What follows here are five lead gen best practices your company should follow to help to grow and develop your sales pipeline with higher quality leads at a lower CPA. The tips presented in this guide are proven best practices that will put your lead generation efforts on a solid path of growth and continued success.
Tip 1: To Thine Own Audience Be True – Know your audience, know yourself, and speak the same language
Before spending a dime on generating leads for your sales pipeline, you need to ask yourself a few things about your company and your potential clients:
Who are you and who do you represent?
What level of service can your clients expect from your company?
What is your value proposition? What differentiates you from your competition?
Who is your ideal or target client? What are they like? What do they need? What problems can you solve for them?
How should you best communicate with your target audience?
Everything will flow from this self-assessment. Once you establish who you are, what makes you different, and what your clients will require from you, you can begin to formulate your lead gen marketing plan. When planning your marketing, to be most effective it will be vital to communicate with your leads and clients on their terms, in their language, and in their comfort zone.
Tip 2: TV or Not TV? – Build awareness and reach more people with America’s Favorite Pastime
Throughout television’s 70-odd year history, it has become a fixture in American homes. 98% of American households have at least one television, and over 76% subscribe to either cable, satellite, or both. While the number of households with a television may be on the decline, as more and more people are turning to the Internet for their entertainment, television certainly isn’t going anywhere in the near term. What makes television such an effective advertising medium, when done correctly, is its ubiquity.
When advertising on TV, you reach potential clients and leads before they consider other options – it’s the ultimate in push marketing. Television tells the viewer about needs and wants they may not realize they had. Television also presents immediacy in the client’s decision-making process. “Call now!” has been the siren song of TV pitchmen for decades – FOMO is real, and “missing out” is a fear that has become ingrained in our DNA – be sure to leverage that.
The key to success in capitalizing on both the immediacy and the ubiquity of television is a carefully crafted, time-tested message that runs alongside the preferred programming of your target audience. Knowing your audience, and its interests, will tie your messaging to their expectations, in a setting in which your audience is most comfortable. Think about how soap operas got their name.
TIP 3: Web Presence (of Mind) – How your website and your search rankings can work together to bring you leads
The Internet has become an invaluable resource for all manner of commerce and information gathering – it’s been said you can find anything on the Internet. Where in the past, people would resort to the yellow pages, periodically published directories, or word of mouth from close friends and family, today the Internet is THE place where people turn when they need information. It has become the yellow pages, directory, and trusted family friend rolled into one.
Perhaps in the early part of the Internet Era, a company could get by with just a website. These days a website is just a place to start. “Web presence” is a means of quantifying how “visible” your company is on the Internet. Having a robust web presence includes being listed in online directories that are keyed to your business's physical location (Google Business Profile, Google KnowledgeGraph); online peer-contributed rating sites (Yelp.com); and a solid, well-thought out SEO strategy for good rankings and high visibility in search results. Taking these steps is crucial to successfully making your company known on the Internet.
TIP 4: PPC – The hidden gem of lead gen: Even your leads didn’t even know they were looking for you!
According to HubSpot, less than 20% of marketers think outbound lead gen efforts result in quality leads. By putting a robust pay-per-click advertising campaign in place, you can leverage users searching for solutions, and present your company to active leads at the moment they’re looking for it. Pay-per-click campaigns are performance-based, which means you only pay when a lead clicks on your ad and is directed to your website.
You control the budget, geographic areas where your ad will be shown, time of day the ads will be shown, and all messaging contained within the ads. You also have full control over the keywords that will trigger your ads to run. Mobile-focused pay-per-click “click-to-call” ads allow your leads to call your office directly from the search results. When contact is made within five minutes of initial contact, leads are nine times more likely to convert.
TIP 5: Social media – America’s Sweetheart opens up dialogue, builds trust, and keeps you top of mind.
A strong and consistent organic presence on the leading social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn) provides essentially free publicity and an open dialogue with your audience. In the all-important mid-funnel consideration phase, building trust can really open up a dialogue to show your leads what you can do right as they're considering solutions and preparing to buy.
Paid social can also pay dividends, with its tight targeting options and flexible ad units. You can really dial in and reach your exact target audience with a well-timed and relevant message.
Conclusion
When marketing for lead gen, keep these best practices in mind.
1) Know your audience, and speak their language.
2) Consider advertising on TV in your local market.
3) Enhance your “web presence” to get your firm and your message out there.
4) Use Paid Search to get your firm in front of your leads when they need you.
5) Be social through social media to foster dialogue that can pay off later.
Commentaires