10 Lead Generation Best Practices for Your Organization’s Growth

You may remember the classic quote, “If you build it, they will come,” from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. Sadly, this approach doesn’t quite work when it comes to your business’s growth.

You can’t expect clients or patients to come to your business on their own. Instead, you need effective lead generation strategies to generate interest, move individuals through the “lead gen funnel,” and convince them to become customers, clients, or patients.

Following a few lead generation best practices can help you land more clients and stay competitive in your industry, whether you are a healthcare professional or another type of service-based provider.

What is lead generation?

In the marketing world, “leads” are individuals who have the potential to become customers of your business. They have expressed interest in your goods or services, but they are not yet ready to make a purchase.

“Lead generation,” then, is the process of creating leads. This involves:

• Creating awareness around your business
• Generating interest in your products or services
• Building a brand audience

Leads are different from prospects in that they are considered unqualified contacts, meaning they have shown initial interest in your company but haven’t acted further. Prospects are qualified contacts who match your ideal customer profile, making them more likely to convert to customers. A good lead generation strategy can attract both unqualified and qualified leads.

Without lead generation best practices, you won’t reliably attract new customers to your business. Every customer was once a lead, and while some leads convert to customers faster than others, you also lose a significant number of leads in the process. This is why it is important to attract as many qualified leads to your business as possible, so that you have the best chances of converting some of them to customers.

Modern lead generation practices have transitioned from cold calling individuals on your contact list to using digital, inbound, and value-driven approaches. The best lead generation marketing strategies take much less time to implement than traditional tactics and offer better ROI, making them well worth the investment.

10 best practices to generate leads for your business

Your business can use a wide range of strategies to generate high-quality leads and build interest in your brand. These are the 10 lead generation best practices to incorporate into your marketing strategy.

1. Define your ideal customer

Before you can start attracting qualified leads who represent your “ideal customer,” you need to define what that ideal customer is. This enables you to tailor your lead generation and overall marketing efforts to this customer profile, preventing you from targeting people who won’t be interested in your business and effectively wasting your marketing spend.

Your ideal customer is the person who:

• Gains the most value from your product or service
• Spends the most money at your business
• Stays as part of your customer base the longest
• Refers others to your business

This person provides maximum ROI and makes your lead generation efforts worthwhile.

You can start identifying your ideal customer by defining their key characteristics, such as the following:

• Demographics: Gender, age, education, income, location, family status, etc.
• Psychographics: Attitudes, interests, values, pain points, goals, motivations, etc.
• Behavioral traits: Business loyalty, purchasing habits, product usage, engagement, etc.

For healthcare practices, these characteristics might also include healthcare needs or service interest, such as dental, physiotherapy, etc.

Of course, there is not one singular profile that makes up your ideal customer. But your brand might cater to certain types of people more than others. Creating a few “ideal customer” profiles can give you clarity as you begin to refine your lead generation process.

One of the ways in which you can use these ideal customer profiles is when creating PPC ads. On Facebook, you can customize your ad audience to very specific demographic and psychographic criteria. This allows you to create ads that target your ideal customer, improving the ROI on your marketing and sales efforts.

Your ideal customer profile can guide where you advertise your business, the types of messaging you use, and your lead scoring process.

2. Use high-quality content to build trust and awareness

Content marketing is a critical component of any good lead gen strategy. This involves creating high-quality content that accurately reflects your brand, builds trust in your audience, and generates awareness about your products or services.

Search engine optimization (SEO) goes hand in hand with content marketing. SEO is the process of increasing your website’s rankings in relevant search results to get your name in front of more potential leads. When your website ranks higher for terms that relate to your business, more people will find your business organically and become interested in your services or products.

Creating content such as blog posts, FAQs, and how-to guides can educate potential clients and position your business as a trusted authority. For healthcare practices, you might create content that answers specific questions your potential patients have, such as:

• What To Expect at Your First Dental Visit With a New Provider
• 5 Signs You Need Physiotherapy
• How To Choose the Right Family Doctor

You can share this type of content on your website, such as in a designated “Blog” tab, and on your social media profiles. High-quality content works in several ways to generate leads for your business:

• Shows your website visitors that they can trust your practice and that you are a reliable authority in your industry
• Shows Google users that your website answers their questions and that your business can address their needs

3. Offer value through gated content, free consults, or trials

Generating leads for your healthcare practice or service-based business often means enticing your target audience with a special offer. This can help take users from simple website visitors to leads who express interest in your business and have the potential to become clients.

