Have you thought about lead generation? Thinking about launching your business? Or maybe a new product? Potentially even a new online service for your existing customers? Whatever it is, you have come to the right place to learn more.
This article will go through the guide to understanding your lead generation.
Having a great sales lead is the perfect start to your project. Grow your business and bring in new customers.
First, the basics. What is lead generation? If you don’t know, it is simply a marketing process. It’s about generating the first point of customer interest. This can be in the form of collecting data. You can turn viewers into potential customers.
What do you do? Figure out what you have to offer. Are you selling a physical product? Are you more like us at Driven Media Solutions, with an online service? Maybe you offer great digital tools. You know best, what your business is about.
Once you have settled on your niche, you can work out more about your lead generation. The next step is figuring out where you should focus your lead generation. Where do you think your audience will be?
Are you marketing an audience-specific product such as curly hair care? Maybe you are offering digital marketing services. Knowing your audience is the best start.
What are they interested in? If it is the curly hair care you are selling, you know they care about their appearance and health. One great platform which advertises health and beauty well is social media. Particularly platforms like Instagram. Another platform that sells this type of product is teleshopping channels.
Whereas, if you are offering digital marketing, your audience is a professional one, rather than personal. So, they might not be scrolling through Instagram for the next best marketing tool. Instead, they might be searching through Google or getting contacts through email.
What’s Next?
Once you’ve worked out who your audience is and what they’re interested in, you can find out where they’ll be.
With health and beauty, social media and telemarketing is the best option for you. On the other hand, with digital marketing tools, email marketing or online advert placements could be best.
There are of course many other places you can focus your lead generation. But these are just a couple of examples. Another few examples could be live events, such as talks or shows, or even blog posts. Once you have learnt more about your audience, you can decide where you should focus your lead generation. Then, potential customers will be targeted.
Secure Data Visibility for Your Campaign
Even on your customers’ time off, you can grab their interest. They don’t need to be at work to see and find you for their business. If you are in a specific business such as digital marketing, you probably already know this yourself.
There are constant reminders of marketing campaign tools in the form of YouTube ads or social media pop-ups etc. These I guess come from cookies. When we search for things online, our data gets stored when we consent to allow cookies. Then, marketed products get pushed our way. This is targeted advertising.
The world of the internet has allowed much more sufficient ads to be placed. Optimising the space online for certain groups with targeted ads is the way to make money now.
How Do You Get The Reach and Visibility?
Digital ads can reach a great and huge audience. As we all know, the internet has changed the world and especially the world of advertising. Even through the last year. People have been spending more time online. The pandemic has resulted in soaring online sales, as people are searching for online shopping. Get in on the market and push your digital ads for higher visibility.
We have an article all about how to get a social media strategy. On there, we go through all of the different platforms you can market on. It also covers creating the right kinds of content. So that could be a video product placement, or it could be an infographic about your product or brand. There are so many different ways to create great digital ads.
Having data on your campaign is also really useful. Track who is seeing your site or your ad and where they have viewed it from. Possibly your campaign is reaching a great audience in a certain country. Or maybe you are getting clicks through another site. Learn about where your reach is coming from by having data on your campaign.
Of course, you need to make sure whenever you are processing any customer data, that it is following the law. GDPR compliance is completely vital, as you can get into lots of trouble if you don’t comply. Even a 20 million euro fine could come your way if you breach data protection laws. This applies when you’re looking at buying things like marketing lists. Which is a pre-made potential customer contact pool. Read our article on GDPR compliant B2B marketing lists to find out more about this.
Hire Good Lead Generators
Work can be stressful. Running your own business is intense. Doing everything yourself is nearly impossible. The best way to combat this stress is to hire a good team. Surround yourself with people who you know will be good. They should be good at their job, but also easy to work with.
Having a good working relationship is so undervalued. When you get along well with the people you work with, productivity can actually rise. Then when you and your team is being more productive, the business thrives, and sales can grow.
There are loads of freelance lead generators out there. A search online will show you many sites that list all these different people. Search for the one you think will fit you. Hire someone who has the right specialist skills for you and your business.
They will have the skills that you don’t necessarily have. If you hire someone for a specific job, they will already have the experience. Don’t leave all of the tasks to yourself. However tempting that may seem. It is completely understandable to want to do everything yourself. Not only to keep costs low but to feel like you are doing it all yourself. And you keep control of your company.
However, you will probably end up losing time and money. This is no way to run a business. Hire specialists, in the areas where you don’t have the expertise.
There is a really great article to read here on why you should hire a lead generator. So, if you are not convinced, go check it out. It lists many more reasons than I have covered above. And also, it goes into more depth.
Focus On Benefits Instead of Features
Lead generation is a difficult thing to get right. One great tip I can pass on is to stick to the benefits. Don’t fill up space talking about all of the features of your product or service. This will bore people and make them lose interest.
It’s a marketing concept. People care about the ease of their lives. So, tell them about it. Show them how your product can make their life easier. They want to know why they should pick you over another brand that sells the same thing.
