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5 Do’s and Don’ts of Successful Lead Generation

Lead generation is one of the most important marketing activities any company can engage in. It “feeds the funnel,” after all, providing the sales fuel that keeps the company growing. What does successful lead generation require of you, though, and what common hazards can you avoid?

1: Do Ask for Website Visitors’ Email Addresses

We feel like this is something everyone should do, but there are still so many websites out there that don’t even bother. It’s mystifying.

Most successful entrepreneurs know the rule that to get what you want, you have to ask for it. That includes marketing leads and their contact information. Make sure your website has an email opt-in system that asks them to subscribe. Sweeten the deal by promising great content in return, but first of all, ask.

2: Don’t Send Spam; Not Now, Not Ever!

Once you do have those email addresses, though, don’t abuse them. We’d hate to see you become one of those companies.

Getting a lead’s contact information is an act of trust. They’re counting on you to only use that information for the purposes they agreed to. So don’t bombard them or flood their inboxes with irrelevant material. That’s a good way to make them not like you, but it’s also just wrong.

3: Do Use The Heck out of Social Media

As a business owner or a marketer, social networks are your friends. They’re catching a lot of flak right now for how they enable some bad social effects, and there may be big changes on the horizon, but keep your eye on the prize.

Social networks rise and fall. Remember MySpace? Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn may each someday follow, but others will take their place. Go with the flow! Social media is too advantageous to business for it to disappear completely. Use it to engage with people who are talking about problems you can solve, and build the relationships that lead to great deals!

4: Don’t Focus on Only One Prospect at a Time

These days, it’s rare that decision-makers can act alone. There are usually numerous stakeholders when it comes to purchasing and contracts, so successful lead generation efforts need to revolve around connecting with each member of those teams.

We wholeheartedly recommend using demo automation tools like the ones provided by Consensus. They make it really easy to ensure that everyone who needs to know about your solutions learns what’s relevant to their role.

5: Do Think a Lot About Mobile and Voice Search

People are getting more and more comfortable using voice search (they’re literally just asking for what they want!), and you need to be comfortable answering them.

“Nearly 20% of all voice search queries are triggered by a set of 25 keywords. These consist mainly of question words like “how” or “what” and adjectives like “best” or “easy” (Source: seoClarity).”

Since many such voice searches are happening on or being referred to users’ mobile devices, you likewise need to make sure that your web content is optimized for both.

If you need help turning any of these ideas into successful lead generation strategies, be sure to contact us at Boom Demand. We help our clients collect reliable and actionable data to drive business growth, and then we help them carry out that action with top-notch sales development!

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Top 5 Lead Generation Methods for Business Growth

When they need to boost sales fast, it’s common for companies to buy a list of leads they can contact. This is a quick fix, and it can be inexpensive, but there are risks. Calling on irrelevant and outdated leads can hurt your brand’s reputation. It’s much more effective and powerful to focus on leads that you know are accurate and interested. These five lead generation methods can help you accomplish that.

1. Opt-in Email Marketing

Email is the granddaddy of digital lead generation methods. The best way to send sales emails is to invite website visitors to volunteer their email addresses and give you permission to send them information, usually in exchange for a valued piece of content.

Of course, this means that you need to have multiple forms of interesting content and ways to help prospects discover it, but it all comes down to this. People who give you their email addresses are more likely to buy something than people who haven’t.

2. Affiliate Networks

Another powerful digital lead generation strategy is affiliate marketing. Like any strategy, it has both its benefits and its drawbacks, but overall, it sort of kills three birds with one stone.

By joining an affiliate network, you can get your offers in front of more eyes, you can bask in the authority and endorsement the affiliate publisher lends to your brand, and that publisher can earn commissions. What’s not to like?

3. PPC Ad Campaigns

By now, we can almost say that this is one of the good, old-fashioned lead generation methods. There are now adults in the world who have no idea what it was like before the internet had become a part of everyday life.

Simple and unobtrusive but compelling online ads are still an important way for companies to build both brand awareness and overall sales. The big issue now, though, is making sure that your ads are optimized for display on mobile devices!

4. Traditional Networking Events

There’s no place like a trade show! Or a conference in a hotel ballroom, or a fun outdoor get-together where you talk shop.

Attending and organizing these sorts of events in person can be one of the best ways to discover new prospects, or learn more ways for how to find them.

5. Outbound Sales Enablement

Essentially, what we’re talking about here is sales development, including making cold calls.

Sales enablement is about a lot more than just cold-calling, though. Effective SDRs like our teams at Boom Demand spend significant amounts of time connecting and building relationships with prospects over social media networks like LinkedIn.

It’s important to go to where your prospective clients are and where they want to be. That includes wherever you can bump into them, whether on or offline!

