Lead generation is as important to public relations as news
mentions. Cision’s 2014 State of the Media reportfound that 35 percent of
PR professionals said sales conversion was a top priority for their team. While
this may have fallen under the marketing team more so than a communications
team in the past, the landscape of PR and marketing is evolving and becoming
more interdependent and data-driven. Understanding an integrated marketing
environment will feed success when pitching brands and working on campaigns by
allowing you to clearly show revenue ROI that will make your results more
tangible to business leaders.
Here are three tips for a winning demand generation strategy:
1. Build your strategy based on revenue drivers
Start by asking yourself this question: Does this idea generate
revenue? If you have to build a demand generation program from scratch,
introduce yourself and your initial ideas to the accounting, sales, IT and
marketing departments as each will provide info you need to help shape your
campaign.
Depending
on what tools are already available to your business, you may have to implement new technology to allow you to
track conversion-driving activities on
your website. Stats to monitor include third-party websites that brought users
to your site, time on page, which pages have the highest traffic and which are
leading to conversions (i.e. requests for information or quotes) on the site.
Use this data to create additional opportunities for engagement and conversion
on those high-traffic areas. All of the data collected in these spaces will
help you answer that primary question and understand which campaigns engaged
your audience enough to become a lead that later converted into revenue.
2. Leads are people, so build customer
personas
By
leveraging your connections in the sales and marketing departments you should
answer these five important questions before starting your campaign:
1.
Who is buying our product?
2.
Why did they buy from us?
3.
How long did it take them to purchase?
4.
How did they find us and what was their path
to purchase?
5.
How much are they spending?
These
questions build the basis for a customer profile. Your sales team can provide
good insights on why a prospect did or did not convert. By understanding what
works and what doesn’t for the sales representative, you can work more
effectively with your marketing team to craft messaging that will lead to wins
rather than losses to competitors.
Question
four, is where results from previous campaigns and website behavior is most
valuable. With this you can segment your potential clients by the products they
need, how valuable of an opportunity they represent and how many touch points
it may take to convert them. Engage with your sales team and learn what
customer pain points exist and then you can strategize with marketing about how
your products or services solve those issues.
3. Target your campaign to a specific
audience
You
cannot be everything to everyone at all times. It’s important to narrow your
target audience for your first campaign to those that have the highest
opportunity for conversion and tailor your messaging to meet their needs. Time
is money, so gunning for the biggest fish in the pond doesn’t make sense when
need to drive up lead numbers. Using data from existing and former clients,
plot the revenue generated from their business and the length of time it took
to convert them from a new contact to a new customer.
The
goal is to find a grouping of clients who have a high value and incurred low
opportunity cost. (i.e. a quantitative cost of the time and resources required
to convert the sale.) This understanding will further develop your client
personas and provide you a clearer picture of what tactics worked so they can
be replicated on prospects..
Once
you understand
your business’s sales cycle and create a persona of your target client, you are
ready to build out content for your campaign.
Don’t
be a content barbarian. Follow these five steps to rule content as a king:
1. Create relevant and valuable content
Once
you’ve determined the prospect segment that will have the greatest value with
the lowest opportunity cost, create content that resonates with the pain points
discovered. Connect that content to the solution your product or service
offers. Here are three types of content prospects find valuable:
1.
White papers or blog posts that answer questions professionals you are
targeting may be too embarrassed to ask
2.
Host webinars featuring respected thought leaders
3.
Conduct surveys polling the dynamics of your industry and build reports from
that data
2.
Test paid ad channels
Your
audience is out there, but if you don’t test different promotional channels you
may never find them. Run pilot campaigns on a variety of advertising channels
like Google, LinkedIn and Twitter. The audience for display ads can be
segmented by city, profession, age group, personal interests and even someone’s
current location. Track which one feeds your sales funnel the most. Then you
can begin to optimize your messaging on the most successful channels to
increase your reach and improve both the quantity and quality of leads over
time.
Be
sure to funnel this data into your client personas as you learn what content
and messaging resonates with your core audience via the clicks and leads
generated.
3. Keep marketing emails short and sweet
Email
marketing copy needs to be brief, persuasive and direct. Answer the following
in as few words as possible:
1.
Why should your prospects read what you’ve sent them?
2.
What are they being offered?
3.
How will it help them?
Your
emails should include a call-to-action (CTA) that creates a sense of urgency
and incites an action. Single words like “Download” or “Register” work well,
but in general try avoid CTAs that are longer than five words. Differentiate
your CTA by making it an image bubble and have its color contrast the rest of
the email. You want it to stand out and draw the eye.
4. Run A/B testing
Test
different copy and colors in your email marketing and landing pages. For
instance, one test we conducted on button colors within emails found that
orange elicited a 46 percent higher engagement rate than blue. This
optimization improves ROI on all of your activities. Test different images,
headlines, body copy lengths or even the use of video on a landing page to find
the sweet spot where you receive the most downloads or registrations.
5. Repurpose the best content
After
running a number of campaigns you will know what content generated the most
leads and leads-to-conversions. Now is the time to find new ways to reuse it:
1.
Take elements of your best thought leadership materials and turn them into blog
posts. Tie this content back to something of regional or industrial importance
that is topical at that time.
2.
Update an annual study with a mid-year addendum and re-release it to your
prospects and clients. This is a great opportunity to invite a valuable client
partner to provide their feedback on the industry or your research while also
providing additional touch points for your sales team with their prospects.
Article From: www.cision.com
