The Perfect Lead Generation Marketing Campaign [INFOGRAPHIC]

Implementing lead generation campaigns such as SEO, PPC and email requires the orchestration of a lot of instruments.

If it’s done correctly, campaigns create beautiful music; if not, they create a lot of noise and not much else.

PPC agencies like Straight North know this all too well.

This agency has created the infographic you can check below, the Lead Generation Ecosystem, as a training tool to help explain the full scope of lead generation marketing to new employees.

The infographic is now available to the public.

At the top of the infographic, you can see options — available traffic sources and possible lead generation campaign types.

At the bottom and bottom right, you can see organization — how to collect, manage and use campaign data to produce ever-improving results.

At the center of it all is the company website — in particular, all of the potential types of content a company can use to motivate passive website visitors into active prospects.

When reviewing the Ecosystem infographic, ask yourself:

• Are we taking advantage of, or at least testing, all of the possible campaign types?
• If not, how can we organize our time and budget to do so?
• For campaign execution, do we have all the right pieces in place, and are they properly connected?

These simple questions may lead to conclusions that greatly improve your lead generation.

That’s my hope, anyway!

While lead generation is a must-have part of your marketing strategy if you want to grow your traffic, to affiliate marketers it can actually serve as an amazing source of additional revenue.

Bigger companies need more sales. Easy!

More leads mean more sales, and some of these companies need a LOT of sales.

So much, in fact, that they’re willing to take big steps. They might buy leads from various providers. Or they might delegate lead generation to affiliates, in a sense.

Now, all of the channels from the infographic can be used to great effect, and there’s one type of offer that’s fairly easy to implement across most of them.

This type of offer is potentially very lucrative and it’s great for the companies (so they are keen on using it):

Sweepstakes.

In general, sweepstakes are an amazing way to build your audience.

In case you can afford it, you should definitely think about it and boost those affiliate marketing profits real high!

More importantly, a lot of affiliate programs offer structured sweepstakes from which you can pick the ones that you believe suit you best.

How Does Lead Generation Marketing Work?

The basic principle is quite simple: an advertiser wants to get leads, so they offer an item, service, or something else of value for a sweepstake.

In order to participate, a visitor has to enter a certain amount of personal data into the form on a landing page.

As with all the landing pages, the more valuable the offer, the more info you can ask for.

At the same time, advertisers create an offer through the affiliate programs in which an affiliate gets a certain payout per lead generated by them.

To make it easier, you can filter it by location, OS, and payouts.

When you pick the one you like, you get a referral link you can implement on your site that leads to the landing page.

In the end, your goal is to drive as much traffic to that landing page as humanly possible, have as many conversions as possible, and collect that sweet, hyper saucy cash to increase your stash!

An Important Thing to Know in Lead Generation Marketing

Sure, the principle is simple, but the whole thing is fairly sensitive and the details can make or break your campaign.

You really need to pick the campaign that suits your niche and website.

Meaning what?

DO NOT be blinded by a high-payout offer that has nothing to do with you!

The more the specific offer is in tune with your audience, the more likely it is for them to actually go through the whole process until the end!

Conversion is as important as the traffic you direct.

There’s no use in doing this if all the people you send to don’t happen to leave their data. In that case, you’d be just wasting your time and money.

To this effect, besides the obvious matter of theme, there are two major factors that’ll impact your success rate:

a) the location where the offer is valid; b) what kind of prizes are given away.

In the end, a generic prize, such as an iPad, might be useful.

Even so, in case your niche is all about cars, it’s less likely that people will go for it.

After all, they came to your site with a different purpose.

Location, location, location.

If the majority of your traffic is coming from the US, it is next to useless to pick an offer that is valid only in Malaysia.

Analyze your traffic, be smart, and make it rain!

Where your Work Begins

Picking an offer by itself isn’t that really big of a deal.

As always, the work only begins once you make your choice.

Why?

Because then it’s time for you to promote the hell out of it!

The channels you can use for the promotion don’t differ much from those you’d normally use.

While standard SEO techniques and content creation can work wonders as a basis for the offer you’re promoting, in this case it’s even more important than usual to use the channels that give the highest conversion ratios, which are, traditionally, both social media and email.

Since the landing page is something that’s out of your control, you must do your best to have your audience hooked before they reach the said page.

This is a bit trickier than when you drive traffic to your own landing page.

This means it’s a good idea to bear the type, tone and format of the landing page in mind and then start from that point once you set your promotion.

Social media has a higher conversion and lead-to-sale ratio than most other channels, so it should be one of the most important stops you visit on your promotional journey.

The more personal the type of channel, the more probable it is that it will yield converting visitors.

For this purpose, it’s not a bad idea to check forums or subreddits that deal with the particular topic and niche you’re covering/promoting.

When it comes to these personal approaches, email is still king, so that email list you’ve been building for your website is going to come in real handy!

You have been building an email list, right?

A neat trick that can really help you out is to be a bit sneaky.

You can ride in the wake of your advertiser’s lead-generation by creating a so-called pre-landing page.

This is your own, personal, landing page where you would direct your visitors before they proceed to the main landing page.

Of course, you can’t ask for much here, but a simple email query is more than enough.

If it works, you are effectively getting paid to build your own email list, but it can really backfire.

Remember that this is an additional step your audience has to take, so they may not appreciate the hoops you’re forcing them to jump through.

The offer has to be really valuable, and you should already have a decent level of trust in order to pull this off.

Otherwise, you will just hurt your referrals, and you might even antagonize your usual visitors.

In the end, nothing can replace the hands-on experience and testing, so it will take some time to get the feel for the offers that are right in your wheelhouse and the best ways to promote them.

As always, don’t be afraid to make a mistake here and there, and test, test, test!

Sweepstakes are a win-win scenario for everyone involved.

Big companies get their leads, you get a handsome payout, and your audience gets a chance to win valuable and awesome prizes.

As always, be sure to analyze the data, learn from your mistakes, listen to the feedback from your audience, and remember:

The sky’s the limit!

João Aguiar

Head of Marketing at Mobidea