How Can Lead Generation Help My Business

What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation describes the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing sales pipeline.

Lead generation often uses digital channels, and has been undergoing substantial changes in recent years from the rise of new online and social techniques. In particular, the abundance of information readily available online has led to the rise of the “self-directed buyer” and the emergence of new techniques to develop and qualify potential leads before passing them to sales.

Why is Lead Generation Important?

The buying process has changed, and marketers need to find new ways to reach buyers and get heard through the noise. Instead of finding customers with mass advertising and email blasts, marketers must now focus on being found and learn to build continuous relationships with buyers.

The Basics of Lead Generation

Let’s begin by with the definition of a lead. What does a lead mean to your company? Many companies have different definitions depending on their sales cycle, but standard definition is a qualified potential buyer who shows some level of interest in purchasing your product or solution. For the leads that fill out a form, they often do so in exchange for some relevant content or a compelling offer.

You can break lead generation up into two main categories: inbound and outbound. And as discussed above, you need to make sure that you keep in mind your nurture and customer retention marketing strategies as part of a holistic strategy.

Inbound Marketing

At Unthink, our definition of inbound marketing is “the process of helping potential customers find your company—often before they are even looking to make a purchase—and then turning that early awareness into brand preference, and ultimately, into leads and revenue.” 

Gone are the days that a marketer only relied on outbound techniques like trade shows, cold calling, and advertisements to get leads. Today’s buyer is in control. According to Forrester, buyers seek out three pieces of content about a vendor for every one piece sent by a marketer, and for every one piece sent by sales.  Because of buyer self-education, your job as a marketer is to be heard through the noise and come up with new ways for leads to find you. To be a marketer in today’s world, you need a solid grasp of inbound in order to truly amplify your lead generation impact.

How do you do that? You need to create interest by offering a relevant mix of informative and entertaining content that builds a meaningful relationship with your audience. And you have to make sure that you are distributing your content through all the right channels – where your buyer spends time. This section goes into a bit more detail on some of the common tactics for inbound lead generation.

Content and SEO

Your content is the foundation of your inbound marketing efforts. According to Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is “a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer action”. Think of content as the fuel to all of your marketing campaigns from email to social. Create content that is impactful to your audience and drives sharing. Through creating high quality content, you can begin to gain your buyer’s trust and start breaking through the noise.

Because search engines equate high-quality content with a high-quality website, creating content with value is very important. Conduct a content audit to see how many of your assets fall into the thought leadership vs. promotional category. That means making sure that your thought leadership content has substance to it. Lots of companies are jumping on the content bandwagon, so do it right: focus on quality over quantity, and on providing useful – not promotional – information.

Once you have a good mix of high-value content, including visual content, start promoting it on social channels. The more engagement you get, the more Google considers your content to be of high value, which in turn boosts your SEO rankings. Search engines look for natural links, so the more informative your content is, the more likely people will link to it naturally.

Get A Custom Wordpress Website Built For You By Unthink Digital Marketing

Website

Your website is where the magic happens. This is the place where your audience needs to convert. Whether it is encouraging prospective buyers to sign up for your newsletter or fill out a form for a demo, the key is to optimize your website for converting browsers into actual leads.  Pay attention to forms, Calls-to-Action (CTA), layout, design, and content.

Blog

Your blog is a fantastic place to create trust with your buyers. Readers can stumble upon your blog from all over the web, so you want to make sure it is search-engine optimized. Remember that someone reading the blog may not want to immediately sign up for a demo, so highlight the Calls-to-Action that ask your reader to subscribe to the blog or to follow you on social channels. A well laid out blog will keep your readers interested, coming back for more, and hopefully curious enough to start looking at the rest of your site. Keep your readership up and position your blog as a gateway to conversion.

Social Media

The increasing popularity of social channels has directly attributed to information abundance. Through social networks, buyers have been able to research and learn about products and services through influencers and peers.  Additionally, a profound shift has taken place within social media channels. Although social is still important for branding and generating buzz, lead generation is becoming more and more important. By tapping into all the social media channels, from Facebook and Twitter to LinkedIn and Google+, you can be where your customers are and create that trust.

Outbound Marketing

While inbound marketing is getting a lot of buzz, a well-rounded marketing mix should include both inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Inbound works for broad lead generation activities, but outbound is good to amplify your inbound efforts, and target specific opportunities. So what exactly is outbound marketing? It’s using outbound channels to introduce your message and content to your prospects, typically through rented attention, rather than making your content and messages available on your own properties.

