There is no better way to demonstrate the value of your marketing efforts than by generating fresh leads for your sales team out of (seemingly) thin air.
Marketing is often an unsung hero, as it is difficult to draw a direct line between the team’s efforts and new business won. Lead generation campaigns – combined with lead scoring – aim to change that.
It’s understandable that many marketers are eager to sink their teeth into such an exciting initiative. However, in their haste, some teams don’t spend enough time getting really clear on the big questions:
- Who are you targeting?
- Why are you targeting this audience, specifically?
- What will you speak to them about?
- What value will you offer them in exchange for their personal data?
- How will you reach them?
We can help you understand why it’s crucial to define each of these elements before you embark on a campaign.
Marketer, know thy market
Who you are targeting is critical to the success of your campaign. Your competitive advantage lies in how well you understand your target market. That is, which segments of that market you want to focus on most and, in turn, which segments find you most appealing.
If you’re marketing to everyone, you are missing out on the opportunity to pointedly share a compelling message with a select sub-group of people. It’s impossible to be relevant to everyone at once – don’t try to be.
Why is another important question.
- Do you know why you’re targeting this particular segment?
- Why will this particular segment find your proposition attractive?
Keeping this front of mind will help you remain focused on the prospects you’re targeting.
Another helpful way to look at this is to ask yourself ‘who are we not targeting and why?’ Targeted marketing means not reaching out to some of the market. Who are you deliberately leaving on the shelf?
What you will speak to them about
Deciding the focus of your campaign is an important decision. If it’s going to generate leads, your proposition needs to be relevant and enticing.
A key consideration here is the content you have available to support the particular strategy or fund you are promoting. Think about the following:
- Do you have existing content to support the case for the investment opportunity?
- If not, how easily can you create some?
- Is what you want to promote innovative, exciting and compelling?
- How will you position it so that it comes across that way?
- Is this a new strategy you’re taking to market, or an existing one?
- If it is an existing one, consider whether your existing material speaks to the audience you’re targeting in this campaign, or whether you’d need to come at it from a different angle.
- Is the strategy or fund you’re planning to promote a strategic priority for your business?
- If yes, hopefully it’s already well supported with a wealth of materials to create campaign assets from. Or at least it won’t be a big ask to create some. If it’s not, then it’s probably not going to generate leads of value for the business.
Another consideration is how repeatable the campaign is. If this is a lead generation pilot for your business and you’ve seen some success, other regions will undoubtedly want to reap the benefits. It’s useful to promote a strategy that is widely distributed, so that you can maximise the return of your efforts.
What item of value will you offer in exchange for data?
A campaign to generate fresh leads for your firm automatically implies that you are targeting people who are not already known to you or stored in your customer relationship management (CRM) system.
In order to nurture these prospects and turn them into marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), you need a way to continue to contact them. Retargeting can serve its purpose, but this is not enough. For your distribution team to eventually have a sales conversation, it is important for them to know exactly who they need to have a conversation with (and how), along with a record of the recent touchpoints that person has had with your firm.
Personal data is paramount to the success of a lead generation campaign. It is, however, often highly guarded and requires effort to obtain – usually via a form. Few people are clamouring to hand over their details with nothing in return.
Defining what incentive you will offer prospects in return for their personal data is crucial.
And, here’s the thing: most firms overestimate the value they’re offering. Digging up a six-month old whitepaper and saying that’s going to be your ‘hook’ to convince people to hand their data over isn’t going to cut it.
That’s not to say that whitepapers aren’t relevant. Perhaps it can be the basis for an interactive infographic-led paper that tells an insightful story of value to your prospects.
Your incentive also doesn’t have to be content. It could be a tool, game, quiz or a product recommender.
Consider all the existing assets at your disposal and the inputs available to you to create something new.
There’s also a real first-mover advantage here – if you offer something of value that’s new to the market, which has the power to gain real traction and increase the volume of leads you can nurture.
How you’ll reach them
Once you’ve firmed up who you are targeting and why, know what you will speak to them about and what incentive you’ll offer in exchange for their data - the last thing is to define how exactly to reach them.
This is a case of defining the channels you’ll leverage, but also mapping the end-to-end journey you plan to guide them through.
Assuming you’re looking to bring fresh leads into the business, you’ll need some outbound channels – possibly display, social, search etc.
You will also need some owned channels where you can get your prospects into an environment you control – often your own website and email.
Typically, in a lead generation flow, your hook will be a highly targeted landing page on your website followed by nurturing via email and your website.
It’s important you map the whole journey end-to-end, so you are crystal clear on how your story unfolds throughout and that you have a clear call to action (CTA) each step of the way.
If a lead you’re nurturing isn’t engaging, you may want to send them down a different journey. Although, if this is your first run at nurturing leads in this way, you may want to start simple. The more paths you define, the more campaign assets you’ll need and the more complexity in your setup.
If you have any questions about the information and insights above, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.