by Erika Cannon
[email protected]
Wikipedia defines generation as “the act of producing offspring.” Lead generation, then, is the act of producing more offspring – potential customers – for your company.
Producing offspring sounds like a lot of work, especially if you want quality offspring. Know what I mean?
Finding new customers is a lot of work; even if you have a small firmographic, say 5000 contacts, it’s still a logistical and technological feat to communicate with those 5000 on a regular basis.
Email is the ideal medium to communicate with any prospect database, as one click of the send button can send an idea, thought or pitch to all of them. Utilize a marketing automation tool that reports electronic behaviors (open, click, visit, etc), and you’ll be able to identify those in need of individual attention from your sales department.
So the sales team works with individuals who have expressed some type of interest while the MA tool communicates regularly with the whole group.
Regular contact with your entire prospect base is important, because not everyone is ready to talk to you now. So it’s important to be in their inbox when they need you, but not so much that you annoy them.
We exchanged fold-out Valentines at Rally this year.
It reminded me that not everyone is ready for a date – or a conversation – right off the bat.
Depending on the size of your sales and marketing department, you can either manage the lead generation process through subscription to an online marketing automation tool ($24K/year), buy a database ($10K), hire a content writer ($40K/year) or work with a company like Rally Prospecting, who provides you a new prospect database, manages the MA tool, writes interesting content and assigns an account manager to work closely with on you the lead generation process for less than your MA subscription alone ($18K/year).
Find the best fit for your company.
