According to the findings of recent research from Ascend2, 89% of businesses believe that the effectiveness of lead generation is increasing. These businesses use multichannel marketing and value email marketing and content marketing as the two most effective digital channels for lead generation. 45% of respondents rated each of the channels as the most effective digital marketing strategy for lead generation.
As can be seen from the chart below, other channels include social media marketing, landing page/UX, and SEO.
Interestingly, the two most difficult lead generation channels were found to be content management and social media marketing. One of the main reasons cited for this is that they are two of the most time and resource intensive tactics. Because of this, 80% of organisations surveyed decided to prioritise these strategies, and then outsource them to ensure that they have the resources available to execute them effectively.
This kind of outsourcing is something that we excel in at Xcite Digital. In our experience, however, the reason businesses often outsource social and content is not only to resource these areas fully, but also to ensure consistent messaging in terms of multi channel marketing.
Within this context, effective social media marketing takes time to build up an understanding of the audience – where they hang out, what catches their interest – and how to engage with them within social networks. As this understanding is built up, custom campaigns can be created to maximise potential within those arenas.
One of the clients with whom we have been particularly successful in social media marketing is Event Agent. Event Agent is a one stop shop mobile app for event organisers. We ran a multichannel marketing campaign to achieve 50,000 downloads of their Event Vendor App in their first year of launch. Our goal was to create buzz and excitement around the App and to get inside the heads of the people looking for help planning their event. We did this by defining each target audience through the strategy phase and working out how to get in front of these audiences with the correct message.
We also provide content for many clients as part of their multichannel digital marketing strategy. The emphasis on content is now all about inbound marketing: attracting interest rather than the keyword stuffing of old. But effective content will be interesting to read, provide help and advice, endorse a company’s authority and expertise, and build confidence in the brand. See our recent article on Top Ranking Blogging to find out more. Well-written content – together with effective use of SEO to keep Google happy! – will do much to raise the overall profile of the company, and is a key element of multichannel marketing.
We have used content marketing to great effect with another client, Fair Business Loans. Fair Business Loans is a social business offering a range of financial products and services designed to meet the needs of people who are financially excluded. We transformed their website into an effective lead generation platform, using a wide range of marketing including SEO, PPC, Social, Email, Content and Creative to promote a consistent multichannel brand message.
Content forms the core of our work with Fair Business Loans. PPC campaigns allow us to appeal to customers looking to buy today, but by writing engaging content we create value based transactions with customers and build up long term credibility in the brand. In parallel, our social campaigns have the objective of building up a community of potential customers who see the value in the content we create for them. These audiences are used to generate sales over the long term, and to promote advocacy – where the community itself helps to find more potential customers.
With our experience of the challenges of social and content marketing we can fully appreciate why many businesses choose to outsource these areas, but are passionate about the need to do this as part of a structured multichannel campaign rather than just “ticking the box”.
We were also interested to read in the survey results that, whilst only 11% of the businesses surveyed still perceive barriers to achieving lead generation success, 77% of respondents cited the need to improve the quality of leads. This can significantly impact the ability of an organisation to convert leads to customers. It can become even more difficult in those businesses that have a complex sales process involving either a long cycle or various different influencers, as leads can require a significant amount more nurturing than those leads converted by a direct sale.
We experienced this with another client – Loans2Go. They needed help not with lead generation itself – though more leads are always welcome! But their priority was to generate better quality leads to improve conversion rate. We conducted a multichannel audit of Loans 2 Go, reviewing the success of different channels. From this we identified the most likely ‘customers’ and helped Loans 2 Go develop an ambitious multichannel marketing strategy that defined exactly what they want from each channel, who they want to target, how to personalise the message and what success will look like. Conversion rate has since improved. You can read more about our work with Loans2Go here.
In summary, from the results of the Ascend2 survey it seems that many businesses are on the right track in terms of lead generation but that not all businesses have yet fully grasped the importance of a multichannel digital marketing strategy with a consistent message across each channel. When they do this, they will find that it results in the better quality leads that they are striving for, and a corresponding increase in conversion rate and business success.
Author: Robert Walker