In many cases, outbound techniques can get someone to think about you even if they haven’t thought about you yet, since many of the methods you use should have more of a “wow” factor to make your company stand out. Outbound communication is often highly targeted, with a call-to-action that is very obvious. As a result, good outbound marketing can push someone through the funnel at a faster rate, assuming they are closer to being ready to buy.  Inbound alone often does not drive someone to buy. Outbound gives them that extra nudge they need to drive a lead down the funnel.

Combining outbound and inbound can multiply the number of views you generate, dramatically increase sharing, and ultimately increase the number of potential customers who see your content. While your mix may differ from ours, we find that the following outbound tactics work best.

Email Marketing

Email is a cornerstone and key component of every marketing campaign. Whether you are hosting an event, sending out a new piece of content, promoting a new service offering, or staying in touch with customers, email should be one of your main forms of communication. According to MarketingSherpa, the most used lead generation tactic is email marketing, with 81% of respondents citing it as the most effective channel. By putting your content in front of prospects, you can find people who might not be looking for you.

Display Ads

Display ads are typically highly targeted to different demographic or behavioral actions. You can select where you want the ads to be seen by choosing an online publication that you feel is a place where your leads spend time, or you can also leverage re-targeter ads that can cookie a lead that views your site. With re-targeter ads, once a person gets cookied, your ads appear on other sites that he or she visits afterwards. Through online ads you can reach more of your target audience, educate potential prospects, and drive leads. Display ads also serve a purpose at every stage in the funnel—building brand and audience at Top of Funnel, educating and helping evaluation at Mid-Funnel, and increasing conversions at Bottom of Funnel.  

Pay-per-Click Ads

With Pay-per-Click (PPC ) ads you pay for each click on your ad which is displayed on a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing, or on a website. For PPC on search engines, your ads show up as sponsored results on the top and side of the organic search terms. PPC ads are a terrific way to draw attention to your latest content or service offerings. They are also highly targeted so they can generate very high quality leads.  Advertisers bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target markets and your ads will display when a keyword query matches your chosen keyword list.

Content Syndication

Because prospective buyers won’t always end up at your website as they start their purchase journey, it’s important that you establish a presence where they may show up. A great way to deliver high-value content to the correct prospects is through content syndication – a content sharing strategy that can be used to promote your white papers, articles, news releases, etc. on other websites for greater reach and engagement. Through content syndication, your content appears on third-party sites and newsletters. And because most content syndicators deliver leads directly to your inbox, it’s a great way to keep leads coming in the door.

Direct Mail

You may think direct mail is a thing of the past. But it’s still effective for targeted communications. Consider a content asset developed for high-level executives. Executives don’t usually browse the web for information. And it can be hard to get through to them via email. That means they may not come across the content you’ve developed with them in mind. This is where direct mail can prove powerful. You could send a direct mail piece to this audience to make them aware of your new, targeted content asset.  Direct mail also gives you a chance to grab the attention of a hot prospect by being creative and interesting with your message and presentation.

Events

Whether you are hosting a small private function, a large-scale international trade show, or an executive-level webinar, event marketing needs to be an integral part of the lead generation mix. After all, events are a critical component of an outbound marketing strategy. Essentially, events offer you the chance to define your brand, clarify the solutions you provide, and establish personal connections with participants. And while they provide you with an invaluable opportunity to engage with prospects and customers, events also give attendees the chance to interact with each other. As every marketer knows, there is no better advertising than the direct words of a satisfied customer. Events also provide a venue to deliver speeches and content that convey your company’s thought leadership and raise your perception in the eyes of buyers.  Compared to other marketing tactics, events are more likely to quickly turn a prospect into a strong lead. As a lively, interactive, educational forum, events position your business as a trusted leader in a field of many.

Sales Development Reps

Sales Development reps (SDRs), also often called Inside Sales or Lead Qualification reps, are focused on one thing: reviewing, contacting, and qualifying marketing-generated leads and delivering them to Sales Account Executives. Simply put, SDR teams pass the baton from Marketing to Sales. Why do it this way? Because you want to make sure every single lead Marketing passes to your Sales team is as qualified as possible. Your SDRs should take the time to help each and every lead, offer them value, make a positive impression, create future demand, and become a trusted advisor. This step is critical in the lead generation process because you don’t want to treat your leads as blank faces to be simply questioned, qualified, and harvested.

