Lead strategy is one of the most critical parts of a marketing plan. It's essential to ensure that you are always on the lookout for your best prospects and nurture them until they're ready to buy. Here are some tips for doing lead strategy right.
The primary cycle of creating excitement and generating qualified leads.
The goal of the Lead Strategy is to create a drum-beat cadence that inspires, engages and captures the interest of our target.
This outside-in approach to marketing builds the value and credibility of your company over time; it allows you to develop relationships with people you believe would buy from, trust and refer others in their network.
Lead strategy on social media is straightforward: Follow anyone who follows us back. If a person we follow also follows us (or vice versa), this other person becomes a new lead. The process helps generate more qualified leads for each activity.
One of the best ways to generate more leads is by using your offer in different mediums and platforms of distribution that are not connected (i.e., mailings & flyers, websites, blogs and social media).
This approach targets as many people as possible over as much time frame of interest, which often increases the number or quality of qualified leads you receive because collective efforts bring about synergy between channels, and individuals will often "re-share" content they find interesting.
Your lead strategy is responsible for making use of all the elements at your disposal - mailings, websites and social media to gain as much exposure as possible; online stores, referrals, prospects and customers databases to gather more names & data about potential buyers; CRM software that helps you schedule follow up calls with those who are interested in your product; and sales calls/prospecting to close the deal.
If a sure thing, social media outlets are going to be an excellent place for your marketing efforts because they remain in constant contact with their users, always looking for fresh content through:
Sign up forms that invite recipients into new workflows of channels; promotions on Twitter, Facebook (etc.), etc.; memes everywhere!
A lead generation strategy is a clear, concise and consistent approach to building relationships with prospects. Not every contact you make can benefit from having the same marketing message or pitch in the same way.
It's essential to tailor your messaging on social media and offline interactions so that each contact feels engaged enough to invest time (and money) into learning more.
Some lead generation strategies are more effective than others; only investing in elements of a comprehensive plan will give you the best return on investment (ROI). It would help if you also considered how easy it is for potential customers who fit your profile to find out about your product/service.
Here is an example of what a lead strategy could include:
Please make a list of all your digital and social media connections to get their contact information.
Email everyone from your contacts spreadsheet with the subject line "We're Jealous!"
Blog posts, Q&As (with an opt-in form), etc.; Draft targeted emails setting up phone calls or appointments; Use content anywhere Facebook offers sharing tools - use video if it's appropriate; Get creative by using pictures and writing captions for anything you share online: photos, text posts, emails; Build a list of your social media connections and use that platform to reach out.
SAC (Social Activation Campaigns) - Some companies consider the most effective strategies in lead generation strategies because they collect contact information from users through various methods described below.
This involves HR managers organizing 'work sessions' with workers who are unhappy or have expressed unhappiness with the specific requirements or working environment to ensure that they are treated fairly and consistently.
These sessions should always go into detail about how the employee feels, why he may feel this way and what steps will be taken by HR in response to his concerns so that he is well aware of everything before moving forward.
HR managers can perform "spot checks" on an individual's work performance during their shift - just as a manager might do, only that managers would typically check the performance record at the end of each day. HR Managers wish to spot any discrepancies between an employee's claims and actual time spent working in order to encourage constructive discussion on individual projects. By utilizing online time tracking, HR can gain a clearer picture of how employees are spending their time, which helps facilitate more productive conversations about performance.
They are also hoping this conversation helps employees see how their input is contributing towards overall works as a team or component within whatever more extensive system they're engaged part of (e.g., project management).
In order to ensure that employees are participating as effectively in the work project, HR Managers must motivate these team members by alleviating any prior tensions throughout the workplace.
If there should arise misunderstandings between individuals and management because of poor communication at either end during a positive, cooperative meeting or if individual team member's performance has exhibited deficiencies with regards to committing all their actions towards personal goals set for their own career path that is in line with company policies, general direction and long-term goals, they should be easily identified through analysis of performance reviews.
Create Gated Content
It's one thing for your customers to come to you for self-service and a completely different story if they want more help or advice.
There can be many reasons as to why people would want advice from an advisor — whether it is financial planning, consumer debt relief, or holiday trip planning.
Here are some tips on how to set up a referral system that makes people stay longer in your company:
Create content that contains valuable information followed by a call-to-action button that says something like "More?" (or whatever appropriate word works best).
