white papers, and e-books that generate a high volume of traffic, and on top of that, search engine traffic. There’s only one thing you need to do - convert them. And it is easier than ever before.

Generate leads through AI-based conversational marketing

Perhaps chatbots of the last decade have disappointed us so much that we are unaware of this field’s advancements. The previous decade’s chatbots returned preset answers based on keywords, and proper installation needed a lot of manual work. Besides, they also had to be updated regularly after analyzing the keywords customers use.

We are in 2021-2022, and the technology has advanced much further; we have AI-based chatbots that chat just like human beings. The installation is easier now, and once installed, these chatbots can take care of themselves. They learn from each conversation, and they get better after each conversation, to a point where they can take care of lead generation and customer support all by themselves.

Now, what does this mean for businesses? Conversational AI is seen as the next major evolution in selling. What it means is that in this decade, some of the traditional marketing methods will fail, and AI-based chatbots will generate leads and sales for businesses; better than ever before. Chatbots initiate conversations with all website visitors, which means each visitor is specifically targeted. Each conversation will be different and will try to convince prospects to buy the business’s products and services.

Summary

Lead and sales generation are the keys to business success. Lead generation methods change so fast in this era, and the older methods turn out to be ineffective after a period. Companies have to adapt to the changes and implement the latest lead generation strategies on their websites just to stay in the game. 

In 2022, businesses have to focus on developing valuable content, like blogs, articles, white papers, and e-books, to attract traffic to their websites. On top of that, optimizing the website and content for SEO will turn the website into a lead-generating machine. As sales and marketing robots are already available, installing them on the website is a no-brainer since they target each visitor and return a conversion rate of up to 30 percent. The focus has come down to generating quality traffic - lead generation is fully automated.