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU)

The self-directed buyer’s shields are up, and they are ignoring your messages. Developing a relationship to cut through the noise is critical.  Not all leads that go to sales are ready to buy, so you have to make sure that you have in place a solid lead nurturing strategy to continue to build awareness and affinity for your brand while your prospect is self-educating. Through paying attention to your MOFU efforts through tactics such as lead nurturing, you can continue to have a relevant conversation with prospects long after your lead generation efforts.

Lead nurturing also increases lead to opportunity conversion rate, drives more revenue, and shortens the sales cycle. It is about finding the right buyers at the right time. Lead generation brings buyers into the funnel, but lead nurturing and scoring sends them to sales so that your sales team can close the deal at the right time. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa’s Lead Generation benchmark report, companies who leverage lead nurturing see a 45% lift in lead generation over those companies who do not use lead nurturing.

What kind of business should I start?

I Iike brainstorming and coming up 

With ideas and working with slogans and logo ideas what time of business should I start? I was thinking about consulting but please advise.

That's the question I received this morning. Here is my answer to this young NEW entrepreneur.

Many new self-employed or entrepreneurs face this dilemma. You know you're good, but you feel like your skillsets are too diverse to box in and you obviously want to do something productive that generates steady income thus you're unsure as to what path to follow. If this goes un-addressed for too long you'll see years pass by w/no fruitful effort.  

First, try coupling your skillsets to a certain industry such as marketing, pr, sales, technology, etc. Are you capable of creating the logos or imagery you propose to someone? 
Second, based on whether you can deliver and the industry that best suits you - understand your would be role in the current eco-system. For example I would place your interest into marketing but you see, a logo does not make a brand, a slogan requires clever pitching to be accepted at once, and clever repetition to the audience for it to stick and become a slogan or part of the brand. Why would a company go to a consultant who cannot deliver campaigns but only create words on microsoft or sketch a logo but not create it? Even a graphic artist must go through dozens of variations of the same 'finished' logo before one gets accepted and thats because a miniscule detail makes a huge difference to a client. So a sketch is close to delivering nothing.
Consulting can be a good gig, but you must understand what consulting is - is not just speaking, unless you're amazing public speaker and jargonist. No, sustainable consulting delivers a product in the form of research, theories, thesis, manages others implementing the effort, works side by side the teams they are hired by. So this means that even for logo and branding consulting you must be perceived as an expert in your field, have experts who like you as a human and respect you as a professional. Specially if you want to simply create verbal content and not tangible brand assets.

With that said, on the other hand, let's say that you are able to deliver tangible assets to a company client. Good for you, now lets understand your role in the current eco-system as follows: 
You are either a disruptor, traditionalist, softserver, specialist, connector or a soloist. Now, is important that you don't get played by your ego - none of these is above another and even through the distruptor classisification might be of your liking it doesn't mean that you are - you, to me, sound like would fit under the soloist. A distruptor is someone with ton of experiences and abilities to bring all others together under one roof service and deliver a hybrid company - I have done that with Unthink, a hybrid marketing agency that caters to small and new business owners who need high budget services on monthly payments and have gathered expert professionals to work under my model and not traditional lump sum plans for traditional and digital marketing and advertising. 
A traditionalist are becoming irrelevant and depend heavily on relations and past authorities in a field. For newcomers this is obviously out of the question and a dying competitive strategy.

Consultants Are Expected To Deliver Tangible Work Somehow

Specialists, you could be here, focus heavily and depend on NICHE markets only. These individuals can charge a premium because they offer a single solution to any client and deliver it well because they understand it backwards and inside out. These people are constantly improving, reading, learning and networking and have a pitch crafted down to the T. They depend heavily on connections obviously and patience for their connections to need their services.
Connectors, are networkers, not doers. - you could be here too. They make the connections and hire or subcontract others who can serve. 

Soloists are common - these are web devs, programmers, graphic artists, solo-business owners - who have modest growth goals, low cost of living and thus can comfortably build connections and offer a small variety of services which once sold they create and deliver themselves. (if you know graphic design you would be here) These people are not looking to build an agency right off the bat or at all, instead just make a good living doing something they love either as main provider or as a contractor or sub-contractor to clients directly or other companies.

My name is Humberto Valle, I am the Co-Founder and CEO of a Hybrid Agency called Unthink.me, we are located in El Paso Texas and have clients from around the world. Some of our most recent small clients are About Time Pest & Weed Termite Control in Scottsdale, Arizona, Layne Maids Service in New Jersey, and brand new launched Real Estate Marketing Agency In Austin Texas.

