Review of channels and their benefits
My previous article about leadgen gained such popularity that it received more than 1K likes and more than 400 shares, and also helped many companies to close for two days in a meeting room and brainstorm on the leadgen theme, restructure their thinking and reflect on their sales strategy. So for me, this is a personal achievement in the world of blogging. But today I returned to the practice and business cases and collected the new material, which, perhaps, will persuade you new ways of developing your sales channels and will push you to new tests and hypotheses. I like having a toolkit and I often use it in the construction of lead generation channels. The main task of such a toolkit is to re-assemble the model for obtaining leads without any loss of power and revenue in the channels. Customizing these channels is not difficult. All you need is to think about how you ultimately want to sell through lead generation channels. Using everything and setting the price below the market, beefing up our portfolio, and spending investor money – this is not an option for the development of the sales department. We do not forget to convert the experience gained into the advantage that we have gained in the process of testing hypothesis in the process of lead generation. They all differ in the scale of adequacy and fullness, as well as the high cost of service. Some hypothesis do not pay off at all.
So, lead generation is not only Linkedin and automation through Linkedin Helper and Dux-Soup, but also brings together many more channels, which many do not even consider. Of course, we want the cheapest and simplest channel to set up, which even a dummy can do. But today we will analyze a lot of lead generation channels that work differently, have different effects on sales and have different values. The article will provide examples that can be implemented immediately at your company and test conversions. Everything that we do on our sales community and sales lab is a deep research into the problem, because we do not waste time on some plain facts. Go!
To begin with, there are Active Channels and Passive Channels in Lead Generation, which work differently on our top part of the sales funnel or generate leads that are differently ready for sale. They can be combined to even out the sales funnel and make it systemic at different times of the year (season and out of season).
Each of these lead generation channels has its roots and branches, which expand the list of possible interactions with our sales and marketing department. Let’s start with the active channels that you can begin to use in your business immediately after reading the article.
An expensive and always in demand lead generation channel for many IT companies . Here are some sub-channels online marketing consists of:
So, when you are planning your next successful startup, immediately lay down the budget to maintain an accurate strategy for the promotion of your site through social networks and social activity. Do not think that three articles on the blog, beautiful design, clever and inviting phrases on the site will do all the work for you. You must prove your competence by deeds and facts. Write a lot, talk a lot, give a lot of ideas in public and be visible wherever possible. The channel is good because you can swing it to unlimited limits and have constant targeted traffic for years, even if you turn off all other marketing activities. You can load the sales department with high-quality queries from one article that has been indexed best of all and gives the most relevant traffic.
But now in Europe as well as other regions, the trouble is that finding a talented SEOs is really problematic. Signing with local agencies – the analysis of the site alone will get you indebted for 10 years ahead. You can act yourself. Here are a couple of tools that you can use to customize your site:
Also about the retargeting campaigns: remember how cool it is when you see a fresh Web Summit ad in FB, or when it reminds nicely about TNW on Instagram? It is best to use Adroll (I love everything in one) or the native tools of Google Adwords , Facebook, Twitter for this. You will need to cut a sufficient number of banners of different sizes and collect cookies from the site. It is best to advertise from Facebook to your blog with news about your future trip with dates and your location and catch up with everyone with banners a la: What are you waiting for? Let’s finally set up our meeting here! – and lead to the contact form for this event.
A blog on your corporate website brings you organic content, social media posts provide coverage and involve your users in the funnel. Distribution of content through socially active groups gives you direct sales orders. Let`s distribute this channel into the components:
In general, in order to really develop this lead channel, you need to have a media plan and it must include activities not for one week, but at least for three months, so that you have time to prepare the info material and follow the info events that occur you. The main thing in this channel is to have flexibility. If you are very focused on a certain subject, then do not widen it and keep the output of articles at one per week, for example, but without water and trash. The main task of promotion in social networks is that the content makes you want to share and comment, the desire to share with a CTO or friend from a cool company. Plus, through the buffer tool you can organize content distribution across all social networks: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter.
Here are examples of media plans that set fire to the heads of SMMs:
Few companies use this lead generation channel, and it is in fact very important for raising reputation and keeping focus on the brand. My work with journalists, media agencies in different countries (Germany, USA) gave huge effect when local news feeds told locals that there are wonderful developers from Ukraine who deliver wonders on projects and many Germans order development services from them. What do we include in these Leadgen channels:
Take as an example large outsourcing companies: Ciklum , Epam, Soft-Serve and consider how they work with journalists and media. Recently there was a post from the company Ciklum, that they opened a new R&D center and launched a new project. There was a lot of noise about the IT Ukraine Week in London, where everyone pushed as best as they could. What does this give in the end? Our clients are accustomed to consume information and rumors from the Internet, and the more mentions you have on various well-known resources and the community, the more you get points for trust in the eyes of the client. More news about yourself and your plans – more quality leads as a result for you through the contact form.
