If the goal is to find a relevant lead and turning it into a customer, simply “finding” leads is not quite enough nowadays. An unbranded lead might look good in your prospection goals from a quantity point of view, but it has limited to no real value. Targeting the right lead is not a matter of faith. It is a defined science that content marketers should be able to implement on their day-to-day activities.
Why is lead generation important?
1. Capitalize on customer interaction
2. Increase profit
3. Create loyalty among your customers
You might be wondering; how important lead generation actually is? Well, according to Intellistart in 2021 B2B companies with mature lead generation processes enjoy 133% more revenue compared to average companies. However, running endless campaigns across various networks assuming they are reaching the right target with the right message and at the right time is extremely unlikely and even unrealistic.
As described in our Sales Enablement Guide, content is one of they key pillars of a Sales Enablement strategy. This compasses content creation but also content management and diffusion. Creating good content is one thing, distributing it correctly is a different story. In this context, having the right content placed at the right time is essential to properly connect with your potential customers or leads. In other words, the goal today is going from lead generation to lead engagement, ensuring your campaigns are the most effective.
Related Articles
Why is lead generation important?
1. Capitalize on customer interaction
The key point in lead generation is to engage with customers better. Unlike traditional advertisement, that shoots information around without necessarily aiming for a specific public, lead generation is targeted. This eventually benefits both customers and sellers.On one hand, customers are not spammed with what they might consider as useless content. On the other hand, salespeople and marketing do not waste their resources on prospects that are not necessarily relevant for their business.**
2. Increase profit
As stated before, an effective lead generation strategy is good for business growth. Indeed, generating quality leads implies higher conversion potential. This quickly translate into a significant increase in Sales. In other words, you are addressing people that you know from the start are most likely interested by what you have to offer. It is only common sense that your chances to succeed are higher.
3. Create loyalty among your customers
Lead generation does not (and should not) stop at finding new customers. It is equally important, if not more, to maintain the ones you already have. In this context, the idea is to keep on selling additional product or services that might help your current customers even more. Keep in mind that convincing existing customers of cross selling or up selling is easier than finding a new customer. An effective lead generation should therefore think of putting forward good content to attract new customers as well as to keep touch with existing customers.
From lead generation to lead engagement
As you may imagine, most B2B companies have a lead generation strategy. If all prospects are being targeted by companies that they might be interested in, how to ensure they react to your content rather than your competitors’?
This is where lead engagement comes in, as a mean to bridge the gap between your prospects and yourself. A common mistake is launching a lead generation campaign but fail to acquire customer retention. Combining lead generation with engagement helps enhancing the marketing outcomes of the campaign. Below, a few tips to take a step further and jump into lead engagement.
1. Keep focus
2. Be customer centric
3. Prospects are temporary, marketing is forever
4. Ask for feedback
1. Keep focus
As you may already know, there are many tools available to help your marketing campaigns. Reduce its complexity by limiting the number of software used and establishing clear success metrics. Instincts might tell you that switching advertisement campaigns and providers is a good idea, but keep in mind the cost of switching. Sometimes scaling the performance of a small number of providers is more beneficial than switching as new methods come in.
2. Be customer centric
To address your customer better, you need to put yourself in their shoes. To do so, develop buying personas. These personas should represent your key buyer segments and you need to make sure that your marketing as well as your sales understand them.
3. Marketing never ends
If marketing is key early in a buyer’s early journey it is still once they have purchased your product or service. Engaging their interest throughout the prospect and customer journey is essential to build a long-lasting trust relationship. Don’t forget that your customers are your best ambassadors.
4. Ask for feedback
Customers are extremely savvy in the internet era we live in. They can obtain information on yourself and your competitors in a split second and are constantly exposed to wide arrays of marketing strategies daily. As a result, they have become more resilient and harder to engage. Do not hesitate to turn to your customers to find out if your strategy is interactive or inspiring enough for them.