Lead Generation Campaigns that Work

Lead generation is at the top of the list for a lot of businesses when it comes to marketing. It's also one of the most difficult things to do. Here are three things you can do to make your lead generation campaigns work harder for your business.

Don't try to do too much

The first thing is, don't try to do too much with a single marketing tactic.

There are actually two steps when it comes to creating leads. One is awareness campaigns that help them understand who you are and what you do. I spoke about that in another post.

The second step is when people that know who you are - when they're ready to discuss buying or do more research - they show interest, they raise their hand, they tell you that they want to learn more.

Too often businesses try to create both the awareness and the interest motion in a single tactic. That often results in a water down tactic that doesn't engage your prospects the way you need to. You don't get the leads from that that you really need.

Listen to how your customer responds

The second thing to keep in mind: start with how your customer is going to respond to your tactics.

Focus on creating tactics that will appeal to them and see how they will be telling you that they're interested.

Businesses often start with an internal funnel view and focus on how to create an SQL, MQL or whatever other internal stage or metric they have, rather than starting with what the customer is going to tell them and then translating that into their internal metrics.

And that response that comes from the customer, that interest, is going to be in two forms: active and passive..

Active interest

Active interest are things like white paper downloads, website contact forms being filled out or demo requests.

These are strong signals that your prospects want to engage further. They require a pretty strong response from you.

Passive interest

There's also passive interest, things like newsletter subscriptions, social likes or website visits.

These are just a starting place; your prospect may want to just get started learning more. You have to be careful not to come on too strong with passive interest so you don't scare them away.

As you choose your tactics from all the things you could do, make sure that you choose some that will generate active interest and some that will generate passive interest. You want a portfolio of experiences.

Response plans

Now, create a response plan for both active interest and passive interest.

Think through those actions from your customer and what you will do to respond to each, and then document them all.

You want everyone on the team to know what the next step is when that customer raises their hand either actively or passively.That way you can all respond to them appropriately and consistently.

All of these steps together will help you to change your campaigns from tactical, siloed actions to proactive synchronized plays that progress the customer conversation, create more leads and ultimately drive more revenue for your business.