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Attract targeted traffic. It's important that you only attract those people who are most likely to buy your products or services.
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If your sales team often complains about the leads they receive from your direct marketing campaigns - or if you're frustrated with lackluster lead follow-up and low conversion rates - you may be unwittingly committing one of the seven deadly sins of direct marketing lead generation. Here are the common mistakes business-to-business marketers make with lead generation and tips on how to avoid them: 1. Leads are not qualified. Problem: All responses are sent to the sales force regardless of their potential value. Sales reps waste time chasing weak prospects because they don't have the information to distinguish good leads from bad. Solution: Ask questions on the direct mail reply form, the web response form, or via your call center to qualify prospects by their level of interest and authority to purchase. Share this information to help sales reps prioritize their efforts. 2. Leads are from the wrong prospects. Problem: The mailing lists you used in your direct marketing campaign didn't reach the right decision-makers, so responses came from people who probably can't or won't become buyers. Solution: As you develop your direct marketing strategy, ask the sales team to pinpoint the demographics of an ideal buyer. Choose mailing lists to reach these decision-makers and add selection criteria to narrow the list down to people who most closely resemble your best customers. 3. Leads are too old. Problem: It takes so long to forward leads to sales that prospects lose interest in the offer or forget they responded. By the time the sales rep reaches the prospect, the lead has gone cold. Solution: Assess your lead distribution process from top to bottom to find out what's slowing things down. Eliminate unnecessary steps or revamp the system to get leads to reps as fast as possible. 4. Lead data is sloppy. Problem: The lead data you send to reps is incomplete or riddled with errors. Solution: Set stricter guidelines about what information must be required before a lead is sent to a rep and review the data input process to assure data quality. 5. Too many leads are sent at once. Problem: The sales force is overwhelmed with a large volume of leads they can't efficiently handle in a reasonable timeframe. Solution: Test your direct mail to a smaller list to gauge likely response. Plan the execution of the direct marketing campaign in stages to create a steady flow of leads rather than a flood.
6. Sales reps don't know about the promotion. Problem: Leads are sent to the sales team from a direct marketing campaign they know nothing about. Solution: Get reps on board early in the process by alerting them to your upcoming direct marketing initiative. Seed them on the mailing list so they receive samples when the direct mail drops. 7. The sales team doesn't have the right tools to follow up. Problem: Responses come in before the proper sales demonstration materials have been created or sent to the sales team. While sales reps wait for product samples, sales collateral, or sales presentation kits, prospects may be hearing from your competitors. Solution: Plan for the development of sales demonstration materials when creating your direct marketing strategy and don't drop the mailing until reps have the tools they need to convert leads to sales. How to Increase Your Small Business Lead Generation Lead generation is a critical component of many different businesses. Take an insurance agency for example, whether you're providing car, life, home, life, health or business insurance, you need to understand how to consistently get more customers and utilize your sales funnel. A lead is a person who has shown interest in your company's product or service in some way. You want them to buy something from you, but you need to spend some time building up the benefits and wooing them to entice them to choose you over your competitors. A lead generation funnel centres around a large number of names being poured into the funnel. Over time, you identify which are viable targets, then hopefully turn those targets into prospects and finally convert to buyers as they move down the funnel to purchase. Direct marketing goes way back in the world of insurance sales, but the internet has made it much easier for insurance companies to get new targets and automatically follow up with potential clients.
If you're using online marketing strategies, it doesn't matter if it's the middle of the night and your business is closed - your insurance agency can get new clients anytime, anywhere. There are 3 steps 3D2B to this process: 1. Generation This is the first part of the journey, where you generate the initial spark of consumer interest or enquiry into your products or services. Ideas to start trying to convert targets to paying customers include: • Asking people to sign up for your email newsletter • Encouraging people to fill out an online form for a free consultation • Using an exit intent popup on select webpages If you're doing SEO, SEM, social media marketing and content marketing well, you should have a large number of visitors to your website and social media accounts, where you can initially engage new clients. Note that Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) requires you to receive consent from recipients before sending messages. Make sure you ask people if they'd like to sign up for your newsletter before you start sending your finely-crafted marketing materials to their inbox! 2. Qualification Not every prospect you capture is going to become a sale. You need to have an effective process of filtering through all your leads to find the best ones. Otherwise, you'll waste time on audiences that will never convert. For example, a prospect who lands on your site, visits your "Pricing" page and enters their information into a form to download your free report is more valuable than a person who lands on your site, reads a blog article, then leaves. Here's an example of lead generation through digital marketing from everyone's favourite gecko. 3. Nurturing This is the step where you're focusing your efforts on providing relevant information at each stage of the buyer's journey. Some examples are providing targeted marketing content and email personalization. Studies show that compared to traditional marketing, content marketing and email marketing generate 50 percent more leads. It's important to create original, quality content if you want to attract customers - especially because a lot of insurance information is confusing to the average person. Content marketing helps you get discovered on social media and in search engines. Then, you can help drive new referrals organically. Appeal to potential clients' needs and pain points with solution- based content and you'll get their attention.
Through continuous nurturing with valuable content, people will start to think of you as a trusted source and authority. The Importance of A/B Testing You'll never know quite how successful any campaign is without testing it! A/B testing is a popular way of determining what works and what doesn't. You should be testing the effectiveness of one element at a time to determine what is actually responsible for an increase (or decrease) in traffic or conversions. The more time you spend testing, the better results you'll see. Some things you can A/B test include: • Adding or decreasing text or white space on your website • Changing a call to action in your email or on your site • Changing a headline or block of text on your sales landing page Finding new clients is hard work. So is working hard to stay ahead of your competitors. Will it be easy? No. But if you put in the time and energy you'll see your insurance marketing strategies pay off!
