An effective lead generation program has eight parts – planning, target, message, roles and responsibilities, communication vehicles, metrics, qualification and follow up.
Planning
Before implementing a lead generation program, first create your plan. Your lead gen plan identifies:
Target
In connection with your planning, identify your target audience. Your target audience includes both companies that are likely to need your product or services and individuals at those companies who are likely to buy or influence the purchase of your product or services. Targeting companies is important because they are likely to have the need. Individuals are important because they will make the decisions on which product or service they will buy.
To identify your target audience, look for the traits that your ideal customers share – geography, industry, size, start-up or established company, etc. Those traits, taken together, should define the audience you want to target with your message and marketing efforts.
Message
Develop a clear, concise message to deliver to your target audience. Your message should be relevant to your audience, addressing their needs. It should also be likeable. Likeable messages are:
Roles and Responsibilities
Identify who within your company has responsibility to execute the multiple processes associated with the lead generation program. Processes include planning, getting lists, creating messages, sending emails, posting to social media, collecting leads, responding to leads, qualifying leads, passing leads to sales or marketing, etc. When you have invested in generating leads, you must ensure they are handled properly and in a timely manner.
Communication Vehicles
Communication vehicles are the pathways to reach your target audience. They may include social media posts, email campaigns, webinars, in-person events, advertising, content syndication and press releases. Don’t limit yourself to just one or two vehicles to reach your target audience. Identify, if possible, the multiple vehicles your audience uses and take advantage of them all.
Metrics
Measure everything. Through metrics, you can measure the effectiveness of:
With metrics in hand, assess and adjust your program to increase its effectiveness.
Qualification
Define criteria for qualifying leads. Leads may be either marketing qualified or sales qualified. Marketing qualified leads are those that fit your ideal customer profile and may have a need; however, the prospect is not yet aware of the need or not ready to move forward in their buying process. Sales qualified leads are those that are both marketing qualified and ready to move forward in the buying (or sales) process.
Follow-Up
Best practices for lead follow-up dictate that inbound leads (leads where the prospect takes action to contact your company) should be contacted within 24 hours of their interaction with the company. As the product offering moves closer to commodity status (low price, many competitive options available), then the optimal time for a follow-up contact following the initial engagement can drop to hours or even minutes to drive a sale.
TechCXO Can Help
As a partner at TechCXO, I can help you build an effective sales and marketing organization to drive consistent, predictable revenue. We build teams that deliver profitable, long-term customers. We lead companies to become customer focused. Learn more at techcxo.com.
We’d like to help you achieve your sales, marketing and customer success goals. Contact us at (203) 856-9400 or david.wallace@techcxo.com to discuss how we can help you drive more business.