You want to generate more qualified leads and turn prospects into paying customers. That’s why you downloaded this e-book and are reading it now. You want to increase revenue and drive your company’s growth. The goal is clear. But there are many different approaches to lead generation. How successful each approach will be depends on your products and buying processes: you can ask customers to recommend your company – that’s obvious, relatively easy, and has its limits. You can book a booth at trade fairs, make cold calls, run ads and online campaigns, boost PR efforts, and so on. Every marketer is familiar with these tools.

What’s far more difficult is finding the most promising path – meaning achieving the greatest possible result with the least effort, with profit usually being one of the key metrics.

Which approaches are best suited for you and your business to build a solid foundation for efficient lead generation? How can you combine digital and telephone measures to reach your target audience efficiently? One thing is clear: you need to draw a clear line between image-building and sales-driven activities. And since this is about sales-supporting measures: by combining human and technological capabilities, you can identify potential customers and their individual needs and feed them into your marketing systems. With this knowledge, you can repeatedly engage prospects (nurturing) and develop them into customers. It’s not easy – but if you approach it smartly, you will succeed.

How Does Lead Generation Work?

It’s important to understand that lead generation must not be a one-off: for the effort to pay off, it requires long-term thinking and teamwork.

Content That Persuades

It should already be clear: content and storytelling lead to the right actions. There is no “chicken-and-egg” problem in lead generation. You know your business and sales strategy – meaning your goals, your target audience, and your tone of voice. Now you need your story and the content that is relevant for your audience. It must be defined, prepared, and distributed across multiple channels. Stories carry the power of persuasion. They must be coherent: what is the challenge, and how can your company help solve it? Over the course of the sales process, the reasoning becomes more detailed and specific.