September heralds the great big “back to school” – though the shops have been full of it since July, with prominent displays of uniform, stationery and lunch boxes!
Even if you are at the stage of life where you do not have any personal involvement whatsoever in back to school, September always feels like a fresh start – perhaps even more so than New Year for many of us. The long summer holiday is over and there is a renewed sense of purpose in the increasingly autumnal mornings.
All well and good. But maybe this September it’s time to reboot your digital marketing strategy? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to put your feet up at Christmas having seen dramatic improvement not only in the number of leads generated but also those that progress to conversion! Here are our five tips to improve lead generation:
Cross Channel
You need to know which channels are working best for you. This will enable you to deploy your marketing budget more efficiently and prioritise those channels that are converting more customers. So analysis of the leads coming through different funnels and their value post-conversion will give you a stronger understanding of which channels are producing higher quality conversions and deserve to have more time, energy and money invested in them.
You will also want to align the channels that are not working against the ones that are, making sure you have consistent:
- Copy
- Messaging
- Images
- Tone of voice
- Triggers
- Calls to actions
- Rewards
Making cross channel work is not hard, it just requires a lot of time and energy to ensure consistency. You start to create small improvements of 1-2% which through the wider Campaign lead to significant improvements.
Know your customer
Once you understand more about how the customers you want are led to you, you are in a strong position to find out more valuable information about them.
- How and where do they interact with you? Via mobile or desktop or both?
- What kind of demographics and backgrounds are they from
- Are there any geographical patterns?
The advantage of defining your audiences into groups is so that it becomes easier to appeal to them on mass, i.e. rather than being niche you can find more customers over each channel because you have a well defined type. This goes more than just Persona, the more you drill down the more you win.
Clear messaging
Confused customers will never convert. You need to be clear about your brand and mission to ensure that it is clear and that your audience will understand what you want from them and what you will do for them in return.
You need to be upfront and communicate clearly what you want the lead to do at the point of conversion. Ensure that you always give them precise instructions to follow through and let them know what to expect from you next.
Make sure that you take time to understand the customer’s likely motivations for signing up for your product or service and clearly convey what benefits they will gain in return. Also ensure that you remain consistent throughout the conversion process so that you don’t inadvertently lose the thread that drew them in in the first place.
Quality and quantity
Whilst we would all love to generate more leads every day, you do need a mix of both quantity and quality from your lead generation teams. Our emphasis is on analysing your results to see where the higher quality leads are coming from for the audiences you are targeting, and then working how to get more of them.
Focus your efforts and tailor your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to the channels and campaigns that bring in people who convert quicker or at a higher value. Similarly if you set CPLs (Costs Per Lead) you need to take into consideration the value of the leads and the channels that are proving most effective rather than falling into the trap of a blanket approach.
If higher cost leads are achieving more conversions than lower cost leads then it would be false economy to cut back on them.
Retargeting
Many lead generation campaigns are not fully effective because they only target an audience once. Some leads need to be retargeted in a more personalised manner to coax them further down the funnel. By analysing how they come to your website and how they behave when they get there, you can tailor your message to give them a nudge in the right direction.
This September take your lead generation strategy back to school! Follow the above tips to ensure that it is heading in the right direction to bring in lots of high quality leads to see you through the winter!
