Growing your lead database is essential for any business that wants to generate more sales and revenue. But how do you attract and capture the right prospects for your products or services? In this article, you'll learn some effective strategies to create and optimize lead generation campaigns that can help you expand your audience and increase your conversions.
Before you launch any lead generation campaign, you need to know who you're trying to reach and what they're looking for. To do this, you can use tools like buyer personas, market research, and competitor analysis to identify your ideal customers , their pain points, their goals, and their preferences. This will help you craft relevant and personalized messages and offers that can appeal to them and motivate them to take action.
Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is important at two levels. One can start defining few factors like Geography, Industry, Employee Size, Revenue, Business Category(B2B/B2C). These criteria do changes depending on your product or offering. Once you have this information, try segregating it to Total Available Market (TAM), Serviceable Available Market (SAM) and Serviceable Obtainable Market(SOM). With this information you can create different Marketing Campaign to create traction in the target market you decide. Next level of ICP is finding the stakeholders in defined target market and understanding their persona, desirability to create relevant value proposals, content, marketing assets required in the customer journey.
Growing your lead database is a lot like gardening. You need to plant the right seeds (targeted marketing efforts), water them regularly (engage with content), and ensure they get plenty of sunshine (offer value). Sometimes, you'll need to add fertilizer (lead magnets) to help them grow faster. And remember, just like a garden, a lead database requires patience and regular tending. So roll up your sleeves and let's get gardening!
A lead magnet is a valuable piece of content or an incentive that you offer to your prospects in exchange for their contact information. It can be an ebook, a webinar, a checklist, a free trial, a coupon, or anything else that can provide value and solve a problem for your target market. The key is to make sure that your lead magnet is aligned with your product or service, and that it showcases your expertise and authority. You also need to create a compelling landing page and a clear call-to-action that can entice your visitors to sign up for your lead magnet.
When you are creating your lead magnets, you need content that resonates with your buyer personas They are looking for useful, high-quality content, actionable information. In the awareness stage, they are looking for education and insights, so interactive ebooks, social media, and research works here. In the consideration stage, you need content that alleviates their pain points. Cost savings calculators, videos, checklists and educational webinars work here. In the decision phase, they are validating that you have the right solution for them. Customer testimonials, analyst reports, demos, FAQs, and white papers work here. Remember, whatever content you are creating, always include a call to action and contact information everything.
In my experience, Lead Magnets vary depending on the customer journey. It is crucial to understand the desirability, feasibility, and viability at each stage of the customer journey. Our goal is to select a Lead Magnet that provides value and resonates with the customer in their specific stage of the journey, whether they are exploring, influencing, or making a purchase. Furthermore, the choice of presentation plays a significant role in conveying the message and value effectively. Whether it's text, infographics, or videos, selecting the appropriate asset type is vital in Lead Magnet messaging. Additionally, conducting A/B testing for the message, assets, and communication mediums is crucial.
What this summary doesn't say is the trend for lead magnets providing more and more value. 5 years ago you could provide a basic PDF with generic advice. People don't easily fall for this anymore. You have to provide value, and ideally a path to tangible outcomes. Let's take cold emailing as an example. 5 years ago, you could just list the "10 cold emailing tips to supercharge your outreach". Now if you don't deliver an entire playbook including subject line templates, examples that worked, community support, etc. you are not doing enough. The bar is only going up.
Once you have your lead magnets ready, you need to get them in front of your potential leads. There are many ways to promote your lead magnets, such as email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, paid advertising, SEO, and influencer marketing. The best channels and methods depend on your goals, budget, and audience. You should test and measure the performance of your lead generation campaigns and optimize them accordingly. You should also follow up with your leads and nurture them with relevant and engaging content until they are ready to buy from you.
As noted, the best channels can vary, but as a general statement, assuming a B2B offering, I would say email strikes the best balance for the most direct reach to a buyer persona in combination with scale and affordability. Tracking software, recorded within a CRM, indicates engagement for email opens and click through on general information (About Us) or specific resource information (ex: blog, white paper, webinar registration, video "how to"). Cadences/sequences will progressively identify the 10-20% most engaged as the priorities for direct outreach. Sales people should call a prospect and based on the buy persona position 2-3 VBRs (valid business reasons) to support a direct, deeper discussion. Ties to segmenting leads next.
I recommend creating a marketing and promotion canvas to simplify the process of identifying various promotion mediums that can help us reach our target market across multiple touchpoints. Here are some examples of promotion channels that can be included: On-Page SEO: Off-Page SEO: eBooks: Email Marketing: Social Media Marketing (SMM): Pay-Per-Click (PPC): Influencer Marketing: Networking Events: Conferences: Offline Advertisements: Considering our current objectives, it's important to select and prioritize the promotional channels that align with our goals. Each channel requires time to activate, warm up, and become visible to our target market.
Not all leads are created equal. Some are more qualified, interested, and ready to buy than others. That's why you need to segment your leads based on their behavior, interests, demographics, and stage in the buyer's journey. This will help you tailor your communication and offers to each segment and increase your chances of converting them into customers. You can use tools like CRM software, email marketing platforms, and lead scoring systems to segment your leads and automate your follow-up process.
In my experience, implementing BANT lead qualification campaigns can be an effective approach for scoring and segmenting your leads into MQLs, SQLs, and HQLs. BANT stands for: B - Budget A - Authority N - Need T - Timeline By assessing and scoring each factor, you can gain clarity on the potential of the leads. Higher scores in each category indicate stronger alignment with your ideal customer profile, making them suitable for becoming HQLs and advancing to the next level of the customer journey within the sales funnel.
Another way to grow your lead database is to leverage the power of word-of-mouth and referrals. You can encourage your existing customers, partners, and influencers to recommend your products or services to their networks and reward them for doing so. You can also create a referral program that offers incentives, discounts, or bonuses to both the referrer and the referred. This can help you generate more leads that are already trustful and loyal to your brand.
Finally, you need to maintain and update your lead database regularly. This means removing any outdated, invalid, or duplicate data, as well as any leads that are unresponsive, unsubscribed, or opted out. This will help you improve your data quality, deliverability, and compliance, as well as save you time and money. You should also enrich your lead data with additional information that can help you segment, personalize, and target your leads better. You can use tools like data enrichment services, web forms, surveys, and feedback requests to collect more data from your leads.
Let's be real. Leads don't mean anything. This isn't the 90's or even 2010. Contact info = "leads" used to be hard to get. Today, it's a piece of cake. But, just talk to anyone in sales and they will tell you what a hard time they are having closing these "leads." A buyer is 64% through the buying cycle before they even talk to sales. You don't need more leads. You need QUALIFIED prospects, and that comes with great overall marketing (education, content, earned media) - not just typical and outdated lead generation.
Stop thinking about "leads", MQL, SQLs, etc... They dont mean anything. You need to work together with your sales team and align your marketing programs to their strategy. The job of marketing is to "make sales easier" (by Chris Walker). We need to stop fooling ourselves with regurgitating theories and old-fashioned metrics and start connecting with our prospects in more meaningful ways, creating credibility and thought leadership.
Today, if you don't leverage intent signals, you're not going to make it. I'd rather have a small, curated lead database of high intent leads than a big list of cold ones.