In business, the ability to consistently generate high-quality leads stands as a fundamental skill for achieving sustained growth and success. Recognising the importance of this, we engaged with experts across diverse industries to shed light on their most effective strategies for lead generation.
Where customer acquisition is the key to success, understanding the approaches employed by industry leaders becomes indispensable. Our insights from these seasoned professionals have highlighted practical methodologies and innovative tactics aimed at not just attracting leads, but also nurturing them into loyal clientele.
Explore the insights below shared by these professionals, highlighting the strategies that drive meaningful engagement, foster lasting relationships, and ultimately propel businesses towards becoming industry leaders.
Graeme Codrington
CEO of the TomorrowToday Futures Institute
I work in the professional services and consulting space, where the most overlooked key to successful lead generation is to ensure you understand the client’s problem. What keeps your ideal client up at night? What are they focused on solving at the moment? Once you are confident that you understand this clearly, the next few questions fall easily into place: where are they looking for answers, what will catch their attention, why would you be the answer to their questions? There are no one-size-fits-all solutions at that point, but if you start by properly and fully understanding the problem that you can solve, you’ll find it a lot easier to present yourself as the solution. In fact, so much so, that if you put the solutions out into the world, on whatever platforms you know your ideal clients are using, you’ll discover that they find you.
Larysa Hale
Managing Director at Expert Circle
In our industry, building relationships and delivering value remain at the heart of effective lead generation. Here are three strategies I’ve found incredibly effective:
Host Educational Events: Creating online events like webinars, masterclasses, or workshops is a powerful way to showcase expertise. These platforms allow us to share valuable insights while engaging directly with potential clients. The key is not just to educate but also to interact. Following up post-event helps in nurturing the relationships formed, turning attendees into prospective leads.
Engage on LinkedIn: This platform is more than just a networking site; it’s a community of professionals seeking to grow and learn. By actively participating in discussions, contributing to panels, and asking insightful questions, we can attract attention in a meaningful way. The goal here is engagement, not immediate sales, allowing us to build trust and establish our reputation as industry experts.
Offer Value Through Content: Providing a free e-book or another digital product can be a great lead magnet. Using a dedicated landing page with a sign-up form allows us to collect contact details while offering immense value. Those who download our materials can be added to a newsletter, keeping them informed and engaged with our content over time.
Each of these strategies is about forming genuine connections and providing real value, setting the foundation for long-term business relationships. What strategies have worked for you? Let’s connect and share insights!
Richard Lomax
M.D. Richard Lomax & Associates
Your Website
If what you’re saying on your site doesn’t capture the attention of visitors within the first few seconds, or make them want to click on your links to explore further, they’ll be gone without a trace.
So, here are 7 key points to consider:
1. If you are looking to generate enquiries and leads from your pages, you must use ‘Direct Response’ copywriting, on every page. I can show you how this is different to the typical copy found on most sites (probably including yours).
2. To keep visitors on your site, you need to have a specific page layout, including the ‘Honey-traps’ that will tempt prospects to explore further.
3. It’s critical that you add the ‘people element’ to your site so that you can build the ‘know, like, trust’ factor that must exist, before you can generate enquiries and sales (there are at least 4 ways to do this which I will gladly share with you).
4. You must ‘Tick the boxes’ that exist in your prospects’ minds so that they feel comfortable in taking action and reaching out to you. Do you know exactly what questions, doubts and fears your prospects have? (This is where we need to focus our efforts).
5. People always prefer to buy from the ‘industry expert’, because it’s their safest choice. I’ll show you how to achieve this positioning in your market.
6. If you are not adding specific data capture strategies to your website to stop browsers skimming one or two pages, and then disappearing, you are losing out on the majority of enquiries that are easily available to you.
7. It’s important to achieve the ideal balance between headlines, sub-heads, calls-to-action, and graphic elements. Making your site ‘easy on the eye’ will help browsers stay longer, and lead them through your site without resistance. I can show you some best-practice examples of this in action.
Email Marketing
Email is a fast, inexpensive, and effective way to target and address your various audiences, especially when compared to direct mail, outbound call centres, and other traditional marketing channels.
Here are 7 ‘Success Secrets’ to help guide your email marketing:
SUCCESS SECRET No. 1:
Building Your List—Be selective about who is added to your list or you’ll create more work for yourself.
If you want to build an email list of existing customers, be sure to obtain their permission first, instead of adding their names without telling them. Give your customers several compelling reasons that make them want to be on your email list.
For example, offer them an additional three-month warranty on a product in exchange for receiving product updates by email. Or perhaps offer a 10% discount voucher off future training courses in return for receiving event details and promotional offers. Alternatively offer a free copy of your latest independent industry report, which you’ll gladly deliver as an emailed PDF.
Be sure to build a list of qualified names out of which a certain percentage will turn into prospects. Out of those prospects, a certain percentage should turn into customers.
By insisting on a high-quality email database, you will avoid wasting time, resources, and money following up on useless contacts.
