Audience buy-in is crucial to engage effectively with your desired online targeted website traffic. 

You’ll no doubt notice by now that there are an ostensibly infinite amount of companies competing for the same buyer interest.

Creating and maintaining your business’ competitive advantage lays in your potential to feature prominently and in forming real relationships with your clients and prospective clients online. It takes much more than a creative website and striking content to really relate directly with your targeted audience.

A good place to start is to develop solid buyer personas and find out where your buyer personas invest their time when online, then ensure that your business has a presence on these media channels.

Download  “30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips & Tricks” to Discover marketing professionals best practice lead generation secrets…  

So here is some fish food for thought…

1 Associate with your target social sectors

Like-minded people have a tendency to associate with each other. In the world of online marketing this phenomenon is no different. Personal influence is extremely compelling and social media can become supercharged personal influence. As a marketing director, it’s critical that you interact on all the social media networks that your targeted customers and prospective customers utilise.

If they’re on Twitter, ensure that you create your own profile on that media, even if you are not in a position currently to interact regularly, it is important that you at least monitor to discover just how your client community is connecting.

 

2 Write Blog articles pertaining to your potential audience passions, interests and problems

Content marketing is a powerful inbound marketing tactic. When you produce and manage a business blog, you’ll align your business as an industry ‘thought leader’ and specialist. If you’d like to entice more targeted audience, the key is to maintain a content editorial calendar with potential topic suggestions and keyword lists that match your prospects interests.

By choosing the right topics, you’ll give your company the ability to accomplish elevated search engine rankings. It is therefore your goal to discover the specific interests, answers and search questions that the potential clients are trying to find. Become known for providing the educational and informative content providing the solutions to your clients requirements.

 

3 Affiliate with like-minded companies

There are no doubt many complimentary (but not directly competitive) organisations that will be attempting to engage with the same targeted website traffic as yours. Discover exactly who these  businesses are, and rather than attempting to conquer all of them, join together with them in a amalgamated effort.

As soon as you have located a few partners, begin guest blogging on each other blogs regularly and share one another’s social posts. Determine collaborative strategies to increase your social reach and to add even more worth to your collective target audience.

 

4 Offer appropriate customer reviews that speak to your targeted website traffic

Your client case studies must engage with your target prospects on both a logical and emotional level. Whenever visitors engage with your brand for the very first time, they commonly have one question in mind, what’s in it for me?

You can simply ease this emotional process by offering an immediate answer to this concern. Demonstrate instances of clients with similar issues, needs and questions as them. This is known as social proof and supports genuinely how exemplary your brand name is perceived.

Ask clients that you have worked with and helped in the past to write a testimonial on your LinkedIn, Twitter or web site. You may want to consider creating video testimonies to accurately communicate the value you deliver.

There are a multitude of tactics that you can and should employ as components of an integrated lead generation strategy. However, not all leads are created equal and not all lead generation methods delivery the same results.

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4 of the most effective lead generation strategies are:

• Lead Generation Website Planning & Structure
• SEO
• Social Media
• Email Marketing

But before I get into the 4 methods, I need to emphasise the two essential processes that you must first undertake way before you even consider lead generation tactics

Indentifying your ideal customer profile or “Buyer Persona” and taking time to understanding the phases of their progressive route to buying, known as “Buyer’s Journey” are without doubt, the most important principal processes you will ever invest your time and resources in.

Failure to complete these tasks will almost certainly guarantee that you won’t realize the best results from your marketing efforts.

 

Buyer Persona

First take a good look at your own client database and you should have the ability to determine which are your best and most profitable customers. Your ultimate objective is to attract the attention of your ideal audience and convert that interest into leads & convert leads into sales.

Significantly more than semi-fictional descriptions of your potential customers you want to impact.Effective buyer personas uncover insights about your buyers’ preferences, their perceptions, problems & indicators that may motivate their purchase decisions.

Your buyer personas must be created from real data gathered from real customers if it is likely to be effective. Really the only method of obtaining relevant and accurate data about customers is to talk to them directly.

 

Buyer’s Journey

This is the single most important marketing activity that you must get right to remain relevant & accelerate growth.

Simply put, a “buyer’s journey” is a model that represents a buyer’s progression along a research and selection process that results in a purchase.

The ultimate approach to lead generation strategy and how it relates to your “buyer’s journey” is to apply this in a context that pertains to your prospects. The most effective method of doing this is to map the buyer’s journey and create relevant & well timed content that interests, educates and helps engage your prospects.

While the specifics of each distinct business model’s buyer’s journey is undoubtedly different, the phases are typically the same:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision

REMEMBER – It’s not just traffic you are looking for…. it’s targeted traffic. Plus it’s not just leads you want… it’s qualified leads!