Why Your Last Strategy Failed

In working with companies that operate in various industries and markets it has become obvious that often times the main and only reason a strategic effort fails is not because the strategy was the wrong one or because it was executed wrong. 

The common mistake that the company's leaders encounter (aside from having a 'fake strategy') is that the strategic plan is too broad! too complex and non-specific. Your strategy should never be better than the people executing it! 

Understand that a strategy is merely a set of targeted objectives aligned with your corporate vision that clearly and very very simply lays out the steps to take to achieve certain objectives. A good strategy also has some contingencies because plans are never fully executed as written or circumstances aren't always ideal - a strategy should have adjustments in the plan. 

There are other mistakes managers make, such as assuming that the strategy is bad when is actually execution, or vice versa but that's a topic for another time. Here are my rules for keeping a strategy simple and thus improve its execution (assuming all others factors are good and in place): 

• Keep it simple - Strategy shouldn't be complex or abstract. Clearly lay out a course of action to where the most bottom employees would be able to understand it.

• Debate assumptions, not forecasts. Strategy is about trade offs, make sure that they are done right.

• Speak a common language. Dialogues between all parties needs to be simple and easily understood by all. No jargon and no fluff. 

• Continuously monitor the strategy's performance (ROI) and its execution. Strategy is often a trial and error towards a particular goal not a set in stone approach that doesn't deviate from written agreed plan.

My name is Humberto Valle, if you enjoyed this and found it valuable follow me here on LinkedIn. As consultant I can evaluate your business model, find operational gaps, improve your marketing strategies. My fees are flat and not by the hour which saves companies an average of 53% from other strategists and my efforts are preemptive which improve ROIs long term. 

MBA Oath Book - A must for every MBA graduate

The MBA Oath: Setting a Higher Standard for Business Leaders by Anderson, Max, Escher, Peter published by Portfolio Hardcover (2010) Hardcover

The MBA Oath: Setting a Higher Standard for Business Leaders by Anderson, Max, Escher, Peter published by Portfolio Hardcover (2010) Hardcover

Iselector by Far The Best I've Owned

This is a follow up post to my original entry where I reviewed or I guess I critized the Beats Headphones. 

I went through about 30 different headphones online and at stores, checking them out for confort sound, stereo quality, features, accessories included, design, aesthetics and more! I couldn't decide what to buy. Then I came across Beats.. This headphones almost had me convinced! But most reviews only talk about how "COOL" they are and the brand and how comfortable they are...

OK. Almost. 

What about sound? Well I talked to a few sound engineers and artists and they all seemed to agree that although beats are seemingly cool headphones, they sound is not any better than your average 20-50 dollar range headset. I was surprised!

Then I found out about their marketing strategy, and the added metal to give them that heaviness and thus "improvised quality" feel to them!

So my search was on... Until I found ISELECTOR Over The Ear Headphones.

This set has a multi-function button that acts as power button/siri caller, transmitter, skip button and more. The noise cancellation works amazingly but even without the NCS on the sound is significantly reduced!

The reviews this headset has are impressive. I'm not even kidding, check out some the reviews below

These reviews speak about the quality, the sound and functionality of the headset and better yet their overall happiness for the price and what they get which as a business person I will say that this only means that the headset is actually worth more than what is being charged. 

What does this mean??? Well it means that if you are looking for an over the ear headphone set with bluetooth capabilities and is super confortable and looks great on - you should get this ISELECTOR BNC80 Headphones! 

The loss of a customer

YOUR CUSTOMERS used to get what they paid for, more or less. Now they're poaching value left and right. Just a few years ago, when typical retail shoppers went to a store and received advice on the size, style, or purpose of a product, they almost always bought the product right then and there. If they were looking for personalized service, they chose stores that offered it - and paid premium prices for it. If they were bargain hunters, they sought out no-frills shops. Whichever distribution channel they opted for, they stayed with it until the sale was made.
Not anymore. Today's customers "channel surf" with abandon. They routinely avail themselves of the services of high-touch channels, only to buy the product at the end point of another, cheaper channel. Who among us hasn't leafed through a catalog before heading to the mall, or called a travel agent for advice about airfares and then either bought the tickets on-line or purchased them directly from the airline to get a better price? The result is that companies are left with "stranded assets" - physical and organizational capabilities, typically developed at great expense, that become more useless by the day. Depending on the situation, these may include highly trained but underused salespeople, lightly trafficked retail floor space, and obsolescing inventory dedicated to displays and immediate fulfillment. Forrester Research analysts suggest that as many as half of all customers now shop for information in one channel, then defect from that channel when it comes time for money to change hands. Our own knowledge of clients' situations in both consumer goods and B2B markets supports this finding.