To further qualify new contacts, many companies and email publications require individuals to confirm their initial request to get onto an email list by replying to a confirmation email. This is called “double opt-in”, and it can slow your acquisition rate by 50% or more, but typically makes for a much more qualified and responsive email list.
Asking a new contact to take a single action to get onto your email list is called “single opt-in”. This approach grows your list faster than double opt-in, though the list may not be as responsive and as rich with qualified prospects.
DO’S
• Collect email addresses from registration cards, point-of-sale, customer service teams, and competitions. For prospecting purposes, gather email addresses from your website, online special reports and white papers offered, from visitors to your trade show stand and from sales calls.
In all cases, give people an expectation of the value they will receive in return for handing over their email address to you.
• Post a privacy notice on your registration page at your website. People are understandably suspicious of many sites they come across on the Internet so it’s best to address their concerns up front.
• If possible, show prospective subscribers a sample of what they are signing up for at your website.
• Keep your registration page simple by asking for minimal information. You can always get more information later using surveys and incentives once an individual is added to your email list.
DON’TS
• Don’t make it difficult for people to stop hearing from you by email. Make it easy for a person to leave (“opt-out”) of any or all email communications. For example, people may still wish to receive your product updates but not your company news. If it’s difficult to be removed from your email list, recipients can complain to their ISP or self-appointed spam police who in turn can have you blacklisted. Being blacklisted means the recipient’s ISP will automatically filter out any inbound email containing your name or email address.
SUCCESS SECRET No. 2:
Relevancy—Make certain your emails are extremely relevant and valuable to the recipients.
In the recipient’s mind, you have to be known for sending high-quality messages; otherwise, you will be ignored or readers will quickly unsubscribe.
With so much email now classed as spam, it’s no wonder that the most common Inbox activity is delete, delete, delete. Your name in the “From” field represents your brand and reputation for sending messages that directly appeal to the recipient. The “Subject” field represents the timely and relevant proposition.
SUCCESS SECRET No. 3:
Email Length—Generally keep it short and packed with value.
Unless you are introducing a complicated product that you know your email recipient is likely to be interested in, a shorter email copy is more likely to be read and acted upon in the first instance.
Small chunks of information are more digestible than a 2,000-word article.
When it comes to straightforward offers, shorter is usually better.
When it comes to informational and educational content, readers typically have a greater attention span.
Use multiple calls to action. As recipients scan chunks of the email put your call-to-actions in multiple locations to improve the click-thru rate.
DO’S
• Do a dry run. Before you send your email or newsletter, send it to yourself and your colleagues to make sure everything runs smoothly.
• Be sure to:
– Check for proper grammar and spelling.
– Check that all links are working correctly.
DON’TS
• Don’t wait until the last minute to produce your email communications. Build up your inventory with offers and “evergreen” content ready for use. “Evergreen” content is not time sensitive so it can be scheduled and produced months in advance. Create a resources file of items, articles and topics that you can use for prompts, inspiration and relevant content ideas.
• Don’t send too often. In many cases, too much frequency can depress response rates and increase unsubscribes.
People are overwhelmed with the number of email messages they receive daily. In addition, they are inundated with direct mail, telemarketing, print magazines, and TV ads and will only pay close attention to what is immediately important.
Your enemy is the delete key; make every word and graphic work hard to deliver value to the reader.
SUCCESS SECRET No. 4:
Content—Give them something they can’t live without.
The “look-and-feel” should say “Come on; I’m easy to read.”
• Whether you’re preparing advisory editorial content or more sales-related commercial content, make sure it is distinctive and can’t be found anywhere else.
• Industry news and analysis, useful insights from your experience, or product tips are examples of content that can jump off the screen and into the minds of your readers.
• Make your content so good that your readers pass it along (Test a “pass on to a friend” link).
• Prepare offers and content so exciting that even you get enthusiastic.
DO’S
• Be personal, and write as you speak. People like reading the words of other real people more than typical “corporate-speak” that tends to be dry and impersonal.
• Use humour only if appropriate; it humanises the copy and warms up the reader. We all need a good laugh whatever industry we’re in.
DON’TS
• Don’t talk about yourself too much. People really don’t care about you or your Company.
• Don’t talk down to your readers. This is a common mistake in copy tone when passing on wisdom or experience.
It’s uncomfortable staring at a screen for long periods of time to read documents. You want to offer your readers an inviting “look and feel” that’s attractive and easy to understand at a glance. Include plenty of sub-headlines, bold and bullet points, and tint panels.
SUCCESS SECRET No. 5:
Design—Don’t turn your email into a visual circus; remember…less is more.
DO’S
• Make the focal point of your email message obvious. Consciously decide and design where you want your reader’s eye to travel.
• Design emails to be viewed in the prospect’s preview window. You have five inches or less in which to squeeze your best content or offer. But be careful not to try and squeeze everything but the kitchen sink into this space, obviously resulting in a confusing email. Position your logo so it has a discreet visual impact.
