These Effective Strategies Turn Prospects Into Customers
Generating leads isn’t just about being seen — it’s about being seen by the right people at the right time with the right message. It’s about choosing the right mix of marketing services to fill your sales pipeline.
This guide walks you through the most effective marketing tactics that can help you efficiently attract, engage, and convert leads.
Paid Digital Marketing Services
Paid marketing services is a broad category that describes any digital ad type. Ad audiences tend to be in-market or at least interested in what your business is offering, which makes these ads especially effective at generating leads.
Search Ads
Search ads are ideal for capturing the attention and clicks of audiences who are actively searching for your products or services. Because your audience is already in-market, search ads are one of the strongest lead generators among digital advertising efforts.
Your marketing agency will bid on relevant keywords in an auction system, and you’ll only pay for the clicks you receive. This is known as pay-per-click, or PPC. Your ads will appear in the search results when users search for those relevant keywords.
Your search ads can be tailored with targeting options like location, device, and even time of day. The goal is to drive relevant traffic to your website, generate leads, and increase your sales.
Search ads are ideal for almost every B2C business. At iFOCUS, we always recommend them as part of our home services marketing strategies for businesses like HVAC service providers, roofers, siding companies, plumbers, electricians, and exterminators. But they’re also great for ecommerce businesses, where shoppers are intent to make a purchase!
Social Media Marketing Services
Social media ads can also generate leads for your business, although we most often think of them as mid-funnel: they’re targeted to users who are interested in what you have to offer (sometimes called affinity audiences), but maybe don’t have the intention of making a purchase right away.
Despite this, you can still generate leads from social media ads on platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, depending on your target audience and your message. The tricky part is identifying the platform where your audience is most likely to spend their time.
LinkedIn social media marketing services are ideal for businesses whose target audiences are other businesses. Meta platforms’ wide audiences make Facebook and Instagram ideal for more generalized audiences. And Pinterest is ideal for selling goods or services targeted toward women, who tend to be interested in party planning, home decor, and other similar household decisions. You are highly likely to find your target audience on at least one social media platform.
Programmatic Display Ads
Programmatic display ads use machine learning to place your banner ads or video ads in front of your audience, nearly everywhere they are online. Popular programmatic display ad platforms include Simplifi, Google Demand Gen, and Google Performance Max.
This marketing service allows you to target specific audiences based on data like demographics, behavior, and location. It can also include site retargeting: when a user visits a website, they see your ad over and over again across various sites and apps, even in their Gmail inbox!
Because of precision targeting, you are ensuring that your ad gets in front of someone interested in what you’re selling, and that your ad feels relevant to them. For example, in a home services marketing strategy, we may recommend programmatic display ads put in front of households located in specific zip codes, who have searched for home improvement companies and own their homes.
Video Ads
Video sells. People are more likely to watch a video than notice a static ad as they scroll by, especially when those ads appear on their favorite streaming services, like YouTube, Hulu, network apps, or in other placements around the web.
OTT (over-the-top) or CTV (connected TV) ads are a type of video ad delivered through digital platforms to users watching content on any device. These ads appear before, during, or after streaming content and are targeted based on viewing habits, demographics, and location.
Unlike cable TV ads, OTT/CTV ads offer precise targeting and the ability to measure performance and attribute leads. Their tailored messaging means viewers are more engaged because the message is relevant to them.
Other Marketing Services for Lead Generation
These marketing services are not so much seen as ads as they are direct communication from your business. Targeted messages to past and existing customers work well for lead generation because you already know the recipients are interested in your business.
Direct Mail Campaigns
When most people think of direct mail campaigns, they think of the oversized postcards you receive in your “junk mail.” But direct mail is so much more than that.
Today, direct mail is a marketing service that also includes emails to past and current customers. Both the traditional print postcards and these emails are highly effective because they feel personalized.
Direct mail campaigns speed up your sales cycle, so you can enjoy an influx of leads quickly after campaign launch, especially when you distribute special offers to entice your customers to take advantage of.
Email Marketing Services
If you have a customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can convert past and existing customers again and again with email marketing services. Email campaigns nurture leads into conversions and keep interested customers engaged with and aware of your business.
Email marketing services that perform best include drip campaigns, a series of automated emails sent to users in your CRM based on their actions, interests, or stage in the customer journey. Emails are triggered by behaviors like signing up for a newsletter, downloading a resource, or abandoning a shopping cart. Each email in the sequence nurtures the relationship, provides value, and guides recipients toward a specific goal: making a purchase, for example.
Drip campaigns are personalized and segmented for better engagement, so your business stays top-of-mind and efficiently moves leads through the sales funnel to a conversion.
Your Website
Are you making a strong first impression with your website? You should be, because it’s one of the most important tools in your marketing arsenal for nurturing leads.
When your website doesn’t work to generate leads, it could be because:
- The user experience (UX) is sub-par. If site visitors can’t easily navigate your website, they will move on.
- It doesn’t accurately reflect your brand. Outdated or inaccurate websites kill conversions fast.
- Your competitors’ websites are better. Your website has to keep up to retain your market share.
Website design and development is a must-have marketing service before you ever run ads online. Your ads need a strong landing page to connect to; without it, you may get lots of impressions and clicks on your impressive ads, but you’ll lose out on leads and conversions if your website doesn’t meet expectations.
These Marketing Services Support Lead Generation
Although they don’t directly drive lead generation, some marketing services help support it. You need a comprehensive lead generation strategy that includes these tactics.
Organic Social Media
Organic social media content and interaction builds brand awareness and cultivates an engaged community of followers. A strategic editorial calendar of organic social media posts supports lead generation because it keeps your brand top-of-mind and supports your overall branding efforts.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is responsible for getting your website to rank highly in search engines using on-page and off-page optimizations, including content marketing services.
Although you can pay and be placed at the top of the page immediately with paid search ads, ranking organically for a variety of keywords is important for long-term success. Helpful content builds your authority, so your website begins to outrank your competitors as more and more site visitors click on your business in the search results. In the background, metadata and a smooth user experience contribute to your success.
Customizing Your Lead Generation Strategy
Lead generation isn’t a one-size-fits-all effort. To get qualified leads, you need a tailored approach backed by data and expertise.
By combining high-performance tactics like search ads, social media ads, programmatic display, and video ads with essential tools like direct or email marketing and an optimized website, you can build a powerful, omnichannel strategy. Supporting services like SEO and organic social media enhance your efforts, so your brand stays visible and relevant.
When thoughtfully integrated, marketing services work continuously to drive growth for your business. iFOCUS Marketing & Advertising creates customized strategies to help you capture leads for your business, increase sales, and grow the way you want to.
Start the conversation with iFOCUS to discover how we can help you craft a plan to reach your lead generation goals.
