What Every Marketing and Sales Manager Should Know About Lead Generation
Lead generation is the process of invigorating interest among your target market for a specific service or product in order to attract them to your sales funnel. Since lead generation helps drive the early stages of your sales cycle, a foolproof marketing plan is crucial to sparking successful sales. In addition to registering with business directories that provide consumers with comprehensive business profiles and contact information, your marketing and sales managers should also have expert knowledge of distributors and their top decision-makers. Here are some things to know about a successful lead generation campaign.
Be aware of your buyers
Marketing and sales managers must be fully aware of how their buyers think and react. They need to know if they are selling B2C or B2B. You need complete knowledge about your annual revenue along with information about the length of your sales cycle. Set up a profile that caters to your target audience to match with qualified leads.
Evaluate your marketing leads
As soon as you know your buyer profile, establish the criteria to determine if a potential client is suitable. There is no need to manually evaluate your data. There are several marketing automation and analytics tools available that can do the job for you. Simply set up your qualification and scoring rules to know if your leads are going through the right online marketing funnel.
Focus on leads that convert
For any business, marketing and sales managers need to think about more action-oriented leads, leading users to pricing information and buyer’s guides. Leads simply circling your site show that users are starting to take notice, but this will rarely serve to increase your profits. Design and invest in leads that allow them to take the lead, such as signing up for product demos and viewing product information. Your sales and marketing managers have to promote leads that prompt users to take action instead of simply providing information.
Extract useful data from your leads
If you can’t get the right information from your leads, you’re only doing half the job. A crucial part of lead generation is identifying personal emails or relevant information about those who are making their way to you through your online marketing campaigns. That is why lead management creates important forms and landing pages to accumulate this important information.
Make sure your marketing and sales teams work in harmony to collect the most essential information for your campaign. This can be anything from users’ job titles to their location. When you qualify and assign leads, you’ll need to decide what kind of data plays an important role for a particular lead. However, always keep in mind that the longer your form is, the lower the chances of conversion.
Nurture your leads
Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with potential customers through strategies like drip campaigns (emails that leak content to leads over time). It should be an imperative part of your lead generation cycle. To make your drip emails effective and relevant, use strong, direct content that will help you build and maintain relationships. Design a solid content strategy before implementing any of your lead nurturing marketing campaigns.
Throughout your sales process, you will come across leads who are not ready to buy and may not be ready for months to come. Don’t give up on them. Place them on lead nurturing tracks to keep your company’s services and products in mind.
Monitor and track
As mentioned above, track your lead generation and monitor the results to constantly track and determine your lead management attempts. Marketing automation allows you to track your progress on drip campaigns to assess conversions or closed deals. Your sales and marketing teams need to evaluate the metrics to give you a good insight to rank improvement points.
Do you need any tips to help you with your lead generation cycle?