We all want more leads. That’s how your credit union grows, right? Sure, but it’s not always as simple as it sounds. You need to determine how to attract leads, get their information, and most importantly, decide what you do with that information once you have it. Let’s break down these key steps in lead generation and some best practices to consider along the way.

Attracting Leads

In today’s content-rich digital world, you have to really offer something valuable to get someone to give you their information. That might be as simple as personalized rate information or instant quotes, but it may also be something that’s at the start of the member journey where they’re not quite ready to seek specific rate or product information. That type of lead generation, at the top of the sales funnel, is vital. Those are the leads that you can nurture through their journey to where you want them to be, whether that’s a new member or engagement with a specific product. Here are three ways to present lead generation content at the top of the sales funnel:

• Put the full content piece behind the lead-capture form. This method is steadily on the decline. Most people expect to see a little of what they will get for their personal info.
• Give a portion away up front, and then ask for their info to get the rest. Maybe it’s one chapter of a home buying guide, one paragraph from a top investments article, or maybe it’s the results or part of results from a quiz.
• Give them the full content piece and an option to fill out a lead-capture form. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, this method actually gets more leads than putting the content behind the lead-capture form completely. You’ve proven the value of the content you are offering and then give the option to get more valuable content, or the same content in a different format perhaps, in exchange for their information.

What information to ask for

We want it all – email, phone, cell, address, job title, annual income….the list could go on and on, but would you give all of that personal information to an organization you’ve never engaged with before? Or even one you have? It’s not likely, especially at the top of the sales funnel. Keep it simple. Ask for only the information you need to take them to the next step of the member journey – likely their email so you can easily follow-up with something else they’re interested in, name, of course, and maybe one more piece of information that would help you deliver a more personalized follow-up or that is relevant to whatever content you are delivering in exchange for that info.

Follow-up

Even though this step comes after all the work you’ve done to get the lead information, it should really be the first thing you think about when looking at ways to attract leads. How are you going to follow up? Your lead generation goals are likely already linked to revenue or engagement goals for a particular audience, so make sure you have that journey mapped out and how this lead generation activity is going to guide someone to the next step and what follow-up is needed to get them there. Otherwise, they get folded into mass marketing that may not be relevant to their needs or interests and you’ll lose the lead you worked so hard to get.

Test, refine, test, refine

Try asking for information in different ways, giving away varying degrees of content, or try different follow-up messages. There are so many moving parts when it comes to lead generation and nurturing, testing is critical to fine tune your message and process and really start optimizing your lead generation strategies.