Sales and marketing experts share their lead-generation tips, including the best methods and media for finding prospective customers.
Research found that social media platforms -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest -- aren't very effective at generating quality sales leads. Meanwhile, some of the more effective methods, like executive events, webinars, search marketing and telemarketing, are underutilized.
So how do you determine which methods or media are the best for finding new customers? By testing several different lead generation strategies -- and measuring the results.
To make this task a bit easier, we asked dozens of sales and marketing experts to find out which lead generation methods yielded the best results for themselves or their clients.
Research found that social media platforms -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest -- aren't very effective at generating quality sales leads. Meanwhile, some of the more effective methods, like executive events, webinars, search marketing and telemarketing, are underutilized.
So how do you determine which methods or media are the best for finding new customers? By testing several different lead generation strategies -- and measuring the results.
To make this task a bit easier, we asked dozens of sales and marketing experts to find out which lead generation methods yielded the best results for themselves or their clients.
- Customer referrals: Customer referrals are an organization's best friend.An existing customer knows what you are offering and probably has a good idea of what the referred prospect needs,
- SEO, SEM and PPC: PPC and SEO are the most effective way to generate leads because when companies need IT services, they go to Google and search for IT companies. (Something like 90 percent of consumers -- business or otherwise -- go to Google search first.
To increase the effectiveness of your search engine marketing (SEM) and PPC campaigns, use "long-tail keyword phrases, which are highly targeted search terms typically consisting of three words or more. - Cross-promotions and co-marketing: Alliances with complementary, noncompetitive vendors to exchange leads, promote each others' products and services, or any number of other mutually beneficial activities.
- Providing useful content: Companies that produce educational or informative content can establish thought leadership and generate leads earlier in the buying process, setting the stage to ultimately win the business. By offering prospects helpful information in the form of blogs, whitepapers, ebooks, webinars, case studies or demos, you can win their trust and their business.
- Speaking at trade shows, conferences and industry events: The best lead generator is to give an event presentation and follow it with customized letters, calls or emails to individuals that you met.
- Using LinkedIn: Research showed that traffic from LinkedIn generated the highest visitor to lead conversion rate (2.74 percent), almost three times higher than Twitter (.69 percent) and Facebook (.77 percent).
- Using Twitter: Use Twitter to promote sales, products or services... and utilize hashtags so that potential clients can find your sale or topic.
- Providing contact information on every website page: With search engines being such an important driver of inbound website traffic, you can't always predict where people are going to enter your website. Having your contact info on every page of your website increases the likelihood that people will contact you.
- Live chat: most IT pros are looking for fast answers without possibly getting stuck on the phone with a sales person.
Ref: http://www.cio.com
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