B2C Lead Generation: Your Guide to Lead Gen for B2C

So, where do you start with B2C lead generation?

In this guide, we’ll answer all your questions about B2C lead generation, including:

• What is B2C lead generation?
• What’s the difference between B2C and B2B lead generation?
• Why do lead generation for B2C businesses?
• What B2C strategies can I use?
• What are some best practices for B2C lead generation?

Need help launching your B2C lead generation strategy? With over 24 million leads driven for our clients in the past five years, WebFX is an unmatched partner for driving success. Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our B2C lead generation services!

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What is B2C lead generation?

B2C lead generation is the process of identifying, obtaining, and converting people interested in your products or services. To obtain leads, you use different marketing strategies to help you reach these leads and capture them for your business.

What’s the difference between B2C and B2B lead generation?

When looking at B2C lead generation, you may wonder how it compares to business-to-business (B2B) lead generation. While both aim to obtain leads, there are two significant differences between these lead generation strategies:

1. B2C markets directly to consumers

The most significant difference between B2C lead generation and B2B lead generation is that B2C companies market directly to consumers. You reach out to people individually to let them know about what you offer and convince them to buy.

With B2B, these businesses market to other companies. While they still market to individuals at these companies, B2B businesses must market to multiple decision-makers to convince them to buy.

So, when trying to generate leads, B2C focuses on marketing to individuals while B2B focuses on marketing to businesses.

2. B2C has a shorter sales cycle

Another big difference between B2C and B2B lead generation is that B2C lead generation has a shorter sales cycle. The time to obtain leads and convert them into sales is much quicker than with B2B businesses. B2B companies often have sales cycles that last for months (or even years!), while a B2C cycle can be as short as a few days.

A big reason for this lengthy sales cycle goes back to who you’re targeting. Since B2B businesses target other companies, the sales cycle is often longer because of having multiple decision-makers. With B2C, the decisions are made faster because individuals make them.

Why use B2C lead generation?

If you’re wondering if lead generation for B2C businesses is suitable for you, here are four reasons to invest:

1. You reach people most interested in your business

One of the most significant benefits of investing in B2C lead generation strategies is that you reach the people most interested in your business.

With these lead generation strategies, you can refine your target audience to reach the people most interested in what you offer. You spend more of your time, money, and effort reaching people who are likely to increase sales for your business.

2. You spend your marketing dollars more wisely

When you do B2C lead generation, you use your marketing budget more wisely. You don’t waste valuable marketing dollars on marketing to people not interested in what you offer.

With traditional marketing methods, you’re often spending money trying to reach people who may or may not have an interest in your business. With online lead generation, you’re putting your marketing dollars towards people interested in your products or services, so you’re more likely to drive sales, and therefore revenue, for your business.

In addition, many digital marketing lead generation strategies often come at a lower cost, too. Digital marketing services range from $2500 to $12,000 per month, including multiple strategies and precise targeting.

On the other hand, running a billboard offers less precise targeting and can cost up to $15,000 per month in larger cities.

Online lead generation is no doubt the better option when trying to stretch your marketing budget further.

3. You increase revenue for your company

When you do B2C lead generation, you increase revenue for your business. As we stated earlier, B2C lead generation allows you to target the people most interested in your business.

Since you’re targeting those most interested in your business, they’re more likely to buy, which leads to an increase in sales. Since your online lead generation costs less and targets more precise leads, you spend less and earn more.

4. You drive leads to you

One of the biggest benefits of B2C lead generation is that you drive leads to you. With outbound lead generation methods, you rely on cold calling and outreach to try and get people interested in your products or services.

This method is often time-consuming, as you may contact people who aren’t interested in your products or services.

With digital marketing lead generation, leads come to you. They find your business through channels like search engines or paid ads. These prospects choose to interact with your company and provide you with their information, whether they join an email list or submit a form.

So, instead of spending your time reaching out to prospects that may or may not become leads, you focus on qualified leads who show interest in what you offer.

How Much Does B2C Lead Gen Cost? Find Out!

B2C lead generation strategies: 4 strategies you can use

If you’re ready to get started with lead generation for B2C businesses, here are four strategies you can use to generate more leads:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best B2C lead generation strategies for your business. This strategy involves optimizing your website’s presence in search engines to help you reach more qualified leads.

SEO uses keywords to help your website appear in relevant search results. You’ll need to conduct keyword research to find applicable long-tail terms, which contain three or more words, to integrate into your website.

In addition to integrating the right keywords, you’ll also follow some SEO best practices like:

• Having a fast-loading website
• Having a mobile-friendly website
• Delivering a positive user experience
• Adding site security
• Opting for local SEO

When you have a website optimized for search engines, you can rank higher in the results. You then drive leads to your site when they search relevant terms, and your website appears in the search results.

SEO is an excellent strategy for helping you attract qualified leads to your website where they can learn more about your products or services.

2. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Another great B2C lead generation strategy is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. PPC ads appear at the top of search results as a paid listing –– they’re tagged with the word “ad.”

PPC advertising is one of the best B2C lead generation strategies because it helps you drive qualified leads ready to buy. In fact, PPC ad visitors are 50% more likely to buy than organic visitors.