Yes, most of the products by your competitors can do roughly the same thing. But it is the perks people care about. Your customers want to know more. Sell it by explaining the benefits instead of the features.
People will be more interested if you tell them, you can make life easier. They will buy into your product when they can see that and understand the benefits. Most people will already know the basic functions and features of a product. Especially if they are searching for it online or in-store.
However, the product’s specific benefits range. Each product from store to store has new things to offer.
Use this to your advantage. Really sell what you have by utilizing its differences. What can you do, that your competitors can’t? How can you help your customers?
Ensure Your Lead Generation Is GDPR Compliant
As I have already mentioned, being GDPR compliant is vital. It is at the core of working with customers. You need to be functioning alongside the law. Follow the guidelines set in place to avoid the hefty fine. It can be a fine of up to 20 million euros like I said before.
Lead generation is no different. You must follow data protection laws. This is not only to protect you but of course your customers. It is so important to look after them and their personal information. This is the only way to build a relationship. You must have a certain level of trust to ensure any customer retention.
Build Trust to Gain Sales
All businesses want repeat buyers. So, to do this, you need to create trust. And trust comes from a good customer experience. And the assurance that you are handling their personal data correctly and securely.
Once you have this trust built, you are more likely to get higher numbers of sales. As you will see customers coming back. This, therefore, creates a reputation. When a customer knows they had a good experience buying from you, they will share this. They are far more likely to tell their friends and family about a store or brand they enjoyed buying from.
On the opposite side, you can get a bad reputation if you don’t do it right. Once one customer has a bad experience, this can spread. They will tell their family and friends about this. A reputation will be formed and you might become known to be untrustworthy. And this can be super damaging for sales.
It is not just the customers you have to prove this to. You must also show your staff or anyone you hire that you are fully competent. Prove that you handle things professionally and within the law. If not, things go wrong very quickly. If staff have a bad experience, this can just as easily get around to your customers.
I know businesses that have lost huge numbers of customers in a local area. Purely because word spread about how they ran the business. So, you need to ensure that your lead generation is GDPR compliant.
We have a whole article that goes more in-depth into the facts behind GDPR. Check it out to learn and understand what it means for you and your business.
Use a CRM To Manage Lead Generation
What is a CRM? Well, it stands for customer relationship management.
Basically, it is a process or system that goes through all your customer interactions. So, when a business wants to look at customer relationships, you can go through all your data on this and analyse it to understand the information.
Use CRM to manage lead generation. Get to grips with your data by learning and understanding your interactions. CRM can organise and synch up all data forms. That can range from sales to customer service.
It can create understandable analytics and sales forecasts whilst storing information. Having all of this data in one place makes things so much easier. You can also share it with other members of staff.
Having a CRM system onboard will really help you manage your lead generation. Therefore, making your life at work easier. Yet again, offloading some of the work tasks can actually be so beneficial. Getting tools or people to help you be more efficient, will allow you to spend more time on what you love. Your speciality might lay in growing the business through digital marketing. Whatever it is, once you have some help, you can get back to it.
As I have already said, customer relationships are at the core of a business. They need to be formed for your plans to work out. So this again will also help to create customer retention and trust. You understand your customers. They become more interested in you. It is how it works.
Consider Hiring Out To An External Lead Generation Company
This last point leads on from my others. Especially the previous point I just made. When you delegate, you become more productive. Everyone can work on their skill set, specialise in what they know and everyone will perform well.
It is just like school. When you get to the point in education that you can choose your subjects, people generally don’t go for the ones they hate or are no good at. Because it truly doesn’t make any sense.
Work on what you love doing. This will make your business and work-life so much more enjoyable. Fall in love with your job again and look forward to seeing that new growth.
This last point to re-enhance this, is to consider hiring out to an external lead company. It can be very easy to find out more about this. One quick Google search and you’ll be shown masses of companies that are passionate about lead generation. They have the skills set and they want to work.
Find quality leads through a lead company. Chances are, they will do a better job than you can. And in less time. So not only will you be saving time on the whole for yourself. But you will also be saving time in how long it takes you to get leads.
If you are worried that this might not be in your budget just yet, don’t stress. There are companies out there who offer free versions of their service. Sign up for these and see how you go. Then you can decide how useful it is to you. You might realise you could do with upgrading.
If that is the case, sign up. Start the paid memberships and get a premium service. Extra help and support, and better quality leads.
Conclusion
I think, in summary, the best idea is don’t overwork yourself. Recognise when someone else can actually do something for you. Often, a specialist will do a much better job and it allows you time to focus on the parts of the business that you love.
That is a great thing to take from the article anyway. Love your business and what you do. However cliché that might sound. But because it is actually really important. Customers know when they are with a good trustworthy brand, as the customer experience reflects this.
Good luck with your venture to find your lead sales. Wherever you end up focussing them, I hope you succeed! Let us know in the comments how you get on. We are always ready to hear about your experience.