Why businesses need to take an integrated approach to lead generation
Lead generation is not a one-size-fits-all affair. It takes an integrated marketing campaign to be successful. An integrated marketing campaign builds a unified experience for your audience. It pulls content marketing, advertising, sales, social media, email marketing, and media relations toward a single goal.
Cohesion is the objective.
No matter how many marketing strategies and tactics you use, you want your brand and your offer to be clear and consistent across all channels. Why? Because consistency builds trust. When people encounter your messaging across multiple channels, they move from knowing you to trusting you to liking you.
Every impactful lead generation campaign should be multi-channel and integrated to be effective. Your buyer profile will give you a clear idea of who your customer is and how they spend their time online. This profile equips you with the insights to create a more targeted campaign that performs better. So it’s worth working with an expert to create one.
But a buyer profile is not foolproof. People are still people. Some prefer Twitter over LinkedIn or articles over videos. An integrated marketing campaign accounts for these differences by using multiple types of media (e.g. videos, articles, infographics, podcasts) and channels (e.g. social media, digital ads, email, blogs, traditional media.)
When a customer or prospect sees consistent messaging through multiple content types and various channels, they know what to expect and begin to trust you. They go through a journey that builds the “Know, Trust, Like” factor for your brand.
Know
First, they get to know you. Maybe a follower liked your post, and it showed up in their feed. The person clicked and read your article. It was a great article, so they followed you on social media. That’s great news, but they don’t trust you yet.
Trust
Now, that person has been reading your emails. They’ve started following your social accounts and listening to a few podcasts where your brand’s mentioned. They’ve identified you as a source of worthwhile information and they’ve shifted from encountering your brand to seeking out your brand for information. This happened organically because you placed yourself where they spend time, you delivered an on-brand message, and your offer and value proposition were always the same. You’ve demonstrated that you’re a reliable source. Now, they trust you.
Like
The final factor is like. Does your brand resonate with this person? Does your offer appeal to them? Just because they have seen you, trust you, and know what you’re talking about, doesn’t mean that they like you. This is where strategic branding comes into play.

From the beginning, your messaging, brand personality, visuals, and everything in between need to appeal to your ideal customer. You can learn more about this in the section on Branding & Messaging.
Inbound Marketing Tactics for Lead Generation
Robocalls and pop-up advertisements interrupt. They irritate. And that is the last thing you want your brand to be. These interruptive and irritating mediums are examples of outbound marketing.
Inbound marketing is the opposite. It’s being there when the customer needs you.
They have a problem. They go to Google to find an answer. They find your content. Your content solves it. As a result, they come directly to you for future problems.
Content marketing, email nurturing, social media, targeted advertising, and authority marketing are inbound and aim to educate and solve problems.
Inbound Lead Generation System
- Attract: A visitor finds your website via an article, video, social media post, email, or other marketing channels.
- Convert: A visitor clicks on your CTA, where you offer a content upgrade. This CTA button or link takes them to a landing page with a form to convert (expect 1% to 4% of visitors to convert).
- Close: You add the newly converted lead to a nurture email marketing campaign and begin scoring them. With most marketing automation platforms, you can automate the process of increasing or decreasing a lead’s score based on their interactions with you. You can add points each time someone clicks a link in one of your emails, or deduct points if someone hasn’t visited your site in a while. This ensures you’re only forwarding qualified leads to the sales team.