Like SEO, PPC involves optimizing your ads for relevant keywords to help them appear in search results. You’ll bid on these keywords to get your ad placement. Your bid amount and the quality of your ad will determine positioning.

In addition to selecting the right keywords, you deliver a great ad by:

• Including ad extensions in your ad to give more reasons to click
• Creating a custom landing page to keep leads focused
• Using negative keywords to prevent your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches

Running PPC ads is a great way to get your business at the top of search results and drive qualified leads interested in what you offer. Best of all, you don’t pay for these leads until they click on your ad!

3. Social media advertising

Aside from PPC, you also have the option to generate leads through social media advertising. Social media ads appear in users’ newsfeeds tagged with the word “sponsored.”

You can run social media ads on platforms like:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest

Social media ads enable you to target leads based on your customer demographic. You can put your ads in front of people who are likely interested in your products or services.

When you run social media ads, you’ll want to follow these best practices to help you generate the most leads:

• Use high-quality visuals
• Create relevant and informative ad copy
• Try different ad formats

4. Content marketing

Content marketing is a lead generation strategy that goes hand-in-hand with SEO. For your website to rank in search results, you need to have pages to rank –– Content marketing helps you create those pages.

There are multiple formats of content you can create, but the most popular formats include:

• Blogs
• Videos
• Infographics
• Ebooks
• Guides

When you create content, you create an avenue for people to discover your business as they’re looking for helpful information. To help you create content that successfully drives leads, you’ll want to follow best practices like:

• Check that content matches the user search intent to ensure you deliver the correct information
• Use a variety of content formats to appeal to multiple audiences
• Create content often to have a continuous flow of traffic to your website
• Use a content marketing calendar to stay organized when you’re creating, editing, and publishing content

B2C lead generation best practices: 4 tips to generate more leads

Want to learn how to generate leads for B2C businesses? Check out these four best practices for generating more qualified leads for your business:

1. Identify your target audience

If you want to do lead generation for B2C businesses effectively, start by identifying your target audience. Your lead generation efforts are only successful if you’re targeting the right people in the process.

To identify your target audience, think about who’s most likely to buy your products or use your services. Identify information like:

• Age
• Gender
• Occupation
• Location
• Interests
• Hobbies
• Buying habits

You can use this information to form marketing personas. Marketing personas are fictional representations of real customers that help you target more future customers.

When you know who you’re targeting, you can generate leads more effectively for your business.

2. Invest in your website’s design

Did you know that 94% of first impressions relate to web design? When you’re trying to generate leads for your business, you must set a positive first impression with your audience.

Considering most lead generation strategies drive people back to your website, you want to ensure your website delivers a great experience.

First, start by implementing a custom design into your website. You want your website to stand out from your competition and show off your brand’s uniqueness.

Additionally, your website should deliver a positive and frustration-free experience for your audience. You can achieve this goal by:

• Implementing a simple and intuitive navigation
• Adding call to action (CTA) buttons that stand out on the page
• Using visuals to break up text on your pages
• Implementing thumb-friendly buttons and hamburger menus (for the mobile version of your website)

3. Add an email sign-up bar to your website

A big part of lead generation for B2C businesses is capturing the leads. When you capture leads, you can nurture them towards conversion. The best way to capture leads is to add an email sign-up bar to your website.

You can opt to add an email sign-up bar to your header or footer on your website.

You’ll generally want to keep it simple and ask for as little information as possible to encourage people to sign up. You can ask for a name and email or just an email and then follow up and get more information later.

If you want to catch your audience’s attention, you can opt to use an email pop-up instead.

When prospects join your email list, you have a direct channel for marketing to these prospects. It’s a great way to take the leads generated and turn them into sales.

4. Create gated content

If you want to know how to generate leads for B2C businesses, try creating gated content. Gated content is exclusive content that requires people to share their information in exchange for the content.

This type of content is highly effective at helping you generate and capture leads for your business. If you have information people want, they’re likely to give up some information to get access to it.

When you create gated content, it must be content that’s worth receiving in exchange for information. This content generally tends to be more in-depth and takes the form of ebooks, guides, and webinars.

For example, if you sell clothes, you may create a gated piece of content that’s a winter fashion guide. Fashion lovers will want the guide to stay on top of trends and give their information to get it.

So, what information should you ask for with gated content?

The amount of information you ask for is up to you. You can ask for a name and email to keep it simple or ask for a few more tidbits of information. With gated content, people are willing to give a little more information to get what they want.

Just keep in mind that if your form is too long, you’ll deter people from giving their information.

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Need help getting your B2C lead generation plan off the ground?

Generating leads is critical if you want your business to continue growing and thriving online. If you aren’t sure where to start with B2C lead generation, our team at WebFX can help. Our award-winning team of experts can help you craft a B2C lead generation plan to help your business grow.

We know how to craft campaigns that drive leads for your business. In the past five years alone, we’ve driven over 24 million leads for our clients.

Ready to earn more qualified leads for your company? Contact us online or call our B2C lead generation agency today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our B2C lead generation services!