Surely, this isn't news to you. But what are you doing about it? You should be rethinking the core logic of your go-to-market strategy. Instead of designing channels to capture targeted demographic segments, you must design them to support unfettered buyers' behaviors. What's crucial is that customers get what they need at each stage of the buying process - through one channel or another - and that, at the end of that journey, your company has not spent more money on customers than they have spent with you.

Source: Wall Street Journal, Nov2003, Vol. 81 Issue 11, p96-105. 10p. 3 Color Photographs, 1 Chart

Oringally posted at HonestMaids.co:

Maids of Phoenix Home Cleaning Services

We have been in business for a short while, but this is a good thing. Our team is working harder than any other maid service out there to ensure your complete satisfaction. Honest Maids team members are not afraid to work hard and earn your trust and complete satisfaction.

 Honest Maids of Phoenix AZ[/caption] Running a business is harder than it seems, you might think “Oh, she has a cleaning business. That’s super easy to launch!” or “Wow, she got a business degree and is doing that?” Some people even go as far as assuming that me and my team are doing this because we can’t do anything else. Well let me tell you that running a cleaning company is difficult, growing it much more. Also know that you offering house cleaning as owner operator is not the same thing as running a company that is competing with large multi-million dollar franchise companies.

I’m writing this because I want to share some aspects of growing a business.

Part of our compensation and benefits to our maid team is that we will work with them to build a team of dedicated members under each who commits to the values and efforts Honest Maids is about. We will do our best to get them their own franchise in their own area fully and independently operated by them. This letter should give them a bit of insight too onto what they should expect. There are days were Honest Maids receives 10 calls a day, there’s others where we get none. In this environment marketing and pricing is everything but we are working hard to build a trustworthy brand that doesn’t have to compete on price alone and instead compete based on quality and commitment.

To do so, there is a branding effort that must take place, the strategies for this are time consuming and any misstep can cause the entire plan to fail. We depend a lot on social media- why? Well

• Franchise companies have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in Google Search results, we can’t compete with that.
• Referrals are huge in this type of business, we are still building ours – most clients will freely share with friends but is harder than it seems to get customers to go to Yelp or others to leave a good review. Unless that review is bad, then you better bet they will be there.
• A lack of Yelp or Google or BBB reviews is actually a good thing because of this, but few people realize that. Social Media remains key.
• My husband is a marketing genius! Really! He has achieved for our website to receive hundreds of visits a day on a $0 ad budget. All content and all just good PR which is free.

We would love to use Yelp, and although you can leave reviews there of us we don’t promote in it. WHY NOT?

• Yelp is running like a mob, unless you are a business you might not realize that you get blackmailed into spending “advertising” with them.
• Competing businesses are promoted in your own profile!! Unless of course you pay hundreds of dollars a month to keep them from doing that.
• My personal thought is that once you receive a call from them and reject their “ads service” they stop or reduce the search results for your business!! I tracked this after I noticed a sudden drop in visits where before we had a ton of traffic. – Again, my thoughts based on experience.
• This leads me to this, if you want Yelp to show more of your business you guessed it! You gotta pay!
• If you want to have a slideshow of your products or completed services…Yup! You gotta pay!
• Restrict Competitors Ads on your own page? Yup, you gotta pay!
• Then they have their actual ad services which help you in return appear in competitors profiles.

So as you see, marketing can be difficult and expensive. Social Media is by far the best approach, as a business owner there are many things I need to make sure get done, like payroll and other HR issues, sales are being processed, insurances and bonding get added to each job and maid member, answer customer and employee phone calls (although my husband takes care of this for the most part).

My husband, he has been helping with a lot of the workload, but the burden falls on me since this is my business and my company. Employee and Customer satisfaction is a team responsibility. So as you can see, there is a lot to do no matter what business you are in and marketing, building a reputation, crafting an image, spreading the word, getting visitors to your website, complying with state and local laws, keeping customers happy, earning trust, building a team, helping with cleans, training and growing the business is not a menial task. It requires a savvy entrepreneur who can take on big enterprises and do so with her chin up.

Yes we clean homes and do so with pride.

-Diana

Don't forget, let us clean your home before or after guests visit. 

Call or Text 602-500-2285