A lead is a person who, in one way or another, has shown interest in a product or service of your company. This is usually a person who somehow contacted your business or company and left his contact details. Leads are crucial for a business, as they are the warmest audience in terms of their willingness to become customers. These are no longer randomly selected people from a purchased database but contacts that are one step away from placing an order.
For example, a person visits a marijuana site and finds a checklist named “How to grow marijuana at home.” The checklist can be downloaded for free in return for some information about yourself (name, email, etc.). If he then receives an email from the cannabis site offering to buy some seeds, he most likely will not be surprised. It will be logical and unobtrusive, and this is what the marijuana SEO services provided by MjSeo.agency are aimed at. Leads are not customers yet but are as close as possible to becoming clients.
What is lead generation?
Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting new people, strangers, and site visitors into potential customers – those who have shown interest in your company's product or service. This is a way to warm up the interest of potential customers that will eventually lead to the desire to purchase on your marijuana site. Here are the key benefits of lead generation:
- Using various registration forms, companies can obtain important information about their target audience;
- This allows them to create databases with users interested in the brand. These databases can be used in the future to implement a lead scoring system through a CRM system;
- This helps companies increase user loyalty to the marijuana brand;
- Lead generation facilitates feedback between the company and the user, speeding up the online sales process.
Finally, lead generation allows you to build relationships with users and, thereby, increase the conversion rate and customer loyalty in the long term.
How to generate leads?
Now let's go through all the stages of the lead generation process. So, the visitor learns about your business through one of your marketing channels. This could be your cannabis website, blog, or social media page. Then he clicks on your call to action (CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages you to take a specific action. The CTA button redirects him to the cannabis landing page that contains a lead form designed to collect information about leads in exchange for a special offer. An offer is a content (i.e., the free guide on how to Legally Grow Cannabis of a particular breed) or a discount that you offer on your cannabis landing page. It must be valuable enough for the visitor to want to provide you with their personal information in return.
The offer is an integral part of your lead generation strategy since no one will leave you their contact details for free but in exchange for something valuable and useful. As a rule, these contact data forms are placed on cannabis landing pages, although they can be embedded anywhere on the site. As soon as a user fills out your form, you get a new lead. See how everything works together? So let's recap:
- The visitor clicks on the link;
- Goes to the cannabis landing page;
- Fills out a form to receive your offer;
- Becomes a lead.
With all of these elements together, you can start using a variety of marketing and advertising channels to drive traffic to your cannabis landing page and generate new leads. What channels and tools are best to use to promote it? Let's consider it in detail.
Lead generation strategies
Online lead generation includes a wide range of tactics, campaigns, and strategies that help cannabis brands attract the right audience and turn traffic into real customers. Because this niche comes with strict platform rules, many businesses work with a cannabis advertising agency to run compliant paid media campaigns and bring in qualified leads more effectively.
1. PPC
When we say pay per click (PPC), we mean advertising on search results pages. Google gets 3.5 billion searches per day, making it the prime target of any cannabis advertising campaign, especially in lead generation. The effectiveness of your PPC campaign largely depends on the continuous flow of users, your budget, keywords, and other factors.
2. B2B
B2B is a special business model that requires a particular approach to lead generation. Meanwhile, SEO is the main tool for generating business leads. It is closely followed by email marketing and contextual advertising. Of course, the level of its effectiveness varies, depending on the channel. CPA (cost per action) also depends on many factors and varies greatly from one area to another. So, for example, a lead for a language school can cost $0.5-2, while a lead for an insurance company is $30, and a lead for a cannabis dispensary can cost $50. And for each of them, this can be a great cost per lead if they have a high conversion rate and a high lead lifetime value.
3. SMM
SMM marketing and social media can also be a source of leads. The right use of your cannabis social media pages combined with the right offers can make a big difference in your lead generation campaigns. Start by adding direct links to your cannabis landing page to promoted Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn posts.
Any lead generation campaign includes several directions. And sometimes it is difficult to determine which of them work as they should and which require changes. What makes a great lead generation campaign? Being at the initial stage of the journey, the user may be interested in informational content (the Tax guide for cannabis businesses or some kind of manual on how to grow a particular canna variety at home). And someone who has learned enough about your offer can be attracted by a discount on the first purchase of the product. So make sure you create the right offers for each step and have the right CTAs in the right places throughout the cannabis site.
All aspects of your lead generation campaign should remain consistent and reflect your marijuana website, blog, and the product you are trying to sell. Otherwise, it will be challenging to move your lead to the next stage of the sales funnel. Remember, the goal of your campaign is not only to get an email address but also to attract a new client. So, be consistent and keep your promises.