By conducting lead generation campaigns, companies ultimately hope to provide their sales teams with qualified prospects to engage with rather than them spending a lot of time, money and effort trying to “look for a polar bear in a snow storm”. They also hope that these qualified leads will be progressed down the sales funnel and become customers.
However, a lead generation campaign can be more than the provision of a steady stream of good quality leads. By going through the process there are many additional benefits that can be gained for any company. Here are a few of them:
MARKET IDENTIFICATION – A lead generation campaign is a good opportunity to get more understanding about which market(s) you should focus your efforts on, depending on the results you will achieve.
For instance, if the campaign is focusing on two geographical markets, you will be able to assess which is more successful and which you should spend more time pursuing by looking at how many opportunities are being identified. In a similar vein, you will also find out which industries within each geo-market show the most interest and therefore establish the ones to target and ones to avoid.
CLEAN TARGET LIST – We can’t emphasize enough the importance of a clean database of prospects for businesses. However, it is estimated that on average 20% of the data becomes obsolete each year, as contacts move on, take on other responsibilities... When doing a campaign, you will go through a cleansing exercise and remove contacts that are no longer relevant and add new contact names. This can be a very tedious and time consuming activity but is highly important, especially for any future marketing activities such as email shots or direct mailing and to ensure you keep up to date with the actual relevant market ie, allocating companies to your sales team to nurture.
PRODUCT OR SOLUTION DEVELOPMENT – Through conversations, prospects may divulge particular pain points, either with a solution that they are currently using or a gap within the solution that needs filling. This can establish areas for product development on your solution/product or even open a door to a new solution that you can provide. Of course, if this is something that you find after one conversation, don’t go changing your product/solution straight away. However, if a trend starts to develop, look into it!
TIMING –Depending on the industries you are targeting and the solution you provide, there are good and bad times to penetrate. You may find out that one audience may be more available for conversations in July/August when others are not at all! You will see a trend forming as to when is the best time to contact your prospects for better conversions.
TARGET PERSONAS – When beginning a campaign, you may think, for instance, that an IT director is the best target persona for your solution because it directly serves a purpose for that function. However, an IT Director may not be the relevant contact nor necessarily have the authority to purchase.
During the campaign you may find that the financial controller may actually be more appropriate to approach. These findings can be hugely beneficial for your sales team as they may spend wasted hours chasing one executive when another could be more effective.
Additionally and particularly in complex sales situations, there will be different contacts within a single company that are involved in the decision making process. Identifying the relevant decision makers in each stage of the buying process will definitely be a key benefit to get from the start.
PUBLICITY – A campaign can not only be great for your brand awareness but also to put your lead nurturing process to use.
During a campaign, you will have conversations, gain insights and gather many contact details and email addresses. Just because the prospect isn’t quite ready just yet to commit, doesn’t mean you forget them. That company has made it to your target market list because that company fits your ideal customer.
Use those details in email campaigns or eShots to remind them about your solution. When those contacts are ready to engage or are in the market for your solution, your brand name and offerings will have increased chances to be positioned at the front of your prospects’ mind.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS – You can find out a lot of information in terms of what solutions the prospects are already using. During the conversations, you might also get the contract renewal date for this solution and then re-target that prospect closer to the time. It will give you a chance to develop additional value offerings that could give you the upper hand against your competitors.
More often, marketing & sales managers will assess the success of a lead generation campaign based solely on the number of qualified leads identified. Absolutely right – but by looking at the bigger picture and considering the extra benefits gained will prove the campaign was even more of a success than initially thought and potentially bring data for strategic decisions.
Companies we work with are provided with added value lead generation services. By outsourcing your lead generation campaigns to Maven TM, not only are you guaranteed to receive highly qualified opportunities, but you will also receive key marketing information that may help in strategic decisions.
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Maven TM is a specialist B2B Telemarketing and Sales Lead Generation company. With hundreds of sales lead generation campaigns completed successfully for technology companies, Maven TM consistently helps companies achieve their sales strategy and stay close to their markets. For more information, please contact Maven TM at info@maventm.com.
