According to a recent Gartner survey, the top priority of most CEOs is growth. And if you want to drive business growth in the twenty-first century, digital marketing is the key. An agency that knows what it’s doing can drive powerful leads and unlock vast opportunities for its business clients. But the relative ease of posting on social sites and running digital advertising campaigns has opened the flood gates for every Tom, Dick, or Harry to get a computer and call themselves a digital marketing agency. The market is truly saturated.
To be a successful digital marketing agency, you must blend marketing creativity with a deep understanding of the technology to drive real results. It all starts with demonstrating your skills, and potential clients will look at your own results for that proof of concept. Have you increased your own brand awareness? Is your sales pipeline full? How many quality leads have you generated? Have your own sales and revenue increased?
With your credibility on the line, don’t risk leaving your lead generation to chance. This blog provides a framework for digital marketing agency lead generation to eliminate the scattergun approach, refine your outbound efforts, and generate real, closeable leads.
Evolution of Lead Generation
In the earliest days of the Internet, a consumer looking for products or services on-line could spend days or even weeks digging for information only to find limited and unreliable answers to their questions. Consumers still required the assistance of a knowledgeable industry pro and the traditional method of closing sales in person or on the phone reigned supreme.
But 2020 is the era of information abundance. A 10-second Google search provides thousands of answers, options, and solutions to virtually any question a consumer asks — and many they don’t. Because it’s nearly impossible to absorb all of the available information, consumers are likely to choose from among the options closest to the top of the list.
The advent of the self-directed consumer has dramatically altered the lead generation landscape. Consumers are surrounded by flashing lights and ringing bells as the competition strives to grab their attention. Sales teams are no longer trying to find customers but are instead trying to be found by customers. Gone are the days of knocking on every door or calling every phone within a designated radius; digital marketing tactics now attempt to help companies stand out in the crowd.
Define your lead goals
The only way to know if you reach your goal is to know what the goal is. When developing a lead generation strategy, define two specific goals:
How many leads will you generate in a specified period of time? It is important to be both realistic and optimistic. Call out a number that will drive you to work hard but is still achievable.
What constitutes a lead? The marketing team may define a lead as anyone who is interested in receiving more information, while the sales team may define a lead as a face-to-face meeting with a decision-maker. Sit down together and discuss both demographic and psychographic elements to narrow down a definition everyone can agree on.
Speak to your target audience
To ensure you are delivering a message your prospects will want to hear, you must first determine who you will be speaking to. If you attempt to sell all of your services to everyone in the same way, your messaging will fall flat. Instead, tailor your messages for your specific target.
If you are reaching out to retail clients, they may want their digital marketing campaigns to change with the seasons. Discuss how you are capable of providing fresh, active campaigns with short turn-around times. If you are seeking professional services clients, such as financial advisors or lawyers, they’re messages will remain largely the same throughout the year. Discuss how you are able to provide quality messaging that stands the test of time.
Guide the buying journey
The typical buying journey has 3 stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. Assigning leads a score will help you track where they are in this journey and provide the most helpful information to move them to the next stage. Nurturing leads with timely information will turn leads to prospects and prospects to clients.
Test, analyze, and optimize your campaign
Any lead generation campaign takes time to build momentum and deliver top-notch results, but an ineffective campaign is as useless as undefined goals. To ensure your lead generation campaign is worth your investment of time and money, dig into the data.
Several weeks after the launch of your campaign, examine which of your outreach methods and messages is getting a positive response and which is getting negative or no response. Make minor adjustments to the poor performing aspects and run the campaign for another several week to test for better response. Even the methods and messages that perform well early on may eventually need changes over time, so keep analyzing and testing to maintain steady performance. However, be sure to give each adjustment time to garner results for a clear understanding of effectiveness.
Don’t go it alone
If you are focused on running your business and taking care of your clients, you may not have the bandwidth to focus on your own business development. That’s when it’s time to enlist the services of a qualified digital marketing agency lead generation service like Salesflow. Having a team of experienced professionals on your side can relieve the pressure of constantly needing to drum up more business and give you peace of mind to know your sales funnel is full.