Griff says...Generating leads

In my experience, for other than large businesses, lead generation is the most requested service. My focus for our blog content will be small and medium size businesses, entrepreneurs and consultants.

Let's explore why lead generation is such a need before providing some answers. If you are a small or medium size business, you have a limited number of customers which produces relatively low repeat business and relatively few referrals. Your brand/market awarenFess is not sufficient to attract people based on reputation or word of mouth. That means you have to find ways to generate awareness on your own. That's what lead generation is.

A few choices for lead generation:

Digital marketing

• Generally this refers to tactics such as email marketing, SEO, social media, google ads and similar services.
• In order to leverage these, you need expertise or a budget to outsource the services to get results.
• If you have the resources, then direct them to create a marketing plan and proceed.
• If you have a budget but not resources, then conduct local google searches for digital marketing consultants and make a selection.

But for the vast majority of businesses that have a limited budget and no resources to conduct digital services, you are mainly left with email marketing.

Here is how to proceed:

• Identify your target market audience and create a profile.
• Most likely you either do not have an inhouse contact list or it is small or it is not up to date.
• Plan to spend several thousand dollars initially and several thousand after each phase of results from the previous sales and marketing efforts.
• Find a quality data list provider that is affordable and who executes email campaigns.
• Provide your target audience profile and get a quote for at least 10,000 names and 2 email campaigns per month for a calendar quarter. If you do not have a source, you can google for data list and email providers or contact me for one of my sources.
• This is called unsolicited emailing and many companies or products will not allow it (Constant Contact, MailChaimp, etc.) so make sure your provider allows it. It is not illegal and does not violate the Can Spam Law as long as guidelines are followed. Only the customer-based emailing providers and products will tell you it is illegal. Just ignore them because their advice is self-serving.
• Your selected provider must be able to generate at least 10% opens and 3% clicks or they are not who you want. They must provide a report that includes identification of the opens and clicks. These are your warm leads and require aggressive and persistent followup. The provider should forward you the list for unlimited usage.
• Engage and have them execute
• Followup the opens and clicks and continue warm calling. You should generate at least 10 prospects and close a deal or two after several months.
• Repeat process and continue

Direct marketing

• Post card mailing is about the only marginally effective means anymore for non-large businesses. Part of the problem is you do not know who is interested unless they contact you. Unlike digital marketing where identification of interested recipients is achievable.
• 1% response is about all that can be expected.
• You still need the target audience profile and data list (see above).
• You still either need a marketing resource to an outsourced provider/printer for the content and mailing.
• Engage and execute every few months.

Advertising

• TV advertising is too expensive
• Local radio may work if your audience is local.
• Google ads can be effective if you have a resource with experience
• Otherwise, revert to email marketing.

Let me know your thoughts and questions and prior experiences that may have been good or bad so I can help you with advice.