Once someone clicks on the link, their following action should be to get in touch with the specialist who helped them so that you can share information about your product and services.
Host an Event
Another lead generation tactic is to host a live event or webinar. In today's crowded world of online content, attendees at events are eager to connect with other like-minded individuals.
You can bundle past and future conferences you have hosted in the past along with your new monthly event. Offer free tickets to first-time attendees and purchase options for those who would like premium conference access.
Examples: HubSpot's Onward Conference gives marketers a chance to network and learn about how technology is changing their industry firsthand from some of the most innovative thought leaders in marketing.
And the event's success formula is simple – it requires partnerships with a large community of thought leaders and an intimate audience to bring people together. This combination provides you with a strong message, giving attendees the opportunity to meet like-minded individuals while also learning from them.
Provide a Freemium Product or Free Trial
Offer a freemium or free trial as your lead magnet to attract interested prospects and convert them into customers. Your target market might not have the budget for full-priced products, so giving them a taste of what you offer can help close sales quickly.
Freemium and free trial marketing allow your company to obtain valuable customer data at the same time.
Example: Periscope Stream app gives visitors who sign up for their service a chance to win cool prizes by providing hints about solving riddles in live videos hosted on their app.
Optimize Your Social Profiles to Promote Your Lead Magnet
Add Social Media buttons where visitors can get your lead magnet.
Add social media buttons to the About Us page and in company bios.
Promote your free trial leads on LinkedIn and offer a discount for those with Pro accounts.
Create a Facebook Lead Magnet Lab (to save each prospect's details and give them follow-up emails) from any existing contact, email or phone number within their public profile.
Drive potential customers to sign up for your mailing list by following relevant people on Linkedin or Twitter, including their social profiles (with an opt-in form). They can then choose to either receive a white paper or your product.
Follow relevant social accounts of people who may be interested in your products and other potential customers on Twitter/Facebook. As mentioned earlier, follow relevant chats and pages related to the subject matter – but only if they are free of charge.
Create a Referral Rewards System
Rewards systems motivate people to share their contact information with you and encourage the spread of your brand's reach.
Reward programs for lead generation can help you connect with new customers by leveraging your existing customers' skills. For example, it's common to offer incentives like a $25 reward for each new customer that signs up via referrals from happy customers.
Customers love getting free stuff and are often more motivated to refer others if they know they'll benefit if the referral closes on a sale as well.
A great way to incentivize referrals is through a program called Advocate A Day, which allows you to reward one satisfied customer each day with $10 CASH!
You can also use the program by assuring your customers that they will receive a way of referring themselves via email.
Target Top-of-Funnel Keywords
If you are running a blog, podcast or any content distribution platform, microtargeting keywords and phrases with the intent of generating leads is very important. You can do this by creating unique landing pages for each keyword/phrase and your main website.
Each landing page has different branding to reflect the company's image and helps boost SEO efforts.
Example: The Content Marketing Institute uses a unique algorithm to identify top-of-funnel keywords across their posts to re-rank them several times and drive valuable traffic back to their site.
Even the best marketers can struggle with time. When you're trying to build a new business, it feels risky to spend your time publishing content on your website and social media profiles while you're moonlighting as an advertising agency.
When done correctly and with a solid execution plan in tow, lead generation has the potential to triple your annual revenues. Your current customers are most likely giving you enough of their attention these days, going through all those usual tasks like buying from you online or visiting your store to purchase a product.
And unless something big happens (a new customer signs up for an account or a great review appears in an online magazine), you're unlikely to see a significant growth spurt anytime soon.
Just as important, as long as sales are growing exponentially year-over-year at this pace, it could take years before you could even generate a reasonable profit.
The good news is that many of your sales can soak up all this attention and provide you with enough breathing room to start building something new on the side.
These sound motivational and helpful, but you know it's not always easy to drive those sales. And a lot of digital ads are still ridiculously expensive when time is money.
As a business owner, you want to generate as many leads as possible. This is the main objective of the lead generation strategy. For this purpose, you can make use of different strategies.
The lead strategy is used to generate leads for your business. There are many ways to generate leads, and the most common one is a mailing list. The mailing list is also known as a list of people who have requested your product or service in the past. But there is another way to create and nurture your lists.
That's all for now! See you later with a different topic!
