How to Generate High-Quality Leads

One of the most important tasks of a marketing team is to generate leads. In order to convert customers, you must attract and engage them with the right mix of strategies and tactics

You need a clear and persuasive message, a seamless customer experience, great customer service, and a robust lead scoring system (which AI tools can help with).

But let’s face it – lead generation is not an easy task. People are bombarded with content on a daily basis to urge them to click, share, or buy, while competitors are probably trying the same tactics as you to get in front of their target audience.

Plus it’s not just about quantity, it’s the quality of leads that matter. What a business really needs is high-intent leads that have an interest in their company, product, or service and which can be persuaded to convert through nurturing. So how can you do that?

In this comprehensive blog, we will cover:

• What is a lead?
• What is lead generation?
• Why is lead generation important? 
• How can you generate leads? 
• How can you measure the success of lead generation?

A lead is a contact that comes to a business through an action such as a query, download, or form submission.

For example, let’s say you have an insurance business. A potential customer on your website who wants to get a quote for home insurance will be prompted to fill out a form that includes their name and email address. This action makes the person a lead in your business and can be passed to the sales department for action (e.g. a sales call or email).

There are four types of leads to consider.

1. A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a prospect who has engaged with marketing activities but is not ready to be sent to the sales department. This type of lead could be an ebook download on your site.
2. A sales qualified lead (SQL) is one that has shown interest in becoming a customer and can be passed on to the sales department for nurturing. An example is someone who had submitted an email or request for more information or to talk.
3. A product qualified lead (PQL) is a lead who has used your product or service and may be ready to become a customer. An example of this type of lead is someone who has had a free trial.
4. A service qualified lead (SQL) is someone who has used a service and has taken an action to show they want to become a customer. For example, this could be someone who wants to upgrade a subscription.

Not all leads are created equal! You need to treat each lead differently depending on the action they took and the lifecycle stage that they are in.

Lead generation is a process of attracting prospects to your business with the aim of nurturing them and converting them into a customer.

You can use both inbound marketing and outbound marketing to generate leads. The approach you choose depends on the business and the audience you’re looking to engage.

The aim of inbound marketing is to attract prospects to your product or service. Content marketing can be the most effective approach here, through using blogs, ebooks, social media posts, webinars, while ensuring your content includes keywords through search engine optimization (SEO).

Outbound marketing is when you reach out to potential customers. This can be done through cold calls, email marketing, using a social network like LinkedIn, or paid advertising.

The approach you use will determine the type of content you create and the resources you put towards activities. A lot of companies use both approaches so it’s worth thinking about how a combination of inbound and outbound can help you boost lead generation.

Even if a company has a large and loyal customer base, it needs to generate leads to flourish and grow.

The fact is that a large percentage of leads will not convert into sales. Some leads may never convert as those people simply want to take advantage of an offer with no intention of purchasing.

This can make lead generation an expensive business. According to research by First Page Sage, the average organic cost per lead across industries is $409.07.

So it’s important to generate leads all the time to keep people moving through the funnel to eventually convert. By tagging and segmenting leads you can put the work required into those that are most likely to convert.

In addition, by being proactive in lead generation you are also promoting your business and raising brand awareness.

So now that you know the types of leads and why lead generation is important for your business, it’s time to find out how to generate them!

According to Hubspot’s The 2025 State of Marketing Report 63% of marketers say generating traffic and leads is their biggest challenge, while 80% say their lead generation efforts are only slightly or somewhat effective.

This means that you need to put some serious thinking and effort into your lead generation strategies.

The best place to start is to review your buyer personas. These are the starting blocks for your lead generation as they give you insight into who you are targeting.

Once you know who you need to talk to you can create content that resonates to attract people into the sales funnel and moves them towards a conversion.

So let’s look at some effective tactics and channels that can help you generate leads.

As marketers, we understand the value of content in attracting, influencing, and converting a lead.

But the challenge for marketers is to understand what content works so it’s crucial to develop a content plan and consider using content pillars to focus on the content that your audience wants to read about.

For example, let’s say you sell email marketing software. A core topic should be email marketing, so you could create a blog titled ‘The Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing’. From that main pillar piece, you can then create topic clusters to feed into it and dive deeper into topics such as ‘5 Ways to Manage & Grow Your Email List’.

This strategy helps build out your content offerings to customers, boost your authority in the area, and can feed into Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), a set of guidelines that assess the quality of your content to rank it.

When you think about content, don’t limit yourself to one or two formats. There are many content types and some work better than others at different stages of the sales funnel, and you can use some for data capture (valuable content that prompts people to give their personal details such as whitepapers or webinars).

Here’s a table showing different formats and the stages where they work best.

The most important thing about creating content for your audience is to address their pain points and offer information, guidance, entertainment, or a solution.

SEO may be overlooked when it comes to lead generation but it’s an important part of the mix, especially as it can help you create content and optimize your website to improve visibility in search engines.

It’s also key to keep artificial intelligence (AI) in mind as it becomes more instrumental in deciding what people see on search engines like Google through AI overviews.

Here are a few effective ways to leverage SEO for lead generation.

• Tap into search intent – To get your content seen by your audience you need to know what they are searching for. Conduct research to find out what people are looking for by using a platform like Answerthepublic, Google Search Console, or Ahrefs, or try social listening. To find out more about your current customers, conduct surveys on community groups or use email marketing.
• Target longtail keywords – Research and use ‘money’ keywords that are linked to purchase intent and incorporate specific locations (e.g. ‘the best sushi restaurants in Albany, New York’) can be effective for SEO and lead generation
• Optimize your page speed – A slow web page or website can affect your performance and leads. For example, compress images, cache web pages, ensure pages are mobile or device responsive, and minimize HTTP requests.
• Create a Google Business Profile – Create a Google Business Profile so consumers can find, learn more and contact your business.
• Regularly update your blog posts – You may have created great blogs that attract and engage your audience, but that won’t continue unless you regularly update your content. A refresh can be as simple as updating stats, including new expert quotes, or adding a new data capture asset, but it’s worth reviewing your blogs regularly to track performance.