Now that I’ve covered the base principals, let’s take a quick look at those top lead generation strategy that I mentioned earlier:

 

1 Plan, organise and build/rebuild a lead generation website to attract and nurture leads

If the last time you updated your lead generation website is more than a couple of years, then the odds are that it’s not optimised for lead generation. This is a non-exhaustive list of lead generation enhancements you should implement:

• Employ customer centred site navigation that considers your prospects’ requirements and pain points to enable them to quickly locate the content they are searching for.
• Create persona tailored content that’s also focused on each stage of the buyer’s journey that will attract and convert prospects.
• Exploit various “calls to actions” with different levels of engagement, for example; subscribe to email, download free eBook, book a consultation, call me back etc.
• Develop landing pages that help assess sales readiness, containing pricing info & easy, one click “Take Action” options. You’ll be surprised how many prospects are actually willing to commit before even talking with you.
• Ensure you website is mobile optimised. Global mobile internet user penetration was over 52% [http://www.statista.com/topics/779/mobile-internet/]

 

2 Get optimised for search engines

Get this part right and prospects searching for information online using keywords that relate to your lead generation website content will be able to find you. Optimised websites will attract consistent, targeted traffic.

Essentially, the more effective your SEO, the more visible your website will become in the search engine rankings, which in-turn translates into increased leads for your brand.

I don’t have time to dive into an SEO lesson here, but fundamentally, you’ve got to create extremely valuable content that employ keywords your ideal prospects are frequently using to find information about your opportunity or concept. Then publish and market the content to so that visitors that are viewing your content begin to share with their network and link from their own websites.

 

3 Becoming more social with drive your lead generation strategy

 Developing relationships with potential clients is essential. Social media is all about people to people. Get to know your potential clients online, engage and share insights.

In the beginning focus your social initiatives on social media groups that include people that fit your buyer personas. Connect and participate to discussion groups which provide you with a greater insight to the group’s members and audience.

It’s also a very good idea to aim for groups that may supply referrals such as accountants, consultants and financial planners etc. If you’re proactive in these groups it’s relatively effortless to obtain support and gather understanding. The referral is crucial here, as you’ll be astonished at the number of leads you’ll receive from prospects outside your target location. The point that your were endorsed by a mutual contact practically eliminates the geographical barrier.

 

4 Leverage the power of email marketing lead nurturing

The conventional email newsletter has essentially withered in its effectiveness. It’s no longer enough to simply land in a prospect’s inbox on a regular basis with boring sales focussed newsletter content.

To generate and nurture authentic leads, you must connect with your prospects with targeted content that educates, interests and inspires them. You have to go all out and discover their pain points and how you can solve their problems or challenges.

Today’s more informed, internet savvy prospects need to get to know, like and trust you before they will invest. Don’t go for the finish line too early, take time persuading them that you are a trustworthy, experienced specialist.

 

Key Takeaway

Effective marketing that generates results does not depend on conjecture. Understand you target audience and fine tune your strategy to fit their personas and buyers journey. If nothing else, ensure you utilise proven lead generation strategy including, lead generation website optimisation, SEO, Social Media and email nurturing to generate qualified leads.

Nevertheless, as you initiate your lead generation campaigns, you must accumulate and review your own analytics data that will empower you to continually revise and perfect your marketing initiatives to consistently attain improved results.

 

Companies of all sizes are now compelled to consider how social media fits into their marketing mix. Larger enterprise brands may be evaluating whether to integrate social media using their existing marketing resources or hire a new full time member of staff to handle their social marketing. Both of these strategies can result in significant disadvantages that are resolved by partnering with outsourced social media management companies.

Let’s consider five benefits of working with an external social media agency to accelerate website traffic, lead generation and business growth.

1 Know-how

Social media marketing is a constantly evolving arena and new social management tools, optimisation techniques and network variations are released daily. Remaining ahead of curve and fully abreast of industry best practices is essential to ensuring your business capitalises on all opportunities, in addition to preserving its social reputation.

Merely integrating your social media management into your existing marketing department will likely render all of their endeavours less effective. You need persistence and focus to continue to succeed in the social realm and manage expanding networks.

Many large companies employ outsourced social media management. Hiring a social media management company is an approach that helps to maintain your industry thought leader presence, while avoiding impact on your overall marketing effectiveness or having to employing additional staff.

2 Commitment

An outsourced social media agency can augment your brands social monitoring and provide full time responses to social efforts and initiatives. Considering the emphasis of the agency is going to be to regulate your social presence, business opportunities will not be overlooked. An instant response can help calm grievances from irritated customers and prevent the swell of a social throng.

3 Divergent thinking

Outsourced social media management companies can offer observations and perspectives to your company that you wouldn’t uncover if handling activities in house. For example, making use of knowledge and success perfected with other clients, at the same time as the fresh thinking they employ to challenges. Their unorthodox perspective may also highlight opportunities that you may have easily overlooked. Divergent thinking can result in increased potential possibilities, improving your companies probability of coming to the best conclusions. In the event that you exclusively look in house for advice you are likely to keep repeating the same mistakes.

4 It’s cheaper

This may sound the reverse of what you’d imagine, nevertheless contracting a social media agency will almost certainly save you money. Incorporating social media into your existing marketing dept will impact on your marketing initiatives and social media management. The reality is that monitoring, reacting to, and consistently revising your social presence, in addition to investigating opportunities to develop your social community is a full time role.

