Top 5 lead generation best practices for modern marketers and sales professionals
In today’s fast paced world, it’s crucial for marketers and sales professionals alike to stay on top of the latest strategies and best practices when it comes to lead generation.
In the beginning, you need to experiment and tweak your sales and marketing efforts as you discover what’s working and what’s not working. These best practices will hopefully help you learn and model some successful approaches and help you short-cut your way through to better leads, greater revenue and more dollars.
Remember…when it comes to leads, both quantity & quality matter. Without a continued good flow of leads, it is likely that your business will not be able to survive in the long run, since existing customers can always churn and move elsewhere.
Bottom line is that these lead-generation practices will help you drive more leads and convert better.
1.Generate Good Online Reviews & Testimonials
Recent studies show that around 88% of people trust online reviews and around 68% of buyers are willing to write reviews when they are asked to. The latter number has gone up because buyers know how powerful the impact of their reviews are for other buyers.
Add testimonials and case studies on your existing website to improve your credibility in the market. Video testimonials work well too.
This is social proofing at its best – a tried and tested best practice adopted by smart marketers even before the dawn of the internet age when only direct mail was around. When audiences discover good reviews about you, they are more likely to approach you when they have a pain point they wish to service.
2.Create Great Content
The age-old adage stills stand – Content is King.
Great content especially forms the backbone of a strong inbound pipeline of leads. While great content is time-consuming and requires persistence and consistency, it is one of the best practices adopted by the most successful companies.
Copywriting is the art of salesmanship in print. In the current Information Age, a major benefit for marketers is that the distribution of content over the Internet has become cheaper over time. So, it is easy to reach audiences at scale without spending a lot.
There’s a reason why the best copywriters are also some of the highest-paid writers on the planet. They have the power to produce good, high-converting copy that can result in a substantial difference in revenue generated from the marketing campaigns.
When it comes to content curation, keep it simple, informative, helpful, and engaging for the reader. Use different formats and different channels for promotion. Keep the branding and messaging aligned with the overall company’s brand vision and you’ll be sure to succeed.
3. Include Email Marketing
Almost all highly successful B2B companies use email marketing in one form or another to communicate with prospects and existing customers. Not only for selling but also for qualifying and segmenting.
Email marketing campaigns allow you to get into the inboxes of a highly targeted audience and get your message across based on research and segmentation done by the management/marketing teams. It is important to hone in on a narrow and well-defined ICP/Persona (Ideal customer profile) so that time, money, and effort is not spent reaching out to the wrong type of people – people who would never be interested in what you have to offer.
For existing customers, email marketing is one of the best strategies to improve brand recall and continuously upsell and cross-sell different services.
4. Use Forms & CTAs Liberally
With new data and privacy regulations kicking into effect stemming from the GDPR act, it’s becoming more important than ever to have prospects opt-in to receive communications from you. This is best done through a series of forms embedded into CTAs through the various touchpoints which define your brand’s presence online.
A classic best practice is to embed a basic lead capture form on the CTAs on your website which feeds into your CRM and kickstarts a lead nurturing process. When a prospect voluntary shares their contact information with you, the chances of a conversation increase significantly. Again, during the buyer journey, to get further commitment and investment into buying, a more detailed form can be used – which will highlight the nature of the prospect’s business and/or requirement.
5. Use Omnichannel Marketing
The modern consumer spends a lot of time on their phone and computer today. While the benefits of email marketing and database marketing are plenty, given how dominant social media has become in everyone’s lives, it’s important from a brand positioning and lead generation perspective to stay relevant and information on channels like social media, and search platforms and use these touchpoints well.
Forward-thinking companies have full-fledged automated chatbots on their websites and major platforms like Whatsapp which again reduce the long-term cost of delivering a good buying experience using such approaches. Use automation where possible.
For B2B companies selling to B2B audiences, Linkedin is an important channel where LinkedIn pages, groups as well as personal accounts all come into play to generate leads.
Now that you know some of the lead generation best practices followed by industry leaders, it’s imperative to experiment, test and iterate and hone in on the winning formula for your particular business and industry segment.
At BorgDirect, we are here to help! Our trusted advisors have been helping companies for the last 2 decades generate leads, improve conversion rates and ultimately build successful, resilient businesses.
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