I am just putting the finishing touches on my next eBook on Lead Generation – so I wanted to share these five key factors of successful B2B lead generation campaigns.
But before I jump into the 5 key elements, I want to share this one important concept with you.
You are not in the lead generation business – you want sales, not leads.
Though this seems obvious, struggling lead generation campaigns typically focus on generating leads – and though leads are important, it’s the quality, not quantity, that is critical.
Think of it this way – let’s assume that your current lead generation efforts cost $100,000 and generate 50,000 leads – that’s a cost per lead of $2. But if your conversion rate is 10%, that means that 45,000 leads or $90,000 failed to produce your ultimate goal – a sale.
The Pareto Principle tells us that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your efforts – so identify those activities that are generating the most sales and start investing more resources in them.
Every business is searching for ways to improve performance and reduce the amount of resources invested in under-performing activities – so here are 5 key factors to successful B2B lead generation…
- Accuracy: Know who you need to connect with and how to best deliver what they need and want. Start with your current ‘best customers’ and find out how they learned about your business and why they selected you over the competition. Then replicate the process on a larger scale so you can attract more leads that are most like your best customers.
- Frequency: The average person is buried under 3,000 promotional messages each day and it typically takes 5 to 7 attempts to cut through that clutter and capture their attention. Successful lead generation is a process, not a series of one-off campaigns – you need to reach your prospective buyer regularly and build the relationship over time. Sure, you are chasing this Quarter’s goals – but you also need to set up opportunities for future Quarters and if you’re targeting the right people, most of them will have future needs to buy. Make sure you work for them as well as those with immediate needs to buy.
- Relevancy: When attempting to process 3,000 promotional offers every day, your buyer is looking for reasons to reduce options – so you need to make sure that when you get your chance, you offer relevant value. Highly successful lead generation processes understand the importance of tying messages and offers to where the buyer is in the buying process. For example, earlier in the buying process, the buyer wants information so they can understand options which is why successful lead generation processes focus on white papers, webinars, events instead of “Buy now, Save 20%”.
- Quality, then Quantity: I hope I made this point clear above – quantity of leads might keep everyone busy but the goal is being productive and profitable so focus on quality leads first, then spend more time and money on what produces sales.
- Test. Measure. Analyze. Modify. Repeat. Fewer than half of all businesses can report on the performance on lead generation activities – which means they can’t redirect money from under-performing activities onto other, more productive activities. Highly successful businesses have processes in place for measuring and analyzing performance and they constantly test new media, lists, messages, offers and creative presentation as well as the timing of communications and the combination of channels (does direct mail-call-email outperform direct mail-call-call-email?)
That’s what separates highly effective lead generation processes from less effective campaigns – does this conjure up any ideas that will help you increase your performance?
