What is the biggest marketing challenge and fundamental goal of most businesses when they invest in marketing? Leads, leads, and more leads (but good ones); Alignable has confirmed in a survey.
You can talk about branding, corporate image, and proposal generation, of course, but if you can’t find enough potential good new clients — and then convert them into clients through the sales process — you have nothing.
Then what are the best ways to obtain the leads you are seeking?
John Jantsch in Duct Tape Marketing observes that online/social media have an increasingly important role, but effective public speaking and strategic partnerships are also important.
Develop your content funnel
Provide less content but more value
Segment your visitors to become more targeted
Improve your automation and follow-ups
Develop content upgrades
Speak for leads
Becoming a speaker is one of the best ways to get clients. Getting up in front of a highly targeted, interested group of prospects and demonstrating that you?re not only very likable but also know a lot about something they need, is one of today?s most effective forms of lead generation and conversion all rolled into one.
Build strategic partnerships
One of the most overlooked sources of leads for any business is the pool of non-competing businesses that serve the same target market.?Identifying a group of ?best of? providers in your market and finding ways to gain access to their customer base is one of the quickest ways to flood your business with new leads.
My own research shows several different lead and business development techniques are effective, but none are universally powerful (other than direct referrals and repeat business, which I deliberately left out of the survey.)
The most effective approach, at about 37 per cent, is trade/community association participation and relationships.
You can complete the survey here and, once you do, you’ll gain access to the overall results.
