A potential customer may cruise onto your website because your service interests them. Perhaps they came across your social media page, or website by searching for a keyword on Google and liked what they saw. However, they quite aren’t ready yet to hit the “Book a consultation” button quite yet.
How do you keep these customers interested in your business or services until they are ready to bite the bullet and make the leap? Well, you need to develop a lead generation plan that holds their attention as you nurture them throughout their buying process.
Now, before we dive deep into creating a lead generation plan, we know you’re probably thinking about those brands whose ads you see everywhere. Like the ones that make you feel like a company is stalking you with their ads. You may think “They are listening to my phone!”, but most of the time it’s just that they have one heck of a lead generation plan in place to make sure you keep them top of mind. Those ads aren’t appearing there by chance.
How do their ads work?
You most likely clicked on a previous ad, searched them on Google, visited their website, or followed them on social media. As a result, you are now listed as a “potential customer” in their system and their advertising lead generation campaign is now targeting you. Sounds cool, right?
Well, 91% of businesses say lead generation is their most important goal.
And, 53% of businesses spend at least half their budget on lead generation.
So, what is a lead generation / what does that mean?
Lead generation is a marketing strategy designed to attract high-quality leads while avoiding tire-kickers and time wasters.
By focusing on high-quality leads, you can maximize your return on investment when it comes to your marketing efforts and can avoid wasting time and resources on people who are unlikely to buy. This can include tactics such as targeted advertising, content marketing, search engine optimization, remarketing, and other methods to attract and engage potential customers as they compare options before making their purchase.
By focusing on quality over quantity, you can improve your conversion rates and ultimately increase your sales when you implement such a strategy.
Let’s use a mortgage broker as an example. Let’s say they are a Toronto mortgage broker specializing in helping business owners and the self-employed get approved for a mortgage in the GTA. A customer looking for a mortgage for a farm in Florida is not their ideal customer. Naturally, they would want to do whatever they could to avoid talking to clients like that who aren’t going to hire them to get a mortgage put in place for them. On the other hand, someone who lives in Toronto, who is self-employed as the owner of a franchise in the GTA, and who has recently been researching mortgage rates and tips as to how they can get approved for a mortgage being self-employed would be a much better prospect.
But, how does one create a lead generation plan to speak only to the people they want to attract? The answer you craft carefully!
Creating a lead generation plan involves a number of steps, including identifying your ideal customer, understanding what they want out of your services, developing a marketing strategy, and implementing these ideas with the goal of increasing your sales all ways at the forefront of your mind.
Get started on your own lead generation plan by following these steps:
- Define your target audience:
The first step in developing a lead generation plan is to define your target audience. Who are you trying to reach? What do they need? What are their demographics, interests, and pain points? Where do they live? Who do they hang out with and where?
Write down everything that you think outlines your key client in detail to get a better understanding of who you should actually be talking to.
- Identify their needs, wants, problems and pain points.
Once you know who your target audience is, you need to understand their needs and pain points. What are their challenges and frustrations? What problems are they trying to solve?
Make 4 lists with key points under each one titled:
- customer needs
- customer wants
- customer problems
- customer pain points
And, note the difference between needs and wants and problems and pain points. We all have things we want but needs are essential. And, we all have problems to solve but, some create more pain than others for us.
- Develop a marketing strategy.
Based on your new understanding of your target audience, develop a marketing strategy that will help you reach and engage them. Do you want to dabble in email marketing, social media, content marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO)? Ideally, you want an integrated approach that includes all of the above but, how you implement a strategy and use a specific tool or tactic will change depending on the who, what, what, and where specific to the customer. And, how many tactics you can afford to use given your budget.
Make a list of all your marketing ideas you have and put a price next to them as an estimated budget. Then go through them all and circle the tactics that you feel would generate the most leads that also suit your budgets. That’s where you will start. You can always add things into the mix later on as you grow.
- Make an action plan as to how you will execute your marketing strategy, what your messaging will say, where it will be written etc.
This is the most important part of your lead generation strategy. It’s easy enough to write down ideas and talk about what you want to do but, actually DOING things is where the magic happens.
- Measure and optimize:
As you are taking action and marketing and advertising your services, it’s important to measure the success of your lead generation plan and optimize it based on your results. How do your customers react? Are you getting solid leads? Are they resulting in sales? Are you attracting your ideal client or does your messaging need to change?
Use analytics to track your website traffic, conversion rates, and other metrics, and use this data to refine your strategy and tactics over time. Your lead generation strategy is something that evolves but, it never stops. There is no on and off switch and if you think there is an off button do yourself a favour and jam it into the on position so that you don’t plateau but, keep on growing.
And, remember if you get stuck or you’re not sure how to tell what’s working or what might need to be improved know that we’re here to help! You can book a free consultation anytime to help you create and implement the right strategy for your business specifically. Our exceptional service and campaign results are what our clients love about us. All you have to do is call on us when you need us.
Source: RulerAnalytics
