Growing your databases and driving sales means generating enough leads. So how can you make more of those essential connections? Five experts offer tips on how to beef up your lead-generating efforts
Share and share alike
Sharing isn’t just for kids—it’s vital for optimizing your [online] traffic sources. Advertisers should share invalid leads and reason codes with publishers, who should use the information to purge poor-performing traffic sources and refine targeting and creative. If allowed by their privacy policy, advertisers should also share converted lead files. Sophisticated publishers can utilize conversion data to build targeting models that proactively predict the consumers most likely take an advertiser’s offer, and then continuously refine the model based on the offer’s back-end performance.
Gayle Guzzardo, SVP, product management, Q Interactive
Provide a killer call-to-action
Direct or e-mail pieces that focus on the offer have much higher response rates than their product-focused counterparts. When developing a call-to-action, create an offer that attracts buyers earlier in the sales cycle. For b-to-b marketing, thought leadership such as educational Web seminars, research surveys and/or white papers usually generate higher response rates in the early part of the buying cycle.
Sami Jajeh, principal, Arketi Group
Don’t ask for more than you offer
When driving leads online, only ask for as much information as you need. If your need is beyond the typical name and email address request, keep in mind that you need to offer up a ton of value to ensure your visitors will be willing to give up robust information. Keep the landing page forms short…don’t include too many optional fields as the initial impression will be that the form is too onerous to complete.
Diane Kuehn, president and CEO, VisionPoint Marketing
Make registration easy
If possible, for whitepapers and Webinars, pre-fill the registration form with their name and any other information you may already have: title, address, company, etc. It’s no secret that you’re sending a message to them, and this will improve registration rates by making it easy.
Cimarron Buser, SVP marketing and business development, Texterity
Stay strategically focused
When conducting telemarketing lead generation campaigns, don’t allow tactical aspects to overshadow your strategic focus. Capitalize on previous data and messaging from similar campaigns. Also, think beyond the telemarketing “touch” by planning a concrete next step for prospects that are not “sales ready,” such as a relevant whitepaper or an invitation to a relevant webinar. Relevancy is key to moving prospects into your pipeline.
Kathy Rizzo, VP of marketing, Telenet Marketing Solutions.
