Some will tell you they have “the” magic key to successful lead generation. Run as far away as you can! There is no magical or mystical formula hidden away in some dark, undiscovered basement in North Dakota. It basically boils down to getting attention from those companies you want to sell your products and services too.
David Meerman Scott, author of the best selling marketing book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly“, there are 4 ways to get attention – Buy, Beg, Bug, or Earn attention. The real question is which approach works the best? Have you tried any and found them to be lacking? There is a way to get more high quality leads. Keep reading and see if you can relate.
Buying Lead Generation (attention)
This has been the most traditional avenue to pursue. You buy a list, or 5 or 6, of “targeted” prospects; many which have information that is no longer current. You devise elaborate, or not so elaborate if your budget is limited, marketing campaigns to try and reach them with your message. Then you are told that if you get a 2-3% response rate you should do an Irish jig and hug your marketing manager – careful, don’t get too carried away.
Or, you spend tens of thousands of dollars to put up a technological marvel of a booth at a trade show. You come back with hundreds of “leads” that have to be somehow sorted into categories (oh, you didn’t bother with that? Could be trouble) and give them out to sales to follow up. You know what happens. A few months later no one really knows what happened to most of those leads, except for the 2 or 3 proposals that have been out for a month or more with no answer. Pretty depressing, huh? Not much ROI on that investment.
Begging for Lead Generation (attention)
This is one is obviously a little less popular, after all who wants to called a beggar? But isn’t there really a begging component to your trade show booth? Especially if you’re running a contest? Wow, look at all those business cards in that fish bowl. Must be a good lead or two in there somewhere. Or, how about that promotion you ran last month to clean out the “dogs” in your inventory? Isn’t that a form of begging? It might lead to a few new customers, but they could just be the ones that are always looking for a deal. Kind of a consistent drain on the old profit margin.
Bugging for Lead Generation (attention)
Here’s a great idea. Let’s run a campaign with email marketing blasts to our customers and prospects. That should get us some new business. Let’s send out promotions and news about how great we are, oh about once a week. No, wait, since sales is a numbers game let’s send them out every day! And, then we can follow up with a telemarketing campaign. The boss’ brother-in-law runs a telemarketing business and they’ve only changed their name and location a few times; and, they’re really cheap!
Ugh, there’s got to be a better way. Well, there is.
Earn Attention and get high quality leads
This is the essence of Intergrated Lead Generation. It entails creating a Value Proposition that defines who you are as a company and creates a buyer persona(s) for the type of customer you want to attract. It depends on your company pushing out high quality, and relevant, contact to those places online where your typical prospect goes to get their information. Warning: your content cannot be sales puff pieces; they have to present the problems that your prospects struggle with and give them solutions in a helpful manner without an overt sales pitch. That could be a difficult thing for a lot of companies to do. But, it has been proven over and over to be very effective.
There are many tactics that you can use to do this. Too many for you to use all of them. But, the good news is that you shouldn’t use all of them. Your content marketing can be, and should be, very targeted. Visit some of our other pages and you will begin to get a better idea of how we can help this happen for your company.
Get Found | Get Leads | Get Sales! You can do it. We can help. Give us a call and let’s talk about it.
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Phil Lauterjung