Here are examples of press releases that work:
But do not confuse blogging with the job of press releases. These are two different channels of lead generation and they carry different meanings and perceptions for your site users. A blog is your thoughts, and a press release is a clear information and message. In the press release, the key point will be concentrated, because such a format can be taken by any editorial staff and spread to their info-centers and reported to the general masses: Techcrunch, The Verge. Within some period of time you could make the badges that you were featured by Engadget, Business Insider and blah blah blah.
The most frequently used channel by many companies so far. The effectiveness of this channel is not in the very first place, but this channel has a completely different effect and it is to encourage the client to return from deep hibernation. This channel is the safest in terms of pressure on the client. I read the email and clicked on the “spam” button, or simply did not answer or reply, because the message was not appealing enough to the direct sale immediately at that time … So, what do we have in this channel:
You can talk for a long time about the effectiveness of cold mailing, but since it is still in use by many companies and has not been removed from lead generation, it means that some kind of fish is caught there. The problem is that we are used to complicate our communication and make it very heavy. Another big problem is that for writing good and conversion letters you need a person who has thrown all the garbage from his head a long time ago and is working cleanly. The simpler, the clearer your messages, the more you have open letters and replies. Do not cram the entire life of your company in one message to the client. Make it beautiful!
Here are examples from where you can take letters for reference, please do not copy them insolently and make your titles, write your combat letters:
It’s high time to think what time is the best to send out letters. There is already an analysis report, which is not a crime to use and raise your conversions. Take a look here: https://sleeknote.com/blog/best-time-to-send-email
Those who worked in product companies or SAAS-projects, understand that without telemarketing and customer support, without this channel generation it is not enough to succeed on the market. We all know that cold calls are tedious and not justified in terms of sales, but when we have a certain funnel and a definite goal for a call, a completely different picture emerges. What happens here:
In the channel of the warm contacts you can build a funnel:
Sales people do not like calling nowadays and in many situations this becomes a stumbling block for those customers who are more inclined to talk on the phone. If I hadn’t been pushing my sales team at times and didn’t insist on calls, transactions would have been delayed and drowned in a ton of correspondence. When a client is without contact and he is communicating via email, he begins cooling off and not expressing any special emotions to the sales person. And then they can start not responding in time to the letters, ignoring and in every way delay the movement down through the funnel. But when the contact is tight and hot, then the decision is made faster – to go or not to go further.
What is now super-fashionable in cold calls or in calls in general? In fact, in our complex outsourcing sales, making cold calls is really a waste of time. Well, it’s impossible to hook someone from the first call with a theme about outstaff or custom development. But doing #prospecting or #warm calls is what you can use to sell and get bonuses for it. When you dial a lead who has just filled out your form on the site or just read your articles, then this is the lead that already knows you. It is possible to negotiate with them and they will not hang up at your: “Hello, May name is Boris and I`m Calling From Moscow.” To qualify your leads, you need to be patient and have good questions, which immediately on the first call will put all the pieces of the sales puzzle together:
There are such tactics qualifications and opening leads:
VIDEO 1
VIDEO 2
I personally like working with leads that already come with specific questions and tasks, but a high level of consulting is achieved when you and the lead have planned the next steps and are ready to move together to implement this plan. Such a coalition contributes and forms a team game and distributes the activities on two sides, I will do this, and you do this and this target we will meet on the final task and sum up our path together. Then the contract / invoices and the beginning of the project. Lead must be convinced in your interest to cross with them this river together. Online or via Skype it is hard to imagine, but we must try to give them this feeling of support and care.
So we are getting closer to the most time consuming lead generation channel. Years are spent to earn reputation, customers trust and respect among customers and market professionals. With this sales channel, you can get yourself engagements when you really deliver more than you take from the client. How can we manage lead generation and set it up here:
Expensive, high quality lead generation channel. Those, who build a high quality company, get good references, to that one wants to come back and advise his friend, who then doesn’t throw mud at the company for worthless advice. For many years, you need to spend on this channel to begin bearing fruit, but then you can make this channel the most efficient tool you have and it will be the No. 1 source for profits. What is the advantage of this channel? Cost of sales is almost zero. You are referred, you close, and so it continues until you take as much as $30, and deliver for as much as $50. How to strengthen the reference channel and aim it on active lead generation? There are some hints that can help:
VIDEO 1
VIDEO 2
My favorite channel for getting high quality leads. If you are an expert and have something to write, the same experts will come to you after some time, only for the consumption of your content. For someone you will become a support in the form of a solution of questions, for someone an innovator, and for someone else you will be a fresh source of knowledge. With a whole bunch of emotions and information that you will present to your clients, you will be able to manage the channel and ideas you specifically want to convey to your audience at the exact time. How can lead generation be done using content:
Well, as you understand, I adore this topic and love working with you through the text. Most of the work in this lead generation channel is not the creation of an insane amount of low-quality content, but the valuable material that carries informational benefits. The more content that you can read, which you can grasp, talk with the author, and then read again, correctly rework in your head and draw conclusions, the better. The big problem is that this channel is often used by IT companies to get organic traffic and simply make articles that nobody needs, except for Google and an insane amount of SEO keys, thinking that it will help and save from a failure in sales. Actually, no, it will make things worse, because leads will be of poor quality and the time for their processing will increase.