Gated content is any type of content that users must provide their contact details to access. Offering gated content on your website could be an effective way to collect lead information that you can then use to nurture leads and continue moving them through the funnel. But you need to approach this process strategically to convince anyone to share their contact details with you.

Offering highly valuable content as gated content can help you encourage more potential leads to share their contact information with you. This content might include:

• eBooks
• Detailed how-to guides
• Video tutorials

Aside from content, you can also provide other high-value offers like free consultations or trials. Offering an initial appointment for free can be extremely valuable, as it can get a lead into your office and allow you to demonstrate why your practice is worth paying for.

Providing offers in exchange for contact details also allows you to qualify leads. You can have a lead fill out your lead generation form with details about the service or product they are interested in. If their description doesn’t match your offerings, you will know that further marketing efforts may not be worthwhile.

4. Leverage referrals and word of mouth

Referrals remain a powerful lead source, even in the age of digital marketing. When an existing client refers someone else to your practice, the referred client:

• Is 18% more loyal than a client acquired by other means
• Has a 16% higher lifetime value than non-referred customers with similar demographics
• Is 4.5 cents more profitable per day than other clients, on average

As a result, one of the lead generation best practices involves generating referrals for your business. This requires you to convince your existing client base to recommend your practice to others.

Referrals build social proof and trust, which is especially important in local or healthcare contexts. Your potential clients have dozens of other practices or organizations to consider in their search, and yours needs to stand out. A referral can show a potential lead that your business is trustworthy and reliable, giving you a leg up over competitors.

Depending on your type of organization, you might start a referral program where your existing client base can earn rewards for referring others to your practice. If you attempt this, be sure to understand your industry’s regulatory guidelines for referrals. In some healthcare settings, you cannot provide monetary incentives for referrals under ethical guidelines.

You can also encourage referrals simply by:

• Building strong provider relationships
• Delivering an exceptional experience to clients
• Ensuring clear communication with your client base
• Building seamless processes
• Leveraging digital tools for communication and engagement

All of these steps can help you provide a client experience that leads clients to naturally want to tell their friends and family.

Client reviews also go hand in hand with referrals. When existing clients leave detailed, positive reviews of your practice, these can provide social proof and instill trust in potential clients, making them more likely to choose your business over others.

While you need to be careful about incentivizing positive reviews, you can consider asking patients or clients to leave reviews after their appointments with you. Sending an automated review request may be a good way to increase the number of reviews your organization receives.

5. Use multi-channel outreach

Your organization’s lead gen efforts shouldn’t only rely on one channel. Your potential leads exist across multiple channels, and targeting them in each of these spaces can lead to more leads and a more effective lead generation campaign overall.

You can market using both inbound and outbound channels.

• Inbound lead generation involves attracting leads with valuable content that draws them to your website. These strategies include search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing.
• Outbound lead generation involves reaching out to potential leads to generate interest in your services or products. These strategies include ads and retargeting.

A successful lead generation strategy further leverages social media platforms to engage your target audience in a space where they are already spending their time. Posting on social media is also free, making it a valuable organic strategy.

When you create a multi-channel lead gen strategy, consistency is important. Creating content across all of your channels regularly will ensure that you stay in front of each audience. This increases the chances of capturing leads from different types of potential clients.

You also don’t need to create unique content for every channel. You can turn blog posts from your website into social media posts and emails, post videos and images across all of your social channels, and link to articles on your website in social media posts.

6. Implement optimized lead capture forms

The lead forms you include on your website can greatly impact the success of your lead generation campaign. They can also affect your lead quality and your ability to qualify leads as they come to your site.

Your lead capture forms, which are the contact forms you include on your site to collect lead information, should be:

• Clear: Be straightforward about the types of information you need, like name, phone number, email address, and service request.
• Simple: Use as few fields as possible to reduce friction. If a lead has to spend too much time filling out your form, they may give up halfway through it.
• Specific: Collect the necessary information to determine whether a lead is qualified up front. This might mean adding a field for the lead to state what products or services they are interested in. Or it might mean asking about their budget, if this is important to your strategy.

Including compelling calls to action (CTAs) can persuade users to fill out your lead form. CTAs should be short, specific, and time-sensitive. Examples may include:

• Download our patient guide now
• Get a free consult today
• Request your free estimate today
• Download our free eBook now

Creating an enticing offer can help you convince more potential customers to fill out your lead form.

7. Prioritize high-intent prospects

By now, you have learned that qualified leads are more valuable than unqualified leads, or people who aren’t likely to actually become customers or clients of your business. To determine whether your leads are qualified, you can create a lead scoring system. Then, you can use these scores to rank and prioritize leads.

