A few weeks ago a startup asked me to discover the cheapest and most sustainable method for her to collect 25 leads to try her product. Like most of these companies, the startup didn’t have enough budget to conduct marketing experiments, so it needed to “nudge its way” to get its first customers.
After 24 hours I was able to generate 60 qualified leads by simply using a landing page and a group on LinkedIn: It was so successful that they decided to repeat the experiment again.
Here’s how I did it:
1) Discover your targeted audience
There are billions of articles and books out there that talk about the importance of defining a targeted market, so I’m not going to teach you a lesson on this topic; I will only tell you what, for techniques, I am going to list, and you will need to know exactly to turn your users into leads.
Target anyone you believe can fit into your ideal customer image.
Not long ago, I had an idea for a new app, and I invested in recruiting 10 paying customers before I even made it, just to figure out who my ideal audience was. So my goal was to gather 10 people who would buy and use it, and that’s how I figured out who my targeted audience was even before building the app.
But this is only one of the methods you can use; there are millions of other ways you can test to recognize your target market. In the case I mentioned earlier, they were companies looking for an easy way to collect subscribers.
2) Create groups on LinkedIn or Facebook
You will need to find a substantial and very active group on LinkedIn or Facebook: be careful that the chosen group is the largest and the one that is really active as there are many that consist of only a handful of robots.
In my case, LinkedIn was better than Facebook. Taking a look at their discussions I realized it was what I was looking for, much better than the ones on Facebook.
Another thing to look for is any kind of promotional material advertised in the group because, after all, you will be doing marketing here too, so you will want to know how others have done it before you; in my case, I found updates that looked like promotions as if it were Native Advertising.
So, become a member of the group and test everything you can: post some updates, get an idea of the threads entered and how people respond, then start familiarizing yourself with the group and make sure it contains those users you intend to transform. in lead.
3) Write bomb-proof content for that group
Now find old content written by you or your team and write a new one: the content produced will have to bring a high level of engagement with the people in your group; I’m talking about something that moves the masses, that leads users to respond and read 80% of what you have written.
Not long ago, BuzzSumo wrote an article titled: ” Why Content Goes Viral: What the Analysis of 100 Million Articles Taught Us “ in which they talked about which types of titles received the most shares and why: take a look at it to get an idea of which title to use.
In short, then, you will need bomb-proof content for your audience, do you want examples? Go to BuzzSumo and enter the keywords for your ideal target, you will immediately find the most shared content. Have you written and published your content? Good! Now start collecting leads!
4) Create a PDF in addition to your article
This step is self-explanatory: create a downloadable PDF in addition to your article by including a biography of you, your company or useful information at the end of the whitepaper.
In any case, remember to enter dates to prevent your readers from knowing that it is an old writing or an article published elsewhere.
5) Create an opt-in landing page for your PDF
These are the so-called squeeze pages: the idea is to tap the email from your visitor who wants to have something in return.
The page shows the beginning of the article in which the visitor is asked to enter their email address in order to have the full version of the PDF: the idea is to attract them to your landing page and then convince them to leave you their email address. So try to be very precise and concise in the text you are going to insert in the section.
6) Make sure your landing page is linked to your email provider
You’ll definitely want to collect email addresses and make sure people who sign up receive an email with the promised free resource. Integrate everything with MailChimp, or with another email provider such as Aweber, which will send emails to your subscribers automatically; this is what my “Welcome mail” looks like:
“ Subject: Here is the promised resource
Hi Mario,
thanks for downloading my free resource. To access the PDF click on the link below.
[DOWNLOAD PDF] Click here to download it
Hope you like the content! I would love to have your feedback after you have read it, please contact me even if something is not entirely clear to you!
Greetings,
Rajib Mahmud
CEO
Become a marketer
Make sure the email really works and test your landing page.
7) Find the owner of the group and ask him to promote you
You are now ready to generate traffic and subscribers from your landing page. The idea will be to collect the emails of leads interested in your content, so once they have signed up for the PDF, you can follow them and try to convert them into customers.
In my case, I found the founder of the LinkedIn group and asked him:
“ I am a member of your LinkedIn group and I recently found out about your blog posts about blah blah blah and I liked them a lot.
Lately, I’ve been working on a project, and I’m going to write an article about it, how about if I interviewed you for the article? Your group and your company would gain more visibility.
Let me know if you are interested.
Greetings,
Rajib “
In most cases, the person who answers says “sure” because they have nothing to lose, indeed they have good potential to gain a little more exposure. After they emailed me back, I send this:
“It looks great, I will interview you and you will have visibility on my site, and on my Facebook page. In return, would you like to promote a whitepaper I wrote specifically for your LinkedIn group?
Then I wait until he answers me; this is because my aim, and yours too, is to help them and then get help , interviewing them and promoting the interview.
Most of the time, the founder of a large LinkedIn or Facebook group, for a certain targeted audience, is an expert or well-known person in their sector, so having an interview with them and publishing it to target users shouldn’t be like that. hard.
If the person is available, try to get as much as you can, it could prove to be an excellent ally for the future, but in any case, never force your hand too much.
I have several clients who have managed to get a business off the ground simply by following this approach:
- Find an expert in the field
- Interview him
- Promote him and ask him to promote you in turn
8) Watch lead trends and follow up
If you post a few interviews with the group founder, he will gain more exposure and in return promote your landing page, so that group members will see it and click on it, signing up to read the PDF. Now your job will be to:
- Count the total number of your leads
- Initiate automatic or manual follow-ups to turn those subscribers into customers
You will have a very few days before your leads completely forget you, so in this time frame you will have to ask them why they liked your PDF; also remember that it takes at least 5-7 follow-ups to close a deal. I recommend that you take a look at this article on follow-up emails to make sure you create efficient ones.
Conclusion
Here we are at the end! Try these tips and let me know in the comments how it went.
If you want to get qualified leads quickly, you don’t need a trendy advertising campaign or spend a lot of money. It will be enough to work well on targeted content and create mini-partnerships to gain visibility on a popular group on LinkedIn or Facebook.😉
#audience #landing page #lead generation #opt-in page