Boom Demand helps clients enact and follow up on lead generation methods like these. We provide a smooth transition from finding each lead and bringing them all the way to your sales closers. Give us a call and tell us about your lead gen and sales enablement needs. We can show you how we’ll boost your results both fast and well!

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Sales Cadences Should Include Gratitude

  • Sales Cadences are about more than just finding customers
  • It’s important that every cadence respects the prospect
  • That includes making sure to thank them for their time
  • Showing gratitude can include sending real gifts
  • Boom Demand is grateful for the chance to help our clients grow!

Many companies, while focusing on their sales cadences, tend to be most concerned with playing the numbers game and getting as many contacts as possible in the search for the one that says yes.

Whether or not anyone says yes, do you remember to thank all of them? Every sales call, every email, every message on LinkedIn? Each one of these requires the prospect to spend irreplaceable time paying attention to you, even if just for a few seconds. Are you at least giving them some indication that you appreciate that effort on their part?

Today we want to look at a couple of important ways that you can do so, and if you are already doing it, let’s see how we can all improve.

How Sales Cadences Work

First, let’s review the basics of how sales cadences function.

The key idea is that it’s an organized way of making sure that you do everything possible to reach a potential prospect in the best way for them.

That means making a series of phone calls, sending emails, and reaching out over social media, all in a non-intrusive way.

The sales cadences used by Boom Demand typically involve 19 touch points spread out over 18 days. No more than seven of those are phone calls. We’ll try emailing up to eight times and make four attempts to connect over LinkedIn.

We never attempt to use the same technique more than once per day, and on some days we let the prospect rest and we don’t try to contact them at all. On those days, we focus on other potential customers.

The Value of Gratitude

In our modern culture, we tend to think about gratitude really only once a year. You’re more likely to see a blog post like this one sometime in November.

But the thing is, gratitude is one of the most important attitudes any sales professional can have. In fact, not just sales professionals, but all professionals.

You see, when we’re not grateful for the things that we have, it’s easy to get consumed with negativity when things go wrong.

But when we remember all the things that make our lives good and enjoyable, and how so many of those things came to us even though we feel like maybe we didn’t deserve them,  it somehow makes it a lot easier to get through the difficult spots.

It’s really just a question of priorities. There are two ways of looking at any situation.

On the one hand, we can say, “sure, I have all of these benefits, but what about this problem and that problem, and the other?”

On the other hand, we can look at the situation and say, “it’s true that this moment is difficult, but I remember that I have this blessing, and that gift, and this source of joy, and I’m grateful for them.”

What do you think?  Which perspective do you think is going to generate better results?

Putting Them Together

So, how do we combine specific techniques such as sales cadences with a general attitude of gratitude?

Well, the first and most obvious thing is to make sure that we do express our appreciation for the other person in every point of contact. This can be as simple as saying “thank you for your time” at the end of a phone call,  or writing “thanks” in the signature line of an email.

What about going one better, though?  what about more than simply saying that we’re grateful?  Is there a way to actually show our gratitude as part of the sales process?

There is! Consider the concept of e-gifting.  One company out there that makes e-gifting especially easy is Thnks. They make it very simple to send small but personal gifts via a mobile app that the recipient doesn’t even have to download.

The way Thnks has everything set up is pretty cool. You can send digital gifts like a coupon that gives them a week of free coffee, movie tickets, or a free Uber ride. You can also arrange to send them an actual physical gift.

All they have to do is show a barcode at the place they want to redeem it or input their address for delivery. If they prefer to, they can also reassign the value of that gift to the charity of their choice.

Regardless of the options that you choose using their app, the point is that it’s an easy way to show a little more gratitude than just saying thank you.

Extra Benefits

What’s especially great about this way of expressing gratitude is that it applies to everybody that you interact with.

Not only is it a great way to say thank you to clients who actually close a deal with you, but it’s also a good way to stay top-of-mind with somebody who might be a good partner and takes a lot of time in negotiation, but ends up not signing anything right now.  

You can still tell them thank you for going through the process!  

Doing so may or may not lead to a new deal in the future with them,  but it will almost certainly improve your brand and lead to some referrals.

Saying Thanks with Boom Demand Sales Cadences

Expressing gratitude is an important part of the sales cadences that we use at Boom Demand. We remember that everything that we have as a company depends on the time and effort that our customers and prospects give us. Sure, we’re providing useful services, but that doesn’t mean that we should take it for granted.

Thank you for reading this post! If you’re interested in how our sales development representatives and the cadences they use might be able to help your business grow, go ahead and contact us today! We’ll be happy to show you how it works, and we’ll be quite grateful for your interest.