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Lead Generation is Top-of-Mind for Most VP of Sales

Sunday, 30 May 2021 07:40 PM

Campaign Writer

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / May 30, 2021 / Lead generation is what a Vice President of Sales worries about the most. Without a steady flow of new prospect leads, sales teams are no closer to closing more deals and sales. Generating new sales leads is a time-consuming process. With many marketing channels to choose from, selecting the right path to know which one will work best is a challenge. Done right, companies can strategically set in motion a flood of new and consistent quality leads to their business for more predictable revenue.

Campaign Writer, Sunday, May 30, 2021, Press release picture
The company VP of Sales discusses the next lead generation campaign with the Sales Manager. Image Credit: 123rf.com / Marctran.

What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation, or ‘lead gen' for short, is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects. Someone who has indicated interest in your company's products or services. Whether you are marketing and selling to business-to-consumer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B). It is a way of warming up potential customers to your business and getting them on the path to eventually making a purchase. Some examples of sales lead generators are job applications, blog posts, coupons, virtual events, and online content.

Hubspot compiled a comprehensive guide titled "Lead Generation: A Beginner's Guide to Generating Business Leads the Inbound Way" where they outlined how lead generation fits into a company's inbound marketing strategy. It details easy ways that any VP of Sales or business owner can start generating leads for their small business or company. The Hubspot Inc. CRM software platform makes it easy for entire companies to work together. From marketing, to sales, to customer service, each ‘hub' is powerful alone, but even better combined together. Hubspot boasts over 113,000 platform users in 120 countries.

Simple Lead Generation Process to Follow

The basic steps of the lead generation process are easy to follow. The first step is a website visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page. That same visitor then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA), whether an image, button, or message that encourages them to take some sort of action.

That CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, which is a web page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer. An offer is the content or something of value that's being ‘offered' on the landing page, like an e-book, a course, or a template. The offer must have enough perceived value to a visitor for them to provide their personal information in exchange for access to it.

Finally, once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer. Online forms are typically hosted on landing pages, although they can technically be embedded anywhere on your site. Once a visitor takes this journey and completes the lead-capture form, you now have a new sales lead to have your VP of Sales or sales team to follow up with.

4 Most Popular Types of Lead Generation

There are hundreds of ways to generate leads. The key is to narrow down and focus on a handful of ways that are proven to work for your business. If consistent effort and time is not given to any one method, a company will never know if it will effectively work for their needs.

Here are some of the best ways to generate B2B sales leads for those companies that really have set out to master their implementation consistently over time to earn a return on marketing investment.

1. Cold Email Marketing

Email is a relevant part of lead generation. In fact, 59% of marketers consider email their most effective marketing channel for generating B2B leads. When sending cold emails, make sure to personalize them. Research shows that personalized emails are 75% more likely to be clicked on by their recipients. They are also more likely to elicit a response than emails that are not personalized.

2. Content Marketing / Content Creation

Customers, prospect leads, and audience members want valuable content from your business. That content needs to reach audience members in a way that feels natural and organic from an educational-based marketing perspective. Content marketing helps businesses do this by describing the process of attracting, engaging with, and delighting your ultimate target buyers. By honing in on effective content marketing, your company can focus on just that. As a result, increase conversions, improve brand awareness, boost revenue, and establish yourself as an industry leader in the process.

3. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) / SERP Marketing

Improving the search engine optimization (SEO) of your company website to appear on the first page of Google for keywords that describe your product or service is a best practice. This helps to drive free natural organic traffic to your company website and increases your inbound sales leads. Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) marketing has been around since the internet was first created. While SEO is free traffic, it differs from pay-per-click (PPC) ads where a company is paying for each click on their ad.

4. PR (Public Relations) / News Media / Press Releases

The one most overlooked lead generation marketing strategies that could dramatically improve customer lead flow is public relations or ‘PR'. Getting positive media attention for your company is vital to any business success. How can a public relation campaign or press release help get more customers and clients?

Major news media (tv, radio, newspaper, magazines, social media, etc.) that publish newsworthy stories about your company, their readers, listeners, or viewers will learn more about your business. People who read or heard about your business in the news media will think "you must be good" and in turn, could very well go from sales lead prospect to new customer or client very quickly.

How to Qualify Prospects: Not All Sales Leads are Equal

One creative lead generation method used by Marty Stewart , Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Campaign Writer, and host of Inside Sales TV, was to send roses to a CEO as a lead gen ice-breaker. This unique approach resulted in a $380,000 B2B sales deal very quickly for his client. Another lead gen campaign resulted in a ‘hot' prospect. This corporate sales strategy led to over $2 million in B2B corporate sales that started from a cold email outreach targeting Fortune 500 CEOs.

"One of the most lucrative corporate email marketing campaigns I wrote for a client came from sending one cold email to top Fortune 500 CEOs. At the time, the 8th ranked company General Electric, with Jeff Immelt as CEO, replied to the email I wrote. My client had multiple conversations with General Electric, and finally did business with them, all as a result of the one email reply from Mr. Immelt," said Stewart.

Lead Generation Tools to Accelerate Results

For outbound lead gen campaigns to earn a rate of return, the first step is to know who you are targeting exactly. That means having a ready list of email addresses or telephone numbers to contact sales prospects. Sometimes this information can be found on mainstream social media websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube, however, that is not always the case.

For example, if you are an architect wanting to get more residential or commercial real estate projects, you would want to get an email list of high net worth (HNW) homeowners looking to build another home. Or, maybe an email or cell phone list of real estate developers looking to build more commercial property. Having a way to directly contact these types of prospects would be crucial for an architect or architectural firm to generate these type of leads.

There are many lead generation tools on the market. Some popular email and phone number search websites include: Swordfish AI, Zoominfo, Lusha, RocketReach, ContactOut, Uplead, Aeroleads, and others. These were all recently reviewed in a Yahoo Finance article titled "9 Top Contact Finding Tools to Find Email Addresses and Cell Phone Numbers."

Campaign Writer, Sunday, May 30, 2021, Press release picture
Sales lead generation was featured in Issue #128 of Contact Finder magazine. Image Credit: Contact Finder.

About Campaign Writer™:

Campaign Writer™ is a leading sales copywriting marketing firm working with Top Companies, Professionals, Executives, and Leaders in their field, to help increase sales and revenue through its content writing Team of Award-Winning Copywriters, Wordsmiths, and Ghostwriters for sales, marketing, public relations, direct response, and email marketing campaigns. Campaign Writer is led by Chief Strategy Officer Marty Stewart.

For a strategic exploratory conversation on how your company can increase sales, visit CampaignWriter.com. Or, call toll-free +1-877-463-9777 within the United States, or +1-702-997-1222 if calling Internationally.

SOURCE: Campaign Writer

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Company Update
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