With the introduction of sophisticated new technologies, lead generation has become a more exact science. That alone doesn’t necessarily make lead-gen easier for your sales team, it does however increase their chances of working qualified leads since most modern sales funnels have evolved along with technology.
Without dredging up the cumbersome past of the typical lead generation model, its safe to say that most sales teams that work with modern lead generation technologies have a far better chance of winning and keeping new customers.
Our question to you is, do you collect, nurture, and work your own leads generated on your own properties or do you take what’s sent you from a lead-gen clearing house? If your extra hungry for leads you may do both, and that is great. The next question is, how do you handle your leads? Are they stored in a CRM that connects to your phone system and Outlook email? If not, we have the solution that brings your lead generation efforts up to date with modern technologies and standards.
Sales Funnel Advertising (Awareness)
Great sales funnels begin with awareness, this is the spark that lights the fire. Usually an advertisement, email, article, social post, SMS message, etc. This is the crucial point in the customer journey because if the advertising doesn’t match the landing page message, the customer might lose trust in the offer and bounce.
For this reason, lead-gen marketers usually create the landing page first, and then proceed to broadcast their message using the content from the landing page. In our experience advertising is the surest method for a constant stream of traffic to a landing page. Depending on your service, most potential customers will react positively to an ad on Google, Bing, Linked or Facebook because there is implied trust in these platform.
Working this trust in your favor is very important because you cannot gain trust with a customer who doesn’t know who your company is. If your company is in the Fortune 500 then you have a much easier time in conveying trust, but most are not.
Sales Funnel Landing Page (Interest)
Once a potential lead clicks an ad, they are sent to a landing page and this is where the interest is fostered. Landing pages should encourage while they are explaining a service, and they may even entertain all with the goal of convincing the potential lead to take a second action which is the result of the landing page pitch. The best method of collection for leads is a webform because the lead information goes directly into the CRM.
Lead Nurturing (Pitch)
This is the technical part of the funnel, this is where you begin to contact the lead using several technologies that should all communicate harmoniously with each other. We detailed a sales funnel lead nurturing system that we build for our clients, if your company is missing a piece in this process that should be a concern.
– CRM Integration: This is where the webform deposits the lead data collected from your website, how you handle this data may decide if you win or lose the customer.
– Phone & Email Integration: Working seamlessly with your CRM so that communications are tracked and logged in the CRM, history is critical in lead-gen. Calls can be made (and tracked) from the CRM, and email sent directly from the CRM.
– Appointment Setting: This happens through your CRM, and again is tracked. We all have seen leads that forgot they completed a webform and submit another form with a different email address. No worries, the CRM will match other pieces of their information and ask if you want to merge the records to reduce duplicates.
We create the advertising, build the landing pages, and help you create the lead nurturing system. At this point our lead-gen experts at Affordable Marketing have done their thing to bring the technology to your sales team, the rest is up to them.
Marketing and advertising add time and costs to your lead generation campaigns, being able to adjust on the fly can only happen if your have accurate and timely reporting. Knowing if your leads are closing (or not) is also a critical step in the process, if your lead-gen marketing is doing its job of selling then you want to optimize it to make sure you’re generating the maximum amount of ROI. If you have not already seen it, you will begin to see that all these steps need to work harmoniously to generate sales.
Some might think that incessant posting on free sites such as social media can generate enough traffic to satisfy your sales team’s needs, but the reality is that it won’t. You will need a more robust and well planned marketing and advertising strategy if you really want to greatly increase your landing page traffic. There are other free options such as free articles on LinkedIn, but unless your article gains significant traction it’s a good chance the few people will ever read your free article.
Through the qualification process, the need and urgency of your leads becomes a little clearer. Following this, consistently engage them with relevant and contextual content that sheds more light on their industry, their challenges, and how your products can help their business. Move your leads through the funnel with newsletters, blogs, infographics, and videos made available across different channels to help educate them.
This brings us back to marketing and advertising, both of which you will need if you want to see large numbers of visitors to your landing pages. Affordable Marketing can help you to create the right landing pages for your service, schedule a free ZOOM consultation to learn how.
Landing pages are the core of your lead generation campaign, this is where you have the golden opportunity to build trust with a potential customer and turn them into a lead. Landing page design is important, even more important factors are understanding how visitors will respond to your message, capturing the visitors information’s and storing it in a CRM, and tracking where the visitor came from so that you can create accurate traffic reports.
Design: An appealing page design that is branded with your company logo, address, phone number etc. is important to gain the trust of your visitor.
Data Storage: Entering the visitors information into a CRM where it can be properly stored and worked on by your sales team is a critical step in winning the customer.
Tracking: Understanding where visitors come from helps to adjust your marketing and advertising, optimize your campaigns, and adjust your budget accordingly.
Lead-gen landing pages are built directly on your website so your company owns them, and they can be changed and optimized as needed. Landing pages also can be duplicated, and content changed to save time and money if you are running multiple campaigns for the same service. This allows us to A/B test the pages to find the best performing pages to send your traffic.
Schedule a free ZOOM consultation to learn how Affordable Marketing can help build your landing pages and increase the leads that are so valuable for your continued sales.
Lead nurturing is arguably the most important step in selling your services. This is where your customers information is used to communicate with your customers. If your system is incomplete or outdated, then your communications will never be on par with your competitors. Only when you have all the right pieces in place can you truly compete in your space, for the same customer that your closets competitors are also competing for.
CRM: The first pieces of the lead nurturing puzzle is the CRM, without this you might as well be using sticky notes to try and remember all your customers information.
Phones: The next vital piece of the lead nurturing puzzle is your phone system, if you’re still using your mobile phone to run your business and close deals then you should know that your competitors have sophisticated phones for their sales team.
Email: You would not believe how many companies we talk to that are still using a free email service to communicate with their customers. It’s not 2005 anymore and corporate email is not just required, it should integrate into your CRM.
Chat: Communicating directly with visitors as they enter your landing pages is essential, many visitors are just looking with the possible intent to buy. Chant can be just the bump they need to get them to the next level in your sales funnel. Also, as with your phone system and email, chat should integrate into your CRM.
If your lead nurturing process is not complete, modern, and up to date, then schedule a free ZOOM consultation with Affordable Marketing to learn how we can get you the best pricing and service to optimize your lead nurturing process.
Not every lead you generate will result in revenue for your business. Your team must identify the right leads, then dedicate their time and effort to guide them down the sales funnel and help them make a purchasing decision. Establish a strong lead nurturing and qualification process to maximize your sales.
Whether you generate leads through inbound marketing or a more outbound approach, there is always one certainty: not every lead you generate is going to be ready to buy your products and services. There’ll be varying levels of awareness of your brand, knowledge about your offerings, and intent in making a purchase. So each lead must be nurtured differently based on their qualifications and where they fit in the overall sales journey.
The first logical step to qualifying your incoming leads is to decide on your Ideal customer. These descriptions shouldn’t be some imaginary criteria you pull out from thin air but based on actual data about your existing customers. By comparing your incoming leads with these benchmarks you establish, your team will have a clear idea of who to focus their efforts on.
Every business might qualify their leads differently because they prioritize different factors. You might analyze different factors before deciding on which leads have potential that your sales team can explore further.