Good leads are necessary for consistent and effective business growth.
Lead generation gives you the customers that you are looking for and gives the customers the right service provider they need.
Lead generation can be done effectively to reduce the sales cycle, to increase the ROI and augment business growth quickly and efficiently.
2021 is all about a new approach, new strategies, innovation, technology and customer care. Though the basic principles of basics of lead generation remain the same, b2b vendors can do a lot more in terms of enhancing that which is already in use, optimize resources and adopt practices that demand a change in approach.
Let us understand how you can start strengthening lead generation at the basic level and then keep at it consistently, so much so that it becomes a sort of lead gen culture in your company. Consider the following factors to begin with-
- Define a proper target audience
- Create a budget taking into accounts all the needs of your lead gen campaign
- Put the experience and expertise of sales and marketing team to the best use
- Draft achievable goals and then build the strategy around those goals
- Take into account the feedback of past customers to evaluate and fine-tune current plans
- Create content assets that are incredibly relevant and useful for lead nurturing
- Create supporting email marketing campaigns and target the past and new customers for enhanced sales
Don’t just revisit the basics but also fine-tune the approach and mind-set that favors lead generation.
While you do the above, also work in parallel on the following aspects and techniques that can get you some good results. Consider the following practices as the fuel you would need to accelerate lead generation-
- Monitor and evaluate the sales funnel from time to time
- Communication between sales and marketing teams should be smooth and transparent
- Invest time and efforts in creating invaluable MQLs
- Capture the best MQLs so that when they navigate into the sales cycle they should convert without much efforts
- Lead nurturing should start at marketing level
- Lead nurturing should be an important stage of your lead generation process hence pay special attention to it
- Make the most out of the content assets and also use content syndication to reach out to maximum people
- Be a visionary and invest time and efforts in brand awareness and brand recall
- Avoid reaching out intermittently, in fact have a consistent plan to nurture leads at every stage of the sales cycle
Even though all of the above practices or principles of lead generation are necessary and are practical steps in achieving your goals you still won’t be able to fully turn around the tide and create impeccable results if you don’t change things at a mind-set level.
What you need to do is adopt a change in approach and make some changes at the mind-set level and the overall outlook you possess towards the lead gen business. Here’s what you can do to achieve the change-
- Focus on building relationships more than just closing the deals
- Building relationships can win you loyal and long term customers
- Don’t hesitate to retarget, it’s the best thing you could do at any stage of the business
- Dedicate resources, budget and experts for retargeting and remarketing
- Set up separate email marketing campaigns to retarget past customers and set up a lead nurturing team exclusively for these campaigns
- Also don’t forget to capture the attention of those customers who had not done business with you in the past
- Not all missed targets are bad leads and they can be retargeted to convert them into good leads
- Make sure you put in more efforts to attract, delight and engage them this time around
Conclusion-
There are hundreds of ways to create good leads, but what’s most important is the audience, the changing needs of the target audience in 2021 and creating customized strategies and solutions to cater to the new needs of the customers.
It can take a while to get around to attracting the right customer, but if you use the above principles step by step you can win a lot of loyal customers who would love to do business with you again and again.