Many are afraid of writing, thinking that they will be convicted, criticized, or just laughed at. There are two options: when the public is not used to you yet – this is criticism; when the audience is already used to you – this is thanks and loyal subscribers. There is another option when the public got fed up, and you began selling through the texts and make them too persuasive. It is always worth keeping balance in relations with your readers. They come to you to get new information, to master it, to process it, to find value for themselves and then, if they do not manage themselves, to ask you for help. The more you sell through text, the less you will have customers. This is how the defensive reaction to the content and your person works. First of all, we want to understand in the text that we read an ordinary person. Then our relationship develops as a partner, I share interesting material, You thank me for spreading information to your colleagues and friends, and this is more than you could wish. Often texts are complicated by the fact that authors cannot understand for whom they are actually writing? Who is their reader? Startup, business, geeky or just an investor who passed by. You need to see your reader live, if he turns out to be an investor and he rereads your articles avidly, then your audience is clearly not for startups, because it’s different level of relationships. If you are paving the way to the minds of the Retail business, then you must choose a real person for whom you will solve problems through text. For the director it will be one, and for an ordinary manager – another. And who among them will decide to work with you, if during the year you solve these problems for them through the text? And that’s what you should strive to achieve. An acute problem still lies in the fact that we cannot practically generate anything new and innovative in comparison with our American colleagues.. And what are we doing? We all ruthlessly copy and paste. Oh, they have a calculator! Tax estimate? Done, what else? Oh, they have a personal blog with their hero! So, I will do the same! What else? So, design and style, too, we copycat. And when you drive traffic from the same resources as everyone, you attract the same audience that will go to your site and laugh from the fact that you are just a clone of the competitor’s site and it will look silly, clumsy and childish. Let me explain. Firstly, your competitor spent a lot of time promoting his articles, he educated his audience and they already accepted him with design, temper, communication policy, and now you, who have not done anything for anyone yet, have already pulled all the developments at once, thinking again, that it will work and sales will jump.
I love it when everything is done cleanly and in its own way, without a copy-paste! Then this is individuality, uniqueness, and the lead has an interest in you, who you are, what you are, how much you are worth. Then you keep the pressure and keep your interest, feeding your client with a good presentation of material without “husk” and statements: “to write in Python, you just need to buy my book, videos and come to the seminar” – this garbage will not work and will not inspire contact with you.
Here are the latest know-how in lead generation through content and strategies:
VIDEO 1
VIDEO 2
Further, so that your content does not float in the wrong direction, you should adhere to the style and form of communication. If we talk about our sales-community, then the form of communication is free here and we do not limit ourselves in emotions. I am personally very open and it is important for me to feel this openness in other authors so that the thought is not littered with different stereotypes, it is important for the reader. It is also important that the author is not tied or affiliated with any business, because this will immediately create distrust.
When promoting your blogs, remember that every copywriter writes for his reader and it’s good when you have a lot of choice, with whom to work and what to write. So you will see what you like and what brings money and orders for estimates.
Your corporate sites are the face of your company and, accordingly, the logical and motivating factor for contacting you. As you can bring a healthy message through the site, you will receive such clients from there. I have seen super innovative sites many times with a bunch of bells and whistles, colors and cases, but they did not generate anything and a second pack of sites that were simple, understandable and clearly structured for perception by new users and, accordingly, encouraging to contact and use the feedback form . Easy site is hard to copy, because we all complicate things all the time and cannot adhere to simplicity, which is why we overkill with the design, cramming a bunch of information into 1 sq. cm. What we have on lead generation through the site:
Let’s bring the site to the ideal. Check graphics pixel to pixel and use the most trending technologies, and animation, and logic, but the site still sells at the same level … What does this all mean? That the picture does not always sell, but the content – yes! As much as you love your work, it will love you back and supply you with grateful customers. And if you put into the text the soul and logic of what you yourself want from your client and website, then your client will notice. Again, copy-paste is not rolling here, this is an alien body, it is not yours and is not connected with you and your business. Create your website, simple, without showing off, but understandable in content. Now, about the frequency of conversion from the site user to clients. Today, in 2018, there is a flood of outsourcing companies and everyone is good and everyone can sell and do, and all have the most famous customers around the world, but they do not take it all. I will now name a few high conversion sites and give you your homework – find out why they sell through the site and they have regular customers. Please write your versions in the comments, and for my part I will answer, because I worked with these guys. Deal? OK. Examples of websites where lead generation is put in first place through context:
US mobile application development company
Just do not copy, create! I repeat, by copying, you do not create anything and do not develop a market and a niche, with such an approach you will be at the bottom of your development.