You can follow a lead scoring process like this one:

1. Define the characteristics and behaviors that signal interest or fit for your business, such as demographic characteristics or behaviors
2. Assign a numerical value to each characteristic and behavior
3. Total the points for each lead
4. Determine which score range is the highest priority
5. Route high-quality leads to sales, and nurture lower-quality leads with further marketing

When your sales and marketing teams focus on high-potential leads first, you can increase your ROI and convert leads at a higher rate. And because your high-intent leads share many of the same characteristics and behaviors, you can refine your marketing strategies to cater to these individuals, making further marketing efforts more effective.

Still, any lead who fills out your contact form could have the potential to become a paying client or patient. Don’t ignore the leads who don’t fit your lead qualification mold; instead, focus on nurturing them so that some of them eventually turn into high-quality prospects.

8. Nurture leads with timely follow-up and consistent communication

Lead nurturing is another important lead generation best practice. “Nurturing” involves building relationships with leads and leading them through the buyer’s journey until they are ready to purchase. Even your most promising leads may require some nurturing to convert to customers.

Lead nurturing may include:

• Following up on their query with calls or emails
• Sending reminders to book an appointment or take advantage of an offer
• Sending educational emails and text messages that show them the value of your services
• Posting educational content on your website and social media profiles to continue building authority with your audience
• Personalizing your interactions with leads to present them with the most valuable information based on their characteristics and behaviors

Automation is a major component of lead nurturing. You don’t need to manually reach out to every lead on your list with personalized marketing materials. Instead, you can automate this process by segmenting your leads into certain categories based on their demographics or qualification scores, then send tailored messaging to each segment.

Patient engagement platforms like Weave make this process simple. You can send email and text campaigns to each category of leads. The platform automatically personalizes the messaging with each patient’s name and other relevant details, helping to build relationships with those leads. And you can automate the entire process, sending certain messages on specific days and at certain times to engage your audience most effectively.

9. Use retargeting and remarketing to re-engage visitors

A large percentage of the users who visit your website or social media pages leave without converting to customers. Retargeting and remarketing are essential steps in guiding these users through the sales funnel, even if they may not initially be interested in your services.

Retargeting involves re-engaging users who previously visited your website but didn’t convert into paying customers. One of the easiest ways to do this is through PPC ads.

Ad platforms like Google and Facebook Ads allow you to display ads specifically to the users who have visited your website in the past. You can create custom ad content that engages this audience.

To display ads to previous website visitors, you need to place a small piece of code, known as a retargeting pixel, on your website. When a user visits your website, this code drops an anonymous cookie on their browser. The cookie tells the retargeting provider to show them ads from your business.

You can also use email marketing to retarget website visitors. This relies on your ability to obtain a lead’s email address before they leave your website. Having lead generation offers that attract even those who are not set on becoming clients or customers can help you gather more email addresses that you can use in retargeting campaigns.

Finally, social media can be an effective channel for retargeting. Modern social media algorithms can display content from your pages to users who don’t follow you but who previously visited your page or have expressed interest in similar topics.

10. Track and measure your lead generation performance

Implementing the lead generation strategies above can help you generate quality leads, nurture leads effectively, and increase conversion rates. But in order for these strategies to add value to your business, you need to track and measure them consistently and ensure that they perform well.

Get into the habit of tracking these metrics to measure campaign performance:

• Cost per lead: How much you spend on your lead generation campaign to attract each lead
• New leads: How many new leads you attract over a specific period, such as each day, week, or month
• Conversion rates: The percentage of leads that turn into clients
• Click-through rates: The number of ad or email clicks on each campaign
• Website traffic: The total number of visitors and organic clicks on your website
• Engagement rate: The number of likes, comments, shares, and time on page for social media campaigns

Monitoring these metrics over time can help you determine whether your campaign is performing effectively. If you are failing to see the results you would hope for, you can adjust your campaign accordingly.

Enhance your lead generation efforts with Weave

These lead generation best practices can transform your business’s marketing efforts, helping you attract more potential clients and jumpstart your business growth. However, implementing all of these strategies manually can be incredibly time-consuming. Lead generation is a process, not a one-time tactic, and it can add a significant amount of work to your weekly task list.

Weave helps automate lead generation for healthcare practices like dentists, vets, and optometrists. Our patient engagement platform lets you streamline scheduling, patient outreach, and CRM integration, helping you implement these best practices easily and save time on other administrative tasks.

Request your demo of Weave’s communication platform today to learn more.

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