Acquiring new customers is the lifeblood of every business but it can be costly.
Every business needs to develop a lead generation strategy that will ensure the survival of the business over both the short and long term.
No matter what business you are in, no matter what industry you need to have a focus on bringing new leads or new customers into your business.
It just doesn’t stop with bringing new leads into your business. You need a system that focuses on nurturing, developing and growing your leads to the benefit of both your customers and yourself.
If you believe that you and your business offer a service, a product that is extremely important to your clients or customers then it is your duty to make sure that you ensure that your company grows, develops and prospers
This is not only for yourself but it is for your clients so that they and their businesses will survive and grow.
Your lead generation strategy must be efficient, organized and effective; in short, it must be a well-run machine.
Well executed and run lead management strategies will produce significant savings, improve productivity and bring your business significant growth in sales going forward.
It is important that you have a documented and comprehensive lead generation and management strategy.
It’s not just about generating leads it is about managing these leads and clients through your final workflow processes so that the relationship is a benefit to both parties.
- Define your Lead Management Process
No matter what you call your lead generation system process it is important that all parties within your business have a clear understanding of the terms and procedures.
Make sure everyone is clear on all the terminology that you use so that there is no confusion within your business about where responsibility sits for a customer and what role each party plays within your sales and lead generation system
The lead management system must be about not only generating new leads but also planning, directing, qualifying and nurturing of leads.
You should ensure that you have clearly documented your policies in relation to how data is handled, stored and distributed.
- Include all Parties
Everyone involved in generating, managing and nurturing leads plus fulfilling orders for clients must be involved in your lead generation and management strategy.
It is important that they all have some input because their individual actions will have some impact or influence on the length of time a customer or client stays with your business.
It is also important to for all parties to understand the value of a client to your business A clear example of this is if a customer spends $1000 a month than some people may only see this client as spending a thousand dollars.
But in reality, this client is a $12,000 client.
If they are spending $12,000 with you for the year and depending upon your gross profit they will be adding thousands of dollars to your bottom line every year. It is important that everyone understands this and appreciates what a new lead could mean to you and the performance of your business.
Depending on the scope and size of your business you will have sales, marketing, distribution, administration so it’s important than that everyone has a sense of what is trying to be achieved with a lead generation and management system, and the role that all different areas have in this process
3 Create Buyer Personas
Building a deeper and better understanding of your prospects or potential prospects will allow your business to be become more efficient in attracting new leads. In fact, you will become more effective in attracting the right type of customer that you want your business to serve and nurture.
If you don’t think you are serving the right customers now and that particularly some of your customers may just be driven by price then you need to consider changing your marketing and your lead generation strategy. It may need to be refined to be directed at those customers in those markets that are willing to pay a price or pay the price that you desire for your product or service.
Sometimes you may need to change your market not necessarily change a product offering or pricing.
By developing comprehensive and detailed buyer personas of your better customers by using the 80/20 rule then you become more efficient with your marketing and lead generation and thus showing your offering and message to that clientele.
Your buyer personas should focus on the customer’s goals, needs, wants and desires.
Identifying how your products and service satisfy your buyer personas goals can tell you far more about how to communicate with your leads and then even the most detailed market research.
Remember that your personas are not fixed non-moving innate objects. They actually represent customers who have needs and goals and those customers will be investigating numerous ways to solve their problems.
By understanding this you can ensure that your message strategy is flexible to move with the changing needs of your market.
4 Create Persona Specific Content
You probably have a number of different buyer personas and each persona will have unique goals and requirements.
So just having a generic message strategy will squander the effort you invested in understanding your customers.
You need to design content which speaks to their distinct goals, needs, wants, and desires, this is crucial.
The more adequately your content picks how you can meet unique needs of a prospect the more likely they are to trust you with their business
Any customer centric organization will be producing personas specific content. You need to ensure your content speaks from the perspective of the buyer or customer if you are unable to do this then you will not be able to address the real world problems your prospects face.
Customers today operate in a variety of different channels.
Your customers or prospects are on your website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest so you need to ensure that your message is communicated across all these channels so that you reach your customers where they are and where they hang out.
The different mediums you use is extremely important as your customers want to engage on a variety of different channels.
- Watch Listen and Learn
Lead generation is a continuously moving object. It is not a one size fits all set and forget and away you go.
Your lead generation system must be an ongoing system which you watch and listen and learn about the responses the customers give to your various marketing and sales messages
You test, you refine, you implement, you test, you refine, you implement this is an ongoing process for your lead generation.
You will determine whether you need to daily, weekly or monthly review your lead generation system but it must be reviewed against key metrics that you and your team have set.
At times you will need to adjust your lead generation system to meet with changing customer demands and requests but on other times you will need to hold steady so that you are not having a knee-jerk reaction to something that is slow to take off or not generating the results you thought.
Existing customers, as well as those customers who end their relationship with you, are a great source of valuable feedback.
If you are not utilizing surveys on a regular basis both of your existing clientele and people who have left you then you are missing out on a treasure trove of information.
Your survey should be taken even from customers you have lost as a way for you to learn about improving your business and your systems going forward. It is part of your learning, part of your development and should never be set aside.
You should have a regular system or process for conducting surveys of your clientele.
- Process Determines Technology.
When you have laid out your process for looking after, generating and nurturing your leads. You then can determine the technology that will support your business and what you are trying to achieve.
Don’t be caught in the trap of getting technology and them being confined to what that technology can provide you in terms of the lead generation system that you require for your business.
Today there are many options for CRM, Campaign Management and other software to enable you to manage your relationship with your clients. You will be able to find a flexible package that suits the requirements of your business.
Automated lead nurturing should be considered a must have your qualified leads who will end up buying from someone. Be sure you are still in their minds when they are ready to choose. That is why a regular email campaign that is an automated process will ensure that you do not forget about contacting your customers.
Your system must enable you to easily pick up and spot qualified leads and that all parties understand what triggered that client to become a lead. Then whoever deals with your customers be it sales or marketing understands where that client came contact with your business.
Whether it be through a detailed report, case study, webinar it is important that everyone who contacts the customer understands where they are within your internal process or systems and how they ended in your system.
This way this will ensure that when they communicate with the customer they have an understanding of their needs, issues, and problems that drove them to connect with your company.
Any lead generation system strategy needs to be thought through and be a detailed process so that the customer enjoys an enjoyable relationship with your business and that you make doing business with you easy and simple from the customer’s viewpoint.