Oh, my one of the favorite channels of lead generation. It is absolutely not scalable now and doesn’t pay off for everyone, but this channel is an awesome extension to video marketing and has the opportunity to surprise all your customers, future customers, just visitors with a new story, pitch, experience, and this is a platform for getting high conversion leads. Why is it so important for a leadgen to pump this sales funnel? Because in order to get close to the top-star, you need not only to walk around the pavilions with flyers in your hands, you also have to perform at the stages and talk about your expertise live on stage.
It is attractive, when everyone is driven to the same room, but the equal access to the client does not quite work. Now at Web Summit shows, you can only drink Estrella beer and eat sardines with potatoes, but you won’t find a client there. There will be 20 outsourcers per startup, and this, I think, is the minimum. Yes, competition is great, new offers, but our outsourcing boils down to a single competitive rule – dumping immediately. Young companies are going to such exhibitions with the hope of getting, at least, someone, and to change the funnel from one channel to another, they run around, handing out business cards and flyers in rows. Larger companies come with stands and advertise their portfolio and key customers. Five years ago, when specialized exhibitions were in their infancy, it was possible to sell and find a client, but now this is only networking. But what are the options, where to go? I think our mission is to niche and sell profile things, I give you signals, and you act:
search for relocate projects
Exhibitions – a place to collect data from the market and the voice of office rooms. You collect cream in the form of fast feedbacks on work with clients, on the quality of your software products, communicate directly without mail and phone and form your vision of the situation where your business is moving. Communicate with your colleagues, share experiences, situations and enrich yourself with knowledge. But you can hardly sell the first time. The same principle of sales works at exhibitions as everywhere else. I saw, liked, exchanged, bargained and then to the point. But you can arrange meetings in advance, and even this channel can be automated. No need to go to events unprepared. We create a landing page and drive traffic there with a clear goal, mission, place and tasks that you will solve at the event.
Here are a couple of examples of landing pages:
As in sports, my distinctive ability in managing this blog and in sales is to be able to be different and stand out. This gives everyone the opportunity to look at my way of thinking from a whole different perspective. If I had copied everything from someone and repeated it after someone, I would not create anything new, but would say that the sparrow is a bird … and this would not have earned an exceptional public around my resource and formed a funnel of those readers, which is important to me personally. And when an IT company cannot independently determine its development strategy as a brand then it only rolls over to copying and projecting a similarity message to its customers. It does not earn exceptional leads, this earns total traffic and zero uniqueness in what it does in front of the leads who see the information for the first time on the site, advertising, banners, live. We need to become innovators. What is concentrated in this lead generation channel:
Well, you all know that building a brand is not an easy task. In order to understand you correctly, your color and logo were remembered and associated with something at the first mentioning, like Mustang, for this you need to correctly understand what you are investing in the meaning of your name and brand. There is a little that comes to mind from the phrase “software blabla energizing ltd”, and you will not be able to get it to the heads of many of your fans. Let’s take a look at these videos and what the best brand managers offer:
VIDEO 1
VIDEO 2
And finally, as a company in the IT software business what do you consider a real brand? Write in the comments. I hope you liked the article and you found a lot of new things for yourself, and maybe not quite new ones, but you remembered and saw other examples that you would explore as changes in the existing lead generation channels. I am grateful to everyone who reads me and leaves a good mark on the development of our community, namely distributes the content to my friends, colleagues, bosses and adds my work with own comments. It is necessary to help, and many need to reconsider their tactics and style of communication with the leaders, because I showed examples of good and bad, and these examples really teach a lesson.
Quality leads to all!
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder with Sales Label Consulting
LET’S MAKE DISCUS ABOUT YOUR PROJECT
Available
October 31, 2024 - min read
Read article Read articleSeptember 20, 2024 - min read
Read article Read articleAugust 26, 2024 - min read
Read article Read articleAugust 8, 2024 - 5 min read
Read article Read articleDrop us a line to talk
about your project