“We need more leads”

If you’re in sales and marketing, you’ve probably heard these words or said them to your team.

Rightly so, since growing the business depends on your ability to attract high-quality leads and gradually turn them into paying customers.

For this to happen, you’ll need lead generation strategies that increase brand awareness, generate interest in your products/services, and encourage potential customers to engage.

Strategies that create new opportunities for you to capitalize on and close.

To that end, we have laid out five tactics that may help boost your lead generation efforts.

1.      Invest in Lead Generation Software

Sales and marketing teams spend a lot of time collecting and analyzing contact information manually. The process is tedious, time-consuming, and may yield inaccurate results.

Lead generation software makes work easier by automating the process, allowing your team to focus on other aspects of selling.

The software captures a visitor’s information at points of contact, whether that is a visit to your landing page or a document download, etc. You’ll learn how potential customers are interacting with your business and customize their journey accordingly.

Here are some features to look out for:

• Ease of use: look for software that’s designed for marketing teams not web developers or programmers. The team should be able to use the software without referring to or dabbling in code.
• Integrations: your preferred software should sync seamlessly with your existing Martech stack. This will make for effective inter-tool communication and reporting.
• Scalability: software that can grow with you is software worth investing in. The system should have the capacity to handle expanding operations and related needs.
• Analytics: the ability to analyze collected data and generate reports will help you streamline marketing efforts, improve operational efficiency, and improve customer interactions. Go for software that can help you do this.

2.                  Host Joint Venture Webinars

At some point, you realize that you’ve pitched your products/services to existing audiences and now need to find new audiences to generate sales.

Joint venture webinars are an excellent way to reach new audiences with your message. You partner with brands in complementary niches to pitch to a fresh audience.

Here are ways to make joint venture webinars more impactful:

• Choose the right partner. The best partnerships are those that involve companies that offer complementary products/services, have complementary customers, and audiences that are interested in the partnered event.
• Promote the webinar. Work with your partner to create a promotional kit that ensures your narrative and takeaways are the same – think email copy, images, videos, etc. Choose distribution channels that work for both companies.
• Prepare, prepare, prepare. Conduct dry runs to help the presenters get comfortable with each other, the webinar software, and equipment. The dry runs will help you pick up any technical difficulties that can be dealt with before the big day.
• Follow up. Capitalize on the interest you’ve generated to follow up right after the event and convert those audiences to qualified leads.

3.                  Create Gated Content

It takes tremendous time and effort to research, compile and package valuable information for audiences.

Putting it behind a gate means those who are genuinely interested in what you’re saying won’t mind trading their contact info for it.

Not only does gating content increase your likelihood of capturing good leads, but also gives you better insights into what prospects are looking for.

Best practices include:

• Create an optimized landing page for the specific gated content. Let the message focus solely on the material you’re sharing to ensure your visitor doesn’t get distracted and leave without completing the action.
• There is more to gated content other than PDFs. Many marketers associate gated content with PDF documents, but these aren’t the only options or formats available. You can create video series, webinars, exclusive access, exclusive communities, templates, and checklists.
• Quality over quantity. A short,information-packed e-book does more for your business and reputation than a hundred-page one full of fluff. Observe proper editing principles and deliver high-quality work.
• Make navigation easy. Use the clickable table of contents, ensure any links embedded on the document work, and use images to make the information more palatable.

4.                  Make Cold Calls

Research by RAIN GROUP shows that many senior levels buyers prefer to be contacted on the phone. By senior level, we’re talking c-suite and VP buyers—just the group you want to target.

Cold calling provides a platform for tapping into new markets and gaining key information concerning your target market’s needs, challenges, and expectations.

So how about brainstorming your value proposition then getting on the phone to lock in that deal?

Here are some considerations:

• Know what prospects want. Tough? Not really. Buyers are looking for ways to solve their current problems. By sharing detailed information about the features and services your solutions provide, you can influence their decisions.
• Pre-qualify prospects. Now that you know what prospects want, it’s time to pre-qualify them. Develop strong buyer personas to help you understand your target market and identify brands with the potential to turn into customers.
• Prepare for the call. Come up with a script that comprises a strong opener, a middle, and a conclusion. Test different opening statements to find the one that draws in prospects. Your middle should contain key features of your products/services, questions for the prospect, FAQs, and objections. In the conclusion is where you ask for your goal.
• Follow up. Cold calling experts say it takes on average five follow-up calls to get leads to convert. While it’s easy to give up after one or two follow-ups, don’t do it. Persistence is key in this business.

5.                  Leverage Email Marketing

With over 300 billion emails exchanged daily, email marketing is an effective communication channel between brands and their customers.

B2B sellers use this channel to build relationships, send out promotions, and stay in touch with customers—past, current, and potential.

Having said that, the email marketing technique will only be successful if you have the right contacts and adopt the right approach. This approach includes:

• Updating your email list. An updated and clean list ensures you reach your target audiences with messages that interest them in your offerings.
• Keeping email content concise. Life is fast-paced, readers are busy, and hardly have the time to read through lengthy emails. Shorter emails with visuals or images that can be read on the go are preferable.
• Scrap the “no-reply” email address. It makes your company look dubious, and your email just might end up in the trash. It also limits the subscriber’s ability to reach you, which may cost you countless leads.
• Link emails to specific landing pages. When a reader clicks through to your site, send them to a landing page that correlates with the email and shares more information. It saves them from navigating your site looking for information and possibly losing interest and leaving.