• Reinforce navigational cues by stating the wanted action, such as “Click Here”, “Go” or “Buy Now”, etc. Don’t assume the reader knows to click on an embedded hyperlink link or graphic.
DON’TS
• Don’t use too many exclamation points or red type. The spam filters don’t like them, and the effectiveness of the colour red is debatable.
• Don’t use “reverse type” for your copy. Except in a small graphic element, it’s extremely hard to read white letters on a coloured or black background.
SUCCESS SECRET No. 6:
Test everything
As you start to become more expert with your email marketing and build up a larger and larger contact list, it’s time to take advantage of the major benefits that testing offers.
Test your subject header, your content, your offer, your pricing, your call to action, delivery days and times.
Get the most mileage out of your email marketing efforts by tracking everything you can, and then improving on those results.
Improving your results online is a very attractive proposition because you can do it faster, cheaper and often more efficiently than in offline media.
Some firms find sending email on Mondays works best for them, while others discover it’s better to send later in the week or even at weekends. Much depends on your target audience and the purpose of your email messages.
DO’S
• Consider everything you do as a test. Even a successful campaign is a test on its way to providing more input to you for the next campaign.
• When launching and testing a new campaign or newsletter, make sure you measure open rates and any click-through rates from links within the email. This will establish your “control” or benchmark. Thereafter, you are always trying to beat the performance of this control.
• Use “split copy testing.” Send one offer worded in a certain way to part of your list and the same offer worded differently to another part of your list and see which does better. Try to do it at the same point in time so results reflect similar market conditions. You then roll out the best-performing version to the remainder of your list.
DON’TS
• Don’t ignore the benefits of using a third-party supplier to do your email broadcasting. You’ll find that most reputable applications are easy to use, and provide automatic delivery of html and text versions of your email. Plus they provide instant tracking of your campaign open and click-through rates.
SUCCESS SECRET No.7:
What to Expect After You Hit “Send”:
It’s always exciting to monitor the launch of an email campaign using the on-screen web interface of your email broadcast provider because it’s happening in real-time.
Open rates tell you the success of your subject header and “From” fields. Click-throughs tell you how interesting your offer or content is to the reader.
DO’S
• Expect to see at least six kinds of responses as soon as you hit the “Send” button.
1. Valid responses: These most important, non-automated replies are from real people requesting specific information or action on your part.
2. Hard bounces: These are abandoned email addresses. Delete them from your email list.
3. Soft bounces: These are typically mailboxes that are full and can’t accept any new inbound emails. Leave these email addresses on your list for the time being. If the same soft bounces occur regularly, then delete those addresses as well.
4. Spam filter rejections: These messages tell you your email has not been delivered. You will probably receive more and more of these notifications as recipients institute controls to cut down on spam, which is growing rapidly. In some cases, you can manually interact with these emails so your message is delivered to the recipient.
5. Spam filter messages: Pay attention to these messages because they tell you why your email has been filtered out. Some spam notifications will actually give you their rating system and show you the words that sent you over the allowable threshold. You may want to avoid some of these words in the future in order to stay under that threshold.
6. “Out of office” replies: Be prepared to receive many of these replies, especially around holidays.
• Reserve judgment on the success of your email campaign for at least a few days. Many people do not read email communications immediately. Recipients often put new emails in a “read” folder for review days later.
DON’TS
• Don’t feel bad when people unsubscribe. If the number suddenly increases above your average, pay attention, because there was probably something that people didn’t like in that last communication. Think of unsubscribes as a way to keep your database updated and clean.
CONCLUSION: Get Going Right Now
The sooner you get started, the sooner your learning curve begins, and the sooner you’ll start generating responses and new sales revenues for your business.
LinkedIn Marketing
With the right strategies, you can generate consistent leads by harnessing LinkedIn direct messaging, using a specific messaging strategy that generates leads for most types of businesses.
If you are currently not getting enough leads, it’s almost certainly down to what you are saying i.e. the appeal of your offer, and your messaging strategy i.e. the words you use. This is where you must focus your attention before any outbound activity is started.
A lead is someone who reaches out and responds by saying ‘Please tell me more’. As far as conversion rates go, this is largely down to the nature of your product or service, and your sales process, but importantly, I would recommend that you follow a process that qualifies your prospects and gets them to interact with you (helping to build trust) before you actually speak to them.
Please note, that I don’t recommend that you consider a company that will generate leads and sell them to you (and perhaps 10 of your competitors).
In conclusion, the insights shared by industry experts highlight the importance of consistently generating high-quality leads for sustained business growth and success. The strategies discussed offer practical methodologies and innovative tactics to not only attract leads but also nurture them into loyal clientele. By applying these proven approaches, businesses can drive meaningful engagement, foster enduring relationships, and ultimately position themselves as industry leaders in today’s competitive market. As you start on your lead generation journey, leverage these strategies to propel your business towards sustained success and growth.
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