Fortunately, plenty of companies actually acknowledge the work load and anticipate hiring a permanent staff member to manage their social media. The downside with this strategy is that it will undoubtedly cost considerably more and returns a great deal less. Further than the on paper costs of a earnings and staff benefits, you will be required to soak up the unseen costs such as training. All of which results in a single staff member to steer your endeavours. While employing a company that is an expert in social media management, means you will enjoy the benefits of a scalable extension to your team combined with the access to total agency resources.

5 Broad Experience

An outsourced agency that manages your social media will likely be competent in the all the available marketing tools and be able to tailor solutions to meet your business objectives. Also, your business will benefit from the experiences with the agencies other clients, their practical insights of research tools and recognition of rivals. This also ensures that, unforeseen obstacles for your business are likely to be of little challenge to a social media company that has dealt with similar issues previously.

Takeaways

These benefits discussed today is by no means an exhaustive list of reasons to partner with a management company for your social media. Multi-skilled agencies that specialise in a number of areas may bring fresh perspectives to your social media in ways that a single skilled manager or management company will not.

The innate impact of these benefits, along with the potential cost savings contrasted with other solutions, means that outsourcing to a social media management company is most definitely a great investment.

 

 

Successful B2B lead generation strategy starts and finishes with a fine tuned knowledge of your prospect customer’s journey, known as the “buyer’s journey”. The journey spans from the instant a prospect buyer develops a desire for something, until they finally make a purchase. During this time you have the potential to connect and engage with your prospect. The key to accelerating more profitable outcomes depends on your understanding of “exactly where” your prospect is in their in their decision process.

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B2B marketing is completely different to the world of B2C. While B2C marketing depends to great deal on emotion, the “buyer’s journey” in B2B is driven by logically reasoning. B2B buyers generally consider the cost v benefit. This process can take some time, as a result, the B2B sales cycle might last between 2-4+ months. Additionally, business buyer’s decisions are motivated by a need to prosper, rather than a more emotional desire for a new product etc, as in the consumer purchasing decision making

The smart approach to B2B lead generation strategy and how it correlates to your “buyer’s journey” is to relate this in a context that pertains to your prospective clients. The most powerful method of doing this is to chart the buyer’s journey and develop appropriate & well timed content that interests, educates and helps engage your prospects.

While the details of each unique business type buyer’s journey is inevitably different, the phases are typically the same:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision

AWARENESS

This is the time that your potential customers have become conscious that they’ve a “need” that has to be satisfied.

To illustrate, lets imagine that your business provides HR & Employment Law solutions, the “Awareness” stage is where a potential client recognises a need for change. This recognition is perhaps introduced as a consequence to HR department reporting higher than normal staff turnover, poor recruitment or inefficient staff deployment etc. This acknowledgment has escalated to the level where the prospect is considering options that they may adopted to improve things.

It’s important to understand that at this stage your prospect may still not be convinced that they don’t need external support and are probably considering all possible options available to them, perhaps staff training or recruitment.

Your strategy at this point should not be aggressive. Develop relevant content that provides a source of educational information rather than a sales pitch. This is the persuasive and trust building phase:

• SEO – Concentrate your optimisation efforts on relevant website search terms
• Social Media – Reinforce your content with an active social presence
• Content – Write SEO optimised blog articles that portrays your company as an authority in your industry

 

CONSIDERATION

Hopefully you have now intrigued and sparked your prospects  interest in your content and website. Now it’s time to become a little more emphatic with your content tactics.

“Consideration” stage is more about engaging your prospects. Content should be increasingly benefits focussed, such as how cost effective it is to outsource HR in comparison to recruitment, advantages of your team broad experience and resources & systems available through your company. This is achieved by producing high quality content that engages them more with your brand and services:

• Produce high quality content such as eBooks, infographics and videos that emphasise your brand’s capacity to service your prospects challenges and requirements.
• Carry on posting blog articles that communicates your brands services, benefits, options and USPs
• Build a B2B email nurturing program that progressively feeds your prospects with interesting content that hooks them and leaves them looking for more or the same.

 

DECISION

This is actually the stage in the “buyer’s journey” when you discover that your prospect is teetering on the edge, almost ready to commit, so it’s time to give them a little nudge. At this point your prospect is probably only a click away from getting in touch. Your content should begin to feature options to convert this prospect of lead into a new customer.

Your conversion options need to incorporate the following:

• Develop a “Request Consultation”, “Request more info” or “Contact” form that allows your leads to engage with you and discover more specific info. Ensure the form is straight forward and very easy to locate on your website and accessible from your content. More importantly make sure you respond to any enquiries as quickly as possible. If you don’t, you can bet your competitors are.
• Some people don’t like completing forms and prefer to speak directly with a human, so ensure your phone number is visual throughout your website. Unbelievably, a phone number on your website can be a deciding factor when a customer requests more information.

 

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Key Takeaways

Identify your prospect buyer’s journey, to empower you to be able compose relevant content. Don’t throw away potential leads simply because you don’t determine where your prospects are in their buyer’s journeys. If implemented effectively, this B2B lead generation strategy will help connect marketing and sales depts., resulting in a harmonized lead conversion powerhouse.