When you’ve just started a new business, it’s important to understand that you won’t exactly be able to get a lot of customers immediately. This doesn’t mean the process is impossible, however. An integral part of assessing your startup’s potential is just how you plan on securing your customers – which can be done by first securing a good audience, and then converting them into good leads. You can do this through lead generation, and there’s actually better ways for you to accomplish this even when you’re just starting out. That’s right – it’s actually possible to pull off lead generation even as a new entrant in any industry. How is this possible?
It might actually help on your end to have a basic idea on just how some lead generation statistics look from various marketing perspectives. For instance, in terms of website marketing, it’s important to note that 93-percent of buying processes actually begin with online searches, with 76-percent of buyers relying on three (3) or more channels to get to know potential purchases. A lot of companies rely on content marketing as well, as not only does it cost 62-percent less than paid search marketing, but also can generate thrice (!) as many leads.
Interestingly, social media also helps generate leads, as 75-percent of buyers actually use them to research on products as well. The active presence of customers in these platforms do give them an edge, and this is reflected as 43-percent of marketers have acquired customers through Facebook, with conversion rates being 13-percent in social media. These are just some numbers that could be beneficial to you, but this simply means you should pay closer attention to how lead generation can play out across a multitude of platforms and channels.
Lead Generation Tips: How To Pull It Off When Starting Out.
When you want to get yourself attracting a lot of potential customers while starting out, you’ve got to make sure both your branding and marketing is in order. This at least allows you to make sure integral parts of your operations such as sales have backbone to work with. You can read more as to how exactly concepts such as sales can blend with marketing through resources such as Journal Review – Passive Income. However, if you truly want to secure early dominance as a startup, you’ve got to rely on your lead generation capabilities.
Here’s how you can pull this off:
Make sure you remember that quality always comes first in leads.
This is often forgotten by a lot of people, but even if you’re starting out, quality of leads still matter than quantity. Knowing this is important, as this allows your sales team to at least focus their attention properly instead of investing time and effort on leads that don’t qualify anyway. See to it that your target clients have chances of buying your service and product, and build campaigns that seek to attract them into availing your offerings because of the value you offer. See if they’re just in your brand to gather information, or if you’re speaking with the folks that make the decisions to buy, or if these fit your image of an ideal customer.
Find ways to gain better data on your customers and their needs.
First and foremost, data is perhaps one of the most crucial elements in maintaining a successful lead generation strategy. This is especially useful if you’ve just started out. Always try to be as accurate as possible when creating a viewer or audience or customer persona you want to aim your campaigns towards. This also means trying to get as much data as possible from audiences and using said data to create better campaigns to draw them in. Surveys, studying engagements in email and social media, are just ways for you to do this.
Create a criteria and grading system for all your prospects.
Aside from identifying the right kind of persona you want for your brand customers, see if you can check if your prospects are fulfilling your criteria anyway. You can try segregating activity into long-term, mid-term, and short-term prospects in order to create a functioning pipeline of prospects you can easily modify. You can also have a set of “requirements” that can help define what sort of prospects are qualified under each category, and what steps you can do in order to push them further down the pipeline and eventually have them convert. Don’t forget that lead nurturing requires not just inviting them to your website or registering them through calls-to-action. Rather, always give them value depending on what they’re looking for.
Always make sure you have access to the right data, and the tools to evaluate said data.
One of the most important aspects of lead generation is making sure you have just the right amount of data needed to analyze your market in the first place. This means having an analytics system that’s built to gather and help you interpret the data you have, and to make sure you have a means of utilizing your data in the first place. The more data you can identify and personalize, the more you can get to know your customer. This allows you to have better ways of communicating with your customers at the right time with the right tone, and with the right approach. This means you should regularly meet with your team to assess the kinds of tools you want to use – be it A/B testing, heat mapping, call tracking, or a combination of the three – and what your other tools have told you about your customers so far.
Monitor your competition to see what they’re doing right and wrong.
A good thing to do is to also monitor your competition, as that way you can at least determine whether or not your competition has launched a campaign that works or not worked, and see why or why not this happened. This is helpful, as you can at least have a way of constantly evaluating and re-evaluating campaigns you’ve launched or plan to launch with an actual benchmark.
See if you can partner with discount prospects or big purchasers.
You should remember that survival in the market increases if you make any valuable connections. As a startup, always think about building relationships with organizations, clients, and iconic individuals in your niche you want to work with, as cultivating a good relationship with them can be used to your advantage. Look out for prospects who experienced changes in circumstances, such as mergers or restructures, as they’re more prone to be open to partnerships.
The Takeaway: Lead Generation For Your Startup Is Possible.
When you’ve started a company or a business, you’re likely going to want to get all your operations underway. For instance, your sales and marketing strategies have to be coordinated to make the most out of your starting budget. With this in mind, sometimes the idea of having to generate leads and conversions alone can be quite the daunting task. However, given the tips above, it’s possible to actually pull off lead conversions even as a startup. What you need is a bit of creativity, a dash of resourcefulness, and proper planning in order to make sure you can have a good lead generation campaign even when you’re starting out.