“Updating some of your content can have as much as a 106% increase in traffic. Revitalize and freshen it up, or add proprietary data (there’s a lot of great data inside businesses) to give it a uniqueness and edge that publishers and journalists love to share to generate more backlinks,” said Luke O’Leary, Vice President of Media Strategy & Operations at NP Digital on the DMI trends webinar.

Social media has grown so big that there are now over 5 billion social media users worldwide. This means lots of opportunities for marketers to engage with consumers by prompting an action such as a CTA at the end of an Instagram reel or clicking URLs on X.

The challenge is that there are many social media channels to choose from and competition for consumer attention is fierce, especially for lead generation.

The key thing with social media is to use the right networks and create the right content for each one. Analyze your data to give you insights into what platform has helped deliver leads. Once you identify the best platform/s, look at what type of content has performed.

For example, to attract TikTok users, you need to create authentic and engaging short-form video content. While real-time platforms like X, Threads, and Bluesky favor text and images and news-style content.

With social media, it can be beneficial to promote both organic and paid content.

While engagement with organic content is declining mainly due to algorithms prioritizing paid content, posting organically can help grow a community and build relationships with customers, especially through features such as polls and sharing user-generated content.

Here’s an example of a great user-generated video for technology company GoPro.

On the other hand, paid social content is worthwhile as it can be highly targeted at a specific audience with personalized content and can be used to raise awareness or increase sales.

So, examine what’s worked before and see what insights you can get to devise a social media strategy that can generate leads.

Email marketing is an essential part of your lead generation strategy as it can help attract, nurture, and convert leads.

You can use email to attract leads by developing lead magnets (e.g. ebooks or webinars), signing up for email updates or subscribing to a newsletter. This enables people to be kept up-to-date with any news, launches, or company announcements to drive brand awareness.

Nurturing leads is one of the main benefits of using email marketing as you are communicating with people who are aware of your brand and have opted to receive communications from you.

“At this stage, effective email list management is important. With a strong customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can segment leads based on demographics, behaviors, or preferences, allowing you to send personalized messages that resonate and boost the chances of conversion,” said Anna Flynn, MarTech Manager at the Digital Marketing Institute.

Consider setting up automated email sequences, or drip campaigns (such as welcome emails, retargeting, or cart abandonment), to maintain lead engagement over time. Automation tools can help you send emails at scale and deliver targeted messages tailored to different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Here’s a good example of a welcome email from performance beverage company Magic Mind that welcomes a new subscriber and also offers a 15% discount to prompt click-through.

Email marketing can convert leads by providing relevant and useful information over time to move them through the funnel using retargeting emails to reconnect with leads who haven’t converted yet.

While social networks have the ability to inform and promote, wider communities can also provide a place for consumers to be engaged and nurtured.

That’s why brands that focus on providing community spaces for prospects and customers may have an advantage as people look to build meaningful connections.

This is especially true for younger generations: 85% of GenZs say it’s important for brands to create a sense of community, according to Tumblr’s ‘The State of Community’ report.

Social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn are not the only places that offer community building. There are also popular forums like Reddit and Quora, text and video-based services like WhatsApp and Discord, while a publishing platform like Medium or Substack can allow brands to share content.

You can also host events to build and nurture a community. Webinars that feature experts on a topic that your community is interested in can draw in a crowd or a live event talking about a new product or service could generate or convert leads.

Here’s an example of one of our masterclasses that’s used as a lead magnet to attract marketing professionals.

“The value of a community is that awareness and that affinity to your brand. So if somebody is having a great experience within your community, they’re going to have a positive association with your brand and think about you more often than what they would normally,” said Alison Battisby, Founder of Avocado Social on a DMI podcast.

After putting so much work into generating leads, you want to know how successful your efforts have been.

To do this you need to track key metrics that show the quality and effectiveness of your leads. One of the primary metrics is lead conversion rate, which measures how many generated leads turn into actual customers. If you have a high conversion rate then your lead generation strategy is attracting the right audience and is effective at nurturing them.

Another crucial metric is the cost per lead (CPL). This measures how much you spend to acquire each lead. So, a lower CPL with a steady or increasing conversion rate indicates an efficient lead generation process.

Another metric is lead quality which can be assessed by analyzing engagement levels, demographic match, and lead scoring (see more in the video below).

Other KPIs include return on investment (ROI), which compares revenue generated from leads against the cost of acquisition, and customer lifetime value (CLV), which measures the long-term worth of converted leads.

Lead generation is a crucial part of marketing. Attracting, nurturing, and converting leads is what can help a business succeed and grow.

To be successful at lead generation you should identify your target audience, understand the marketing channels that perform, use different strategies to generate leads, and continuously measure and track performance to keep you on track.

Don’t be afraid to try new platforms, tools, or formats in your lead generation approach, and take inspiration from competitors or brands whose marketing strategies you admire.

There’s no better or faster way to break into the digital industry than with a digital marketing certification. DMI’s certified and industry aligned Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing will teach you the fundamentals of digital marketing, show you how to leverage AI in your marketing activities, and simple ways to cultivate soft skills. You’ll also explore key channels such as email marketing, social media, SEO, content marketing, and display and video advertising to execute successful marketing campaigns in any industry.